Vault Dweller said:
Dajaaj said:
Vault Dweller said:
The combat is pretty good, better than BG2 in all aspects but the mage duels. The problem is too much filler combat.
Well if you like MMO combat in a single player game, I guess you can say it's better. But even then, the encounter design is so bad that it doesn't matter how good the combat system is.
It's been awhile so I don't really remember what was so awesome about BG design encounter? I really want to know.
It's not that BG2 had super-awesome encounter design. It's that it wasn't laughably bad like DA's.
Proof? Arguments? Maybe I'm getting old and need glasses, but I don't see how the DA encounter design is any fucking different from that in any other IE game. You walk into a room, monsters attack you. The end. That's as much fucking depth as you normally get.
However, I'd LOVE to actually read some arguments and learn from such enlightened folks. What I'm getting tired of reading is the usual "i hate!" crap. It's your fucking right to hate whatever the fuck you want, but can you do everyone a favor and explain why you hate it so fucking much and maybe we'd join you and hate shit together. Won't that be something?
The main reason has to do with the incredibly large amounts of trash combat. For example, in the evil temple place when you're looking for the urn, almost every battle is the exact same: a bunch of cultists, some are warriors, some are fighters, some are mages. That particular battle isn't a bad thing, in fact the first time you do it it's quite fun. The problem comes in when you spend the next hour doing the exact same battle again and again. Even when you get different enemies, like with the dragonlings, they're basically just warriors with a breath attack. Your strategy to defeat them is the exact same as it is to defeat all the other battles. There are a couple of cool encounters: the one where you fight the supermage, a few cultists, and a few drakes was well done and is fun. But you have to do so much of the same old same old to even get there it becomes tiring, boring, and most important just not fun. A game shouldn't be about getting through a lot of boring, repetitive stuff to make it to a small amount of good stuff.
The worst part is, though, that it's not just in that temple. Most of the other parts of the main quest are like that. The forest? It's not
terrible until you get into the temple where the werewolves are, but once you do it's a long trek fighting either a bunch of spiders, a bunch of wraiths, or a bunch of werewolves. The fact that there are 3 separate fighting groups there would normally be fine, except that these same groups show up again and again with very little variation. It's just a lot of repetition, and, for the most part, each battle plays out the same way. The mages' tower is also like this, for the most part, just fighting the same abominations or blood mages over and over. Except for the fade part. The fade part there was really awesome and well done, it's just a shame that it was a chore to get to.
In BG2 there was variation. You would have the exact same encounter twice at the most in any given questline or location, and for the most part each quest was a number of totally different encounters that you had to use different tactics to win. For example, Firkraag's dungeon place. At the beginning you fight a group of orcs, then there's ogrillons and vampiric mists, followed by a rakshasa and two exploding kobolds. That's just one part of the dungeon, and unless you're just way overpowered you have to use different tactics to succeed in each fight due to the abilities and immunities of the various enemies. On the next section of the map you fight orcs again, except this time they are behind secret doors with murder holes shooting at you. Then there's a troll, some hobgoblins, and an otyugh: your tactics don't change too much here, but it's not just more orcs doing the exact same thing. Then there's the room full of vampires, and if you use the tactics you used to kil the orcs here you are going to have a tough time. After that is the little mask quest, where you have to fight a number of efreet, followed by a whole party encounter (if this were DA you'd have had about 4 of these types of encounters already, since most of the enemies are basically the same). After that you get the wolfweres, who have their own set of immunities which makes it hard to just pretend they are orcs. Then there are the golems, though these are completely optional they are a fun and challenging (in a way that hasn't been done yet in this specific dungeon) fight. Then there are the orogs, which are basically just orcs, so that's a boring encounter. Then Tazok arrives, which is basically like one of DA's mini bossfights, with him and a bunch of orogs. Finally you fight the age and the dragon, or do them one at a time. Neither of those encounters is like anything else in the dungeon so far.
If that dungeon was in DA, I would expect the orcs to be boosted and basically made to be the equivalent of your party, with a strong mage and a couple of thiefs. Then most of the enemy variation would be taken out and replaced with the orcs save for maybe two groups, let's say the wolfweres and the vampires. Unfortunately, they would also basically be just like the orcs, with one or two ability differences, and you would fight them in the same general way. I would expect the Tazok fight and the last fight to not change very much, though you probably wouldn't fight the mage by himself, and Tazok would be helped by orcs, not orogs. You would lose most of the variation that you got, and for the most part each battle would be fought like the last.
The fact that I can go into detail about each fight in the Firkraag dungeon, but for the urn temple one in DA it's pretty much a bunch of cultist encounters, then a few dragonling or drake encounters, and 2 unique ones, shows me how BG2 is more varied and less boring than DA. If you don't see it that way, that's your prerogative, and I'm not really trying to change your mind or tell you that DA is a horrible game and you should stop playing. In fact, I don't think DA is a horrible game. I genuinely enjoy playing it which is why I've been able to stomach the combat and encounter design that I find boring. I just wish it were better in this area because it would move DA from simply the "good game" category to the "excellent game" category. But as it is, with such a big flaw (in my opinion) in such a large part of the game, it can't be better than BG2, which devoted a large part of the game to combat as well, but it was done better.
