This game wasn’t as good as I’d hoped. It had such promise, but it was marred by bugs all over the place.
The game clearly tried to borrow the party play system from Final Fantasy XII, only it wasn’t as useful. The ability to raise fallen party members was limited and couldn’t be effectively automated. Spellcasting was often made impossible by the game’s sometimes insistence on having my mage run to the center of my fireball before casting it, which not only was terribly damaging, but took time as I ran instead of just casting and then casting another spell. Well, that’s what reloads were for.
There’s extra paid content in the game, but at least part of it (Soldier’s Keep) by all rights should have been in the core game. The inability to have a home base was just stupid and a glaring omission. An honest company would have just charged the extra $10 outright instead of draining you after you already committed most of the money in advance.
So buggy for the amount of money I put into it. I’m disappointed. If the game had worked well I would have been satisfied. As it stands, I’m not. I’m highly unlikely ever again to buy a Bioware game.
Just too much frustration, because on top of the bugs there are the gimmicks. Pre-set battles where I can’t place and prepare my people, monsters that appear out of nowhere when you step on a certain place, and such just add difficulty in a cheap and unfair way that makes it just much less fun and interesting for me.
Oh and saving and loading took way, way, way too long, which is made worse by the autosaves. Next time guys: ASK if I want to save instead of just autosaving. Especially since I can’t convert an autosave to a regular save.
Much like Super Paper Mario, it’s really only the plot and characters that led me even to finish, which I guess puts it one step above KOTOR, but games I put away forever in disgust aren’t a high bar to clear.
Update: I almost forgot one of the worst bugs of all. The Orzammar main plot got into a frozen state with me: unadvanceable by any means, in a way that you don’t know is coming until it’s too late. Had I not had a save just prior to triggering the bug, I could have lost dozens of hours of gameplay by having to start over entirely. I would have burned the game with fire before I did that, but I was lucky and had a save suitable.
Yeah, it really doesn’t speak well of the game when you have to warn people to save frequently and keep many saves.
This bug is also on top of another one related to Leliana, which I was warned about by Moe Lane before triggerng, fortunately.