Dragon Age II Review

[technotica]

DA2 improved on the first? What the hell are you talkin about? It butchered the first on everything that made it great.
Saying that DA2 is a pinnacle of rpgs and better than the first is an insult to the rpg genre.

truer words have never been spoken

DA2 is a huge letdown and these reviews im seeing with 9/10 scores confound me.

Its a "decent game" and for a hack n slash its a very good Diablo esc game. (very good in that regard) Though Diablo may have had a better story.. (half joking)

For an RPG and especially for Dragon Age its a big "wtf convinced Bioware to turn their hacknslash spin off title into a full blown, re-imagined, retconed, sequel"..

The scale and scope is minimal, the story is relatively non existent. the quests are for the most part boring and half border on 100% fodder, literally. *pick up random item, talk to random NPC, complete quest*.. thats literally all there is to it. The other 50% of the quest (unless they are the few and far between main storyline quest) are just boring to death and back.

The writing and dialog stinks compared to the first, some of it bordering on cringe worthy. The voice actors stink compared to the first, and if you thought the multiple choice dialog system fromt he first was confusing, the dialog wheel in DA2 is a complete mindfuck. I never had problems with the oldschool dialog system, but i honestly have no clue as to why people think the chat wheel is better. Its completely oblivious to anything you intend on saying and alot of the times you end up wasting dialog options because the wheel throws up 6 different options and you dont know wtf any of your choices and dialog trees the technicalities of and are going to ARRRGGG!!! its a mess..... (but thats just my opinion)

In the review he says they improve on every play mechanic from the first game. lol gimme a break.. you mean of what is left from the original or what?? A majority of the play mechanics from the original are completely GONE. Theres nothing to improve on they're not even in the game, period.

There's only 1 weapon set, no changing armor for "NPC's" (they are no longer other characters in the game/story but more like the mercs from Diablo 2..)Theres no gift system, theres no party camp, theres ONE city, theres ZERO exploration, scope, scale. I have fun playing this but it just will not hold my attention for more than a few hours at a time. Theres certainly no staying up all night like there was with the first one. Its a down right different game and imo inferior to Dragon Age in "almost" every way. If I were looking for a good, fast paced, loot-whore, hack n slash, it would be the game to get. If im looking for more Dragon Age.. well.. I guess Dragon Age is finished? (they do plan on continuing this DA2 trend correct?) ..and i know im forgetting some things..

DA2 also reuses the same Dungeons.. (laziness??)

The combat and improved visuals are the only saving grace, and that's not really saying alot.

Bottom line; it passes the time, but its a disappointment and a far cry from DA:O.

 

[Necromancer1991]

The game has issues, but some people like it, some don't, we don't need to attack Greg, or anyone else who likes the game, name-calling people who disagree with you is the trademark of children, morons, and politics. Okay Greg & a lot of other people liked it, just as many didn't, okay end of discussion, feel free to comment but don't act like going "OMG his game sux ballz!!11!!one" is going to make Greg go "OMG they're right!" and go knock down his rating to a 1/5, simply not going to happen.

 

[Autofaux]

God, I hate Fenris. ***** ***** *****, whine whine whine, mages are horrible abominations in waiting that deserve to be second class citizens. The only mages he respects are Bethany or Hawke, for being "strong" or whatever.

 

[Lillowh]

I really cannot take this review seriously in any way, shape or form. It is laughable. And it also stinks to high heaven.

The pinnacle of RPGs does not have ;

Several cut and paste dungeons
Shallow characters who I you care little for and a protagonist who you care for even less
Far too regular fights that are basically hack'n'slash
Companions who can upgraded only in limited ways
Tons of junk serving no purpose whatsoever
Environments stripped of any character
A storyline that is dull and forgettable after about 5 hours
Dreadful artwork in places

And several other things that I've hopefully forgotten because I stopped playing it after 9 hours.

This game is worth at most a 7 by anyone's standards.

ok so here we go:

1. its not as bad as you think, it does happen, but thats not a huge detriment to the game
2.this is opinion, i find that i like most of these characters
3. its a video game fights happen, as for "hack n slash" its not like that on the PC
4. they can be upgraded in a bunch of ways, weapons and belts, rings,necks, its the armor that can't be upgraded regularly
5. its loot, the original had this too, useless crap that served no purpose but to fill your bags
6. opinion, i like the look of Kirkwall
7. opinion again, I'm liking the story so far, just got done act 1, about 12 hours into the game.
8. not sure what you mean by artwork, textures? they are a bit buggy, but this is a Bioware game they're all a bit buggy.

and lastly:
"This game is worth at most a 7 by anyone's standards"

you mean the game is worth at most a 7 by YOUR standards, most of what you said was just an opinion, not a fact.

