#and that the game isnt just a reskin of the original

[squipedmew]

I know literally nothing about these characters and I would already die for them

[wifihunters]

not to Dragon Age Preemptively but

there's been so much (valid) worry that da4 isnt going to handle the issues that are inevitable if the game is headed into Tevinter and like? Honestly? I think it comes from the games trying so hard to make everything feel like a devil's advocate moment in defense of roleplay rather than like. An actual choice.

In Origins you could do some absolutely heinous things. You could do some heinous things without realizing! Depending on your origin, your reaction to the templars, Vaughan, Bhelen, etc... most of us probably fucked something up our first playthrough just based on information variation. Still, with few exceptions, there are weighted 'good' options in most areas.

That... felt like good roleplay. The mission was simple (you were fighting an evil zombie dragon. If you really needed to ally with it to feel complete, there was a dlc for that) and how much you wrecked the world on the way to that objective was up to you, but you definitely know when you're doing an evil dao run.

Dragon Age 2 is a game I enjoy, but its a dating simulator on rpg rails. Hawke is doomed to fail, you just pick who you fail on good terms with. It doesn't have a place in this argument because it's the most pessimistic game so far.

Inquisition seemed to try to combine the two but... failed?

Corypheus is the 'archdemon' 2.0, Samson and Calpernia feel like less involved Meredith and Orsino except they're just mutually exclusive. The Inquisitor is Hawke but destined to succeed no matter what.

Every world choice doesn't change your character's morality, it just reskins the setting with thin paint. My wife going to the mages felt shadier than my (purposeful attempt at an evil run?) run with the templars, really for no reason other than making both sides equal. If DAI was your first game (it was my wife's) you didn't feel any ramifications for this other than which 'boss' attacks Haven. I barely noticed Fiona and I knew who she was.

And the thin reskins and 'equality', 'everyone is morally grey', makes it so the developer can't write an actual stance. Every companion and character needs a "true, however---" check in place so they can't overtake the player's moral godhood. If that was the goal, writing things like genocide and slavery, cultural destruction and bodily autonomy.... shouldn't be on the table as plot points. Go smaller or make an animalistic evil god again.

[transfemininomenon]

short answer: its a bad game

long answer: okay sit down i have so much to say about this game and full disclosure inevitably a lot of this is going to come to My Personal Opinion and ALSO full disclosure that i have not ever actually Finished dark souls 2 because ive on two separate occasions gotten half-way through and then given up because i just was NOT having fun FUCK shrine of amana piece of shit awful god damn fucking area what the FUCK were you thinking with that area with its heat seeking magic missiles and water and random holes in the world and millions of enemies an 

its basically divided up into a few different sections - presentation & theming, quantity vs quality, how difficulty is handled in the game, and the gameplay itself, and how they all kind of go hand in hand with each other 

on the subject of presentation & theming, THE big thing when it came to dark souls 1 is that the world is oppressive, dark, and Difficult. the difficulty of the game is put right into the theming of the game in that its a hard game while the WORLD is a shitty and difficult place in the story. but on the back of that is another theme which is that of yes the world is oppressive and bleak and feels hopeless - but you keep going Anyway and no matter how insurmountable something might feel you can and WILL defeat it

this is further built into the game through the covenant system as well as summonable npcs for boss fights. the game not only says that its okay to ask for help if need be, it actively encourages & rewards people for helping others with the covenant system. its not just a game that is Hard - its a game that’s scary and difficult and dark but also actively encourages you to seek help and to also BE the person helping others survive in a seemingly hopeless world. and that triumph of finally getting past something you were stuck on for so long feels SO good and becomes worth all the trouble

dark souls 2, meanwhile, buys right into the “dark souls is HARD casuals get OUT” mentality. literally the intro cutscene to the game is like “man youre gonna DIE youre gonna DIE so MUCH and youre gonna lose all your SOULS and youre gonna be so MAD”. in contrast with the original dark souls’ opening cutscene which establishes the base lore/story of the game while introducing different characters & future boss fights, the opening cutscene of dark souls 2 does nothing beyond “haha ur gonna be so MAD” 

and it just really kills the vibe Immediately for me. it no longer feels like a really interesting story about overcoming adversity through determination and struggle. it just feels like well i gotta prove im Good and Kill The Boss 

