Dragon Age II has some of my favorite storytelling in a game. The party members were very well-characterized, and I really got the feeling that they had lives independent of the PC. The story meanders a bit, but individual parts were quite effective (the second act was the high point for me, between the Qunari arc and the serial killer subplot). Also, if your jaw didn't hit the floor at when the Chantry blew up, then you were asleep for the previous 20 hours of gameplay.
Well if one really hates story but loves drama this is the game to buy, because nothing of any significance will ever happen, might as well called it Desperate Tolkien Wives 2.
Also if one always wondered what a dwarven greaser would be like Varric is the character for you.
I thought it was a really good game, personally I loved Kirkwall, and while the characters weren't as interesting as the characters in DA:O I thought the plot was brilliant and I really enjoyed the game.
Mind you, I didn't have a problem with the original ME3 ending so maybe I'm just crazy...
Nowhere near as good as Origins but it only got beat on so much because Origins set such a incredibly high bar. Gameplay was a little too butchered and simplified from the original but the story was still top notch, I loved the charecters, and I still really really like the game world. All in all a very great game... just not incredible.
Uhh, no, not really. Most people were pissed of by a lot more than that, namely
Deus Ex Machina, Magic Ghost Children, Instant Win button, Exact same ending for everyone - just in a different colour, no sum up of what happened to the universe, Normandy teleported by space magic to some random planet where your crew is trapped, and various other bits and pieces of bullshit that overall killed the ending. Yeah, a lot of it was symbolic. It doesn't really matter if it gets in the way of the ending.
Of course this thread isn't to discuss the ME3 endings, and if you feel like responding you can send a PM or something instead, but 'most people' were not upset at
their Shepard dying.
There were far bigger problems for most than that.
Anyway, OT:
Dragon Age 2 is really a watered down Dragon Age: Origins. If you would have preferred DA:O be closer to Baldur's Gate, this is NOT the game for you. If you would have preferred DA:O be closer to Darksiders, this is the game for you.
Combat is button spam. It maintains some of the same tactics as Origins, but a lot of the battle is in jumping away from enemies than charging forward with an attack. You can solo an Ogre at lvl 1 easily just by stepping to the side, attacking, dodging its attack, then attacking again. This is with a 2 handed warrior build, its even easier with the other classes. Enemies spawn in waves, and rely on zerg tactics rather than RPG tactics. They will swarm you with 10-20 little weak enemies, or maybe 5-10 strong enemies and 1 enemy that buffs its allies and does bugger all else, yet also has the most HP. The way the enemies 'syngergize' to take you down is also more like in an action game: They gang up on you with the powerful ones that knock you back each attack and just spam attack you so you are perma-stunned until you die. They just charge at you and attack, and occasionally use a spell or special ability, though even they are nothing special. Rogues play more differently than warriors now, in that they are even more focused on the move around and dodge side of things, yet I didn't even notice if there was the whole utility side to the rogue any more - if there was it is ridiculously watered down. Dragon fights were extremely underwhelming too. The Dragon fight in 2 consists of attacking the Dragon for a bit, killing 20 of its offspring that swarm you whilst it sits on a rock you can't reach and breathes fireballs for you to dodge, attacking it a bit more, and repeating 3-4 times until its dead. Think the Archdemon fight, only with a smaller area, no way to attack the archdemon if its not in that small area, and no backup to help you fight the swarms of nameless mooks. Also, no awesome kill animations like in Origins. They trigger every time you kill something that has one, but they are, quite simply, a slideshow of 3-4 pictures of your character performing the move, rather than them actually doing it and letting you see the whole thing.
Level design is... shit, to put it in a word. Every level is, quite honestly, a few corridors leading to a room in a linear fashion. There might be 5 metres of a side passage to explore, then you're done. The smallest maps in Origins are about the size of the majority of these missions - well, excluding those 10 metre walk in, kill wolves, walk out ones - with only a couple being decently sized, and even then they are nothing compared to Origin's maps. Loading screens are everywhere. Think more Denerim than Redcliff or Orzammar for the city [Yes, there is only one city]. That isn't the worst of it though. The worst part is that there are maybe 15 maps to the whole game, used over and over again in at least 5 separate missions. The EXACT same map. The only difference will be that this time one of the doors can't be opened, but the other one can. This screws around with your minimap by making you think you can go places you can't in this dungeon, which is annoying.
