PorkyThePaladin
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2013
- Messages
- 5,230
So after completing D:OS last year, I fired up D:OS2 now, yet again, hoping this time it will stick.
The game always starts out nice, the engine is spiffy, lots of interactions, seems like the gameplay is fun. But almost immediately, it starts to slowly sap your will to play it (much like D:OS). I am at Fort Joy now, one part of me hoping to complete it, the other thinking about all the other games I could be playing.
And then I had this epiphany, D:OS2 is the isometric/tactical Skyrim. Or in other words, the Skyrim of iso/tactical RPGs.
What do I mean by this? Well, it's a game that's super popular among the masses (Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam, 10/10 reviews from everywhere), easy to get into and play, epic and huge, nice looking, hits all the checkmarks of anyone trying to get into an RPG. A dream come true... until you start to play it as a hardcore RPG player.
Then, you realize that everything about it is bland, shallow and extremely boring. The writing obviously, to begin with. Good god, they dialed down the irritating humor from D:OS a bit (after all the complaints I guess), but there is still this never-ending trying-to-be-funny-when-you-are-not verbal diarrhea in every other dialogue, and when they are trying to be serious, there is just a lot of really bland, dull writing. Compare the beach landing scene at the start of the game between D:OS2 and Risen. It's not like Piranha Bytes have great writers, but they keep stuff short, to the point, and realistic. Meanwhile, in D:OS2, everyone you meet around Fort Joy (even look at the retarded name) goes at you like a flunky theatre student. Blah Blah blah blah.
Then, the combat. At first looks pretty good, but is it really? On the melee side, it's all silly abilities with silly animations that have nothing to do with actual medieval style melee combat. They are really just spells with melee names. On the spell side, the gimmick of combining elemental effects wears off rather quickly, and you are left with 100+ hours of exchanging blows in the guise of spells to wear down each other's hitpoints. More importantly, it's all just so formulaic, whittle down the armor so you can cc/do damage, then cc/whittle down health. Really pales in comparison to mage duels of Baldur's Gate or real life tactics of Battle Brothers/E:Viking. And the silly animations make it even less enjoyable than equally shallow combat of something like Fallout 1/2.
Finally exploration. Completely ruined by the camera. I spend half my time rotating it, trying and constantly failing to find a good angle. And if the camera doesn't ruin it enough, how about a million and one useless crates, most with nothing good in them. And what can you possible find via exploration anyway, another dull NPC with 2 thousand lines of pointless dialogue?
The game always starts out nice, the engine is spiffy, lots of interactions, seems like the gameplay is fun. But almost immediately, it starts to slowly sap your will to play it (much like D:OS). I am at Fort Joy now, one part of me hoping to complete it, the other thinking about all the other games I could be playing.
And then I had this epiphany, D:OS2 is the isometric/tactical Skyrim. Or in other words, the Skyrim of iso/tactical RPGs.
What do I mean by this? Well, it's a game that's super popular among the masses (Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam, 10/10 reviews from everywhere), easy to get into and play, epic and huge, nice looking, hits all the checkmarks of anyone trying to get into an RPG. A dream come true... until you start to play it as a hardcore RPG player.
Then, you realize that everything about it is bland, shallow and extremely boring. The writing obviously, to begin with. Good god, they dialed down the irritating humor from D:OS a bit (after all the complaints I guess), but there is still this never-ending trying-to-be-funny-when-you-are-not verbal diarrhea in every other dialogue, and when they are trying to be serious, there is just a lot of really bland, dull writing. Compare the beach landing scene at the start of the game between D:OS2 and Risen. It's not like Piranha Bytes have great writers, but they keep stuff short, to the point, and realistic. Meanwhile, in D:OS2, everyone you meet around Fort Joy (even look at the retarded name) goes at you like a flunky theatre student. Blah Blah blah blah.
Then, the combat. At first looks pretty good, but is it really? On the melee side, it's all silly abilities with silly animations that have nothing to do with actual medieval style melee combat. They are really just spells with melee names. On the spell side, the gimmick of combining elemental effects wears off rather quickly, and you are left with 100+ hours of exchanging blows in the guise of spells to wear down each other's hitpoints. More importantly, it's all just so formulaic, whittle down the armor so you can cc/do damage, then cc/whittle down health. Really pales in comparison to mage duels of Baldur's Gate or real life tactics of Battle Brothers/E:Viking. And the silly animations make it even less enjoyable than equally shallow combat of something like Fallout 1/2.
Finally exploration. Completely ruined by the camera. I spend half my time rotating it, trying and constantly failing to find a good angle. And if the camera doesn't ruin it enough, how about a million and one useless crates, most with nothing good in them. And what can you possible find via exploration anyway, another dull NPC with 2 thousand lines of pointless dialogue?
