[updated old topic] Finished Dragon Age 2, here is what can confirmed.

[Irridium]

What pisses me off most about the game are 2 things.

1) Environments are re-used to a ridiculous degree. Every dungeon is exactly the same. You just start at different points. Same layout, same textures, its just ridiculous.

2) No mod support. Granted this may change since Bioware opened a modding forum for DA2 on the Bioware Social Site, but so far we've heard nothing about an actual toolset.

YOU STATE OPINION AS FACT.

Therefore, you're an idiot.

I would disagree with you on a lot of those points, but I can't say that i'm right and you are wrong.

Some things he said are facts though.

Combat is the same as Origins, just faster. This is fact.
You can customize the appearance of Hawke. This is also fact.

Those are facts, the rest are opinions.

Also, I'm speaking of the PC version.

 

[godofallu]

What pisses me off most about the game are 2 things.

1) Environments are re-used to a ridiculous degree. Every dungeon is exactly the same. You just start at different points. Same layout, same textures, its just ridiculous.

2) No mod support. Granted this may change since Bioware opened a modding forum for DA2 on the Bioware Social Site, but so far we've heard nothing about an actual toolset.

YOU STATE OPINION AS FACT.

Therefore, you're an idiot.

I would disagree with you on a lot of those points, but I can't say that i'm right and you are wrong.

Some things he said are facts though.

Combat is the same as Origins, just faster. This is fact.
You can customize the appearance of Hawke. This is also fact.

Those are facts, the rest are opinions.

Also, I'm speaking of the PC version.

I have it on 360 (shoot me they won't let me return it) and the combat is not the same as origins. That is fact.

But wait we both disagreed on something that is a fact... probably because it isn't a fact.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

The real gear grinder for me is the continual reuse of maps. It's lazy and I feel like using more than three or four maps isn't too much to ask. Why is Fenris' mansion the same as every other mansion? Why is every cave the same? If the game wasn't so immersive and interesting the map thing probably would have ruined it more for me, but as it happens I'm pretty engrossed. The quests are imaginative and fun, sometimes disturbing, sometimes shocking, but always entertaining. I'm only about half way though, so things could change!

The maps thing doesn't really bother me. I am very happy with the variation in side quests though, as you said. If I had to choose between boring repetitve quests or boring repetitive environments, guess which one I'd pick...

 

[Geo Da Sponge]

I probably wouldn't say Dragon Age 2 is harder than Origins, I just think people are getting that impression because they're switching from a game where they have loads of experience on building characters to a game where they have to start from scratch. In DA2 it's much harder to rely on the character archetypes (tank, DPS, healer) to win you the day. It's harder to tank because in Orgins you could just slap Threaten on a sword and shield warrior and you'd be fine, if you used Taunt occasionally. It's harder to have a healer because you can't spam heal abilities, either from potions or mages. I certainly think it's a more interesting challenge because it's less about character builds and more about how you use them (which is not to say character building isn't important).

Any setting with less than 100% friendly fire is a dumbed down setting.
Tactical use of AoEs is lame if you can just spam your friends.

THIS. A HUNDRED TIMES THIS.

The only reason I'm playing DA:O on nightmare. I remember a time when I would cast Storm of the Century on EVERY fight I had, easiest playthrough ever.

It's probably worth pointing out that AOE attacks are actually pretty weedy by later levels in DA2. At the beginning you can wipe out entire encounters by using two AOE attacks when they're bunched up, but later on they're a lot less impressive. Plus there's less of them (mages have access to two, at most, ways to create enduring AOE effects). So while it's simpler to use them when you don't have to worry about your team mates, you can't just throw them out and instantly win (at least, not after about level 10 or so).

 

[Irridium]

I have it on 360 (shoot me they won't let me return it) and the combat is not the same as origins. That is fact.

But wait we both disagreed on something that is a fact... probably because it isn't a fact.

On the PC, it is the same. On the console, its different. Simple as that.

As I said, I was referring to the PC version when I said combat was the same. And it is.

 

[ZeroDotZero]

Also, DA2 is HARDER than DAO

Uhhhhh.....nnnnnnnno.

This should be in the user reviews section, maybe.

Actually, I agree with the OP. DA2 has challenged me more than Origins ever did.

 

[Weaver]

I disagree with linearity (sort of). I find the areas you're in to not only be very linear, but very very small. They also repeat over and over and over; for instance every warehouse in the dock is the exact same building.

