So I've been playing Dragon Age 2 for the first time recently.

[CardinalPiggles]

And I think all the negativity it got when it first came out was a bit too much, yeah okay, it's not going to win any RPG awards, but it's still pretty damn good.

An example would be the NPC's and PC's are still very well designed, all with interesting back stories and good definitive character. You know, what makes a Bioware game distinctive, it's still bioware at it's core.

Warning, spoilers are coming.

The game actually managed to invoke some emotion from me in certain places, like when your sister Bethany dies during your journey through the deep roads (I don't know if that's avoidable, but it happened to me), I felt really upset, and quite angry with that guy that locks you in that room, so much so I showed him no mercy when finally catching up with him at his mansion, instances like that influenced my decisions throughout the game. I haven't been this emotionally attached to game characters since... ever.

I also find it very interesting trying to balance my team, for example, I like to take out a mage, Anders, (he is also my gay boyfriend), Varric, the crossbow wielding dwarf, and Fenris, my damage dealing warrior. Anyway so that's my favourite team, but the problem is Fenris and Anders hate each other due to Fenris' hatred for mages, and it gives me something else to think about when making discussion decisions.

My only gripe is that you have to constantly visit the same copy pasted environment again and again, thus taking away my immersion. If this was not an issue I would give this game a 10/10.

I guess for discussion value, what is your biggest problem with Dragon Age 2?

Edit: It sounds like some people don't know how to balance party members and manage the gambits system, that's not the games fault, and not bad design, it's your fault for bad management.

 

[sage42]

The story wasn't as good as Origins, the copied caves, and Anders attitude change are my only complaints, everything else I enjoyed immensely. The copied warehouses sewers and what not I can understand. The Tevinter magisters must have had them built all the same for various reasons. And they did give a reason why Anders changed but still.

 

[Klepa]

I thought the gameplay was better in Origins. But I'm one of those old Baldur's Gate geeks.

I didn't much like the characters in DA2, except for Varric, who was a badass.

Copy pasted dungeons really took a bite out of my immersion. Doesn't help that I noticed the copy pasting during the first 30 minutes of gameplay, when I tried to go to areas that showed up on the minimap, but were inaccessible.

But yeah, gameplay and characters mainly. They're a pretty big part of a tactical/RPG game. Or atleast one's sequel.

 

[Scde2]

I don't think it was a bad game, well bad for Bioware, but mediocre overall. The story...er narrative was good at some parts, but failed to invoke interest from me overall. I personally liked the characters, but they were far from memorable.

While I liked the combat, seeing the same dungeons over and over and having to face enemies who kept popping up out of nowhere discouraged me from playing through it again. At least in the foreseeable future.

 

[Hiphophippo]

I agree. The hate is very, very misplaced. It reminds me of Deux Ex: Invisible War. Both it and DA2 are fine games on their own merits, they just have the unfortunate distinction of being compared to the previous game in the series.

Both high marks.

 

[Hiphophippo]

you might aswell ask where the gameplay went. Because i havent seen any in 5 playtroughs.

I wish I had the kind of play time that allowed me to replay a game I didn't care for 5 times.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

They didn't vary the characters' abilities enough. You pretty much have to take Anders with you to survive, since all health potions across the entire party recharge at the same time.

 

[DustyDrB]

I really like it as well. It was my favorite game of the year until Madness Returns came along. The story is good except for two major stumbles (towards the end of Act 2 and the whole end of the game. The ending really sucks). The repeated dungeons were sort of lazy, but I'm used to that form BioWare (I've played Mass Effect 13 times now, and that game has even more copy and pasted locations).

The ability trees were much improved for rogues and warriors, the combat was more involving (though waved enemies was a bad design choice). I also liked the race redesigns and the overall look of the game. There were a lot of steps forward and backward.

