Incline [Poll] The Best of the "Kinda Mediocre"

[deama]

Uhh, why is pillars on the list? DAO was made in 2009, 6 years before pillars? Mass effect 2007, and NWN2OC in 2006, 10 years before pillars?

 

[Glop_dweller]

Presumably the assumption that any of them are mediocre.

 

[Mustawd]

Please add Two Worlds.

 

[Butter]

Is DA:O worth playing? I bought it ages ago and haven't gotten around to playing it. I heard it's super generic with shit combat.

 

[Commissar Draco]

Please add Two Worlds.

Two Words One or Two Comrade? Fist part was somewhat fun potato cheap knockout of TES Games, must admit I did liked it lot more than Oblivion the second one was dog shite.

 

[Mustawd]

Two Worlds One. Never played the retardedly named sequel.

EDIT: Also, I’d add that it’s early level world was pretty brutal. You couldn’t simply go exploring all random without getting murdered by the wildlife.

 

[Haplo]

Is DA:O worth playing? I bought it ages ago and haven't gotten around to playing it. I heard it's super generic with shit combat.

The main story and villains are cartoon cutout generic, like a caricature.

Abilities of some classes are badly structured and unbalanced (mages) or poor and full of redundancy (sword & boards).
The combat system isn't terrible and spell combos are kinda fun to use. But PoE real time engine is better. Not to mention classes, abilities and itemization.

 

[Prime Junta]

DA:O’s main problem is an identity crisis. Is it a monty haul fantasy romp with dragons and elves and dwarves treasure and oh my? A grimdark revenge fantasy? A harem anime? A tactical party based RPG? An aRPG? A D&D clone? A WoW clone? Nobody knows and it keeps changing its mind.

There’s good stuff in it, like terrific C & C, lots of varied beasties to fight, a carefully crafted if painfully derivative world, a biiiig game to explore, and a modicum of build diversity, but overall it’s meh. And once you figure out just how laughably OP some of the spells are it’s game over man.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Is DA:O worth playing? I bought it ages ago and haven't gotten around to playing it. I heard it's super generic with shit combat.

The main story and villains are cartoon cutout generic, like a caricature.

I wouldn't go as far as to call it a caricature, but it is indeed generic fantasy. That being said, it is portrayed quite well and it has a strong cast of companions and a quite nice atmosphere.

I'd warmly recommend it for at least one playthrough, although beyond that its flaws become much more apparent (and annoying).

Spoiler

As a Dwarf at heart, I also have to applaud them for their portrayal of Tolkienesque Dwarven culture which is unique without straying too far from the 'source material' as it were.

 

[jf8350143]

DA:O is the last Bioware game that let you be a evil character. After that it's only Good guy, Good guy who being sarcastic and Good guy who pretend to be a jerk.

And you can actually be a lawful evil character, unlike most of other games who thinks only chaotic evil is evil. "You can be evil, you can do evil things like murder everyone, and murder everyone, and murder everyone. Did I mention you can murder everyone?”

So it's definitely worth playing in my opinion. It's not like there is so many RPGs for you to choose these days.

 

[Eyestabber]

Whew, poll results now paint a pretty interesting picture:

- Solid lead for DA:O
- ME and PoE tied for 2nd place, with a slight advantage for ME
- NWN 2 clearly behind

These results so far lead me to believe the codex does NOT really mind trash mobs as much as it's usually claimed in NWN 2 related threads, otherwise DAO would be lower. It's all about frontloading quality content. NWN 2 follows the "tradition" of older cRPGs of having a REALLY slow and pretty boring early game while DA:O tries to impress you from the very beginning. The good bits of NWN 2 like Crossroad Keep, trial etc all happen way past midgame. The campaign railroads you REALLY hard in the beginning, so much so that it takes a couple of hours to finally reach Neverwinter, where things start to open up and become more interesting. They could've just moved Shandra to Neverwinter and scrapped the ENTIRE Highcliff portion of the game entirely and nothing of value would be lost.

Because of the initial slog, a lot of people probably quit the game out of boredom and that's how they remember NWN 2:



Oh, and I remember playing the game when it came out and never really understanding the jokes regarding Neeshka's tail. Because the game was a buggy mess and her tail only appeared for me about 2 years later when I replayed a more patched version of the game. THAT's when I learned she was supposed to have a tail.

Meanwhile, DA:O greets you with the origin story, a fun little twist I wish more games implemented. Come to think of it, AoD has something similar. Hey, I do remember VD saying nice things about DAO. Coincidence?

It takes several hours of playing DA:O until you realize how awfully full of trash mobs it actually is and by that time you're already close to finishing it anyway, so most people finish the game with a positive impression, though few ever replay it.

Mass Effect is similar in the sense that it starts off rather nicely (ASSUMING you overlook the utterly retarded the relationship between the Council and Saren) and the cracks only show up past the ten hour mark. Nobody remembered ITT, but Mass Effect set the precedent for recycling the same room a thousand times. Every single enemy "base" looks exactly the same, because it IS the same map. Dragon Age 2 perfected the art of recycling maps by making every single filler quest take place in the exact same cave. Bandits, spiders, blood mages, everyone LOVES that exact same cave.

 

[oldmanpaco]

Remember when bioware had to change the gay butt sex scene with the elf because all the developers were natural bottoms but the biodrones envisioned themselves as tops?

 

[Roguey]

Remember when bioware had to change the gay butt sex scene with the elf because all the developers were natural bottoms but the biodrones envisioned themselves as tops?

Zevran always came across as a power bottom to me (not so different from a Gaider self-insert).

 

[M. AQVILA]

DAO>NWN2>ME1>Garbage