Dragon Age : Origins and Dragon Age II

[Joccaren]

So what was it that peeved you off about Dragon Age II. If you hated it when you played it do you still feel it deserves the hate, have you reconsidered? Are you like me and actually think the second is 10x better then the first?

Hated DA2. Gave it one playthrough as it wasn't unplayable, but no interest in playing it again.

For one, the combat was terrible. Whoever thought spawning in waves of enemies was a good idea should be shot. Whoever designed all those cheese encounters in small rooms where 8 mini-stun mobs stun lock your party, or where 20 mini stun opponents surround and stun-lock your party, whilst a general slowly kills them should also be shot. Yeah, yeah, aggro management and all that. Point is, at least one member of your party is unable to do ANYTHING for the entire fight, and if that's the tank he can't generate aggro, and if he can't generate aggro everyone else gets attacked, and suddenly NOBODY can do anything for the entire fight. Biggest cheese fights ever, and they pissed me off.
I also don't like the Ninja rogue thing. There's enough of that in the world. IMO rogue is a utility class first that you NEED to get high end loot from dungeons, unlock secret areas with bonus loot and XP, disarm traps, and relies mainly on hiding and getting opportune strikes during combat, not leaping and jumping around like they're some crazy anime character and dealing more DPS than the guy with a motherfucking greatsword. That's just wrong IMO. Your warriors are Tank/Single Target DPS, your mages are Heal/Crowd Control and your rogues are utility. Do it right and everyone has their roles and you'll always have a mixed party. Sadly neither of the games has really got it right IMO.

Additionally, I hated the art style. Just... No. It looked like it was trying for a cross between cel shading and realism and it did not work. It looked horrible. Origins I can stand looking at, its not brilliant but its not terrible. DA2... Some of the characters I can stand, few of the environments I can, especially not the deep roads, and the animations on half the NPCs - like the retarded walk the undead do that is more comedy than creepy - just make the game look retarded. Thank god the third one's using Frostbyte, means they might be trying for some more realistic aesthetic that they might be able to pull off.
Also, the killmoves were terrible. Same killmoves as Origins, but instead of watching them happen you just show 3 or 4 0.01 second clips of them in a montage and go "Yeah, that was awesome right?"
No, no it wasn't. I swear I saw more black screen than killmove there, and that's not cool.

Speaking of environments, the fact that the same 6 rooms were recycled over and over for the entire game got old fast. I go on epic adventures to epically adventure. I want things like Banjo Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64, Mario 64 - where there are a bunch of places to go and see. I don't want 6 rooms done over and over with the only things to tide me over as the caricature story and the poor combat.

The story... No. It had potential, yes. Execution? No. The amount of forced conflict half the time was stupid, as was the way half the characters behaved. Really, apparently all mages are bloodthirsty lunatics and all Templars came from the Third Reich, 'cause they all sure as hell behave that way. MOST of your squad was alright, but even then there were some things that were just stupid and annoying, like Merril, or Fenris.
And I'm not even going to get started on what happens with Leliana and Anders. Anders character change is an insult to a lot of the people who liked him in Awakening, or who liked Justice, and Leliana... I decapitated her. She is dead. Don't retcon it. If you do retcon it, have the balls to own up to retconing it and don't pretend her head magically reattached itself, or that it didn't really fall off. Defend your design decisions, don't make excuses. You'll still get blasted, but at least your not hiding from it, and that earns you more respect in the long run than someone who tells their consumers that they were wrong in an attempt to cover up something they overlooked.

Also, the companion inventory. Now, TBH I didn't mind the junk tab. Personally if it exists to be put in the junk tab, it honestly just shouldn't exist, but W/E. What I hated was the fact that my companions could hold 1 type of weapon, and no types of armour beyond what they already had, and that the only way to upgrade said armour was with a purchase of an item in god knows what store in each chapter, that disappears after that chapter to make you walk around the city looking at each shop, and then out to the Dalish camp to look at their shops, and then to every other shop in the game, just to get all the armour upgrades before you finish each chapter, 'cause god forbid you miss one it is forever unavailble to you. I wouldn't have minded so much if it had of been a crafting system where you craft upgrades to your companions armour using ingredients you can find in all chapters, but this way was just annoying and pointless filler fluff that added nothing to the game. You might as well have just automatically upgraded them for all it engaged the player.