 

[chaosyoshimage]

My main problems with it where recycled environments, the overall rushed feeling, and the ending (Which I won't spoil, but it was annoying). I actually liked the re-done combat and the characters (Beside a few things my boyfriend Anders did). Oh, and the mages vs. templars story was great, if not a little flawed...

 

[Saviordd1]

I agree, this game was one of the few that managed to illicit an emotional response from me.

However no matter how you look at it the game felt rushed which is sort of sad, and the story feels like 3 mini plots that vaguely connect.

Still good for me though 7/10

As for the biggest problem? The motherfucking thugs, those bastards that respawn and are EVERYWHERE are just annoying, that and the fact that enemies receive reinforcements in EVERY battle.

 

[MetallicaRulez0]

Copy/Paste environments and sub-par story are my only real complaints. I actually really enjoyed the gameplay and combat in DA2. I guess I could have done without the incessant waves of useless enemies respawning constantly during battles, but that's a minor complaint really.

 

[DustyDrB]

They didn't vary the characters' abilities enough. You pretty much have to take Anders with you to survive, since all health potions across the entire party recharge at the same time.

No they don't. They recharge only for the party member who uses one. Maybe it seemed that way to you if you had them set in their tactics to drink potions once their health got so low. But one party member drinking a potion definitely doesn't start a universal cooldown.

 

[Madkipz]

you might aswell ask where the gameplay went. Because i havent seen any in 5 playtroughs.

I wish I had the kind of play time that allowed me to replay a game I didn't care for 5 times.

I just wanted my moneys worth and having played origins 5 times this warranted playing trough the sequel 5 times. one on hard, once on hardcore and then just turned the game down on casual. Its not worth playing it on any increased difficulty level because doing so just add to the tedium that is dragon age 2.

Hopefully they fix it in DA 3, hopefully.

 

[fdbluth]

Ah, another fellow brethren in the Dragon-Age-2-wasn't-that-bad camp. I wish I could say your post will change all those haters to see the error of their ways, but alas, we have this about every week, yet no one seems to change their minds.

While I do agree with everyone else (and I mean everyone) that Dragon Age 2 has glaring, perhaps unforgivable, flaws. It was a greedy attempt to cash in on a golden opportunity and it shows, what with the repeated dungeons and all that. My guess is they first wrote out the story, tweaked the gameplay, figured out how to build Kirkwall, and then ran out of time. They should have just delayed it, of course, much like Valve does (actually, forget that, because Valve really isn't a good example for this), but seeing as how Bioware's a subsidiary of EA now...

I think it also has to do with the amount of hype given to Dragon Age 2. It was an absolute surprise when Dragon Age 2 was announced, because Dragon Age hadn't received as much attention as Mass Effect had gotten (what with being a more traditional RPG and all), and the fandom rejoiced and dreamed and hoped and wished it'd be the equivalent of the second coming of Jesus in fantasy RPG form. Sadly, we received... Dragon Age 2, the flawed, underdeveloped fetus of a game, pulled from the womb of Bioware by a cutthroat doctor named EA.

So, in conclusion, fuck EA and don't pay attention to haters. Cuz haters gonna hate.

Combat takes up 60% of this game:
and this combat is 50% autoattack 20% Crowd control, 20% abusing the AI and 10% CCC

it is fast paced, has animations taken from Naruto and Power rangers.

The enemies you encounter are simply hordes of nameless goons accompanied by a few mages, assassins or tanky warriors.

As you scale difficulty upwards all that happens is an increase of hp, the game starts handing out knockbacks to everyone and increases their damage to the point of either stunlocking or oneshotting your mages / rogues to death.

Add spells with long cooldowns and shitty damage on top of waves upon waves of reinforcements and you have the recipe for boring non engaging game that anyone will tire off eventually.


When a game cant take its own lore seriously it starts wandering a road that ends in the game not being much of an rpg (im looking at you sc2 wings of liberty) and that would be fine if gameplay made up for it and in a bioware game you might aswell ask where the gameplay went. Because i havent seen any in 5 playtroughs.