Who said anything was a fact (apart from the copy and paste dungeons)? Yeah the rest is opinion - I've got a medal here for you for noticing that. These forums aren't up to much without opinions.

Here's one more fact - my opinion is not going to change. At best this review is dreadfully misguided and at worst - well I'm sure I don't need to tell you.

You yourself stated it as fact by saying "The pinnacle of RPGs does not have:"(sorry had to fix that since incorrectly you used a semi-colon instead of a colon)

The way that is written is claiming to state fact. You were saying that the pinnacle would not have these, but they are opinion, because the pinnacle of RPG's is a matter of opinion.
Learn to understand why you say before you say it to make your intention clear.

 

[BloodSquirrel]

. Its completely oblivious to anything you intend on saying and alot of the times you end up wasting dialog options because the wheel throws up 6 different options and you dont know wtf any of your choices and dialog trees the technicalities of and are going to ARRRGGG!!! its a mess..... (but thats just my opinion)

You know, they could at least give you an option to use the old system. It would be trivial to implement- show the subtitle that you were going to show anyway when your character spoke as an option and skip the audio clip. I hate selecting an option that says "I hate puppies" and having my character actually say "I love puppies, but kittens suck".

 

[Buizel91]

The thing is, when you are reviewing something you can't just post things like: OMGOGASGOMGGGGG ITS SO FUCKING AWESOME I WANT TO LICK THE GAME COVER. Why? Because reviews must say what's good and what's bad regardless if you like it or not so that people will know how good it is. A review must be as objective as possible and this game has points that a decent review should punish severely such as repeating maps a hundred-fold the amount mass effect did.

What has the world come to? A "professional" reviewer acting like a mindless fanboy who will shun away obvious flaws just because DA RULEZZZZZZZZZ. I'm not saying reviewers should be merciless judges like yahtzee, but he is the ONLY one who speaks his mind and has the balls to say THIS is good whereas THIS OTHER SHIT is fucking HORRIBLE. This review has no more credibility than a fanboy nerdraging at EA forums about it's awesomeness.

You do know a Review is an Opinion of something? in this case a game? maybe he didn't find any bugs or glitches during his play through? maybe nothing annoyed him?

If you don't like it, read another review, don't blast this guy because he reviewed a game he thought was excellent. if you don't agree then Boo-Fucking-Hoo

A good reviewer will look past his personal bloody opinion and try to encompass a broad spectrum of opinions in relation to his own. I BOUGHT THIS GAME BECAUSE OF THIS REVIEW AND I WANT MY MONEY BACK. This is an UTTER FAILURE compared to DAO I feel so betrayed by the escapist words cannot express. Its hard to even call this an RPG...
Not saying anything about how fans of the original might react to this new IP is a fault. 5 stars would meen the game would have to be amazing...
Reused maps the town is severely underpopulated for a place that cant take one more refugee
Feels like im playing WOW collection quests half the time.
Kirkwall is boring its a boring place that seems like it was done in a couple months in a 3d animation class.
Was there a differant Team working on this because thats how it seems?

-.- He may of gave the game high praise but, i'll say it again, he may not have found anything bad during his play through, no bugs, no glitches, nothing.

He could of named a few bad points, but does it matter? it's HIS OPINION ON THE GAME.

Plus it's a new game, if you hate it so much trade it in, if it's new it will go for a high price.

 

[Zom-B]

... the town is severely underpopulated for a place that cant take one more refugee

I've noticed that in a few of the game videos I've seen. For what's supposed to be a large city, there are very few people in Krikwall. I know that developers will say that it's difficult to have a lot of NPCs wandering around, but Yakuza 3 proves that's bullshit. The city areas are teeming with people in that game and there's no slow down, the graphics are great and the backgrounds are vibrant. Sure, the NPCs aren't super detailed, but I'll take a living city with actual pedestrians over what DA2 seems to be offering any day.