I also hated the whole attitude of the game. It can be summed up with one quote; "Push a button, something awesome happens".
NO. We have enough hyper action games out there that the market is over saturated with them. You take one of the few decent old-style RPGs in recent years and turn it into what is actually rather close to a hack'n'slash at times... Yeah no. I am not going to appreciate it. I disliked the removal of a lot of things from the original game, or its "Streamlining" - which I think needs a more solid definition. IMO if it makes it easier to use, and less of a hassle, and has NO effect on gameplay, its streamlined. Taking the save function out of Start-Options-Game-Save/Load-Save and putting it as one of the main things on the start menu is streamlining. Making the game auto-save at checkpoints is not [Not saying its something DA2 does, but its an example].

Really, the game had a lot of potential. It wasted all of it. I found Assassins Creed 3 more interesting than it, and that game bores me to tears. There is nothing I can think of that the game actually does well. Its got some good ideas, but fatally flawed execution.

 

[Smeatza]

Good combat mechanics that create a fast paced yet tactical combat environment.

And by that you mean
1. Repeatedly click the enemies till they die
2. Wait for them to respawn
3. Repeatedly click the enemies till they die
4. Attempt to leave the area then realise you're still waiting on enemies to spawn in
5. Repeatedly click said enemies till they die
6. Bump up the difficulty level as you're getting bored
7. Realise this means about 100x more clicking before the enemies die

Anyway my major annoyance was a complete lack of meaningful choice or consequence. The majority of choices it did give you resulted in the same consequences dressed up differently.

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

No, I don't think I am like you when it comes to Dragon Age II.

I enjoyed DA:Origins to some extent, and I was looking forward to a more polished sequel. That sequel never came.

However, the sequel that actually happened - DA2 - is offensively bad. I was able to block out the annoying characters, I was able to blank out the eastern domina chick and the shaved dwarf, hoping to be rewarded with enjoyable, fulfilling gameplay. Those hopes were shattered almost instantly, and it kept getting worse. The first fight let me realize that the fighting system was mostly like WOW, but crap. The asset recycling is, I guess, commendable in a somewhat partially enlightened world, in a modern game I find it hard to swallow.

Oh, and I really have issues with games that take a piss out of Templars.

I tried half a dozen times to get over it and just 'enjoy' the game. I ended up burning it on a pyre. It's gone, and I feel much better for it. With every destroyed copy of DA2, the world gets a little bit better.

At this point in time, I consider it to be stupid bordering on the masochistic to still trust either EA or Bioware. That doesn't mean I'll never buy a game from them again, but I certainly am aware of my being wary of both of them.

 

[UrinalDook]

I've said a couple of times on the forum that I much prefer Dragon Age II over Origins, but I am not blind to it's many, many flaws and I understand completely why so many prefer Origins and cannot stand 2.

Honestly, I feel like maybe it would have been far better accepted if it hadn't been labelled a straight up, linear sequel by slapping that 2 on the end. The first game already coming with a subtitle paved the way for a franchise of spin offs and side stories, and calling it something like Dragon Age: Rise to Power or DAestiny (kind of arc words for the game), while marketing it as breaking some of the 'classic' RPG conventions established in DA:O may have saved it some ire from those who loved DA:O for being a listless retread of 90s RPG mechanics and plot.

Of course, being the insufferable fence sitter I am, I can also see why Bioware did just slap a 2 on the end: DAO sold well. Offering up a sequel is a far easier way of bringing back some returning customers who maybe don't research their game purchases to the exacting standards of every person on the internet.

What DA2 became, then, is the ultimate opinion splitter. I am grateful for just about every RPG convention DA2 defies. I would tell people my favourite genre of games is RPGS, but honestly I don't actually think I'm a very good RPGer. I hate the illusion of character offered by the silent protagonist - I hate living a story through how people react to the main character, rather than being able to react to them myself - I hate dice rolls, I hate 'only you can save the world' plots, I prefer Skyrim to Morrowind, Kotor 2 to Kotor 1 and Mass Effect to all of them. But DA2 changes up so many of these things that, sure, if you loved the original for those reasons then you're going to be disappointed.

