So yea I’m a fairly big Dragon Age Fan, I love the game and can’t wait for the sequel. You wouldn’t believe my surprise when I find out just yesterday that new DLC was released. I had never heard of this new mini campaign Golems of Amgarrak. I knew absolutely nothing about the story or the content therein. So you can imagine my surprise when I find quite possibly the most challenging and annoying content I have ever experienced in a Bioware game.
Bioware has always been a developer to favor story telling at all times, so when I say that the story is one of the worse part of the package, you should understand the levity and sheer disappointment packed into those words. That being said the story isn’t bad, but it’s incredibly disappointing that the entire thing is a pathetic chimera of nearly every other dwarven mission in the game. A dwarf asks you to help him find his missing friend/brother/noble house that has traveled into the deep roads in search for a lost Thaig (settlement). They were looking for the power of Golems and how to make new ones, when… Oh No they’ve lost contact and their probably being eaten by some shocking darkspawn monstrosity that A) eats people’s faces and B) turns them into monsters. Honestly it’s not that bad of a tale, but when Bioware has done this exact same outline for several quests including two main quests one in Origins, and one in the expansion Awakening, it loses all effect. A good story isn’t that good when all you do is change a few factoids of something you’ve already feed us, and call it a new tale. By the way this is not a spoiler if you have played Dragon age before, since you have already done this quest, and you can guess every plot point.
If that wasn’t enough the method story telling is absolutely anemic, as it’s mainly told through two things; random notebooks you find that spark generic disembodied voice monologues (aka audio tape messages), and through things your party randomly spouts out through game play, that can be impossible to hear depending on if you camera isn’t in the right angle, and B your in the middle of casting buffs, fighting or advancing to quickly so two dialogs overlap. Frankly some of the best parts of Dragon age involved Conversing with characters and being allowed to choose your Reponses, but that element is so rarely utilized in this DLC it might as well not be there.
Obviously not every mission can be driven by the strength of its story, so you might say to yourself maybe the DLC has some entertaining game play to keep you going, unfortunately you will also be disappointed in this respect as well.
IF you have played Dragon Age you know how this mission plays. This is a pseudo top down Strategy RPG that follows the formula to a T. The core gameplay is quite good, even if there are some class related balancing issues. Frankly not much has changed from the initial release, and this is acceptable.
The issue with the Pack is the layout of the mission, the team you are equipped with, and the gameplay limitations you are beset with.
You’re allowed to either create a new character for the mission who will start at level 20, or import a character from either Origins or Awakening. It’s not advisable to create a new character since you will NOT be prepared for the upcoming slaughter, and if you have a created character from a different campaign it is more than advisable to have had them trained up through the expansion pack, and highly prepared through massive shopping, since there isn’t any merchants in the DLC meaning you’ll be relying solely upon your crafting skills, and all the things in your current inventory.
Your Party in the mission is terrible. You’re given a team of a warrior, a rogue with the ability to summon a pet rhino, and a weird Red Mage Golem thing, and that’s it. Depending on what class your Player Character is, this group can be either decent, a non factor, or absurdly hard.
I ran a warrior class so I got the absurdly hard route. If you run the Warrior class your party is made up of nothing but frontline attackers, as the golem likes to get up close, the rogue dual wields swords, and the warrior of course uses sword and shield. While there are items that allow you to redistribute points you can’t buy them in the DLC, and you will probably have a barren inventory making you incapable of equipping your guys with competent weapons.
The Difficulty on this mission is nothing short of erratic. Most of the quest you will have no problem getting past anything that dares cross your path and the mission comes off as extremely boring, but then during two specific instances one of which being the final boss encounter the difficultly spikes so far off the chart that you feel it might be impossible. The Final Boss in particular is arguably the most difficult fight in the entirety of the game, just because he is so cheap.
The environment sucks, as the entire dungeon is ripped from all the other dwarven area in the game. While there really isn’t so much you can do with a cave, there is nothing here that makes it stand out, or be at all memorable. While of course this is still the Deep Roads, and a Dwarf city so it would look similar to other areas, there is nothing about the area that feels unique. If I may reference one of the first DLC missions actually bundled with new copies of the game, you travel to a smaller dwarven area, and it had unique imagery, and land marks that actually still stand out in my mind. They looked unique, and nothing about this DLC feels that way. It feels like a copout, when if they just added a one or two set piece areas, they could have made this place feel new.
Frankly this DLC isn’t worth your time or money. It has nothing new to contribute to the game, where every other content before this has offered a reason to play and experience this. Even some of the lackluster offerings are superior; the Dark Spawn Chronicles offered you the chance to play as dark spawn while not a very good pack at least it was unique, but here? There is nothing of value here. There is nothing but frustration and death, stay far away from this one.
Notes
- I still am not sure about dwarfs without beards.
- Also Bioware really needs to step it up in their facial designs; I am tired of seeing the exact same people over and over again, just because they are too cheap to work outside of their character creator, to create unique hairstyles and faces.
- Older Dragon Age DLC is actually the Deal of the week on Xbox Live this week. Be sure to grab the Awakening expansion at the steal price of 20 dollars (1600 MSP) while you can!
- You may think I’m only hating on this DLC because it’s hard, but I’m not. It had nothing new to offer, and the fact that you will have a decent chance of having a shit party, is why I hate it. The difficultly merely compounded that hatred, and I wouldn't have minded the difficulty if the DLC wasn't shit.
No comments:
Post a Comment