Now don't get me wrong, I don't think Dragon Age 2 is a bad game. I played this through on the PC and the overall game experience was quite satisfying. My first problem had nothing to do with the actual game itself, but the expectations I had long before I even saw the demo trailer. In fact, I think a large portion of the fanbase had the same issue judging from many other reviews. Well the bottom line is that I had BioWare under the gun, and I wasn't gonna take anything negative with a grain of salt. Sad but true.
Now, afterwards, let's see how it all turned out.
The gameplay has, in contrast to it's predecessor, has been slightly improved on many levels. Modifications to the user interface makes it easier to navigate through the character sheets and to keep track of your spells and abilities. Combat is also both faster and more balanced now. In Origins, I more than often found myself spending 100% of the time with the game paused executing orders to my entire party during combat, making it feel a little bit like a chore, and the fights were long, sometimes too long. In that regard, the game has been dumbed down, but I think that is a good thing... except for one little detail that was really terrible in DA2.
To be honest, it really, really ails me to say that this solitary detail turned the advantage with the improved gameplay over Origins into dust. At least for me it did. What I am talking about is the complete lack of intriguing sceneries and places to fight at, and the same, constant reoccurring caves and warehouses you have already run through a gadrillion times before. You can quite literally dance your way through a cave knowing exactly when and where the enemies will spawn and how many, making the entire experience tedious and boring when it should be surpricing and engaging.
The lack of compelling artwork is evident even as soon as you start playing the game. Right of the bat, in the very first area, you realize that they haven’t bothered to put any greater effort into making things look as appealing as they could be. The first area is always your first impression, but the atmosphere and the environment is very colorless and dead, and it doesn’t get better from there either. The characters look too clean in their appearances. I get this feeling of completely untarnished iPods when I look upon their faces. They are too cartoonish and unrealistic. A big letdown.
Aside from you and your companions, the rest of the characters in this game is really forgetable and that is almost an understatement. It feels like World of Warcraft when you simply just run from one questgiver to the next, and you won't really bother to listen or care about why you are doing the quest. Most times you just want the experiance and the gold, and to be done with the questline.
Character customization has been reduced to weapons and accessories for your companions. Armor sets is exclusive to the main character only, which I think is a step back. Perhaps BioWare thought that it would be more convenient this way. After all, the story is about you and your character, and the supporting cast isn’t supposed to be yours to deal with.. that much. But in a game where you CONSTANTLY have to rely on a party of four don’t you think it would be nice to be able to equip your companions with appropriate gear suitable for any given situation? If you are failing on a fight perhaps you have some gear stored with certain attributes that would help. Instead, you’re stuck with either changing party members or level up some more, which of course is not always possible if you’re in the middle of a mission. I see no reason at all why things should be like this. It feels very counter-productive and caged in. I suppose the positive side of the coin is that we don’t have to use our brain as much, because that would just be too cruel!
The world map has an innovative way of handling things between night and day. Whereas in most games you would traditionally have to rest/sleep to switch between the two, Dragon Age 2 has two identical, but separated maps of the city for day and night that you can fast-travel between at any time. This saves you the trouble of going to your home/inn to sleep to turn the clock around.
Story:
Here is where my anger towards the game exploaded, mostly due to the unjustified expectations I had. Origins had a neat compelling storyline, a standard fantasy saga where good meets evil, and nothing too enigmatic to baffle the mind. DA2 completely deviated itself from anything generic and moved into the land of complexity which revolutionized storytelling, or so they like to think.
It’s one thing to up the complexity of the story, and another to up the complexity in the occurances that make up the story. Let me try to elaborate on what that means in this context. In Origins you had a prime evil (the Arch Demon), that controlled a horde of dawkspawn set out to consume the world in darkness. The plot was simple: Kill the Arch Demon to save the world. In Dragon Age 2, there is no such prime evil or simplicity to the story. Instead we get a story about contradicting ideals, mages vs templars, racism and a man named Hawke that is trying to make a better life for his family - all centered within the walls of a remote city in a land god knows where. Yes, you do travel outside the city once in a while, but there is no open world exploration at all, and you are often lead to run through very linear caves and pathways.
My biggest issue is that there isn’t even a prime antagonist, or any clear antagonists to speak of at all, which makes the game turn rather flat and vague. It’s hard to know what you are actually playing for when there is no true goal to overcome. The game is split in three parts/chapters that each has an ending of it’s own, and you hardly even know what the end will involve until you have already crossed the finish line.
”Enemies will become friends, and friends will become enemies” – this is sort of the formula for the bad guys in this game, and it might sound interesting at first, but DA2 does it very poorly. Not in the way they execute it, but in the way uncertainty arises regarding what they are trying to convey with it. You’re more likely to ponder whether you made the right choise in a moral issue when you should be fangasming over potentionally slaying a huge dragon at the end. The main antagonists weren't really that evil at all to begin with, and at first you will aid them and do missions for then, often venturing deep into the feelings and motivations that drives them. You will come to understand the reasons why they do as they do, and think that they are perhaps not so bad after all... right before you strike them down because they unexpectedly snapped and went all out evil.
In other words: Dragon Age 2 sure did add a lot of complexity in the occurrances in this game with moral issues and contradicting ideals in the plot, but lacks a true end goal to overcome – a goal that should be presented early in the game and not near the end.