I liked DA:O for the setting, the characters and... I don't know, really. I guess tanking as a sword and shield was a fun departure from my normal style. I guess I'm 'immature' enough to have appreciated a bit of swearing and gore in a fantasy game. But apart from that, the mechanics and level design made the game an absolutle slog. 80% of DA:O is busywork. I guess it's rewarding if you see the appeal in micromanagement. The important thing is that DA:O had it's moments of sheer brilliance. Storming Redcliffe castle, the final section of the Deep Roads, the simple idea of the origin prologues. And a final decision that is genuinely challenging. That's what kept me going, what forced me to tolerate the boring procedurals of all of Orzammar, the whole Sacred Ashes quest, the Fade, the Assault on Denerim...

DA2 gave me Snarky LadyHawke, who is by far and away my absolute favourite protagonist of any game ever. I will forgive the game a hell of a lot of missteps in exchange for that.

Some people had nothing like that to hook them into DA2, and I do understand what DA:O offered. I just wish there wasn't so much animosity between the two camps. A little more acceptance of other's opinions would go a long way, as would a little more acceptance that Bioware aren't 'your' personal video games developer and are always going to make games the way they want to. Sometimes that will piss people off, but rather than splurging so much bile over the internets, deal with it, trade your copy in and maybe wait for a few more reviews and youtube videos before buying the next entry.

Yeah, yeah I know. I'll get off my soapbox.

 

[conmag9]

Moderate Spoilers

The only things I really disliked about DA2 were the reused environments and the part near the ending where Orsino goes off his rocker when you're WINNING. First Enchanter, I would have thought you'd be ecstatic! We can and finally have the excuse to rain down magical doom on these assholes! Their charge could be stopped by digging a bloody hole in the ground and watching them all fall in! We do NOT need you to validate that paranoid nutter's opinions on mages doing stupid, self defeating things while desperate! If they wanted to give another boss fight, maybe just bring in a particularly talented Templar? Or a renegade mage with Stockholm Syndrome choosing to fight against you? Siding with Meredeth (I'll admit, I've never done this on account of refusing to work with slaving, sadistic assholes who go out of their way to recruit people who hate the very people they're supposed to "watch over") would make a bit more sense, as her delusions give her a perfectly good reason to go off the deep end, but Orsino really shouldn't have.

The first thing was because it was a rushed job, which I'm sick of hearing of.

 

[Yopaz]

It didn't offer as much depth as Dragon Age Origins.
It was a very different game from Origins.
People believed the hype.
People didn't like that it had less choices.
It got a really low metacritic score for the same reason Call of Duty games get that. It's called critic bombing and it happens to all Call of Duty games and all games that aren't what people expect. Also a game getting a score of 80 still means it's very good. There's jsut too many undeserved 10/10 thrown around.

 

[Zetatrain]

The story is split into 3 different parts and none of them have anything to do with the other. The second act is a largely missed opportunity and had some actual weight behind it, but once you get to the third act the game acts like it was forgotten; save for some unavoidable changes in the area.

I wouldn't say they have nothing to do with each other.

The first act is mainly about you and recruiting/meeting your team members. During this time you are introduced to elements of the qunari plotline and mage vs.templar plotline. The two different aspects are not the center of attention yet, but the first act lets you know that these two aspects will become central to the plot later on.

Act two is, of course, mainly about the Qunari. This act is important, because it leads to the power vacuum that allows Meredith to seize control of the city, which inevitably causes relations between templars and mages to worsen. This is probably the best act because it had good build up and a good climax.

Act three is where the Templar vs mage plotline becomes the center of attention...and where everything falls apart. In act 2 there was proper build up to a climax, but in Act 3 there is virtually no build up at all. By the time Act 3 starts the mages and templars are already on the verge of going to war with each other. It seems that a lot of stuff happened during the three year time skip, but unfortunately we don't get to witness or hear about anything that happens during those three years. All we get are a few vague lines that Varric says when he's telling the story to Cassandra. As a result Act 3 feels incredibly rushed.

IMO, there should have been 4 acts. Acts 1 and 2 would be the same, act 3 would basically be build up for the Mage vs Templar plotline, and act 4 would be the climax.

 

[Orc Town Grot]

Thanks for the thread,

Though I feel Frozengale posted it as a kind of trap to pull suckers into an argument.

Both games have weaknesses and failings. The first is over-long and lacks tempo. The second falls to pieces in many ways as a piece of RPG design but seems to impress some players either on the basis of its 're-imagined' combat style or the snarky, self-obsessed, bi-sexual, horny and stupid, teen-angst mood of the whole thing.

