can you say something nice about dragon age 2

[darthzew]

I rather loved Dragon Age 2 and it's baffled me to no end that I'm a minority in that. I won't defend the entire game, but there's one aspect no one ever seems to mention and that's the art direction.

You see, unlike Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2 actually has an art direction. Origins was a very bland looking world with little in the way of unique design. It all looked so stock. The elves were just shorter humans with point ears, the dwarves might as well have been Moria, and the environments were just stale. Dragon Age 2, however, is full of unique looks. It still manages to harken back to Origins, but it also presents its own style. The elves especially look different. While the environments are repetitive, yes, they also aren't as bland as Origins (though DA2 does have the same issue at times, especially in the dungeons.)

 

[D Moness]

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!

the repetative dungeons argument is funny because (i am replaying origins again) a lot of the sidequest in origins are also the same area(fights in the streets of denerim are 99% the same bloody street). So origins isn't blameless in that either. In DA 2 it is just a bit more obvious.

As for Anders i was romancing him in my first playthrough. It went well until act 3

Spoiler

were he blew up the chantry with stuff i helped to collect

my first thought was "crap there goes my romance" >.<

I prefer the story and character of 2

 

[Kyber]

The story was much more neatly packed, and in many points better. What i noticed to be a problem with it was the dumb-down for consoles. It was pretty good on consoles, but it was dull on PC, and that annoyed people because Origins was amazing on PC. What also seemed to annoy people a lot was the enemies popping to existence from nowhere, and it did take a bit of the immersion out of it. Also the scenery wasn't as varied, a lot of it was reused blatantly, and what wasn't was pretty boring. The great thing about Origins scenery was the feeling you got when you got out of the dull jungle to exciting Orzammar, and when you got out of the dull Orzammar in to the exciting capital city, don't get me wrong, Orzammar was one of the greatest so-called levels in video game history, the story was great, you could feel the rising tensions between the families, and the history of the dwarves and their social economics we're really fascinating, but change is always refreshing. What annoyed me in particular was the title, i would have much preferred it to be called something like Dragon Age; Story of Hawke, because it didn't really feel like a proper sequel to Origins. I still liked DA:2, i thought it was great, just not as great as DA:O

 

[Sp3ratus]

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.

Well, to be fair, if you position your mages near the center and/or away from the wall, you buy yourself some time to reassess the situation, once the second wave comes around. Most of the ambushes, at least in the city proper, the reinforcements came from the rooftops and didn't just materialize in the middle of the action. It also makes sense not to have a proper frontline in an ambush, as that's rarely the case anyway.

Also, bringing your warrior away from whatever he or she was tanking at the time is a choice and is part of what I meant about repositioning in combat. Because of the waves coming, you have to cover different parts of the battlefield and because of that, reposition your party, in order to make sure your party doesn't get killed.

I do agree that the waves system was overused to some degree, it wasn't really necessary to have it in every single encounter, but I liked it all in all. Also, enemy rogues and their assassination can be a pain in the ass, but it's manageable, once you learn how to deal with them.

 

[bananafishtoday]

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

Was just about to post this. They really should have called it Dragon Age: (Subtitle). I feel like it wouldn't have gotten so much hate were it presented as a separate game and story in the DA universe rather than a sequel to the first game.

Honestly, I loved DA2. The combat changes were kinda "meh" for me... DA:O is a strategy RPG aimed at the PC, DA2 is an action RPG aimed at the console, so take that for what it's worth. Combat requires little thought, and as others have said, if you want an experience tuned for "normal," play it on hard. It's still enjoyable imo, but more in an empowerment fantasy sorta way. By the third act, my Hawke was nigh-unstoppable, but it was still a lot of fun stance-dancing between blood magic and healing aura.

(To be fair, my experience with Awakening: my Warden was death incarnate, and not a single fight held any challenge. Rogue, full archer spec. In DA:O, highest bow DPS was pure dex/cun with Aim, a mode that slowed your rate of fire but gave a lot of damage and crit, and Song of Courage, which gave even more damage and crit. Awakening added a new mode that gave even more damage and crit but without the rate of fire penalty, so with my Warden's build, it was like a machine gun through wet tissue paper.)