 

[Neosage]

DA II, a few hours in and already loving. First one was a right mission to complete. Much more pleasurable experience DA II is turning out to be. Easier on the eyes and ears, the voice acting is top-notch this time, props to bioware for getting rid of the stuff that made the first game a drag in some areas, (not saying the first one was bad, I love the game, but man some parts were boring. The new one is far more immersing)

 

[Buizel91]

The thing is, when you are reviewing something you can't just post things like: OMGOGASGOMGGGGG ITS SO FUCKING AWESOME I WANT TO LICK THE GAME COVER. Why? Because reviews must say what's good and what's bad regardless if you like it or not so that people will know how good it is. A review must be as objective as possible and this game has points that a decent review should punish severely such as repeating maps a hundred-fold the amount mass effect did.

What has the world come to? A "professional" reviewer acting like a mindless fanboy who will shun away obvious flaws just because DA RULEZZZZZZZZZ. I'm not saying reviewers should be merciless judges like yahtzee, but he is the ONLY one who speaks his mind and has the balls to say THIS is good whereas THIS OTHER SHIT is fucking HORRIBLE. This review has no more credibility than a fanboy nerdraging at EA forums about it's awesomeness.

You do know a Review is an Opinion of something? in this case a game? maybe he didn't find any bugs or glitches during his play through? maybe nothing annoyed him?

If you don't like it, read another review, don't blast this guy because he reviewed a game he thought was excellent. if you don't agree then Boo-Fucking-Hoo

A good reviewer will look past his personal bloody opinion and try to encompass a broad spectrum of opinions in relation to his own. I BOUGHT THIS GAME BECAUSE OF THIS REVIEW AND I WANT MY MONEY BACK. This is an UTTER FAILURE compared to DAO I feel so betrayed by the escapist words cannot express. Its hard to even call this an RPG...
Not saying anything about how fans of the original might react to this new IP is a fault. 5 stars would meen the game would have to be amazing...
Reused maps the town is severely underpopulated for a place that cant take one more refugee
Feels like im playing WOW collection quests half the time.
Kirkwall is boring its a boring place that seems like it was done in a couple months in a 3d animation class.
Was there a differant Team working on this because thats how it seems?

-.- He may of gave the game high praise but, i'll say it again, he may not have found anything bad during his play through, no bugs, no glitches, nothing.

He could of named a few bad points, but does it matter? it's HIS OPINION ON THE GAME.

Plus it's a new game, if you hate it so much trade it in, if it's new it will go for a high price.

Yeh I wish. Its called PC.

PC games can be traded in you know ¬_¬'

 

[EonEire]

I guess for me the combat is just the biggest and greatest leap. Nothing annoyed me more then Benny-Hilling around after an enemy Benny-Hilling around after a ranged team mate legging it away. I have lost count of how many times I actually wanted to cram the game disk up the combat designer sewrage pipe.

The biggest failing for me however was the story, not the over arching story but 2 specific things:

The framing device: OOOOOO how I do NOT like this rubbish one bit. This is NOT MASS EFFECT. I did not buy Dragon Age Origins because it was Mass Effect Medevil edition. They are very different and thats not a bad thing as I really like Mass Effect also, but neither of these games needed to be closer to each other. Mass Effects story telling works for it, I just can't be comfortable forgetting the hours after hours I sunk into DA:O and just hearing about it in a sideways way, Its just rubbing it in my face that somewhere my gray warden is there but for some reason I'm not controlling "me".

Dwarfy Mc May-Have-Happened: Having a talent tree that feeds into how he tells the story? This just ruined it almost completely for me. I just dont feel like there is even 1% accuracy and story wise lost a lot of drive.

Its just me and these are just the things that stuck with me, not saying they are universal positives or negatives, just my feelings on my purchase.

 

[Popido]

Hahahaha. People fell for the hype trap!?

Well played Greg. Well played.

 

[Rzepik]

"A pinnacle of role-playing games with well-designed mechanics and excellent story-telling, Dragon Age II is what videogames are meant to be."
What the hell -_o
Excluding the first act, this is simply the worst cRPG I ever played.
Storytelling is a mess, sometimes quality of writing is just horrible

Spoiler

Hawke's mother death is just ridiculous. It only lacked few dead baby seals.

Surprisingly combat mechanics are decent, but spawning waves of trash mobs are ruining everything.

