can you say something nice about dragon age 2

[Maeshone]

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.

Yeah, personal attack might have been a bit too much, I really shouldn't do too much internet-browsing when I'm tired. I'll edit the post, sorry

And I do recognize that you bring up valid complaints. The wave-based combat and the reuse of dungeons are my major gripes with the game. The rest of the game however, I think is superior to Origins. I liked the characters better, I liked the story better, (act 3 was a bit of a mess though) and I preferred the more actiony combat, which they didn't take far enough down the action route in my opinion. I'd really prefer just straight up Warrior Within style combat, mostly because the combat in Origins just felt really slow and clunky and that really put me off.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

Merrill is gorgeous.

/serious: it's an okay game in its own right if you like thoughtless, flashy hack-and-slash and don't mind the heavily recycled environments and enemies. "Competent" is the word I use to describe it; you'll be entertained, but not riveted.

It has a dozen failings, but its largest was that it really does nothing that DA:O didn't do better. It was because it was a tremendous missed opportunity for Bioware and a huge disappointment for fans of CRPGs, which is probably why it attracts such vitriol.

Personally I felt like its biggest misstep was with Hawke. He's just not a very interesting protagonist, especially if you're playing as a dude. I was only capable of completing the game to the end once I decided to play Hawke as a domineering lesbian templar with a secret turn-on for elven blood mages with adorable accents.

captcha: heart's content

d'aww, the captcha's met Merrill.

 

[Meatspinner]

Dynamic adventure locations.

"Drop in out of thin air" feature that they implemented really added a much needed variety to the tactical combat

MMO type bossfights added a whole other layer of gameplay

Oh and the women felt more fuckable.

I whis I could say more about this great and wondrous game but for some reason I never managed to play it through. I must rectify that in the future

 

[Padwolf]

I sure as hell can! I've sunk many hours into that game, I love it! Sure it has it's problems, but the characters are good, the story is good and the combat is wonderful! The story feels a bit more personal than Origins and your actions will affect your party. Hell if you throw out an item you got from a companion they will not be happy about it! The only thing I did not like were the repetitive dungeons, otherwise I don't have any issues. I had a lot of fun with the game and I do recommend it. The protagonist is really good too.

Just watch out for Anders. He will ruin your romance with Fenris!

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

2 however, judged entirely on its own merits and not going into the game expecting it to be origins, is a decent game!

This was really its problem...it was a sequel, so it was always going to be judged on DA:O's merits and not on its own.

It's really their own fault for calling it Dragon Age II.

 

[Bvenged]

While it sucked overall for quality and story (and as an RPG), it was still a fun action fantasy game. The combat was more fluid and entertaining than DA1, for instance, and it has good, albeit artificial, length.

I preferred it to DA1.

 

[Guffe]

Not really...
Never played it, that might explain the situation

 

[Zhukov]

Aveline and Varric are both really cool characters.

Isabella and Merrill are funny and entertaining.

The combat was pretty fun, although it outstayed its welcome, much like in the first game.

 

[votemarvel]

Dragon Age 2 is a good game, just not a very good sequel.

I'm surprised at the praise the combat gets because it certainly isn't "hack and slash". The combat operates on the same dice roll system as the first game, you just have to hammer one button to do basic attacks.

They did patch back in the auto-attack to console versions (it was the default on the PC) and with that enabled you can see that the only real change is the waves and a cool-down on your potion use. That being said however the combat certain looks more exciting, so a good job was done by the animation team.

Since we are meant to be saying good things I can go to the characters. There isn't a weak character in the bunch, there are some you'll like more than others but each is well written with great interactions when you take them out as party members (Varric/Merrill and Isabella/Aveline being my favourites).

The story is interesting but suffers from the time jumps that take place between chapters. They feel quite out of place to me and I can't help but feel if the game had proved more popular we would have seen DLC to fill those gaps.

All in all Dragon Age 2 is a game worth playing at least once.

 

[Gabanuka]

I got it cheap off a friend (£5) so it was worth what I paid for it. It wasn't an awful game, just not very polished and leagues behind its predecessor.