But the story and characters? I thought they were great. In DA:O, I played a city elf, and it always annoyed me how little I could do with that. I wanted to play my character as someone who defended her people no matter what, but other than some throwaway dialogue, it was hard to do that. (That guy at Ostagar who laughed about beating his elf slaves? I literally spent an hour searching for some quest line or dialogue choice that would lead to me murdering his ass.) I actually avoided DA2 for a long time because I was pissed I'd have to play a human.

I ended up playing a mage, and it was so good being able to actually do things toward protecting "my" people. I got really immersed in both games' stories, so maybe it was just a happy coincidence, but the actual game narrative in DA2 lined up much closer to the narrative in my head. I absolutely loved my Hawke. I'm definitely in the voiced protagonist camp (either voice everyone or no one, I say). My Warden too often just felt like the character I was controlling in a video game, too much a blank slate. But my Hawke felt like the person I would be in that world. The writing and voice acting really drew me in. Like, when the Arishok declared I was one worthy of respect, or at the end when the Templars backed away from me in terror as I walked out the city, I legitimately felt I'd earned something to be proud of.

And the story... in DA:O, honestly, I didn't really care as much about the main plot as I cared about the lore and about my party members. I mean, it's clear what Bioware's goal was. "You are a human/elf/dwarf warrior/rogue/mage. Evil zombie orcs led by an evil dragon god are going to end the world. Save it." They set up the quintessential cliche fantasy scenario, pure black and white morality, then subverted that by building a realistic world around it, where everything's painted in shades of gray. DA2 took all that set dressing I loved so much from the first game and made it the main focus. The plot gets a lot of flack for being disjointed, but I liked it that way. DA:O had a climactic structure, while DA2 had an episodic one. DA:O is about a hero saving the world from destrustion, while DA2 (Cassandra "We NEED the CHAMPION" Pentaghast aside... they really shouldn't have tried to play up Hawke's importance, it runs counter to the narrative) is about an ordinary person dealing with a series of extraordinary situations.

End of the day, I love DA2. It has its flaws and was clearly rushed, but its shift in tone and style had me hooked from start to finish despite the dungeon reuse and braindead combat.

 

[PirateRose]

I didn't like the first one, actually I still haven't even got all the way through the first one. I find the characters to be the same old, predictable Bioware trope characters and the game play is boring.

The second one however is what I played first, and as I really enjoyed it, I haven't touched it since. I really enjoyed the characters though some of them carried some tropes, and I liked how the ending played out. When compared to ME3, DA2's ending just seems to fit with the story. ME3's ending felt like a flaming freight train out of nowhere

 

[Auron]

Pretty nice imo. It's a different kind of story, it's not often that the fantasy story isn't about some EPIC save the world quest and I enjoyed it very much for that reason. The main character's still a badass but the story's basically about his family being refugees in a foreign land trying to make a decent living and reclaim ancient family heritage and inter city conflicts. I enjoyed this very much, I'm not a dialogue wheel hater either and like that the main character speaks for once lots of people hated on it though.

It's not a bad game by any stretch of the imagination, I think it got flak because it's a different game than Origins. Based on the same setting but with a different premise and story. I mean it would be stupid to have another game about the same thing considering the darkspawn threat from the first game was solved, so it's points to them imo.

 

[Bostur]

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.

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.

Well the very first fight with the Ogre comes to mind as one were Aveline won't survive unless you manually dodge out of the way. I actually died over and over on that fight wondering what I did wrong. I couldn't choose any party members at that point, I hadn't had an opportunity to select any talents and I haven't gotten any gear so I failed to see what I was doing wrong. I tried doing all sort of different tactics until I finally gave up and watched a youtube video. Then it occured to me, oh it's an action game now I get it.

Holding aggro is moot when enemies spawn in random positions. Enemies often appear behind casters and one-shot them. Even the best tank can't be everywhere at once. I found that keeping the party together and just focus firing while backstepping worked best. Most of my attempts at a tactical approach was punished by the game. Positioning is pointless when the characters sprint around the map at random and get one-shotted. The wave system is less strategic because you can't plan for something that is random.

