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Darth Tigris on 17 February 2012
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SvennoJ said:

Darth Tigris said:


So did you choose a class other than Soldier?  On the 2nd part of the demo, did you go in and spec out yourself and companions?  You have 23 experience points that you apply in so many different ways to Shepherd that I was immediately overwhelmed.  You only get 11 for the other two, but at least you can choose to load up on one ability or spread out the points so you can use a variety of abilities during the combat.  In fact, even loading up on one led to numerous different paths just within that one ability.

Oh, speaking of the combat (though I only played it once), did you set up opportune times to use Overload on shielded enemies so they would be easier to take down?  Did you maintain manual control of your character's abilities to set up different strategies to take on the various tactics and enemies you face?  Or did you just leave everything to the AI and play it like your average cover shooter?  Did you amp up the difficulty so that typical TPS gameplay only leads to death, thus forcing you to actually USE the RPG elements?

For the record, these are things I noticed after ONE playthrough with ONE class (Vanguard aka MANguard), so I'd imagine there would be a number of things that I missed.  How about you?

I played Sentinel I think. Anyway everything you describe is not what I'm looking for. Combat is the thing that's on the bottom of my list for RPGs. Exploration, dialog, diplomacy, mysteries, puzzles are all more important to me then whatever combat has to offer.

What the demo showed me was a very straight forward A to B slog through combat. I guess my definition of RPG is different then Mass Effect's definition. Combat gets repetitive very soon to me, same set of bad guys around every corner. I had hoped story mode would cut back on the combat encounters, while leaving a few key battles, and let me ramp of the difficulty of those. But all it does is make it more boring by making you almost invincible.

Well those aspects are done to varying degrees in different RPG's, so it sounds more like this is not the TYPE of RPG that appeals to you more than it not being an RPG.  In many ways, the things that I described ARE classic RPG puzzle solving wrapped up in character customization and a real time TPS combat engine.

But since neither of us has played the full game, let me say this:  it would be irresponsible for Bioware to include the types of things you listed for the most part in a DEMO.  Those are plot points and long reaching elements that would serve them well to keep as close to the vest as possible for as long as possible.  There is only so much that a demo for an RPG could give us, as it's most representative elements are evident only with long term play.