 

[Neuromancer]

Varric is an awesome character.
The story is more personal and gray (but still has flaws)
Combat looks nice (however I dislike the fact that the only strategy the game has to pit against you is zerging more and more mobs)
Sets the mood for the next game well. (Although in general, cliffhanger endings are not very fun)
There are many shout-outs to Origins and some of your decisions from it play a (minor) role on how the story progresses.

 

[TheCommanders]

The characters were well written (mostly). The skill trees work much better than origins. Fights are faster paced and more entertaining (although the wave combat is not a great model for dragon age). The story is more complex than your standard save the world fantasy affair. Having a voiced protagonist is almost infinitely preferable to having a silent protagonist. Sarcastic Hawke is awesome! The champion armors look pretty sweet. Hair models look less like they are made out of wood (origins I'm looking at you). The DLC's (frequently overlooked) are really good and solve a lot of the problems the main game had (less wave spawning, no reused environments). Overall, Dragon Age II improved on origins in a lot of ways that get overlooked because of a few areas where it took a few steps back. Hopefully DA3 will combine the best of the two.

 

[Roofstone]

Great setting, story, characters combat and choices. This is overall though, it is the millions of tiny complaints that nag at me.

But they are small enough that I can ignore them easily. I love this game.

 

[putowtin]

LEt's do pro's and cons (as I see them)
Pro's
Really enjoyable
Some interesting new characters (Varric mainly!)
Alistair makes an appearance (Unless you had him killed)

Con's
Reuse of same locations over and over
No Grey Wardens (Not really)
Bat Shit Insane ending (No spoilers but WTF?!?!)

Overall,
I got it for a fiver, no complains and I will end up playing it over christmas (I'm running through Dragon Age Origins, all it's add ons, so I finish it off nicely with DA:2)

 

[Sp3ratus]

In DA2 the player is supposed to manually dodge attacks, a feature that I find works poorly with a point and click interface. Especially when there are 4 characters to control. It would have worked better as a pure action game, or a pure tactical game.

Really, how so? The only instance of manual dodging I can see is if your tank can't hold aggro, like a tank supposed to do. Granted, I've had to do it once in a while, while playing it, but most of the time the set tactics worked out just fine, with the weaker members dropping aggro and/or the tank using CDs to get aggro back.

The combat is like that of action game, but with a point and click interface, a design decision not even worthy of Bethesda.

LET'S MAKE THE ENEMIES COME IN MASSIVE WAVES!!!11!1!1!!11!!!111!!11!1

Combat is button spam.

The combat system ripped out most strategy with things like enemies that fall from the sky.

/serious: it's an okay game in its own right if you like thoughtless, flashy hack-and-slash

You know, I don't get this attitude. I don't know what difficulty any of you played on, but I have a feeling it wasn't on nightmare, because if that was the case, I'm fairly certain none of you would say there's little or no strategy involved. This is not to put any of you down, please don't take it that way, but I think it's unfair to call it an action game and/or button spammer, if you haven't beat the game on the highest difficulty.

Also, how is the wave combat making the combat any less strategic? If anything, it adds more things to consider to every encounter, like repositioning and cooldown management. I have no idea how those two things removes strategic elements, rather than add them.

Having to navigate all those things; repositioning, cooldown management, friendly fire, keeping aggro and deciding which mobs to take out, in order to not get your party killed, is what I'd call strategic combat, but maybe that's just me.

 

[OniaPL]

Yeah, personal attack might have been a bit too much, I really shouldn't do too much internet-browsing when I'm tired. I'll edit the post, sorry

And I do recognize that you bring up valid complaints. The wave-based combat and the reuse of dungeons are my major gripes with the game. The rest of the game however, I think is superior to Origins. I liked the characters better, I liked the story better, (act 3 was a bit of a mess though) and I preferred the more actiony combat, which they didn't take far enough down the action route in my opinion. I'd really prefer just straight up Warrior Within style combat, mostly because the combat in Origins just felt really slow and clunky and that really put me off.

Yeah, no worries. Happens to me as well.

But anyways... You say that characters, the story and the combat were better. I'd just like to respond, since I am rather passionate about the first game.

