Dragon Age 2
Fairly large review. I just tried to talk about everything in the game.
Bioware’s most controversial game yet managed to continue the dispute that Mass Effect 2 started 1 year ago about how RPG’s should be made: action or traditional?
In the end, this kind of debate is good marketing considering it involves a LOT of players across the genre-pool and you can manage to trick most of them into playing your game. But Bioware showed some awful PR skills along the way, releasing little and repetitive information, allowing a marketing dude to say the word “awesome” and “button” in the same sentence and just denying a lot of things without reasonable arguments. It’s nice to see that they can make a game feel different each time unlike others (Bethesda), but not giving a damn about your future credibility with some players is lame.
Gameplay
Set in Kirkwall, your actions are limited to the nearby areas only and the big city. That big map of Thedas that we’ve been staring at for months is still only codex-meat. It’s a new thing, and not necessarily a bad one considering that Bio was getting repetitive with the old “4 major locations->epilogue” regarding the main story. Now it’s just one town, more focused. It’s a nice change of pace but by the looks of it they needed more time to shape it up into something worth admiring. 1000 shades of brown can become boring even if it comes in different materials, be them stone, wood or dirt. The game looks pretty enough, better than Origins but more bland at the same time. It’s a comparison I shouldn’t try, but looking at a major town in GuildWars 2 will blind you with colors, architecture, weird shapes, locations and abundance. That game isn’t even out yet, but it already looks inviting enough. Kirkwall is grim, and I don’t care that the Tevinters intended it to be this way for the petty slaves. Who the hell builds huge golden statues of slaves crying?
The way you travel between districts is done in the old way, teleporting to them by using the map. I don’t find it disturbing since they were nice enough to keep this like in Origins, but I’m asking myself if this was even needed for a town. Here you are trying a unique perspective and you’re cutting things up into teleportable districts? Why not do something like in The Witcher, with one huge town that you explore street by street? They could’ve done something incredibly creative with this considering they attempt a day/night cycle already, but instead they took a muffled step to the left.
The main debate is related to combat of course, something that no gameplay vid or demo could settle in the months before the release.
I’ll tell you this: if you had absolutely no problems with the awkward feet shuffle from Origins then stop reading this now. For me, that stuff was annoying and being able now as a rogue to jump around the battlefield with ease sounds like an improvement. I’m not talking animations, I’m just talking about the general sense of control that you have over the battlefield. In Origins, you could literally see the characters doing imaginary dice-rolls in their minds before each attack, but over here it just looks like a fight. Mages look like Shaolin monks with the staff but it’s a lot better than a boring version of Harry Potter’s wand.
I don’t see any way how this can be compared to ME2. You still have dozens of skills between you and your companions, full control over them, tactics, sustainable skills, grenades, poisons and potions. Combat is better and more polished. If you want the game to be challenging as Origins then you just have to crank up the difficulty. The game is bloodier in a disgusting way, but that’s no longer related to combat, the same goes for the way swords look. Many of them are shamelessly imported from Origins so I fail to see the argument in this when even the predecessor had issues. Yes, the greatswords look like Final Fantasy material but please remember that in DA:O the rogue could handle 2 longswords just as easily and implausibly.
The skill tree got remodeled and it does look to have more sense into it. You have plenty of options to make and less restrictions at a glance. But if you think on it for a while you’ll realize that it still is in your interest to invest all your ability points in a specialization to perfect it before moving on. Thing is, each skill has 1 or 2 upgrades, and within that branch there are 1 or 2 passive skills that greatly benefit those first skills that you started with! The alternative is to invest in single skills from all specializations and you’ll end up with many weak spells. Each level up brings 1 ability point to use and by the end of the game you’ll get really greedy with them. You will be less inclined to risk starting a new branch rather then upgrading what you already have. I don’t see the same problem from Origins any more, but that’s just because it was brought to a new level. But at least in the previous game I knew that a character who had the Petrify spell had it for real, and he didn’t need 3 more upgrades to invest in it.