Personally I prefer Origins, which is the bigger treasure-trove of world-design DETAILS. There are so many NPC's, so many backstories, so many sub plots, fragments of history and lines of dialogue, that the game goes a long way to creating the feeling of a FANTASY WORLD. Origins feels like a labour of love. It is long and it may be boring for some, but I've finished the whole thing more than ten times, and I always discover some new details about Thedas I missed on previous play-throughs. I gave it a review score matching its ability to hold my attention: 10/10.

Of course Origins was imperfect. And I can see for many it would be a pretty bloody boring affair.

But comparitively I found DA2 to be a shock. I wrote more than 20 negative reviews about it listing HUNDREDS of details, points of design and technical elements for WHY it is an inferior game. My score vacillated from 6/10 to 0/10 before settling at 2/10. probably unfair, and more emotional than rational. Really a LOT of rationalising and hyper-ventilation for why I HATED it so much. I guess for the gamers who invested a lot of time and fan-boy passion into Origins, the design 'innovations' of DA2 were seen as a betrayal.

Still I can concede that other gamers and players, of whatever demographic or level of interest in RPG design, might prefer DA2. Maybe they like the DA2 version of Anders. How they possibly could do that after spending time with the Original Anders from Awakening I don't know. But people do have different tastes in clothes, music, and everything else, so obviously that's all fair enough.

Origins was imperfect in many ways. It was boring. It was less than perfect. Yet to me it hinted at a great promise: that an RPG in this decade could actually give us a new. bigger and BETTER version of the type of experience that we had with Baldur's Gate. Origin's wasn't quite there, but it had the promise.

DA2 smashed that dream. It was a big deviation: A narrow, limited, poorly built, repetitive, clautrophobic, adolescent 'adventure game', that did nothing about building and opening a fantasy world for the players to explore.

In many ways Origins REALLY wasn't that good. Because like DA2, Origins was a NARRATIVE RAILROAD: that trapped the player in a scenic railroad of a game, from points A-Z. In DA2 however there was not even the illusion offered that the player would have their own adventure in an imaginary world.

If the whole thing is simply a pre-scripted interactive movie, finally the adventure cannot be that good.

In this dimension the games share a common limit.

And gamers really can choose their poison.

Where it mattered BOTH, they both failed.

To this day there is no continuous, interactive realm of Thedas. Unlike Azeroth which lives, Thedas remains a memory of a game we once played.

I played Origins again recently, but didn't finish as I know the story and it is CORE BORING. DA2 I finished twice, hating it ALL the way, and really can't bear to install again. I have installed with the intention of replaying, but the first loading sceens bring back such negative memories and so much bile that it is always un-installed before getting to character creation.

THX again for the topic. Please do NOT nit-pick my post and reply with bullet points arguing with me: that is unless you want me to dig up and copy-paste huge blocks of text elaborating why I hate DA2. That game is simply a bad memory now and I have moved on to better things. I will NOT pre-order or buy DA3 until about a month passes after publishing and I'm sure that it either restores what was lost in Origins or does one better and actually improves upon it.

Once bitten twice shy.

The state of AAA game titles in the past 3 years has been so bad that there is no reason for any optimism. Diabolo 3 anyone? Simcity 5? Dragon Age 2? etc etc etc.

Enough incoherence for one post

Cheers.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

I've had the same problem trying to muster the enthusiasm to play through DA:O, but every time the environments are bland, the combat is a drag and the story doesn't compel me.

In DA2 the environments were slightly better in my opinion although overused. The combat was more enjoyable. And the story was more engaging, and I think that was because the characters were more effected by the story, and I felt very attached to most, if not all of the characters in DA2 (with the exception to Hawke).

I understand some peoples frustration with the second one deviating a fair bit from the first, but I think a lot of that is simply down to preference. Obviously it's annoying when devs alienate their original fanbase but, that's tough luck.

 

[Smooth Operator]

I do believe our very own Escapist reviewers have put it up as a staple of the definitive RPG experience, so really you can't argue with that, DA2 is the best game ever made...

That is for people without taste, but those who are unfortunate to have developed one might find it a bit shit.

 

[Madkipz]

So I just finished Dragon Age : Origins a few weeks ago which is quite an amazing feat. I have tried playing it for several years (borrowing a family owned copy of the game) but so many little things just bug me about the game that I would eventually just give up. I finally bought my own version of it (Ultimate Edition) once there was a Steam sale on it. So I finally sat down, modded away many of the annoyances and beat the game plus it's expansion.