Squad make up is meh. You can get what you need, but you're stuck with a choice between 2 characters for the most part, and only 1 if you want a healer. Somehow mages seem even more OP than in Origins, mostly thanks to the fact that enemies only ever come in swarms and you can just AOE them to death with your mages and a couple of rogue specials. Each party member is different, and is useful for something slightly different to their counterpart, but I wouldn't call the planning great by any means. Its slightly below Origins in this aspect IMO, mostly because there is only one choice of a Healer whereas in Origins you could build Morrigan to be a healer too. Squad interactions are arguably better, arguably worse. If you want to have a conversation with your squad members and find out more about them, you've got to wait until certain points in the story where you recieve a quest to do so. This means that its not just random sitting in camp and talking constantly to unlock their secrets, but it also means that if you want to know something you've got to wait for the game to let you know it.
Characters I liked. They were reasonably well written, and managed to not get one my nerves. Better in some ways than the Origins characters, worse in others, but don't expect to get to know them near as well.
Inventory... Eh. I didn't like it. Items that exist purely as junk to sell and nothing else are kept in a 'junk' tab now, which is good, but otherwise... Item naming is largely non-existent [A ring that gives +5 damage has the same name as one that improves a mages magic pool by 25: They're called "Ring", and that's it.], and it has a system where it puts a number of stars next to the item based off how good it is, I believe relative to your level, that I ended up just ignoring because it was not helpful at all, and just ended up confusing the issue. In addition, you no longer equip your followers. You can give them a weapon, but it must be the same sort of weapon they've already been using, and you can't change their armour - you can only buy upgrades at shops that are available during only 1 chapter of the game [Upgrades are available in all chapters, but each upgrade only appears in 1 chapter with no notification, so if you don't find and buy it then, you are unable to ever get that upgrade]. You, thankfully, can be fully equipped however you like.
The Player Character... I didn't like. I dislike Bioware's new pattern of making RPGs where the main character is its own entity, rather than someone you define. You still have some control over your character, but its also following the Mass Effect Dialogue Wheel, so expect a maximum of 6 options, but more generally 3 in terms of how to respond to a situation. In addition, the game tells you exactly what each option will do, or makes it extremely obvious if not. If you liked trying to joke with Aleister about him being a prince, only to have him take offence to it because you didn't really understand how he felt about it, that no longer exists. There is no way for you to make a wrong choice unless you want to.
The story I found meh too. Its inconsistent, and constantly jumping around. It doesn't have an issue that it focuses on, like the Blight, but more a series off issues that it will start, jump to climax, end, then discard. Retcons of your choices and events that happened in Origins/Awakening also exist, and are quite obvious. Of course, they only exist if you made certain choices, but this serves to retroactively force a canon on what happened in DA:O, regardless of what you did. There is also random bullshit that happens at times, though its nowhere near as jarring as that in the ME3 ending so you'll probably be fine. There are a couple of interesting twists, but overall its merely alright.
The graphics... If you thought Origins looked bad, they've somehow managed to make this one look worse. It looks like an extremely cheap cartoon you'd watch on TV most of the time - from the actual art style of the game, the textures and models, and even the animations. Undead walk in a manner that I had to fight myself not to fall out of my chair laughing at how stupid it was [And no, its not the slow zombie walk stupid, its amazingly the opposite], and the animations look more like they'd belong in some anime than in a western RPG most of the time. The textures and models look like they were drawn by a 7 year old. The concept art looks good, but in game it looks seriously bad - even with the HD texture pack. On top of that pretty much nothing about the aesthetic is kept the same as in Origins. The Deep Roads are now a series of small, 2-man wide corridors made of red stone like Minecraft Nether Bricks, with occasional small rooms made of the same material and filled with pillars, and a couple of small cave like passageways. They are very jarringly different, both level design wise and aesthetic wise. Qunari are possibly the most different, however. They now look like hairless minotaurs rather than bronze skinned giants, and the only Qunari designs I really like from 2 are that of the Arishok, who looks badass, and that of the mages. Normal Qunari... I don't like them.