I only played on hard, but after 20 hours of frustrating and repetitive gameplay I uninstalled and never wanted to see the game again. The only reason I played that much was because I really wanted it to be good, because I enjoyed DA:O so much. On the upside it made replays of DA:O much more fun

I do wonder how much DA2 varies between ports, because some of the descriptions I heard from others sounds like a completely different game to me. In my PC version the combat felt very broken.

Or maybe I just didn't get it, thats also a possibility. I often wondered what the intention with the gameplay was.

 

[Subatomic]

In my opinion, while still a good game, DA2 had two major problems:

1) It would have immensly benefitted from a few month more development time. This is mostly apparent in the blatant reuse of levels, but can also be seen in the combat system, which had some good ideas like the cross class combos and interesting abilities (especially for rogues). The problem is, on the standard difficulty those simply weren't needed and everything died pretty fast anyway (even with those respawns out of nowhere). Some fights, abilities and NPC skills could also have used some more balancing tweaks, which had the unfortunate side effect of making certain party members almost mandatory (I'm looking at you Anders), unless you were a Mage yourself. Maybe that was the point, considering Anders plays a pretty major part in the overall story, but IMO it wasn't a good idea to only have one NPC with healing spells.

2) People expected a Dragon Age: Origins sequel, which it wasn't. It did many things different compared to Origins, from protagonist (fully voiced with his/her own character instead of silent) to setting (one city + surroundings instead of a whole country) to story structure (three loosely connected acts centered on the main characters instead of a 'save the world'-epic). If you were going in expecting more of the same, but better, you couldn't help but be disappointed, espsecially considering the additional problems caused by the rushed development mentioned above.

Still, it is not as bad a game as some people say. Especially the second act is pretty cool and the Arishok an interesting and nuanced antagonist (I'm deliberately avoiding the word 'villain' here, because that's not what he is), and the game does a good job of portraying the political and religious mine field that is Kirkwall and how it all goes to shit. There are interesting and well voice acted NPCs, and despite of what some people claim, the game doesn't 'force' same sex romances on you in any way, the romace dialogue is pretty well telegraphed (hint: it's the heart symbol...). The two story DLCs (if you're willing to pay for them, they're still rather expensive) fixed a lot of the combat balancing problems (among them no more waves) and thankfully have entirely new environemtns.

 

[Woodsey]

It's a very interesting concept, and one I'd still like to see done properly.

 

[barbzilla]

I can't complain about DA2. I actually enjoyed it, despite a few issues that peeved me. With the exception of their not being an overarch to the story and the reused dungeons/areas (this one pissed me off quite a bit actually). The combat was fun, the leveling system was decent, and the story that was present was fairly entertaining. I loved the banter between party members and a few of the characters were well written all together.

I can understand the hate for the game, as I was a huge fan of DA1. I didn't play DA2 for about a year after it came out, just due to how they changed the game format. Once I got over myself, I did enjoy it quite a bit.

 

[bananafishtoday]

Well the very first fight with the Ogre comes to mind as one were Aveline won't survive unless you manually dodge out of the way. I actually died over and over on that fight wondering what I did wrong. I couldn't choose any party members at that point, I hadn't had an opportunity to select any talents and I haven't gotten any gear so I failed to see what I was doing wrong. I tried doing all sort of different tactics until I finally gave up and watched a youtube video. Then it occured to me, oh it's an action game now I get it.

Holding aggro is moot when enemies spawn in random positions. Enemies often appear behind casters and one-shot them. Even the best tank can't be everywhere at once. I found that keeping the party together and just focus firing while backstepping worked best. Most of my attempts at a tactical approach was punished by the game. Positioning is pointless when the characters sprint around the map at random and get one-shotted. The wave system is less strategic because you can't plan for something that is random.