After doing that I decided to get me a copy of Dragon Age II. After a little over a week I have completed the game and clocked quite a few hours into it. I remember seeing the Metacritic score of it at some point in time and realized it was quite low compared to the original by both Game Journalists. And it's user rating is 4.2.

So why all the hate? Are there people here who can explain to me why so many had such a horrible time with Dragon Age II? I personally thought the combat system was much more polished, balanced, and fun to play with. The characters had more depth then Origins and added quite a bit of depth to some of the characters from Origins. The story was more compelling then the generic "End of the World" scenario. And my word it even throws almost every single Bioware cliche out the window. Also, and most important, you can hide the stupid hats. Those awful and vile hats that shame the world can be hidden. And actually quite a few of the hats look quite good.

So what was it that peeved you off about Dragon Age II. If you hated it when you played it do you still feel it deserves the hate, have you reconsidered? Are you like me and actually think the second is 10x better then the first?

What was there not to hate?

The bland mmo combat that seemed visceral yet did not go all the way is one of my biggest nitpicks. In higher difficulties you have a serious disconnect between the animations and the implied lethality of several abilities while bulletspongy enemies destroy any attempt at immersion on anything that wasn't easy difficulty supplemented by enemies that jumped down from rooftops and ruined any kind of strategical depth.

The skilltrees gave you less abilities to fiddle around with and heavily relied on a very basic combo system to deal actual damage to enemies, but even then you dealt fairly little damage to the bigger tools. The problems were so severe that one had to resort to permastunning both enemies and bosses through items, knockbacks and passives. You had to do this in origins to some extent too, but at least there you had healing worth a damn. So it begs to question what system is better if you had to do the same shit on higher difficulties? At least in origins it looked somewhat more grounded in realism whereas in DA2 your characters were flipping out doing super saiyan moves that ultimately made no sense.

Kirkwall itself and their inhabitants looked absolutely horrible. You'd think that if everything was limited to a single city then they should have had the time to put in massive amounts of detail and craft an actual city rather than a few chopped together zones that were all relatively samey. When compared with stuff like the guild wars 2 cities it just doesn't measure up. Not even to their previous title Orzammar. This is as basic a city as it gets.

The redesigned darkspawn were terrible, awful and bioware should feel bad.

The blatantly reused tileset and the constant betrayals by npc's you either saved or quested for made it all too predictable while the characters journeying with you made it quite clear that you were the only sane person alive.

This constant stream of traps, fetch quests and contrived plot devices (deep roads sibling gets infected by dark spawn regardless of what you do) used to move you forward and as time skipped on to get you to the next relevant plot device any sense of relationship with these carbon characters just grew more and more contrived to the point where my female hawke ended up lezzing out with isabella because every other alternative was terrible.

Church going prince dlc should have been a baseline character and not something to shell out 10 usd for (he was no shale that's for certain).

Origins left an impression on me with regards to blood magic, but the second game shat all over that as suddenly EVERY MAGE IS A BLOOD MAGE. SERIOUSLY. EVERY MAGE YOU MEET COMES BACK TO KILL YOU AS A BLOOD MAGE. The Quunari could have been a lot better fleshed out.

The ending was just.... "AHA! I AM THE ELDER MAGE AND IM GOING TO PROVE THE TEMPLARS RIGHT AND USE BLOOD MAGIC BECAUSE YOU SIDED WITH ME! or AHA YOU SIDED WITH THE TEMPLARS BUT THE LEAD TEMPLAR IS STILL BATSHIT CRAZY SO YOU'll STILL HAVE TO KILL HER."

The limited dialogue options made for a lack of variety when it came down to not only decision making, but also to how well the characters were perceived. Which made for a terrible us vs them mentality everytime the plot tried to move you forward (Quunari, mages vs templars).

It also felt very pandering with the constant cameos of things from the first game (Alistair etc). They also reused and twisted characters such as Anders (who will act the same regardless of how you treated him in the "prequel").

Ultimately Dragon age 2 is a decent game, but it was in no way an improvement on origins as it took several steps back just to include voice acting, better ui and for those of you playing it on the easier difficulties you had "better" combat, but all these things were not up to the quality that had so far been unprecedented with a bioware game people got really. Really upset. The promise that the IP held with Origins (which was by far a much better game due to its potential) is basically gone.