At best id call it this game a shitty Mass effect with swords in some generic fantasy setting, and thats kinda bad compared with its predecessor that had alot more potential.

Pirate it or wait for bioware to hand it out for sale with all the dlc a month before DA3 comes. Your money is better spent on fable 3 or the sims medieval.

Have you seen animes? It's not something you connect with fast action. It's just yelling at each other for two hours until the actual author catches up with the Japanese animation schedule.

I'll give you the fact that Origins was more deliberate, and required more... "strategy" (I use that word in a loose sense), but overall, I think the combat was an improvement. More visceral, ended more quickly, giving more time for us to explore and pay attention to the story. I do agree that it wasn't handled very well, what with the faceless mobs and all, but it's not that different from the faceless mobs from Origins; it's just that less effort went into staging the fights (again, so little development time).

And please don't ever try to justify piracy with saying the game's bad. Advocate that the game's not worth people's time and therefore, people shouldn't buy it. This is why publishers get the (false) idea that people don't hate the game, just lazy, overentitled brats who don't want to pay for the good stuff.

Either way, let's all just hope (but not wish ourselves into believing) Dragon Age 3 is going to be better.

 

[Madkipz]

Ah, another fellow brethren in the Dragon-Age-2-wasn't-that-bad camp. I wish I could say your post will change all those haters to see the error of their ways, but alas, we have this about every week, yet no one seems to change their minds.

While I do agree with everyone else (and I mean everyone) that Dragon Age 2 has glaring, perhaps unforgivable, flaws. It was a greedy attempt to cash in on a golden opportunity and it shows, what with the repeated dungeons and all that. My guess is they first wrote out the story, tweaked the gameplay, figured out how to build Kirkwall, and then ran out of time. They should have just delayed it, of course, much like Valve does (actually, forget that, because Valve really isn't a good example for this), but seeing as how Bioware's a subsidiary of EA now...

I think it also has to do with the amount of hype given to Dragon Age 2. It was an absolute surprise when Dragon Age 2 was announced, because Dragon Age hadn't received as much attention as Mass Effect had gotten (what with being a more traditional RPG and all), and the fandom rejoiced and dreamed and hoped and wished it'd be the equivalent of the second coming of Jesus in fantasy RPG form. Sadly, we received... Dragon Age 2, the flawed, underdeveloped fetus of a game, pulled from the womb of Bioware by a cutthroat doctor named EA.

So, in conclusion, fuck EA and don't pay attention to haters. Cuz haters gonna hate.

Combat takes up 60% of this game:
and this combat is 50% autoattack 20% Crowd control, 20% abusing the AI and 10% CCC

it is fast paced, has animations taken from Naruto and Power rangers.

The enemies you encounter are simply hordes of nameless goons accompanied by a few mages, assassins or tanky warriors.

As you scale difficulty upwards all that happens is an increase of hp, the game starts handing out knockbacks to everyone and increases their damage to the point of either stunlocking or oneshotting your mages / rogues to death.

Add spells with long cooldowns and shitty damage on top of waves upon waves of reinforcements and you have the recipe for boring non engaging game that anyone will tire off eventually.


When a game cant take its own lore seriously it starts wandering a road that ends in the game not being much of an rpg (im looking at you sc2 wings of liberty) and that would be fine if gameplay made up for it and in a bioware game you might aswell ask where the gameplay went. Because i havent seen any in 5 playtroughs.


At best id call it this game a shitty Mass effect with swords in some generic fantasy setting, and thats kinda bad compared with its predecessor that had alot more potential.

Pirate it or wait for bioware to hand it out for sale with all the dlc a month before DA3 comes. Your money is better spent on fable 3 or the sims medieval.

Have you seen animes? It's not something you connect with fast action. It's just yelling at each other for two hours until the actual author catches up with the Japanese animation schedule.

