can you say something nice about dragon age 2

[Darren Carrigan]

I enjoyed Dragon Age 2
I loved the characters
The little cameos are nice too - was great to see Zevran pop up.
I did like the changes to the combat even though i liked the old combat.
It made me feel more like a badass even if i ran out of stamina/magicka.
I liked how powerful it felt to be a mage in that game, two spells could clear a group of infantry.

 

[OniaPL]

Big bitchin' snip

I just had a few more points I felt like I needed to say before I stop pestering you about this subject.

-First of all; Combat. We are clearly just looking for different things there, so no point in discussing that further.

-You said that Act 1 was fine. I agree that it was fine; up to a point. It is a relatively long act that leads to nothing except the Deep Roads Exploration quest. Much of it felt like filler, and I ended up feeling empty since it all felt so pointless. You just get the deep roads exploration, you do it, timeskip. All that happened before that didn't really mean anything. You could argue that it did mean [isomething][/i], since it was about setting up the world and characters, but it was a way too long of an act for that. It dragged on. It was monotonous. (Fuck gathering all that gold.)

-Regarding Characters:
The characters definitely fit their own stereotypes, but I think they handled that well. Alistar is a sidekick character, but with him his past as being a young templar and what it all meant to him fleshed him out into a real character, instead of a silly sidekick. The protagonist can also "harden" Alistar, which makes him turn into a more stern, forwardfacing champ.
Meaning: Alistar can graduate from just being a sidekick.

Leliana was the slightly nutty one, but with her the issue of faith is a big theme. You talk with her about her faith, and she tells you about it. During the game there are even periods when Leliana questions her faith. I found it to be really interesting.

Morrigan; yes, she was a witchbitch who wasn't that bad after all. However with her I found the struggle that she had about her mother interesting. She loved her mother, yet she hated her. I found this conflict compelling.
Oghren had too little facetime to really be anything. I felt like he was an "extra".

I felt like DA2's character arcs outside of Varric and Aveline lacked the same kind of growth that characters like Leliana and Alistar had in the original game.

I have a simple request: Could you give a numerical score to DA2? I just wish to know if you thought it was "okay" or if you thought it was "good".
On a scale of 1-10, 5 being average, what score would you give it? Mine would be 4.

 

[RatRace123]

I like it. It has a lot of flaws, but I still greatly enjoy it. The more personal scope of the story, I liked that. I liked the fact that Hawke wasn't a world saving hero, but merely just some guy/girl. I liked the companions, even if I don't think the group was as strong as the one in Origins. But I do like that the companions were seen talking to each other during their downtime, and they weren't all dependent on you as their anchor. It made them feel more like real people.
Really my problems with the game were more focused on the actual game aspects.
If it hadn't been rushed out by EA, if it had, like 6 more months of polish (at least, I'd rather give it a year.) those flaws could probably have been ironed out.

So yeah, I still like the game, and I think it's totally worth checking out, and it does not deserve anywhere near the amount of hate it gets.

 

[Judgment90]

The best thing about DA2: Varric.

Varric is awesome, PERIOD.

 

[RubyT]

Yes, Dragon Age 2 was a very good game.

Most people who hated it, hated it for it comprising of only one town and featuring boring permutations of three basic dungeon designs. I can understand that, compared to the epicness of DA:O it felt like a cheap, quick money-grab. If Bioware had taken at least two years to do it, they could have delivered a much more satisfying experience for all.

On the other hand writing, voice-acting and character design were still vintage Bioware. So it's like the anti-Skyrim: well-written but nothing to explore.

DA:O was one for the ages, DA2 is one for an enjoyable single playthough, if you braze your expectations.

 

[God's Clown]

Dragon Age 2 is pretty good game, and Isabella alone made the game worth it to me. That sexy slut that she is. I normally don't like slutty characters, but Isabella is awesome about it.

 

[endtherapture]

It's the only Bioware game I've never finished at least once. That says it all.

 

[David Huff]

It was the inspiration for Gavin's Age of The Dragon.

 

[Joccaren]

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.