 

[DSK-]

I've noticed the most common way to defend DA2 and its design decisions is to just criticise DA:O.

How else would one defend it?

By defending said choices on their own merits and how they may improve it as an RPG (snort)

Really it's almost as if the two games were designed for two completely different audiences...

Okay,

It has interesting characters.
Good combat mechanics that create a fast paced yet tactical combat environment.
It gives you a variety of interesting choices to make through out the game.
It's fun.

But people don't care about those things because it's not DA:O

Also as far as your "RPG (snort)" comment goes, what makes it not an RPG? And what even makes DA:O an RPG. Define what you mean by RPG first before you scoff at calling it that. The term RPG gets tossed around more then a ball on a playground. But it's so loosely defined that implying "This game is not an RPG" is a bit silly.

In all honesty, if the story wasn't as muddled and boring as it was, I would probably have rated DA2 far higher than I currently do. It isn't because it is not DA:O, it's because I find DA:O to have given me a far superior playing experience. However this of course is just my personal preference/opinion.

OT: I won't list the things I didn't like about DA2 because many people have already posted my pet peeves.

 

[Zetatrain]

So why all the hate? Are there people here who can explain to me why so many had such a horrible time with Dragon Age II? I personally thought the combat system was much more polished, balanced, and fun to play with. The characters had more depth then Origins and added quite a bit of depth to some of the characters from Origins. The story was more compelling then the generic "End of the World" scenario. And my word it even throws almost every single Bioware cliche out the window. Also, and most important, you can hide the stupid hats. Those awful and vile hats that shame the world can be hidden. And actually quite a few of the hats look quite good.

So what was it that peeved you off about Dragon Age II. If you hated it when you played it do you still feel it deserves the hate, have you reconsidered? Are you like me and actually think the second is 10x better then the first?

Well here are my quick thought's on different aspects of DA2:

Story:
While DA:O's overall story is rather generic, it was executed very well. Plus the whole "save the world" scenario is more of a framing device for the smaller stories told within it.

DA2's story was less generic and definitely had more potential, but had serious problems in its executions. As you can see from comment above, I actually thought Acts 1 and 2 were well told, but act 3 really hurts the story. Overall, I still like DA2's story, but its lack of execution leads me to rank Origin's story higher up.

Characters:

I think both games had good characters and the characters were definitely my favorite part of DA2. One thing that I thought DA2 did better than Origins was that it gave its character's much better quest lines. However, one thing that hurt DA2 was that it had significantly less instances to talk to your teammates than Origins. This is especially true with your siblings. One dies in the prologue and you only have the first act to talk to the surviving one and maybe a couple brief moments in Acts 2 and 3.

Gameplay:

While I did like the faster combat mechanics, the overall experience just felt water downed. It just seemed like there were significantly less ways to play each class compared to Origins.

Not being able to change any of your teammates armor was a really bad move on Bioware's part.

Enemies constantly spawning in mid battle is just annoying and throws tactics out the window. This would have been ok if it only happened in a few battles, but unfortunately it happens a lot.

Lack of traps was a major con and crafting is just way too simple

Graphics and Art Desgin:

Well, graphics are better...not much else I can say on that.

Don't mind Flemeth's new look and I like the elves new design much more than the original. The Qunari's new design is also pretty good IMO.

Recycled dungeons and equipment is a major problem especially in an RPG. There is just simply no defending it....though it is nice you can finally hide those hideous hats.

Despite my criticisms of DA2 I still enjoyed it enough to complete 3 playthroughs and I would give it a 7/10. However, I just can't put it over DA:O, which I am currently on my 7th playthrough. DA2 was simply the victim of a rushed job.

 

[alphamalet]

The story... No. It had potential, yes. Execution? No. The amount of forced conflict half the time was stupid, as was the way half the characters behaved. Really, apparently all mages are bloodthirsty lunatics and all Templars came from the Third Reich, 'cause they all sure as hell behave that way.

HA! This quote is hilarious and so damn true! Dragon Age II has more false urgency than a 24-hour news station.

