Thoughts on Dragon Age 2 (Part #4) - Collateral Damage
By Egge 1 Comments
Modern BioWare games have a tendency to break down noticeably on higher difficulty settings, albeit in all sorts of interesting and funny ways. The friendly AI in Mass Effect 2 really starts showing its limitations on the (otherwise awesome) Insane difficulty mode - requiring constant and often tedious micromanagement during most of the longer combat sequences - and in Dragon Age 2 the main problem is that the game simply wasn't designed for friendly fire, which is only available on Nightmare. As can be seen in this video (at around 2:15 or so), leaving AoE-capable party members in the hands of some generic Tactics script can leave the player in a world of hurt...
Other than that, replaying DA2 on higher difficulty with an "imported" DA:O save file is rather enjoyable, and given the side quest-focused structure of the game it's easy to jump in for a quick fix and cut through some trash mobs just for fun whenever you got 15 minutes to spare. As much as I agree in theory with many of the complaints levelled at the DA2, I can't help but find the basic gameplay to be a surprisingly (and perhaps undeservedly) rewarding experience.