That's beyond lame. It also doesn't help it's so small you can literally see everywhere possible to go from standing in the middle room.

 

[Geo Da Sponge]

I have it on 360 (shoot me they won't let me return it) and the combat is not the same as origins. That is fact.

But wait we both disagreed on something that is a fact... probably because it isn't a fact.

On the PC, it is the same. On the console, its different. Simple as that.

As I said, I was referring to the PC version when I said combat was the same. And it is.

I have Dragon Age 2 on PC, and I've played Origins pretty extensively on both 360 and PC. And it is different on PC. The underlying mechanics are the same, and anyone who's played Origins will pick it up pretty quickly but if you play it like Origins you won't do too well on higher difficulties.

And I mean that in a good way. I like the combat in Origins and all, but it's all too easy for people to hide behind traditional character builds in it.

PS. Does everyone else hate Templar Hunters as much as I do?

 

[Baneat]

Also, DA2 is HARDER than DAO

Uhhhhh.....nnnnnnnno.

This should be in the user reviews section, maybe.

Could you please explain? If I'm wrong, then would it not be reasonable to elaborate on what I've been mistaken on?

Yes, i can explain. The difficulty of DAO was acknowledged by even the developers of being too hard. There was a patch soon after release that improved the stats of your party.
On Normal, the first game required a tank+healer combination to play effectively. I've finished DA2 once (now playing it a second time) using a two-handed sword warrior with Taunt and the defense aura as my tank.
In the first game, on Normal and Hard, area of effect spells could damage your own party. In DA2, they do not unless you're playing Nightmare.
Add to that the speed at which the enemies die, the lunge attacks, automatic drop rate adjustment of potions, class combos with devastating effects and the fact that choosing spells has been made far more accessible and streamlined, and you have an easier game. The only difficult element in DA2 are the mobs that stealth and backstab your support characters, but even those are easy to take care of with the huge amount of crowd control spells.

I don't care what they say, DA2 is so much harder, for me, than DA:O, I wipe on every encounter on normal but breezed through DA:O's hard mode.

 

[Agayek]

I have it on 360 (shoot me they won't let me return it) and the combat is not the same as origins. That is fact.

But wait we both disagreed on something that is a fact... probably because it isn't a fact.

Except that you're wrong. The combat in DA2 is exactly the same as DA:O, mechanically speaking. It's all calculated in exactly the same way and it follows the exact same rules. The only difference is that cooldowns, animations and whatnot have been tweaked to make it all flow much more smoothly and be much faster paced.

 

[MinishArcticFox]

I agree that it is a similar game and that the companions were a bit disappointing as was the lack of coercion.

But there is no way the combat was a hard cross class combos eased the difficulty by quite a bit. Origins kicked my ass until I was wearing it like a hat but I only died once through out all of Dragon Age 2. But that may be a unique experience.

 

[Madkipz]

Also, DA2 is HARDER than DAO

Uhhhhh.....nnnnnnnno.

This should be in the user reviews section, maybe.

Could you please explain? If I'm wrong, then would it not be reasonable to elaborate on what I've been mistaken on?

Yes, i can explain. The difficulty of DAO was acknowledged by even the developers of being too hard. There was a patch soon after release that improved the stats of your party.
On Normal, the first game required a tank+healer combination to play effectively. I've finished DA2 once (now playing it a second time) using a two-handed sword warrior with Taunt and the defense aura as my tank.
In the first game, on Normal and Hard, area of effect spells could damage your own party. In DA2, they do not unless you're playing Nightmare.
Add to that the speed at which the enemies die, the lunge attacks, automatic drop rate adjustment of potions, class combos with devastating effects and the fact that choosing spells has been made far more accessible and streamlined, and you have an easier game. The only difficult element in DA2 are the mobs that stealth and backstab your support characters, but even those are easy to take care of with the huge amount of crowd control spells.

I don't care what they say, DA2 is so much harder, for me, than DA:O, I wipe on every encounter on normal but breezed through DA:O's hard mode.

the reason you are dying is because you are not running away from the spawn area, once you are gone from where the waves spawn then the fights become VERY easy and everything is served in sizeable chunks. The only difficulty change from hard to nightmare is in the numbers departement (damage // adds). Bosses are easy as pie (other than rock wraith).

1) you state that combat has not been dumbed down in any way:

The melee AI can NEVER hit you if you are good at abusing the mechanics of the game. Dragon age 1 did not have this issue, as once the animation was started the damage was considered dealt.