Quite simple really. Walking out as the enemy preps it's attack animation, walking back in after to attack again for most, however there are rogue abilities dedicated to jumping away from enemies as well. You can play with tactics if you want to, but it's also not too difficult to just time your movements and solo most encounters in an action game way. I say most because there were those BS times where you were surrounded by 6+ lieutenants and a general in a small room that would perma stun your party unless you ran through the nearest door and kept them coming 1 at a time.

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.

A large part of it is because what I said is 100% true - the combat IS button spam. Every time you want to attack, you have I press a button. No designate target then issue special orders, you've got to spam that button like there's no tomorrow. It's the default game mode, and whilst there is an option for it, it either does nothing or I cancelled every time anything happens other than your character doing a normal attack, including enemies attacking you, which made it quite pointless.
As for less strategy, I'd say yeah - it takes a more action game approach to strategy. Unless you remember each level and encounter from a previous attempt or play through, you have no way to plan for the battle. You cant see the enemies before you get there and plan how I take them out, partially because you are attacked almost the moment you do sight them, and partially because they spawn in afterwords from god knows where. You can have a general set of tactics, but rarely need specialised tactics for encounters. The lack of enemy variety kinda adds to that too.

Overall the game give of a far more action game feel. It isn't an action game, it's a very awkward mix of action game and RPG. As said, I said, IMO it would have Been better of just being one or the other.

 

[KB13]

Honestly for being a "sequel" to the first game it is not a bad game to play. I have play worse (Venetica) and I have played better (Beyond Good and Evil). During combat you need to pay attention because once the opposing character your Hawke is fighting dies Hawke just stops, no helping comrades with this protagonist. The companions do not have the customization options as the first games, the voice acting, facial emotions, and attitude tops the first game... except Anders, he's just a whinny self absorbed, any way. While stuck basically in the same city the entire game (minus the DLC) the story line defiantly sets the player up for the third game with the Mage/Templar conflict. All in all if you really like the way DA3 sounds buy the game used or rent it (I've been told RedBox now does game rentals) and at least play it once in-case they make a selection system involving decisions Hawke made in the previous game.

 

[Xdeser2]

It was, without a doubt a bad Bioware RPG

however, evaluated on its own, it was fine. Average. Run of the Mill. It had somewhat enjoyable combat (once again if you don't compare it to origins), and a few of the characters were pretty fun. (Though as much as I enjoyed Varric, he came across as if the devs said "Hey, you know that Tyrion chap from ice and Fire? Lets put him in here, and make him an actual Dwarf")

See, I cant go 2 sentence praising it without bringing up criticisms lol

 

[Another]

A good comment?

I only play mages in most RPG's like this, and the combat was better for them, I feel. Also loved the Quanari subplot, the culture is pretty cool conceptually.

A double sided comment?

The concept of a single characters rise to fame spanning 10 years in a single city was actually a cool idea. Baaaaaad execution.

 

[J Tyran]

It ended, no seriously you could complete it. Getting stuck in that game and having to play it forever.......... -shudders-

 

[loc978]

Considering I was a bit put off by Origins for having more in common with D20 simple than AD&D... There are only a couple of nice things I could say about DA2. It's pretty... and I didn't get suckered into buying it, because I'm only into these games for another D&D fix.

 

[johnnnny guitar]

Well it helped me see that I was a bias towards Bioware I can still remember when it came out I semi-defended it but I soon realised "No fuck that, the Game was shit and has some of the worst design/mechanic choices in Modern Games"

 

[Garyn Dakari]

Buy it! It received the hate it got due to the low quality as a sequel and other flaws, but it's still a very good game, and fun to play. If you are truly unsure you can always watch a playtrough in YouTube, or read a review and decide if it's worth it or not. I personally recommend it.

^^This. DA2 was a bit of a let-down when compared to DA:O, but by itself it was a fine game. It probably wouldn't get even half the hate if it didn't have that 2 at the end. Maybe if it was called "Dragon Age: (insert subtitle here)", rather than "Dragon Age 2" it would have been better received.

 

[Baldry]

I liked the game. Good characters and writing (minus the ending). Interesting world (minus the reused environments). Good combat system. One of the few annoyances was my inability to be an elf, which is shiiiiiit. Also it's owned by EA which is shit. But yeah I enjoyed it, it's a good game, no origins but not a pile of super shit.