I'll give you the fact that Origins was more deliberate, and required more... "strategy" (I use that word in a loose sense), but overall, I think the combat was an improvement. More visceral, ended more quickly, giving more time for us to explore and pay attention to the story. I do agree that it wasn't handled very well, what with the faceless mobs and all, but it's not that different from the faceless mobs from Origins; it's just that less effort went into staging the fights (again, so little development time).

And please don't ever try to justify piracy with saying the game's bad. Advocate that the game's not worth people's time and therefore, people shouldn't buy it. This is why publishers get the (false) idea that people don't hate the game, just lazy, overentitled brats who don't want to pay for the good stuff.

Either way, let's all just hope (but not wish ourselves into believing) Dragon Age 3 is going to be better.

if you had played the game on anything above normal difficulty then the comparison to anime is pretty damn accurate. You literally see hawke do animation upon animation yet there are still people around him because of increased health pools and reinforcements.

Boss fights also are drawn out and retarded unless your resort to abusing bombs and poisons.


I put the fast "paced" in quotes because of health pools and knockbacks the only fast paced aspect is the overly animated animations taken directly from power rangers and there is no denying that some anime have overly complex moves that do jack for damage.

 

[high_castle]

I play BioWare games for the story and characters. They are the only games out there that place the narrative above everything else, and it shows. So I'm willing to forgive little things like copied environments (pretty much my only fault with the game). I have no idea if you've finished the game or not, so everything else I want to say, I'll spoiler.

Spoiler: DA2 Ending

I think a large part of the reason why the game got so much hate was the way it ended. This wasn't a save-the-world kind of story. It was about a man or woman who got swept up in events larger than themselves, tried to make a difference, and ultimately failed. It's about being ineffectual in the face of larger problems. When the entire system is broken, sometimes it takes more than just one man to put it back together.

That's what I found so endearing about the narrative. Red Dead Redemption also put you in the position of failing--to an even larger degree, really. Yet because John Marston was not crafted by the player and thus didn't have to be viewed as an avatar (which is still a mistake in RPGs, IMO), I think more gamers were willing to go with the tragedy. But so many people don't want to feel like failures, like they lost. And that's the point of the game. Sometimes you can't win.

That and Anders' character arc was amazing. Love him or hate him, he was handled exceptionally well to the point so many people sympathize with him despite and even because of his actions--no matter what real world connotations they carry. He's a very layered and nuanced character and would be as good a subject for interpretation as any character in literature. It's not often we get games this deep.

I liked Origins. I've been a BioWare fangirl since the Baldur's Gate days. I know DA2 played with the conventions of the RPG, but I liked that. The story was far more personal than epic in scope, and thus I cared so much more what happened to my character.

And yes, Bethany (or Carver) doesn't have to die in the Deep Roads. But it's definitely a great tragic moment when they do.

 

[Amondren]

The repeated environment and the Voice acting for male Hawke his voice shifted so much for my taste give me more options any-day without voice acting. The copy paste was shameless and made that guy horrible for me because it was like walking into the same room over and over with the furniture being shifted 1 inch every time and by furniture I mean giant spiders. 7/10 just due to those reasons and the forced story.

SPOILER: No matter what you do the church WILL blow up you WILL have to choose a side and you WILL fight both the harvester 2.0 and that lead Templar.

 

[Kahunaburger]

if you had played the game on anything above normal difficulty then the comparison to anime is pretty damn accurate. You literally see hawke do animation upon animation yet there are still people around him because of increased health pools and reinforcements.

Boss fights also are drawn out and retarded unless your resort to abusing bombs and poisons.


I put the fast "paced" in quotes because of health pools and knockbacks the only fast paced aspect is the overly animated animations taken directly from power rangers and there is no denying that some anime have overly complex moves that do jack for damage.

Well, depends [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4gkiji8zLA&feature=related] on [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByMZYcDk18M] the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaxWf97Ihgk&feature=related] anime [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5oMAlxWodg&feature=related]