Dragon Age 2 is a Glitch Fest [Exclusive Video]

Dragon Age 2 is a Glitch Fest indeed, but Gouki.com still loves it. These videos are from a second play-through. Female Hawke Blood Mage FTW. [Mage Slow Down] The later GoukiJones got in the game, the more it started to freak out. [Missing Textures] 2 Exclusive Videos.

[bigtrucknd]

It's not that bad. Fallout New Vegas is the worst sequel. That game is broken and unplayable. I never had my system freeze once during DA2 but constant freezing during FNV.

[goukijones]

DA2 froze on me a few times. But still though after all of this, I do love this game.

[PooEgg]

When I first got this game I hated it. I had made the mistake of judging the game based on my deep love for DAO, and also from reading a lot of negative comments on the internet (mostly here on N4G). It turns out, the game is actually a lot of fun, and half of the stuff I read turned out to be incorrect or exaggerated. It might have been better if it had been called ‘Dragon Age Kirkwood Story’, or something aside from Dragon Age 2, which sets up ones expectations very high, and can only disappoint if not released properly.

Regardless, I moved past my disappointment, and I started to really enjoy DA2, but after investing over 50 hours to the game I got a bug that destroyed my main character, making him unplayable. As one can imagine, this has put a damper on my enjoyment and made me lose a lot of respect for Bioware… EA lost my respect ages ago, and it seems that they intend to pull Bioware down with them.

So regarding the bugs issue. In that respect I have to agree with the haters. The bugs are totally unacceptable. The game was released with some serious game breaking bugs, they totally destroy your main character, and although Bioware is aware of this, and are supposedly working on a patch they are taking their sweet time about it, and a lot of people on their forum are pissed. Some people are returning the game and demanding refunds. What is worse is the Exiled Prince DLC that some people paid additional for is one of the causes of the game breaking bug. Even if you didn’t buy the DLC (I didn’t, because I decided to take a stand and not buy into their Day 1 DLC) you can still be affected by the bug.

For Bioware’s sake I hope that they fix these bugs soon, they have stated that a patch would be out soon, but it took a while for that to be communicated to their forum, and that has already harmed their reputation. They have known about these bugs for over 3 weeks now.

The reality is that DA2 is not a bad game, but it is a game that could lose Bioware a large number of fans. In choosing to focus the game towards a more mainstream audience they have turned off a number of the hardcore RPG players. By releasing a game with such unacceptable bugs, and taking too much time in patching said bugs, they now risk losing the rest of their fans the ones who ignored the negative comments and played past the first 10 hours of the game to find its greatness.

Another thing that I have to wonder about: How did so many professional game reviewers manage to play through this game from start to finish in order to review the game, without noticing these bugs?

[goukijones]

I wish you'd leave comments like this on my site bro. Good takes. Unfortunately by the time Bioware gets around to fixing these bugs, I'd probably sold/traded my copy. Thanks for the comments.

[PooEgg]

I know where you are coming from. I actually considered returning the game, but I am keeping the faith that Bioware will deliver a patch soon as they promised.

One thing I did do was ask Best Buy to do a price match. Since the game is already on sale, I decided I would feel better if I only spent $49 on a broken game instead of $59. They credited me $10 and it did make me feel a little better. : )

[akiraburn]

That was very well said PooEgg, although, my experience differed some. I was not a fan of the original Dragon Age, and just barely made it through the game before quitting out of sheer annoyance. At first I had started on PS3, but also tried the PC version. My full play-through was on PS3, since I had gotten pretty far in it before starting on PC. Because of that, I was dealing with insanely long load times (up to 5 minutes several times, but averaging 2 minutes).

Beyond that, I loathed the characters, the control scheme, bugs/glitches, the choppiness of combat, etc. So for me, DA:O was really disappointing. And mind you, I’m a huge fan of KOTOR and much of Bioware's other works.

That being said, I was entering DA2 with somewhat low expectations, however I kept an open mind, and ended up somewhat surprised. Making the combat fluid made the game immensely more enjoyable for me. Most of the characters weren't as annoying as in DA:O, and I really enjoyed Varric's wise-cracks throughout the game. However at an early point in my play-through, I began noticing how really un-finished the game is. Things like many over-lapping menu and text boxes, small bugs and glitches, and similar effects show right away that this game needed more polish before being released.

I just finished my play-through last night, and here are some key things I've noticed (Take note, some can drastically affect your game. I'm leaving spoilers out of this almost entirely, minus character names). First, if you happen to be in a relationship with Merril and she’s living with you, during act 3 when it tells you to talk with her, afterward she will head back to her home where you are supposed to talk with her again. At this point the game triggers the ending conversation to her final quest before you can even get the quest. This can happen sometimes even if she isn't living or in a relationship with you.

The slowed attacks that this article mentions, apparently can be attributed to how many times you've removed Isabela from your party, and if you have friendship with her. If she is your rival, this probably won't affect you, however, if you have any friendship with her, for each time you've removed her from your party you will get a permanent effect of -5% attack speed, and that will stack each time. This counts even when doing things like going to your home (when everyone is auto-removed), or her leaving on her own during quests. So throughout the course of the game, using her the minimal number of times, you still end up attacking at least 25% or more slower. There is an identical problem with the DLC character Sebastian, where your defense goes down 5% for each time instead of attack speed.

Other key issues... later in the game, there is a quest you will receive which is unbeatable. You get a letter mentioning that someone’s been kidnapped and asking you to save them, however this quest is bugged and can not be played beyond receiving the letter. Also, it is possible for enemies to end up getting stuck when killing them too close to walls and out-of-bounds areas, which could render you unable to receive certain key items.

Honestly my best suggestion is to check the Dragon Age wiki during any quest and look over the bugs section. Also, save often using many files so you can revert to older ones if necessary.

Getting back on point... EggPoo, I think you're spot on with what you said. There should be no way that reviewers missed half the issues with this game, and there is no excuse for them giving it a pass on these areas. And like you said, it's not that it's a bad game, but it seems to me that this was still in it's beta (or even pre-beta) stage of development, and has a lot to work out before finalization.

[PooEgg]

I didn't know about the some of these bugs, thanks for the heads up.

I agree that DAO also had bugs, for some reason they didn't bother me this badly.

I suppose it has gotten to the point where the only smart move is to hold off on buying games on release day. If you wait a few weeks all the bugs will be out of the woodwork, and hopefully patched. If everyone did this, perhaps the companies would take notice and try to improve their QC.

[akiraburn]

Glad to help bud. Indeed, it's a sad day when it's such a significant percent of games have these sort of issues post-launch. I've actually taken that route of waiting on most games now, and just renting them instead. Blockbuster's Gamepass or Gamefly are becoming more viable options for gaming on the cheap as the months pass. I actually rented Dragon Age and Dragon Age 2, which I think is a good move, given that within 6 months there will inevitably be a full expansion pack for DA2, plus more DLC, and it will all come on a single disc. And just as assuredly, they'll drop the price of that collection soon after. Hopefuly by then they will have worked the major bugs out.

But even major bugs aside, you know it's bad news when your level design team isn't happy with their own work. From what I heard/read, apparently they were pretty unhappy that they had to copy/paste so many dungeons and whatnot, and they said that they were even trying to figure if it was viable to insert more dungeons through patches to replace some of the copy/paste jobs. I don't see that actually happening, but I could be wrong. In any case, you're right, quality control went out the door on too many recent titles.