2) You state that there is inventory management in this game.

I state that there is LESS inventory management in this game.

 

[RivFader86]

I think DA:O was lot harder in combat (to the point of being frustrating at some points). You needed to control your companions a lot more like for example switch to the tank that is standing away from the other 5 mobs to slap a lonely archer while said 5 mobs beat the rogue into the ground while the healer shoots shiny sparks at them (that is with fine tuning the tactics to get them to work halfway decent on their own)because of her longass cd's (which when reduced not only make the game "flow much better" but a hell of a lot easier...1 heal in a minute or 2 is a HUGE difference). I finally had enough at one point lowered the difficulty to the point where there is no more friendly fire and just ae'd the shit out of every group (cone of cold ftw).
Right now DA2 actually seems to easy on normal but since i'm rather low (lvl 9 i think) i'm holding back my final verdict. But fights are over very quickly most enemies die from mage ae before i can shoot em with my rogue and the ones i do manage to get are dead after one or two shots...so right now i seems to me that it should have been "smaller groups with tougher mobs"
But nevertheless the combat in DA2 is a lot of fun.

What really annoys me is that you can't put regular armor you find on your companions...i dunno maybe i just like to play dress up ;p But i kinda miss that.

 

[Vayce]

I've seen all sorts of people on forums dump hatred on DA2 in a seemingly irrational manner, so I thought what better way to find truth to these accusations than to play the game itself? So having played the game myself, here are some completely unbiased confirmations that I can make here. Bear in mind that I'm playing the PC version, so maybe some of these things may not apply to the console versions.

Combat has not been dumbed down in anyway. Also, DA2 is HARDER than DAO (I've been playing on Hard and Normal, the REAL difficulties that you should be playing on).

I don't know why people keep talking about how everything has been dumbed down. You auto attack by right clicking on enemies, you set tactics for your non controlled party members, you can pause the game in order to deliver commands to your companions strategically, and you can use skills and abilities by hotkey or mouse. Same as the original but faster and more fluid, pretty much. Also your character doesn't shuffle around awkwardly when trying to attack certain enemies even when you right click on them like in Dragon Age Origins, so that's a plus for me. And yes, this game is harder than the first. Abilities have been remade somewhat and enemies will swarm you like crazy, so you'll be pausing a lot more often in order to get yourself out of stickier situations. The bosses are actually difficult, too, especially now that you can't just chug all four types of Health poltices on your character anymore. Now you only get one type of Health potion and one type of Stamina potion and both of them have long cooldowns.

There is inventory management in this game as well as being able to customize the appearance of Hawke.

I don't know where people got this assumption from, but I can say for certain that it came out of their asses. You can indeed customize the appearance of Hawke and equip items on him or her with a wide range of armor, helmets, rings, amulets, belts, and weapons. The only difference is that armor can't be equipped just by your Strength stat but sometimes by both Strength and Consitution which apply to heavy armor or Cunning and Dexterity which apply to light armor. You can also equip your companions with amulets, rings, belts, and weapons but not their default outfits, but is that really a bad thing? Can you really picture Morrigan wearing a First Enchanter Robe or Isabella wearing heavy plate?

The game was no more linear than Dragon Age Origins and Awakening were.

Basically, the gist is that there are still rival factions to choose between, a wide assortment of main plot quests that can be undertaken at any time, and loads and loads of side quests to complete. Dragon Age Origins gave the player the illusion of having freedom by giving them the ability to change companions into whatever armor sets and weapons that they liked, but in truth there wasn't much freedom at all. Leliana starts out strictly as an archer, Sten a two-handed swordsmen, and Morrigan a mage. Yeah you can equip Morrigan with dual daggers and Sten with a sword and shield but that wouldn't be very efficient, would it?






Now, to prove that I am indeed unbiased I'm going to confirm some things that did genuinely disappoint me in Dragon Age 2.

No more persuasion or cunning options in dialogue.

A minor complaint, but still bugged me a bit. Running into special kinds of dialogue options that offered better rewards or unorthadox outcomes were always kind of a nice thing to have.

Side quests consist mostly of talking to people and killing things.

Pretty self explanatory, and was also a problem that Dragon Age Origins had.

Companions weren't quite as dynamic or memorable as Origins's companions were. Also you can't converse with them as often.

I don't know. To me the characters you get in Dragon Age 2 have the potential to be very compelling and interesting but they just haven't stuck to me yet. I think they could have gotten the player more attached to these companions if they would let you converse with them more often.