 

[Pinky's Brain]

The game has issues, but some people like it, some don't, we don't need to attack Greg

Don't you agree he omitted important information relevant to the quality of the game though?

Also, whether he played a review version with autoattack in the options or whether he just made a little white lie assuming it would be in the release version the review should have been amended to indicate it was simply entirely wrong on that ... this had a well known negative impact on people's enjoyment during the demo.

 

[Necromancer1991]

The game has issues, but some people like it, some don't, we don't need to attack Greg

Don't you agree he omitted important information relevant to the quality of the game though?

Also, whether he played a review version with autoattack in the options or whether he just made a little white lie assuming it would be in the release version the review should have been amended to indicate it was simply entirely wrong on that ... this had a well known negative impact on people's enjoyment during the demo.

There's a line between saying he forgot to mention stuff, and calling him a "Corporate flunkie", on auto-attacking, wow it's a feature where I only have to click once as opposed to a few times and he was wrong about it being in the game, HOW DARE HE, it can't be bioware's fault, NO THE BLAME LIES SOLELY WITH GREG! In what fantasy world does a feature like that being absent break a game, or even ruin a review, sorry if you're on the PC and the game is a click fest, but it's being patched in, SO WHY THE FRAK IS THIS AN ISSUE? I mean it's not as though they released a Mario game and forgot to put in a jump button, I'm not saying it's okay for stuff like that to be patched in post-release, I'm just saying in terms of stuff that needs to be in a game, Auto-attack rates pretty low.

 

[Baneat]

The thing is, when you are reviewing something you can't just post things like: OMGOGASGOMGGGGG ITS SO FUCKING AWESOME I WANT TO LICK THE GAME COVER. Why? Because reviews must say what's good and what's bad regardless if you like it or not so that people will know how good it is. A review must be as objective as possible and this game has points that a decent review should punish severely such as repeating maps a hundred-fold the amount mass effect did.

What has the world come to? A "professional" reviewer acting like a mindless fanboy who will shun away obvious flaws just because DA RULEZZZZZZZZZ. I'm not saying reviewers should be merciless judges like yahtzee, but he is the ONLY one who speaks his mind and has the balls to say THIS is good whereas THIS OTHER SHIT is fucking HORRIBLE. This review has no more credibility than a fanboy nerdraging at EA forums about it's awesomeness.

You do know a Review is an Opinion of something? in this case a game? maybe he didn't find any bugs or glitches during his play through? maybe nothing annoyed him?

If you don't like it, read another review, don't blast this guy because he reviewed a game he thought was excellent. if you don't agree then Boo-Fucking-Hoo

A good reviewer will look past his personal bloody opinion and try to encompass a broad spectrum of opinions in relation to his own. I BOUGHT THIS GAME BECAUSE OF THIS REVIEW AND I WANT MY MONEY BACK. This is an UTTER FAILURE compared to DAO I feel so betrayed by the escapist words cannot express. Its hard to even call this an RPG...
Not saying anything about how fans of the original might react to this new IP is a fault. 5 stars would meen the game would have to be amazing...
Reused maps the town is severely underpopulated for a place that cant take one more refugee
Feels like im playing WOW collection quests half the time.
Kirkwall is boring its a boring place that seems like it was done in a couple months in a 3d animation class.
Was there a differant Team working on this because thats how it seems?

-.- He may of gave the game high praise but, i'll say it again, he may not have found anything bad during his play through, no bugs, no glitches, nothing.

He could of named a few bad points, but does it matter? it's HIS OPINION ON THE GAME.

Plus it's a new game, if you hate it so much trade it in, if it's new it will go for a high price.

Yeh I wish. Its called PC.

PC games can be traded in you know ¬_¬'

Most of em now link into steam or something similar, and it's not possible to return or trade

 

[Baneat]

"A pinnacle of role-playing games with well-designed mechanics and excellent story-telling, Dragon Age II is what videogames are meant to be."
What the hell -_o
Excluding the first act, this is simply the worst cRPG I ever played.
Storytelling is a mess, sometimes quality of writing is just horrible
Surprisingly combat mechanics are decent, but spawning waves of trash mobs are ruining everything.

You ****, use real spoiler tags. Skim-readers will slip right past those, I did.

 

[Rad Party God]

Plus it's a new game, if you hate it so much trade it in, if it's new it will go for a high price.

"I'll buy it at a high price"