Attributes are the same but they’ve been perfected in a bad way. Bottom line is: warriors need to bother only with strength and constitution, mages with magic and willpower and rogues with dexterity and cunning. That’s it. Doing anything else would be foolish since the items for all those classes require exactly those pairs of attributes. In Origins, even my mage dabbled in cunning because it was needed for...
There’s no more persuasion, trap making, poison making, nature, stealing and anything else-skill. Traps exist only for your rogue to spot (using cunning), poisons, runes and potions are merchandise material for you to order at home and persuasion is absorbed by the dialogue wheel. Hostage negotiations are no longer threatening because no matter what you choose it’s bound to the wheel to obey. For potions you need only good eyes to spot the reagents because they’ll magically be available at home when you place an order on enchantment-bay. It’s stupid.
And it’s a shame because I liked the prospect of having a dialogue wheel, but I don’t like having it take over so many roles. Having a character with a voice is a great thing, and even though the “good” choices are boring, the rest are worth hearing. There are good lines and party banter to laugh at, and based on what you choose Hawke takes on the role you set. Always picking the sarcastic one will mean assuming the permanent role of smartass.
There are still lots of items to loot and buy in the world but fewer things to do with them. Your companions have preset armors that you can just upgrade over time, so based on your class 2/3’s of the armors are useless to you. In the final act of the game you’ll receive the Champion suit which is 3 times better than anything so you’ll skip the fashion show altogether. You’ll get plenty of weapons and trinkets to spread around your party though. Maybe it is tiring for some to customize your companions from top to bottom but I really think there can be better ways to help those people than turning half the items into pointless trash to sell, based on your class. I’m not so much annoyed by this as I am by the thought of what will Bioware decide to do once they discover this outburst of unused creativity. They’ll probably tune it down to 3 armor sets in the whole game like they did in ME2.
Story & Characters
The story is spread around 10 years just like we’ve been told and I was pleased to go through it most times without a clue about what was going to happen. Some find it boring that you don’t have a clear-cut reason to progress, like fighting a big bad archdemon at the end but I didn’t mind it. Also, for the first time in ages you’re no longer part of a secret order of fighters like the jedi, Spectres or Gray Wardens. You’re just a refugee making a name for yourself. There’s something honest about it and I like it. My only advice is to enjoy it while it lasts because at the end you won’t be that thrilled by the cliffhanger laid shamelessly at your feet. First of all, the only need I saw for those 10 years so far was to find plausible reasons for all the cameos paraded in front of you. Honestly, everything that you go through can be cut down to 2 or 3 years at the most. Second, the story ends in one of two possible ways and you’ll be surprised that it really comes down to those 2 extremely obvious choices. There’s no going around them, they’re fairly basic and there’s no epilogue to echo your choices from the game.
More even, the two choices seem plausible only if you pick the right class. As a rogue with a mage sister, I had a moderate involvement in the conflict between mages and templars. Considering both choices rationally is plausible because you’re really involved as a neutral party. But if you’re a mage, I don’t see any sane reason to even entertain the idea of a choice. The game is clearly not prepared for you playing as a mage since most templars that you encounter are blind to your magical fire balls. “Mages are not normal like you and me” said one to me during a cutscene where the camera angle was obstructed by my staff laying on my back.
Side quests are handled a lot better than before and can be entertaining. These can be completed right away without the need of unlocking a certain area right about the end of the main story like that sextant from Origins needed the Alienage. The problem changed to repeatable caves, tho. In pure Bioware practicality and sneakiness, a large cave complex will be used for several quests by closing off parts of it based on the quest at hand. Unfortunately, some share the same entrance so it’s not that hard to spot. Complaining about this is hard because it’s not that surprising and it was done before. ME1 had 3 dungeons with just different boxes each time and Origins had several quest tied to one exact location based on your progress in the main story. Take your pick, you can be offended but you’ll be mad at the same tradition that you might have been ignoring all these years.