In short TLDR, Dragon Age 2 is a fairly decent RPG that is, in most aspects, just as good as Dragon Age Origins. Also that most of the hatred that DA2 gets is completely irrational. Seriously, 2/10? Only a completely broken game with absolutely no redeeming qualities would be worthy of a score that low. 7-8/10 would be more fair in my opinion.

Good write-up. I agree that a lot of the hate seems to be coming from PC enthusiasts who consider themselves betrayed and call people "consoletards" if they disagree. I'm playing the PC version, having a blast in Kirkwall, and that's all that matters to me. BioWare did not do me wrong with this game.

 

[Wierdguy]

Jesus christ guys... if you play a bioware game for the combat youve totaly missed the point... who cares about the fighting? Its always been the story that drives bioware games - if you want combat then go play wow or CoD or something similar =p

 

[Paragon Fury]

Also, DA2 is HARDER than DAO

Uhhhhh.....nnnnnnnno.

This should be in the user reviews section, maybe.

Could you please explain? If I'm wrong, then would it not be reasonable to elaborate on what I've been mistaken on?

Not at all.

I played on Hard, and only had people bite it during the first Deep Roads boss, the Arishok and Meredith.

 

[automatron]

But some of the hatred is indeed retarded, I heard some people whined why they couldn't have a romance option with Bethany/Carver.

Ewwwwwww...
But so far I like the game.
No real opinions on the difference, haven't played the first

 

[Chechosaurus]

I agree with pretty much everything the OP says. I really did find DA II to be much harder than DA:O at some points. I played on hard as a mage and some bits absolutely kicked my arse. That Rock Golem in the Deep Roads actually made me turn it down to normal to even give my party a fighting chance and even then it was an uphill battle - not to mention the rogues that could one hit Hawke and everyone else except for my Tank.

The combat is much more fluid and because of the cross class combos, you really have to work together as a team in order to make it on hard. In DA:O, I just used Glyph of Repulsion combined with Glyph of Paralysis for a long AOE paralyse which I would then repeat with Morrigan once it had worn off.

I also completely agree with you as far as the characters go. I only really liked Isabella, Anders, Varric and Merrill (Merrill is one of the best Bioware characters ever in my opinion) but the others were either unlikeable or I just didn't get enough chance to converse with them. I haven't played at all with Bethany because she died before I even reached Kirkwall so I don't know what she's like but I've been told that she's not all that great. I did eventually warm up to Aveline but her voice actor wasn't really all that inspiring and didn't seem to embrace the role very much. On the flip side though, there is a lot of truly excellent party banter as you wander around the city that does go a way to making up for the lack of one-to-one interaction.

As for the story, I wasn't really sure where it was until the second act. The first 10 hours of my playthrough was various side quests but after the Deep Roads, the story really picked up. I think that one reason why the story wasn't as well received is because it isn't as clear cut as 'The world is at stake and you are the only one who can save it' but I personally thought that it was excellent, especially in the third act. I won't say anything to ruin it for anyone who hasn't finished yet but the last few hours were magnificently intense.

Another aspect that I really liked was how your decisions in the game seem to have a greater impact on the outcome. I haven't done a second playthrough yet (I'm working on it though) but it seems like every choice you make could greatly affect the third act which gives it a much better replay value than DA:O.

As for not being able to completely kit out your party members... Well I though that was for the best. There is a maximum of 10 items to consider when equipping a party member and when you have 9 people to kit out, that's around 90 items to keep track of and that it just encourages you to keep with the same three party members. If you decide to take someone new out, you have to spend a fortune kitting them out and making sure that their trousers are better than the ones you are selling and it's all a bit much... even more me and I fucking love numbers and trousers.

Also, I agree that the lack of 'cunning' dialogue options was tragic. Every Bioware game I have played has always been best when your character has a tonne of points in conversational skills whether it be Renegade/Paragon from Mass Effect or Coercion from KoTOR.

Captcha - would Ithern

Would Ithern what?

 

[Roganzar]

Personally, I don't find DA2 to be easier or harder than DA:O, just a different approach to challenges. I'm doing two-hander tanking half the time Avaline soaking damage the other half and doing as well as I would do in Origins, a couple of drops in some harder fights then learning the tricks of bosses through trial and wipe tactics.
Most importantly I'm having fun playing Hawke stand-up comedy Champion of Kirkwall.
Micromanaging is horribly over-rated in my opinion so getting away without it in the majority of the fights is good with me.