11-30-2009, 06:49 AM
Quote:Despite the rather tactical combat, the main focus IS the story and... it's a doozy. Not sure if it's better than the 'stories of old', but up front, it's a lot more mature than they were. Oh, flirting... damn, it's funny, especially in a teenage-romance kinda way. It's embarrassing, full of humor and a funny way to blow off some steam.
Back to killing darkspawn with mah mind!:D
~Frag
I picked up the Xbox 360 version of this the other day and am about 15-20 hours in so far. I knew the game was built for the PC going in and that there were possible lacking areas as far as the console versions but any more I'd just rather play most games on the couch with the big screen and surround sound. The story so far is very engaging but the game play is some of the most bi-polar I've seen in a long while. The entire section with the mage tower and the fade made me want to stab myself in the face as well as gave me a migraine having to stare at a screen that was blurry for hours while playing that section.
And on the 360 version the auto-save feature is completely worthless and would have been better off left out of the game. (I don't know how it is on the PC.) There will be areas of the game where it will seem to auto save after every door you pass through and then other areas where I will play for hours criss-crossing the map and doing quests and not have it auto-save once. I know all PC-centric gamers will say "Save early, Save often!" (I've played my fare share of PC games as well as JRPGs) but the reality is that games are past this point. If you have an auto-save feature in your game that may not save for hours on end, you have a broken feature. And this is probably one of the worst travesties you can put in a game as it not only betrays the player's trust it can and most often will invalidate large swaths of the time they invest in your game. At least most JRPGs are up front and honest about the save system: You keep playing until you get to the next save point. By showing your players that there is an auto-save system working in the game you give them the expectation that at any point were they to fail they won't be put back too far. It also implies that the Save Game feature is less a constant necessity and more to be used at the end of a gaming session. Checkpoints are the norm for games anymore and unfortunately it seems as if the auto-save feature in this game is only there to make sure you have a fresh save before a boss fight.