Whether you'll enjoy it or not depends solely on what you want out of it. Whereas the ME3 ending was mostly a complaint about story, the complaints about DA2 are gameplay, story and everything in between. As with the ME3 ending, however, both sides of the coin exist and you will find people who loved and hated each aspect. Whether you will is entirely dependent on your tastes.
HOWEVER, emphasis on the former. Because it really is a good game. Although is hell bent in giving Hawke a love interest. Which is sort of weird. But hey, shiny spells and Blood magic! It's awesome.
Although it's kind of weird when you just waltz through the Templars HQ, even though you're a Blood Mage. XD
If you think that DA2 was better than Dragon Age: Origins, you are a bad person and the best christmas gift you could give to the world is launching yourself to space without a way to bring your wretched existence back to this Earth.
Ummm.... The marketing made it very clear what sort of game it was going to turn out to be? That was nice because it meant I never ended up buying it, though I did end up giving a friends' copy a whirl just to see how drastically they abandoned the whole "Baldur's Gate spiritual successor" thing.
I thought Dragon Age 2 was a pretty good game. I liked the characters in it. Merrill is cute in an awkward and shy way. Varric is an awesome character. While I do think Dragon Age: Origins is better I still think Dragon Age 2 is a good game.
Characterisation of certain party members was amazing.
However I wasn't too fond of all the breaks from previous canon, I didn't even realise Isabella was supposed to be the same Pirate you meet in the first game until she mentions she had sex with the Warden.
The first twenty minutes to half an hour are awesome. Then you realize you're running fetch quests so you can get enough money to get more money, and then it starts repeating dungeons and by that time I found that as much as I really wanted to like the game, I couldn't stand it. Put it down for a few weeks in the middle of act 2 and only finished it because I wanted to see if it got any better. Surprise surprise, it didn't.
If you think that DA2 was better than Dragon Age: Origins, you are a bad person and the best christmas gift you could give to the world is launching yourself to space without a way to bring your wretched existence back to this Earth.
If you can't accept that some people may have different opinions than you, you are a bad person and the best christmas gift you could give to the world is launching yourself to space without a way to bring your wretched existence back to this Earth.
Oh please, personal attack? I merely attempted to use overexaggeration for comical effect. Whether or not it succeeded is debatable, however you can't call it a "personal attack".
That aside, I DO think that DA2 is a horrible game. Mind you, I loved the first game. It had a lot of flaws, but I loved it. However, Dragon Age 2 ripped most of those things out. The combat system ripped out most strategy with things like enemies that fall from the sky, the plot was a horrible mess, the art design was so incredibly uninspired that it made me depressed, and absolutely nothing excited me about the game. Of course Bioware still managed to ace some characters such as Varric and Aveline (IMO), but it wasn't enough to make up for the rest of the game which was painful to play through, and which I did only because I adored Origins so much.
DRagon Age 2 threw a jab at a more "personal story", which fell flat. Had it been properly executed I think I might have loved it, but the game didn't succeed in making me care about the family and the artificial drama that revolved around them in some scenes. Hawke's whole "Rise to Power" didn't end up being anything more than a story about some dude happened to end up in Kirkwall and did some stuff that didn't really matter that much in the end.
Well, it certainly wasnt; a bad game... infact it made a number of improvements over Dragon Age: Origins... like actually having a coherent and unique visual design, a much more organic skill tree, where skills and spells actually changed how you would approach a situation... mages were more useful, except as healers... they removed useless and redundant things, like the basically useless stealth elements, and the almost useless potion and poison crafting skills... the entire idea of the story was interesting in the way that it was structured... and of course all of the characters were unique, interesting and inherently well written, way more than a lot of the characters in origins, and each one went through a noticeable and interesting ark that developed them depending on how Hawke intervened, or didn;t... Except for that raging anime stereotype of an elf... and while your actions regarding the city were far from impactful, it really felt like you as the player, had a lot of control and influence with your companions... not to mention the combat was generally improved but more than a bit in love with itself... also improving the lore and atmosphere, expanding the world to feel like more than generic psuedo medeival fantasy land number 541... also it kept in the tradition of the series to keep the morality as grey as posible, allowing the player to judge their own actions and choose what they felt was right, which helped culminate in one of my favorite game endings in recent years...
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