Recent reviews by franziskavonkarma

suuuuuch mixed feelings. i kind of wish i didn't like it all so i didn't feel so frustrated with it.

this really got away from me so tldr: i do think its a good game! it's just.... not a good dragon age game. if you're already a dragon age fan, you probably already know whether or not you want to play this. my take: if you hated inquisition, you will hate this more; just play origins again. if you aren't a dragon age fan, check it out! i clicked it as recommended for a reason: good game, bad follow-up... but play the others when you're done with it.

• VERY fun gameplay
  
• gorgeous! i remember being a little skeptical of the graphics when the trailers first dropped, but honestly? i think more high-end modern games should take this slightly more stylised approach.
  
• as much as most companion quests were lacking, i did really like all of the characters
  
• when you DO get to make impactful choices, it does hit. after neve/harding gets injured, their injuries are visible for the rest of the game? very cool. also like the degree of how bitter neve/lucanis gets after you sacrifice minrathous/treviso, and really i only wish that every companion got that potential for a more varied relationship based on your choices. the way the endgame was handled was incredibly fun, and i wish that there were more large scale battles throughout the game with that approach and with those stakes.

• only gameplay con: too many dragon fights, especially when they all have the same attack patterns. gets kind of tedious.
  
• roleplaying is veeeery barebones... if you're going to have a voiced protagonist at LEAST give them multiple personalities to pick from a la DA2 & ME instead of just. nothing. three dialogue options that are all basically saying the same thing in a slightly different tone. take me back to purple hawke saying some of the most out of pocket tactless ♥♥♥♥ ever put in a video game.
  
• poor reactivity wrt character creation choices? i played as an elf who grew up in minrathous yet beyond my control he kept saying ♥♥♥♥ like "OUR gods" or remarking on elfy things he grew up with........? i HIGHLY doubt the *TEVINTER* military family that adopted him would be giving him access to a full elven education.
  
• seems like a minor quibble but you can't have a negative relationship with any faction. you can totally ♥♥♥♥ over the dragons and the crows but aside from initial judgement, neither will have a serious problem with you long term. none of the factions are ever at odds and aside from the spoiler text (which even then, is pushing it), you never have to choose between them. suuuuch a missed opp.
  
• on the topic of factions, none of them are ever allowed to be even a little bit complicated. oh, the pirates? they give artefacts back to the cultures theyre important to. oh, the crows? the crows famous for buying children and grooming/abusing them into murderers? well, they're just well meaning patriots and a big family <3 they cooka the pizza they eata the pasta. mamma mia. havent read it but fwih in tevinter nights caterina was outright abusive to lucanis and illario but despite the family drama being a Main Crow Thing in this game, it never comes up!
  
• the same applies to the companions. even the resident assassin never does or says anything kind of ♥♥♥♥♥♥. neve refers to some ambigious ~dark past~ and then you find out that it was just..... a job gone wrong. mage in minrathous and the worst thing in your past was a mistake beyond your control? really now. i miss dorians pro-slavery era.............
  
• the lore is just... sanitised. all of the edges have been sanded off. it's barely recognisable as thedas. the only person given the grace of even a sliver of nuance is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ solas... wrt the minrathous/treviso choice specifically, it's craaaazy that the deeply ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up things that have happened in those cities/things done by the factions connected to those cities doesn't play AT ALL into which one gets nuked.

you can't be a bad person. you can never be mean. you will never fall out with your allies because you have different political views, partly because you're never given the opportunity to express those views and partly because all the crunchy political tensions that have had dragon age fans arguing non-stop for a literal decade have been completely sucked out of the setting. every enemy you have is just kind of ontologically evil, people who just want power for powers sake versus the much more human villains of previous games. the scale of the threat at hand has gotten so high that it loops back around to feeling like nothing. a lot of the problems i have are problems i had with inquisition that are just... worse, now. improves on inquisitions gameplay by a mile but goes a step further in butchering the interesting things about the setting; elven gods being real already deeply sucked ass, but now slavery isn't the defining trait of tevinter anymore on top of that... can't have ♥♥♥♥ in bioware games.

more than anything i think the biggest con is that there's just enough there that i really like that i can see how it could be better. it's so easy to imagine like... more nuanced factions. a wing of the southern chantry (maybe either represented by the inquisitor or your choice in divine, depending on the fate of the inquisition). restrict the veil jumpers to just elves to have that be the stand in for a dalish origin and let us play as city elves again. the ambassadoria as a dwarf-exclusive faction because dwarves were really given dust in this game outside of hardings quest, which sucked ass. qunari faction still aligned with the qun where your rook is maybe in a similar position to sten back in origins; notably NOT restricted by race, building more on the qunari being a religious group over a racial one. having close ties to the qunari would give you bad rap with the ambassadoria & the chantry, and vice versa. have some faction characters actually die because of your actions.

easy to imagine more nuanced companions with more drastic choices in their quests! having lucanis' quest have a more drastic ending than the complete non-choice he got... get revenge and be named first talon, or refuse and be disowned or smth. give neve something bad enough in her history to actually regret. wouldn't change emmrich hes fine. harding and taash........... well. i mean you'd have to start from the group up with either of them. swap harding for dagna and let taash be multicultural i guess. choice between arlathan and hossberg that can mould your dynamic with davrin and bellara. increase the influence of the southern chantry in the north, which is a blow to the venatori and puts you in neves good graces, but also impacts the mourn watchers and gives emmrich a grudge. bring the mage conflict back. bring the elf conflict back! bring back companions having principles and beliefs that might clash with your own. bring back RIVALRY while im at it. this game could've been so good and i think that's what makes me the most mad.

not quite as tight in either story or level design as the first game, but still a fantastic sequel and a blast to play.

CRAZY addictive. i adore micromanaging every patient its soo fun. i wish more hospital sims had the more grounded tone this one has.

very fun with very striking character design and a very interesting world. all in all, very recommended.

rtwp is the devil but truuuly one of my fave games of all time. you could get me to play a game about paint drying if it was set in eora.

suuuper cute, super chill <3

a neat little game with an interesting, if clunky, central mechanic of recording segments from one station and sending it to other stations. can be a little frustrating to repeat the full thing when you miss a line, but the fast forward function is fast enough that it isn't a total slog.

if it wasn't fully voiced, i'd say get it on sale, but, in my opinion, its reasonably priced, considering.

it's kind of clunky and i do think it expects some real leaps of logic at times, but it's a solid deduction game that i had a good time with. the supernatural elements and interconnecting details between cases were really engaging <3

really provided some of the best yaoibait in the business