The cameos I mentioned reach a ludicrous level. One guy you just bump into on a street corner and he says hi and just leaves. Are these guys so desperate to tie Origins to this? The story ignores the events of Ferelden so they try adding as many characters as they can into this? Even if you’re tied to the Warden by the Amell family line you still hear only 3 lines about it. The most outrageous cameo is Anders himself because if you strip down his name and the cat joke, he’s someone entirely new. He would’ve been just as insane if he was presented just as some random hypocrite mage preaching on the freedom of mages while possessed by a demon. Calling him Anders won’t change a thing. Bioware’s fear of going too far from Origins takes a geographical level as well, Kirkwall being just north of Orzammar. DA3 will probable be set on the road to Starkheaven and DA9 will hopefully reach the Anderfells.
The other characters are acceptable based on whatever is your personal preference. To make it short, Isabela is a whore, Fenris is a bit of an emo, Merrill entertains you with the idea of new but in the end surprises you with how simple her story can be, Aveline is the only tough woman in recent years who doesn’t fall down in your arms out of love (Ashley Williams doesn’t count because she’s a crazy christian), Varric is the only cool dwarf you’ll ever meet and Sebastian was left out as a DLC. Since it’s spread on 10 years, there are some restrictions regarding your relation with them. They all have homes of their own because it would be silly to keep them all around a camp for the whole time. The talks are also nailed down to certain moments because they had to pace everything out somehow. You can’t romance a character in the first year because you’d be left with a lot of nothing for the rest. The gifts are also gone, at least in the creative way of finding who likes what. There are no more anonymous bracelets to hand out or pretty paintings to give to Sten. Gifts are specific quest like items and giving one starts a conversation. I think each character can receive 1 gift or so, extremely limited. Wouldn’t it be cool with the rivalry system to give bad gifts on purpose to people just to piss them off? Like a condom to Sebastian, and a ball&chain to Anders? And have all these snarky comments to-
CREATIVITY WHAT IS THIS? Nvm, moving on:
You have a family in this game, and I left it for last because I have issues with this. I guess there’s no secret after the demo that one sibling you loose by default based on what class you pick. I don’t want to spoil it, but you’ll loose the second one by the second act and he keeps in touch only by mail so you’re left only with your dear mother. You don’t even have time to try turning Carver into a friend because the game steals him from you. And that’s the problem. Your choices have no impact on them, and these events don’t happen because they’re a lesson on responsibility. No, they just happen because the game wants them to happen, with no real impact on the story or any change noticed by your character. There’s one family related quest that is just brutal without reason. No use, no impact, no sense and just disgusting. The game made me wish I didn’t have a family not because I made poor choices that endangered them all, but because I had no saying in what happens.
Blablabla
In the end, this game has no personality. It leeches off Origins to appear serious, but in the end it’s enjoyable only based on where you came from. If you loved DA: O you’ll find enough reasons to hate this sequel. If you had fun in ME2 you’ll have enough reasons to love it. DA2 won’t do anything special to change your mind about it. It’s not a game made to satisfy you, because it was made to satisfy everyone.
But this scheme won’t work next time. Maybe some of the hardcore fans of Origins were fooled into buying this but they’ll stop falling for this next time. The only ones left will be the Gears of War fans who like a fast paced game like Mass Effect 2, and they enjoy these changes. Once that happens, will Bioware even try to satisfy the disappointed gamers from Origins and patch things up? Well the answer to that is a big two-letter word: EA.
Dragon age 2 is a cool game that I enjoyed playing, but it’s just that. There’s nothing great about it, and nothing worthy in it to be called a sequel. As an experiment I found it fun because it had some great ideas. Dialogue wheel, voiced character, better combat and skill tree are the good things. It could have been better if they worked on it 1 more year. I’m sure of it. Otherwise it just feels rushed.
Rating
If you liked the traditional feel of Origins a lot: 6/10
If you liked ME2’s action and polished combat: 9/10
Tldr: 7.5
Originally Posted by Razvus
on another immediately after. Thanks for posting your review though.
). I enjoy the faster paced combat, the animations, the dialogue wheel, and the fact that I can actually reach the demon that's happily munching on my mage before my mage dies. But there is something that they should have done.......KEPT THE 
