Interesting, but repetitive and error-prone
posted by 97svtvert (ORO VALLEY, AZ) Nov 21, 2009
Member since Nov 2009
BioWare has made some excellent RPGs in the past, and this one is almost as good as its other efforts. The storyline is quite engrossing, and the depth of characters which can be controlled by the player is unmatched.
However, gameplay is very repetitive. There are four or five main quests, and each one ends up with you spending several hours battling through large dungeon-like maps room by room, fighting the same bad guys over and over, for the most part. Once you've done the first quest, you might as well have done the rest. The story and character interaction partially makes up for this, but you'll still get pretty bored at times, if you're like me. Unlike Mass Effect or Knights of the Old Republic, which you could play through two or three times and have completely new experiences and not feel as if you were repeating the same tasks over and over (though Mass Effect was slightly guilty of this) - once you complete the main quest, it's unlikely that you'll want to play completely through again just to see a different ending.
New features like gifting make wooing romantic interests easier, and the romance plot lines are much more detailed than, say, Mass Effect. Graphics are surprisingly not as good as one would expect from a PS3 game - while previews show hair blowing in the wind and swaying with movement, for example, in-game hair and ponytails have apparently been reinforced with massive amounts of hairspray, because they rigidly move along with the player's head.
The game is also frighteningly error-prone, with one of the most common issues being a lack of recognition that plot points or quest items have been fulfilled, leaving you stuck at a door that can't be opened or with a NPC that can't be reasoned with. Be sure to save early and often so that you can repeat such tasks and avoid frustration.
It's an exciting game, but one would expect BioWare to do better. It is engrossing, despite its faults, and one should expect to be quite taken by the story.
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