Recent reviews by Griifen

I love the game (despite the repetitive nature that is slowly starting to get at me that the Borderlands games never had)... but wow the crashes are a nightmare. No warning, I can even be afk and the game will just disappear. I've had about 6 crashes, most happen a few minutes after I start playing.
By all means if you love the BL universe then this is definitely worth a shot, and hopefully you aren't plagued by the crashes as I am.

4 campaign missions with awful writing... that is why the game is only worth $5. Well done Bethesda, it'll be good to see you drown.

59 hours in and I just finished the game for the firs time. 100% world completion, 49/52 achievements, lv50, all but 1 faction lv4, all gear at +10, all companion quests complete. The following is my review of the game:

The writing is god awful. If you see any reviews about the story being really sub-par then it's totally accurate.
There are some good parts, and towards this end part of the game I can see major improvements in the writing. I think a lot of people will not put in all the time to finish the game because of how poorly done the story is in the first ~25 hours of the game.

The combat is amazing. 9/10. They decided to make the allies basically useless which is a real shame, totally not what Dragon Age games have been. I forget they exist outside of the bonuses they give me and the comments they make. But it allows me to have 100% of the combat to myself so I have fun either way. The weapons and armors and stat bonuses are amazing. You can really tell they put in so much effort into uniques and combos and modifiers. I can literally completely change my build now to like 5 different builds and I think each one would be kickass. I will 100% play this entire game again just to experience the other classes and see what unique build exist for it.

The world design is fantastic. A lot of going backwards and forwards, but that's also because I try to 100% a map the moment I get there. If you don't, the side quests will take you pretty much all over the place so nothing gets unseen by the end if go by quests alone.

The mobs are fairly unique, but I can see a lot of overlaps between types of enemies. The occasional boss is refreshing from the normal mobbing you encounter. They did a pretty decent job creating unique enemies. I can still powerhouse through each encounter, but I can see it being very rewarding on max difficulty when you need to play well to survive. Or, if you want to just smash through everything, you can totally do that with the build options available.

I'm keeping my review on steam as not recommended though.

As someone who's played all dragon age games this is a major deviation from the franchise and it sucks compared to what they could have made if they actually cared about the story and writing more. Anyone who is looking for a Dragon Age game as a fan of the franchise, or heck even just a fan of Bioware games and the stories they have made in the past, will be very disppointed in how they approached this one.

I want my negative review to be seen by the devs and make them understand that they messed up properly on this account. There are even some lore stuff that just doesn't make sense which breaks immersion in the franchise. They also regressed a lot in terms of customising the story compared to the previous game. The story is like a 4/10 so it's not break your screen and throw the game away bad, but no one in their right mind is replaying the game because they want to (or even can) experience the story from different angles. The only reason you replay the game is for the combat.

But, if you have no idea what the series is about and don't care about the story that much, I would 100% recommend it. Everything outside of the story and writing is absolutely fantastic!

If I look at steam right now, only 0.6% of players have finished the game.

Yes, the game is long and it was only just released, so I don't expect many people to be as far into the game as I am. But 0.6% is also really, really low.

Youtube is a battlefield of people with 100k-200k views just trashing the game for its poor writing. Bioware also very clearly paid reviewers to promote the game and lie about the story telling and some other aspects of the game. This is like prime meat for critics of the game to throw Bioware under the bus. The launch of this game did not go well for the company. Turns out when you piss off the veterans of the franchise you get a fist full of overflowing lash back, and this time it really hurt.

I don't know if it'll be like Mass Effect Andromeda which flopped hard on release and was dropped by Bioware without a care in the world (for a different set of reasons, but nonetheless it still left a really bad taste in people's mouths).

The only hope the game has now is if people play the game for longer and put out videos of the latter part of the game, showing how the story does get slightly better. Maybe then more people will push past the initial hurdles and give the whole game a chance.

The game never ceases to amaze or build the hype for the next set of unlocks.

My first playthrough was constantly challenging and felt especially rewarding. By the time I had finished my first playthrough I felt excited to start a second playthrough with huge anticipation of different builds and tactics I could follow after having seen the variety available in the endgame.

It is 100% worth it and can put most AAA game to shame. Way to go devs. You made a banger!

10/10 for everything except the same bug from the first game, talking to the pit master, hasn't been fixed for over 2 years. Among the first quests you will ever get in the game that every new player will experience, yet it hasn't been fixed.

You want my positive review, fix your ♥♥♥♥.

After playing for more than 20 000 hours in my lifetime, I have never come across a game more brilliant than DD2. What an absolute masterpeice.

The way you are rewarded for exploring (I have explored over 50 unique caves - got the achievement to prove it - and collected over 80 seeker tokens - again achievement to prove it), the amazing nuance feeling when switching to a new vocation (I have maxed strider, magic archer, and I'm 9/10 on archer), the way mini-bosses behave, the unique bosses you come across (I won't spoil any of them here), the way the varieties of enemies behave and attack and keep your respect (you can easily be overwhelmed and killed regardless of your level if you don't plan your engagement according to your vocation's strengths and weaknesses), the awe of how massive the world is and how you can't easily forget it, how powerful the mini-bosses and bosses feel due to their size and ability to slap you around like candy floss if you aren't careful... It's just incredible how much effort they put into the game and how they predicted and catered to the player's experience.

A full-on 11/10 from me. I have put in close to 70 hours already 5 days after the launch, and I will easily see myself putting into 200+ hours playing the game 3 times over trying out each vocation and finding even more seeker tokens in places I never even thought to explore in my first play through.