 

[RJ 17]

Snip

There were a lot of reasons that people didn't like the game, most of them were discussed at-length here on the forums. The biggest complainted people have about it is the fact that there's no original dungeons. Every dungeon is just a copy-paste of another. That cave/mine place gets used for pretty much everything. People also said they didn't like the story because it felt like nothing happened. It was meant to be a "slice of life" story about Hawke's adventures in the city of Kirkwall, but evidently most everyone was hoping for another huge gigantic threat. Beyond that, they said that the story was disjointed and just randomly bounced about, which I disagree with and even made a topic to refute that claim a long time ago.

Personally I liked the 2nd game. Like you, I really enjoyed the combat system (especially as a player who favors playing as a Mage). I didn't find anything wroung with the story, in fact I found it to be quite good if you're able to look at it in the grander scale of things. It is, at it's core, a sequel. Most 2nd parts in trilogies are meant to be stepping-stone stories. Ways to carry the plot forward from the first game to the climactic third game. That's what this one does. You start the game by fleeing from the Blight in Fereldan...

Spoiler: And end the game...

By igniting a civil war between Mages and Templars

A lot of people also didn't like how there was nothing you could do to stop Anders from being a fucking moron and going all terrorist on everyone.

Personally the only problem I had with the game was that the fights came in waves. I'd prefer to fight all the enemies at once. Not slaughter 15 of them right in front of their friends who are waiting inside the windows for their turn to jump out. That and, as I mentioned, the whole copy-paste dungeon thing was a big let-down, especially considering how fantastic all the original dungeons in Origins were. Beyond that, I really enjoyed the game.

Honestly I think most people were just wanting to be Grey Warden fighting Dark Spawn again . But considering that you ended the frickin' Blight and as such dark spawn are no longer a horde, but rather scattered, disorganized groups, I really don't see how there was any way to keep fighting that fight.

Oh, another thing people didn't like about it (and I agree with this one) was that you didn't get to pick your race like you did in the first game.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Dragon Age Origins seemed to expect more of players. It took me roughly 50 hours to beat it the first time and I'm not even finished with Lilliana's Song or, Ddarkspawn Chronicles (I also got the Ultimate version once it was out). I can't say I loved the game since I haven't gone in for a true second playthrough but I really enjoyed the game while I was going through it. Dragon Age Origins is the game that made me see how great the proud Dwarven race really is (I went through every opening and my main character ended up being a bisexual, high-born Dwarven male). I loved the various side characters especially Shale (why was Shale a DLC character again?) and ended up making Zevran my love interest. I remember going through Awakening but I don't remember much of the plot with that game...really my most prevalent complaints were about the graphics and how all of the weapons looked like they were made by Fisher Price but those gripes (also the music was non-existent) but those gripes were nothing because I enjoyed the game part of the game.

Dragon Age 2 felt a lot more like Mass Effect. I played the game before they patched the combat (tap-tap-tap-tap) and this was probably the last game that I got on day one. First off, I hated that I had to play as a human...nothing against Humans in general but my favorite thing about most W-RPG's is how I can be a race other than boring old humans. Minor gripe though, a much larger gripe comes from the cast. Not a single misanthropic character like Shale to be seen and none of the love interests really interested me. I remember getting together with the elvish female but she didn't seem to be into me even after the big "I love you" moment (probably because Hawke wouldn't role-play a brutal mugging). I didn't mind the new same-sex relationship option but it felt like Anders was sexually harassing me. What was up with Isabella too? She had that Megan Fox effect on me that makes me see her as being covered in a layer of grime apart from being an utterly unlikable human being.

Anyway, the biggest problem I had came at the very end when I realized I had never beaten the game. I didn't want to go through the same combat a million more times to level myself up. I didn't want to buy new equipment or talk to anyone. I wanted the game to be done so I ran from every battle, skipped through every dialog and still managed to beat the final boss...this really shouldn't have happened, I had effectively stopped playing the game and was still able to beat it. That isn't right! What's worse is...

Spoiler: 2 year old spoiler

I backed The Mages believing that they are not all a bunch of blood-magic using psychopaths. Besides, my sister was one of them so I should be nice to them because I, as the character, know what they have to do through. Once the Templar show the slightest bit of advantage in the final confrontation, the leader of the Blood Mages says "Fuck it, let's give them what they want!" and summons Blood Demons from his veins. I fucking vouched for you guys! Thanks a lot you jerks!!

Dragon Age Origins was promising if a bit dated but in my opinion Dragon Age 2 failed. I have no plans on grabbing the third installment, instead I'll be hoping Disney says 'OK' to Obsidian and we get a new Star Wars RPG.