Characters
-------------------

-First of all, companion quests and companion interactions were bad in comparison to Dragon Age Origins. You were not able to talk to your companions when you wished, and at the start of each chapter/act you would get a laundry list of things to do, such as companion quests.
In Origins, you could talk to companions when you wanted, and they would sometimes have some insight or opinions or stories about the location you were currently in, or about the memories the place or the events reminded them of. You also had to "find" companion quests; Instead of them being thrown into your face, they came up after extensive amounts of dialog and called back to something mentioned before. Receiving one felt like an honor and actually meant something.

Anders has one of the wackiest character arcs I can remember. His development, his major plot point is so batshit crazy that it made me hate the character.
Isable and Merrill I did not personally enjoy, but I can see why some people would like them.
Fenris, i did not like. He was a stereotype of a wounded, hateful emo; yet he never really got his moment of redemption and at no point did I feel like he had anything more into him than the emo elf thing.
I had Bethany. I thought she was fine.
Aveline and Varric I liked.

Story
---------

Dragon Age Origins had the traditional "save the world from ancient evil" plot, but it did it well. It served as a framework for your travels to the elves, mages, humans and dwarves. Each major location had a story of it's own which deviated from the "darkspawn are evil, must slay darkspawn" thing, and I found them really interesting.

Meanwhile in Dragon Age 2, the first act is just faffing about and setting up the story, in 2nd act the Qunari kick in... and it leads to nowhere. I actually liked the Qunari and would have liked them and their issues be the center of the game rather than the craptastic mages vs. templars argument which was absolutely ridiculous, especially in Act 3.

None of the sidequests really proved to be interesting. They were mostly just fetch quests or errand work. While Origins had it's fair share of fetch quests, I felt like they had better framework and actually felt important to the individual characters.

Combat
------------

Dragon Age Origins had a fairly challenging combat in my opinion, at least on harder difficulty levels. You had to have a proper strategy in a battle, or you would get crushed. Most of the abilities also felt interesting to use.
It also had a SHITLOAD of optional challenges, like hard boss fights and the like which rewarded you with pieces of items or powerful artifacts. The revenants, dragons etc. I felt like the combat in Origins also required more creativity than the mess that was DA2.

DA2 had an "actiony" combat that wasn't really actiony. You just mashed shit to kill enemies and prayed to god more wouldn't drop out from the invisible blimp on the sky. It didn't have the same excitement Origins did.
DA2 also, at least on Hard where I played the game, forces certain characters on your team. Such as Anders. Anders was a powerful healer, and he was a necessity for most of the fights. He was an optimal pick for nearly any party, and you could not get away from him if you wanted to be confident you could face whatever would lie ahead.
DA2's difficulty was also extremely imbalanced at points, or so I felt playing on hard and normal. See: Ancient Rock Wraith, Qunari 1vs1 as a warrior.

 

[OniaPL]

You know, I don't get this attitude. I don't know what difficulty any of you played on, but I have a feeling it wasn't on nightmare, because if that was the case, I'm fairly certain none of you would say there's little or no strategy involved. This is not to put any of you down, please don't take it that way, but I think it's unfair to call it an action game and/or button spammer, if you haven't beat the game on the highest difficulty.

Also, how is the wave combat making the combat any less strategic? If anything, it adds more things to consider to every encounter, like repositioning and cooldown management. I have no idea how those two things removes strategic elements, rather than add them.

Having to navigate all those things; repositioning, cooldown management, friendly fire, keeping aggro and deciding which mobs to take out, in order to not get your party killed, is what I'd call strategic combat, but maybe that's just me.

The problem with the wave system was that you had no way to secure your flank or even anticipate where the enemy woukld come from. Too many times two assassin rogues would appear from the sky next to my mage and start raping him, which meant I had to pull my warrior to protect him from the frontlines which led the enemy collapsing onto you from all sides leaving you to button smash. Mages are squishies; you need to keep the enemy away from mages with your frontline. DA2 eliminated that and any strategy involving positioning, since you had to pray you weren't standing on a spawn point and in case you were you could get away.

I started and played through the game on Hard. Maybe it would have been "strategic" on Nightmare. I didn't bother checking since the combat was a chore and horrible to play through.