Dragon Age 2's combat looks…a lot like Dragon Age: Origins, actually
I don’t say that like it’s a bad thing, mind you:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ojefQlGTzE&fs=1&hl=en_US]
Fight time!
And yes, I know this is old news. It’s been sitting in my Instapaper queue for a bit now, and I’m only now sorting through it.
Dragon Age: Origins had a pretty good tactical combat system, at least as far as my experience went. The changes they’ve made in Dragon Age 2 seem to be more evolutionary than revolutionary.
That said, the meteoric firestorm ability is…pretty cool.
Coming from the console (360) version of Dragon Age, I
WOULD say that like it is a bad thing. Targeting was a *nightmare*,
and while there were numerous tactical options like laying traps
and poisoning your weapons they all required way too much
micromanagement and menu navigating for me to bother using them.
Maybe they worked on the PC version, but navigating menus is a LOT
clunkier with a joystick as opposed to keyboard and mouse, and as a
consequence all those tactical options were lost to me. The combat
was so bad that I ended up just switching to easy mode, which makes
it so that even the big boss battles required minimum input. Yucky,
but better than replaying a section over and over because I can’t
target that darn wizard who keeps fireballing my guys onto their
butts over and over again! Still, I really loved the game. It was a
treat getting to know Alistair, Morrigan, Wynne, and (to a lesser
extent) Lilliana. Hearing them bounce casual conversation off of
each other was definitely the highlight of the game. And really,
after Mass Effect it was clear that you don’t come to a Bioware
game looking for decent combat mechanics. Also also, they really
need to invest in some lighting in those offices!