then there’s the issue of quantity vs quality. when it comes to both zones & boss fights, dark souls 2 by far went for quantity when it came to them and the actual quality of both suffered a Lot as a result. like, there’s a LOT of zones and boss fights in dark souls 2. a LOT. and yet i genuinely currently can, off the top of my head, remember around 5 by name, and none for any Good reason. a lot of the zones just end up blending together because there’s SO little actually memorable things about them 

and the exact same is true with the bosses. many are reskins of bosses from 1, very few actually have much in the way of interesting mechanics or good design, and a lot of them are just so Easy. without even really trying when i was doing my attempts at the game id end up defeating some bosses in something like 10 hits without ever taking much damage. much like the zones there’s very few bosses i can even actively remember because they’re just SO unmemorable and boring. the bosses that i DO remember are only because they end up just getting reused as normal enemies, sometimes as quickly as the VERY next zone

which this ties into another one of my big issues which is how the game handles difficulty. when it comes to others games in the series the difficulty comes in ways that, while they may be frustrating sometimes, almost always at least seem Fair. if i die its PROBABLY because i fucked up, whether it be mistiming an attack, anticipating the wrong enemy move, or rushing into a situation im not prepared for. most of the time i die and i go yeah, okay, i see where i messed up, and that lets me bounce back in and do it better

the difficulty in 2, on the other hand, more often than not comes very cheaply. a big issue i have long complained about in terms of area design is there’s SO many random holes in the world for you to suddenly fall into, including a number of bosses where this is the case. then rather than having enemies actually have interesting or different moves to them the game tends to either send swarms of enemies at you or have them appear out of hiding and ambush you. very little when i die in that game do i ever feel like it was because i actually did something wrong and it always just feels cheap & unsatisfying 

this is then weirdly paired up with bosses being so lackluster where most of them are just SO easy and require such little thought that even defeating those doesnt even give a big sense of accomplishment. there’s just so little Satisfaction to be gained from the game and SO much frustration 

THE big thing with all of this is that all of those above three things i could forgive if the game itself was at least Fun but it just........... isnt to me. the game itself constantly feels SO clunky and slow, even compared to earlier titles - like demon’s souls of all games feels Better to play than dark souls 2 does. i never feel like i have the level of control with my character that i do with the other games and combat feels awkward and just in general not very fun 

enemies tend to have really weird timing with their attacks, rolling feels weird, and it could just be the weapons ive tried in the game but none really ever feel Good. i tend to in soulsborne games go for Big Sword (except in bloodborne where i tend to move more toward dex builds on account if it being the one games where i actually Get parrying) and not even the act of swinging a Giant Sword around could ever make me happy in that game

exploration isnt fun because the areas arent interesting and the bosses suck................ it isnt fun to fight things because the game doesnt feel good and the difficulty always feels cheap.............. the theming isnt interesting and there’s nothing about it that draws me in or inspires me like various themes in the other games.................... its just overall nothing i really am interested in or want in a souls game and when the OTHER ones give me that in their own different ways there just really isnt any reason for me to want to play that game 

this all isnt to say there arent aspects of dark souls 2 that i DO like - majula is a VERY good hub area and only beaten by the nexus on my list, and Lucatiel is my favorite character & storyline out of anything else in the whole series. she’s such an interesting and tragic character and her storyline better showcases the undead curse and the reality of how Terrifying and sad it is than any other storylines in the other games and its VERY good 

those arent enough to make up for the issues i have with the game though so im going to long say that dark souls 2? sucks 

[veeranger]

ok here are my thoughts on SPV3.2′s rendition of Halo CE’s first level: The Pillar of Autumn, which i played last night. 

please keep in mind these are my subjective opinions based on my single playthrough of the level on normal difficulty, and that i have nothing but respect for the obviously large amount of effort put into this mod by its creators. 

first of all its great that this level skips the camera orientation shit even on normal difficulty, thank god. 

so basically the level plays out exactly the same as it did in the original game with the exception of the weapons behaving differently, until you get to that one staircase room that was a nightmare on legendary in the original game. its clever actually because the enemies are positioned on the same side as you but above so you run up the stairs and turn around to find yourself face to face with....a brute! not an elite but a brute in the halo 2 style. 