If Origins can be summed up with ”Kill the Arch Demon to save the world”, Dragon Age 2 can be summed up with ”Make Kirkwall a better town”, which begs the question what was the intention of this game, since it obviously wasn’t a continuation of the previous story? My guess is that BioWare wanted to broaden the lore by making this game, and to connect the main character with the hero from Origins to ultimately make something really great out of Dragon Age 3, or perhaps even making an MMO.
In the end I will give the game a 6/10. It's not a bad game, I even liked it a lot. But it's hard to judge this game as a game by itself when it's in fact a sequel, and hence my mind will constantly make comparisons. I am first and foremost a fan of fantasy stories and tales, and I think that's where this game failed the most.
BLG writes: "There was a time that BioWare games were the biggest deal in gaming. The Canadian developer’s legacy of all-time classics is well known. Mass Effect, Knights of the Old Republic, and Baldur’s Gate are some of the biggest names in gaming.
While BioWare’s quality has fallen off lately, there’s no denying the quality of titles in their portfolio. That’s why we’re going to dive in and rank every BioWare game from worst to best. By every, I do mean every BioWare game, even the ones you completely forgot about!"
Ranked from worse to even more worse more like, they been on free fall for a fair few years now and I personally don't think any of there earlier games have aged well
Wow to think at one point in their history they made a Sonic the Hedgehog game..crazy
Anthem is crazy underrated. I really enjoyed it. ME1 is Bioware's best imo
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I actually put quite a bit of hours into Anthem but i dont think its underrated. It was a huge mess, server issues, gameplay issues, crashes, no endgame loop, too few different enemies, uninteresting gear. too few dungeons.
It for sure had potential and if they could have managed to keep the same gameplay of the classes but without the rest of the issues, this game could have been huge, but in the state in which it launched it was such a letdown. They partly fixed some of the issues, but it took too long. A grinding game like this needs to hook players from day 1.
With the successful release of Mass Effect Legendary Edition, could BioWare be considering the possibility of a remaster of the Dragon Age games?
Only if it's Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition. Those were amazing but Origins was kinda suck ass.
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It mirrors the Mass Effect trilogy quite well. Origins, like ME1 is very different to the games that precede it and as a consequence would require significant more work if a remaster were to happen. Respect the games mechanics like they did with MELE but it definitely needs a massive visual overhaul.
honestly the first time i hear this lol I hope it's satire Origins was amazing and the others well not so much
I've been making the same statement on N4G for 10 years now and I still get the same responses.. in fact, 10 years ago last month is when I bought Dragon Age II and ended up getting the platinum for it. I tried Origins but it bored me. It's a shame because the story seemed awesome. Then I got Inquisition back in 2015 and enjoyed it.. but Part 2 is what I have a true soft spot for. I still do a playthrough of it on my PS3 occasionally.
What? Origins was the best one. All of them were good but nothing compared to origins.
I would rather have them both.
These are the kinds of remasters I like. Where they are going in and improving the game assets. I hate remaster where they just port the game to the new platform and call it a day. I want to see noticable improvements in not only framerate and graphical resolution, but textures, environments, and character models. Keep the gameplay as it was, but improve the full look to nextgen.
From GameWatcher: "Dragon Age 2 has been around for a decade at this point, yet still ends at the center of enough debates. Arguably the most divisive entry in the series, plenty of players point out how its release, which came barely one year after Dragon Age: Origins' Awakening expansion, essentially doomed it. David Gaider, who worked as a Lead Writer on the title, recently shared some thoughts about the sequel on Twitter, including several things he would change if Hawke's adventure would be given the Snyder Cut treatment."
Interesting. I'd wish they had the time to develop the world rather than just give us hallways.
The main problem for me was the same sin Capcom commited with Resident Evil - putting much more action in hopes of selling more, and forgetting what made it great in the first place. DA: Origins battle system was awesome, but the emphasis on action in DA2 felt out of place.
The difference is that RE4 had a long development time and many ideas tried and scrapped before being released, what made Capcom, at least, change the course of 3rd person action games forever. It was "a bad Resident Evil, but a fantastic game". Meanwhile, DA2 was just rushed.
Replies(1)I loved Dragon Age II. It was the first fantasy themed RPG I enjoyed and one of the few to this day. I even got the platinum soon after it released.
I hate how little is transferred over from my previous saves the only reason i bought the dlc for origins was to see what happened in the sequel and was disapointed
That was a really well written Review, nice one.
I agree with a lot of your points, especially the lack of different locations and the lack of a true antagonist. Fair enough, the leaders of the Templars/Mages and the Qunari are interesting in their own right, but I felt we didn't get enough of them to make us hate them, or have any true motivation to bring them down.
But like you I enjoyed the game a lot despite it's flaws. I think Bioware will definitely improve with DA3 if they keep the good parts of DA2.
And I agree with outwar6010 ^ too. The most you get from an Origins save is a few lines of different dialogue... Which is a bit crap.
I'm glad I didn't bite on this game day 1. I was disappointed when I read that most of the game takes place in a city. To be fair, DA: O was very linear, going through the world was basically going down a series of corridors with few exceptions but at least you visited different locales that had their own unique feel. DA 2 might be the same size but the first game FEELS bigger and that's really all that matters. It seems that it had a much better story as well.
I enjoyed reading your review btw, nicely done.
Great review and a pretty spot on score. THX.