My net's once again giving me too much trouble. For the past two days I've hardly had more than half an hour of active net connection(with all those 1 minutes and 2 minutes put together). So I'm finding it hard to be active on GS. To make matters worse, Dragon Age is keeping me occupied for most of the time.
UPDATED IMPRESSIONS
Dragon Age's been a bittersweet game so far. There are a number of flaws and yet the game manages to keep me hooked. The torture!
As I said in my previous blog, the game is glitched enough for me to say that Bioware decided to put out a half-finished product. Glitches include:
1. The enemy attacks going way off mark and still being able to damage my character.
2. Characters getting stuck at the corners of even small obstacles
3. Random drops in frame rate
4. Sudden freezing and crashing
5. Unresponsiveness to orders in tactical mode
...and a few more minor and rare glitches.
However, the storyline is very good and the missions are interesting. A number of side missions are close to the main story and hence you don't get the feeling that you're getting side tracked.
Overall, the game is good in almost all aspects, but minor flaws in every aspect prevent it from being the best in any.
I find myself comparing the game often to other games as well as a few books. Comparisons are as follows:
Oblivion:Inevitable! The previous(and perhaps even now) pinnacle of open ended RPGs(the un-hack n' slash type) has a few things in common with DAO and yet there a are so many things completely different too. The most important aspect is the open endedness - DAO isn't half as open ended as Oblivion. You can't travel on foot between towns or areas, and thus the very aspect of exploration is limited. A lot of 'explorable' places are also restricted early on and obviously the game is more plot driven.
Mass Effect:The last time I played a game with such an awesome storyline and detailed universe was Bioware's own Mass Effect. However, I feel that DAO still falls short of the ME storyline, which was totally epic... worth a novel. I'd say DAO has a great storyline, but I wouldn't call it novel-worthy. ME had a more engaging plot with more suspense and twists than your average mystery novel.
The Witcher: The tactical mode and the combat view in it reminded me of The Witcher, even though the isometric view was introduced as early as Dink Smallwood.
Fable-The Lost Chapters: Character interactions look like those from Fable. The character is shown as a dumb(in the sense speechless) dopey looking kid in Fable and I find the same expression in DAO. Couldn't they have done something better here. At least the accompanying characters express their views occasionally, which kinda breaks the monotony.
Eragon: The whole Grey Warden thing and the dealing with the different races - it reminds me so much of Eragon. And then there are dragons in both.. tho the portrayal of dragons is different. There were a few instances that made me feel that I was playing a scene out of the book. I can't tell you the scene because then it'd be a spoiler.
Lord of the Rings: The mother of fantasy novels! Naturally I always tend to find something from LotR in any fantasy novel that have humans, elves and dwarves in them.
I actually hoped that I'd be writing a review by this time, but the game is so large that I feel that I've hardly breeched the surface. So the review will have to wait.