I only played on hard, but after 20 hours of frustrating and repetitive gameplay I uninstalled and never wanted to see the game again. The only reason I played that much was because I really wanted it to be good, because I enjoyed DA:O so much. On the upside it made replays of DA:O much more fun

I do wonder how much DA2 varies between ports, because some of the descriptions I heard from others sounds like a completely different game to me. In my PC version the combat felt very broken.

Or maybe I just didn't get it, thats also a possibility. I often wondered what the intention with the gameplay was.

You're right that it's a lot more action-oriented, which may not be for everyone. And I don't like the overuse of waves either.

But... the waves are scripted, not random. There were a few fights where I got destroyed because I expected n waves, then suddenly, wave n+1 spawned and wrecked me. So it can be frustrating the first time you fight that specific battle, but when you retry it, you can plan for that wave because you know that it'll spawn under the same conditions every time.

The game doesn't communicate this very well, because the fights tend to be chaotic and there's no overhead camera, but yeah. Prolly not worth replaying if you disliked the game that much, but yeah, it isn't random.

Edit: Oh, and the final boss battle in one of the DLCs actually uses the action-y dodge stuff really well. It's a dude and a wyvern, and most of the attacks target the location a character is at (a charge, a projectile, an arrow shower thing) so most of the fight is about switching between characters and moving them around. It ended up being really enjoyable and showcases DA2's combat style better than a lot of the fights in DA2 proper.

Also, I may be misremembering since it's been awhile, but I think there's a button on the UI that toggles whether non-controlled characters move of their own volition or stay where you put them. If not, it's a thing you can change in the AI scripting. Again, unintuitive so you're certainly not at fault, but it's there.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

I enjoyed the story and some of the characters and the fighting worked well, its more hack and slash than strategy. The only thing that let it down was the repeated use of backgrounds and rooms, also its set all in one city so there is lack of variety in landscapes.

So if you can get it for cheap then all the negatives wont matter.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

It had good choice acting.
It was a sequel to am actual good game.
Thief skills letting us teleport around the place were coo
It didn't have any QTEs in it.

 

[Toilet]

The Qunari looked really cool and Varric was a great bro and a cool character.

That's all I can think of, it's a pretty bad game. Origins was superior in nearly every way.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

I just thought of a good comparison for Dragon Age 1 and 2.

Dragon Age: Origins is like LOTR in the sense that everything is on a massive scale, the world is in immediate peril and there are too many characters in there to remember (easily).

Dragon Age 2 is more like The Hobbit in the sense that the focus is on a small band of people, even though there are bigger things happening around them.

Personally I prefer the smaller story with more focus on the characters, so naturally I preferred DA2 anyway. But one nice thing about it was the deviation from the Tolkien stereotypes, for example the strong warrior type was an Elf, and the crossbow/ rouge type was a Dwarf, and I thought it still worked really well. The characters were believable.

 

[Terminal Blue]

* The skill trees are hugely more balanced with far fewer cheap/useless skills.

* Combat is less sluggish (once you get past the fact that it's wave combat).

* Boss fights are more interesting than just "here is a regular dude with more health".

* Character classes build intuitively (there's actually some benefit to a rogue taking dexterity, for example).

* Specializations make mechanical sense to the class they're linked to. Mage specializations actually help you cast spells, for example.

* Your party actually feels like they have lives, rather than hanging around camp hoping you'll actually take them along on your next adventure.

* Friendship/rivalry system means you can roleplay your character more consistently without missing out on learning about your companions (although I found the thresholds for friendship/rivalry to be aggressively high)

* The story is much more personal and thus includes some genuinely emotive moments. It's also much less generic, and had it been tied together better with more foreshadowing could have been a really original take on RPG storytelling. Points scored with me for trying.

* The redesigns of the various races look really good.

 

[Krantos]

It's a Dragon Age game.

That right there is good. The problem 2 faced is that for most people (including me) it didn't live up to Origins. It's still a perfectly decent game. It's just that Origins was great, so by comparison, 2 suffers quite a bit.

Yes, the characters are mostly flat. Yes, Anders is a ponce. Yes, the game shamelessly repeats dungeons. Yes, Enemies seem to magically appear out of nowhere during fights.