with the brute comes their signature brute shot, brute plasma rifle, a new brute plasma pistol, and a new weapon called the shredder, a brute version of the needler that lacks the projectile tracking of its sister weapon but has a much higher projectile speed making it very fun to use and extremely deadly to unshielded foes including the brutes, who all lack energy shields like the halo 2 and halo reach variants, which makes sense. gameplay wise they’re much less of damage sponges than they were in halo 2 however i did notice that theyre markedly less aggressive again compared to their halo 2 iteration. i have yet to see a brute do its signature charge, but im going to chalk this up to engine limitations and not developer oversight, for all i know these brutes are probably just reskinned elites with no shields. brute chieftains are also missing alongside their iconic gravity hammers, though i assume this is engine limitations preventing something like that from existing. 

 now all this said i am sorely missing the spiker as the brute’s signature weapon because way too many of these bastards are carrying brute shots which can make encounters a bit frustrating at times, while paradoxically making other encounters far too easy due to the weapon’s ability to one shot weaker enemies and carry much more ammo than its halo 2/3 counterparts. it also makes vehicle segments suck sometimes because there are 2-4 brutes with these things knocking your warthog around but thats for the next level.

anyway back to the level, it quickly takes a turn into uncharted territory with a major detour that has you going through large storage areas and a lot more hallways before you finally end up back on track in the original level. i dont hate this per say and it certainly spices the familiar levels up but i can’t say i love how long these new areas are. i think i spent at least 30 minutes on this level and most of that was the new areas. now this isnt bad per say and the areas were not explicitly poorly designed, though i wasnt the biggest fan to be honest, its more so that the level becomes a slog after a while with no end in sight. i also think this addition muddles the intended game design of a tight corridor shooter than blossoms out into a massive open sandbox in the second level but that is not relevant really so i will not actually put stock into that opinion. 

after getting through the new stuff you just drop back into the original level and the rest of it plays out basically the same as it would otherwise, new sandbox notwithstanding. if this level and the second level are showing me any kind of pattern, its that i can expect every level to just suddenly branch into new content before eventually falling back on the original level path and playing out like that. more on this in other level reviews i’m sure. 

all said it was not the best level ive ever played and it dragged on too much but i wouldnt say it was all bad. i had fun more or less and i will say the level ran together pretty organically even with the new additions. oh yeah theres a few extremely minor environmental manipulations you can do like turning gravity down in some areas giving you moon physics and turning on auto turrets in some battles. nothing major but still cool. 

i dont think i want to speak on weapons yet because i havent gotten to use everything yet but i dont like this mod’s assault rifle. it added the smg from halo 2/3 (which i also dont like in this mod) so now the ar is the 32 round variant with a severely nerfed rate of fire which doesnt feel very good to me. the smg has way too much kick to fill the roll of the original ce assault rifle so i feel a little lost without a reliable spray and pray gun, but i suppose comparing and contrasting to the original game is a bit pointless considering this mod really wants to be a totally different experience. still i dont like the ar and im not crazy about the smg. 

i will speak on grenades though, there are two new ones, a clusterbomb which is self explanatory and a gravity bomb, which pulls enemies into it and then weakly explodes, killing weaker enemies and usually dropping elite shields. interesting additions to the sandbox but i feel like the clusterbombs make frags redundant.  

this mod has armor abilities now like halo reach, taking the place of your flashlight when equipped. i assume this has to be this way otherwise i would want to berate them for making me kill my flashlight for sprint or VISOR, which is basically just the detective vision mode from odst but in a really displeasing color pallet. now im nitpicking but yknow. the game is still very dark in a lot of places thanks to this mod still using halo ce’s original lighting engine or just respecting the fact that it was like that for a fucking reason unlike anniversary edition, so losing the flashlight is a real pain sometimes. 

oh also this mod changed the HUD, now your shields and health are where the should be, in the top middle of the screen like in every halo game starting with 3.  

anyway i think thats all i have to say about level 1, not a massively successful first impression but it was not bad and i did not hate it. pretty so-so for me. the next level i’ll have more positives to talk about i think