So I finished my second playthrough and I'm liking the game less than I'd hoped. Mostly, my complaints are about minor things, but there's qute a few of them.
For starters, there's the broken sidequest telling me I need to rescue some noblewoman. I hope there's a patch soon because it's pissing me off that I can't clear out my quest journal.
Then there's the **** that goes down with Anders. My game of Awakening finished with him leaving the Wardens briefly but returning later. I had also killed the architect. In DA2, the architect is alive and well and Anders has lost his frakkin mind. He's depressing and an abomination and there's the whole not going back to the Wardens thing that makes my ending for Awakening a lie.
I hate what happened to Justice. I don't really buy that he would fixate on the plight of the mages when he's a spirit of justice. Not mage justice. I would think he'd be foaming at the mouth for every injustice that occurs that he can change.
I miss my rogue using longswords and having some seriously bad ass combat skills. I miss swapping back and forth between swords and bows quickly through the radial menu.
And then there's the rivalry/friendship thing. Call it whatever you want, it's still disapproval/approval. I don't see a difference. The characters still bitch and moan when you make a decision they don't agree with. I miss being able to talk to party members whenever I want. Did you really have to take that out of the game and limit it to a few moments post character quest? That was something I hated about Awakening and I wasn't surprised to see it implemented in DA2, but I was disappointed.
And was it just me or did anyone else notice there were no dwarven women in Kirkwall? Bad enough you limit our race to human after letting us choose in DAO and name us Hawke and stop us from putting armor and mage robes on our party members (cough cough MASS EFFECT 2 cough cough). Could you at least have put some dwarven women somewhere, anywhere in Kirkwall?
Last thing to keep this from being a book, I really hope someone takes a look at the darker skin tones and tweaks them so they look they way they should look. The darkest skin tone looked like a bad tan, and more times than not the lighting made my Hawke's facial features disappear. Surely there are black people in the Dragon Age universe. Yes? No? Remember Jacob and how frakkin hot he was in Mass Effect 2? Can we have that as a skin tone option next time instead of sunburnt Hawke?
I agree. I like the new combat, and I actually don't mind the smaller scale story in comparison to the first one, but it seems like they should have started with this story about Hawke, then Dragon Age 2 should have been about the Blight.
I don't understand some of the changes to the characters and their looks/personalities. I don't know WHAT the hell they did to Alistair and Zevran in terms of their looks. They're like completely different characters. Leliana sort of looks the same, but not.
I like their new art style, but some character consistency would have been nice. And lets not get started on "Titsabella," I mean, "Isabella." She's probably the biggest (no pun intended...or is it?) visual change from DA: O to 2. Well, I guess the Elves are as well.
I really do enjoy playing the game more than DA: O (i think some of the game tweaks are good; like the speedier combat), but unfortunately, the story isn't nearly as engaging. That seems to be a Bioware trend these days, as Mass Effect 2 is much more fun to play than ME1, but the story is weaker.
I hope DA3 and ME3 turn out to have better stories than their 2nd parts. I personally think Bioware need to drop this desire to do trilogies, and just do two really awesome titles in a franchise, and move on. Not EVERYTHING needs to be a damn trilogy these days. I'm not very far in DA2, but some of the changes are more than just a little jarring, and the way they've completely ignored Awakenings is irritating. If it's not canon, then what the hell is the point?
And I totally agree about the color sliders. My Hawke is dark, and yet you can't see her fricking FACE, because the lighting engine doesn't compensate for darker skinned people (except for Isabella, who's actually darker than my Hawke, so I don't know WHAT'S going on there). I'm pissed that I actually have to go to the Black Emporium and lighten up my Hawke a few shades, just so I can SEE HER. :/