Still and all, though, it's a decent game. I never got through it though, because every time I tried, I'd play for ten minutes and then load Origins up again.

 

[Bostur]

But... the waves are scripted, not random. There were a few fights where I got destroyed because I expected n waves, then suddenly, wave n+1 spawned and wrecked me. So it can be frustrating the first time you fight that specific battle, but when you retry it, you can plan for that wave because you know that it'll spawn under the same conditions every time.

The game doesn't communicate this very well, because the fights tend to be chaotic and there's no overhead camera, but yeah. Prolly not worth replaying if you disliked the game that much, but yeah, it isn't random.

Technically they may be scripted. By random I simply meant that there seemed to be little consistent logic to the spawning. At least not as far as I could tell.

Lack of hints and communication is probably a big factor. DA:O and many other RPGs have wave systems that seems more consistent. Spiders dropping from the roof, skeletons rising from graves, reinforcements appearing from unexplored rooms. In DA2 it felt to me most of those reinforcements came out of nowhere.

I can get a bit emotional about DA2 partly because I was very disappointed, since I had hoped the Dragon Age series would have reintroduced the tactical RPG. And partly because I'm so confused why DA2 was so celebrated among critics and fans, I just can't help to wonder what was considered to be so good about it. It's more a matter of curiosity than a desire to bash it.

But the story and characters? I thought they were great. In DA:O, I played a city elf, and it always annoyed me how little I could do with that. I wanted to play my character as someone who defended her people no matter what, but other than some throwaway dialogue, it was hard to do that. (That guy at Ostagar who laughed about beating his elf slaves? I literally spent an hour searching for some quest line or dialogue choice that would lead to me murdering his ass.) I actually avoided DA2 for a long time because I was pissed I'd have to play a human.

I ended up playing a mage, and it was so good being able to actually do things toward protecting "my" people. I got really immersed in both games' stories, so maybe it was just a happy coincidence, but the actual game narrative in DA2 lined up much closer to the narrative in my head. I absolutely loved my Hawke. I'm definitely in the voiced protagonist camp (either voice everyone or no one, I say). My Warden too often just felt like the character I was controlling in a video game, too much a blank slate. But my Hawke felt like the person I would be in that world. The writing and voice acting really drew me in. Like, when the Arishok declared I was one worthy of respect ...

It's probably very hit and miss whether we connect with the predetermined story. The illusion of choice so typical for RPGs is very fragile if the player expects to do something entirely different. I had similar experiences with the city elf background as you, I wanted to do something else on some occasions. That backstory certainly had the motivation for murder in several areas. I think RPGs needs some room for players to use their imagination, some blank spots that we can fill out. If the story and characters are too detailed the player is left without a purpose. Thats one critique I have heard often about DA2, that people didn't feel it was their story, it was reserved purely for Hawke. In some ways Hawke may have had too much of a purpose for the player to be involved.

In general I probably prefer silent protagonists, but it felt odd in DA:O because the protagonist was shown during dialogue, it made the Warden look mute. I can connect with a voiced protagonist as well, but the way that BioWare implements dialogue wheels in their new games makes it hard for me to relate. I often get a very different impression of the options than what was intended, leading to several cases where the protagonist says things I didn't intend. The fact that DA:O literally showed the whole line works better for me, but that can feel a little derpy when it is repeated with voice over.

 

[The Scythian]

I rather loved Dragon Age 2 and it's baffled me to no end that I'm a minority in that. I won't defend the entire game, but there's one aspect no one ever seems to mention and that's the art direction.

You see, unlike Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2 actually has an art direction. Origins was a very bland looking world with little in the way of unique design. It all looked so stock. The elves were just shorter humans with point ears, the dwarves might as well have been Moria, and the environments were just stale. Dragon Age 2, however, is full of unique looks. It still manages to harken back to Origins, but it also presents its own style. The elves especially look different. While the environments are repetitive, yes, they also aren't as bland as Origins (though DA2 does have the same issue at times, especially in the dungeons.)

Unfortunately, that new art direction was completely horrible.