Was Dragon Age II really that bad?

[The Lunatic]

For a game from a big studio, it's absolutely awful.

If you aren't expecting much, I'm sure it'll be fine, but, if you've paid full price and played the previous game you're in for a serious smack in the face.

 

[VladG]

They took the game in a different direction. Instead of an epic, world-spanning adventure, this time it's a more personal, more focused experience. It has the same solid writing, superb characters, brilliant universe as the first games, with improved gameplay and combat. Frankly I found it at least as good as the previous titles, if not slightly better. True, the copy-pasted map is annoying, but I'd rather have that and all the great story and characters, than a big, empty, soul-less (but very diverse) map.

I played this thing through in one go, and that's more than I can say for DA1.

 

[JediMB]

And, depending on how Awekinings turned out for you...

Spoiler

They retconned Ander's death. That's just poor.

But to be fair, Awakening already largely disregarded the post-game ending from Origins, in much the same way as Broken Steel invalidates the ending you get from vanilla Fallout 3.

There were worse retcons in the game, really. Ones that actually invalidated choices made by the player, such as...

Spoiler

Leliana's death, if you bring her with you when/if you desecrate Andraste's ashes.

While I would never ever do that, personally, I don't think BioWare should have overridden the decision for the players who did.

That said, I thought Dragon Age II was great. Much more fun to play than Dragon Age: Origins, although there were balance issues that took away a bit from the tactical aspects. The lack of an isometrical-style view didn't really hurt the tactical combat much, though.

 

[AlternatePFG]

It wasn't awful, it was just mediocre. The story has some nice ideas going but it's so disjointed it simply doesn't work. Half of your companions are completely unlikeable. I would say that they somewhat improved the combat system, but it's let down by the fact that repetitive wave after wave of enemy are sent after you. I wasn't expecting it to be any good though, so it wasn't a surprise.

Those who said it was the worst game of the year or something are idiots though.

 

[ABLb0y]

I actually prefered it to the original. I don't know why, but accuse me of being a 'Console-Fag' if you want, and tell me to 'Go back to CoD' But i really liked it.

 

[pluizig]

For me, DA2 had two major problems:

- They didn't make the most of the 'ten years, one city' idea. Kirkwall never changes in ten years (even after ACT 2 SPOILERS, it still looks the same in Act 3), your friends don't age or even change their clothes, etc.
- Wave spawns of enemies. Why do fifty random thugs throw their lives away at the legendary Hero of Kirkwall, followed by fifty of their friends appearing out of nowhere, followed by fifty MORE of them? Every. Single. Time.

 

[JediMB]

I thought it was an improvement, not least due to the more substantial themes and its distinctive artistic direction.
Origins was good, but it was virtually void of identity. DAII corrected that mistake.

The whole family/friends theme of the game was both very kind and very cruel to my heart.

I really should get to doing that second playthrough soon. But I feel as if I should finish my second Origins character first, and that's just god-damned boring. (I don't like playing a Mage Warden.)

 

[KaizokuouHasu]

To me Dragon Age 2 was quite weak as games go. As a sequel it does a poor job of referencing Origins. And as a title when ignoring the first game falls short because of their use of visceral fighting; that is, you swing your oversized sword and blast all those spells and colour the screen epileptic-hazardous, but still your attacks are only meh strong. It chose looks over quality. Typical for a money-making project.

The combat was always a bother. First you face of against 3-12 enemies and mercilessly slaughter them in a comparatively short time (unless you play on higher difficulties in which case it is shamelessly slow) and then be treated to 2-6 more enemies to eviscerate. The second wave was always smaller than the first which makes little sense. What group of bandits attack with the bulk of their strength only to then jump in with the remaining stragglers when it should be obvious by now how f-cked they are?

I also had a problem with many of the characters. It felt like they were designed with the mind that not a one would be right in the head, or at least would have character traits that are less than forgiveable unless you're nuts.

Spoiler: Overview on your team with spoilers

Everyone in you whole team will betray you given the chance. If not in the main story line, they will in a side-quest when you enter the fade. Basically - you have the worst friends in history and every single one of them will pick their own happiness of your joint one.

Spoiler: Varric

Varric is cool. He is hard to dislike because he is very agreeable. The only reason you'd want to have him on your bad side would be because you've decided to be a dick. He will try to betray you in the fade when offered the power to get his revenge on his older brother even though his brother left both Hawke and Varric to die over a treasure meaning that revenge wasn't just his to take.

Spoiler: Aveline

She is a very ungrateful personality. She owes her life in Kirkwall to the player (Hawke).She annoyed me immensely when she tried to compare the natural death of her father and her remorse over it to the death of Hawke's mother. Hawke's mother had her head severed of her body and reattached to another dead woman's body. Her eyes were then cut out and replaced with another pair from yet another woman. After that she was reanimated from the dead to serve as a sex-puppet to a mad necromancer. Not quite the same thing as passing away from age and illness. I'm not sure what Bioware was thinking when they figured they'd have Aveline go "I know how you feel". She will try to betray you in the fade when she is offered to see her dead husband again even though she has already got a new man in her life.

Spoiler: Fenris

Fenris has got a lot of stick for being 'Emo' by many players. And sure, while he does sport a rather ugly hairstyle and always speaks in a very nihilistic and gloomy way, he is actually a fairly well played character. Having been a slave for as long as he can remember he holds a deep grudge towards magic users (since those were the people he was a slave to), and he doesn't like anyone who tries to tell him how goody-good-good mages really are. I can understand his frustration, but he has a knack for going over-board with his criticism. He will try to betray you in the fade when he is offered the power to fight back against his former master and not have to run every again. He already has this power since he is strong as it is, but also because Hawke is with him.

Spoiler: Anders

I didn't play Awakening, so I'm not too informed on his past. He hates anyone who doesn't openly proclaim how evil Templars are and how wicked the Chantry is for not acting against them. Many times he shows signs that he wants to start a war against the templars. He does start one at the end of the game, which basically means that for all his talk about how innocent and oppressed mages are he is hell-bent on justifying the fear that had the mages all over the nations imprisoned to begin with. Not quite logical. He is the only one who won't betray you in the fade, but instead he will betray your friendship by deceiving you into distracting the Chantry's attention while he plants a magical bomb inside it so he can blow the whole place up starting a war between Mages and non-mages word-wide. Ouch.

Spoiler: Merrill

She annoyed me. While not enough to lead me to pursue a relationship with her at first, but the fact that she is so obsessed with a friggin' mirror and the past that she will murder her whole clan when they tell her it's a bad idea. She was quite effective at it too because of her skill build. She will try to betray you in the fade when she is offered even more power to help her with that friggin mirror she drools over.

Spoiler: Isabella

Isabella is the reason the war started between the Qunari and Kirkwall since she stole the artefact that the Qunari are looking for in the first place. When you are about to retrieve it she will spirit it away again and by then it is too late to calm the friction with the Qunari. She does make a return in the final showdown with the Arishok, but she doesn't win any loyalty back since all the deaths already caused was her fault to begin with. Many people still forgive her and see her return as enough to give her a full pardon. She will betray you in the fade when she is offered a new boat. She makes a poor reference to the 'big butt' song and promptly dies as I activate my 'Assassinate skill' for 1800 damage.

Basically, you really ought to play the game solo. Your team isn't exactly reliable company.

The thing that broke the game for me was their stupid use of plot devices. It's a major spoiler, read at your own risk:

Spoiler: Read only if you've finished the game

Early in the game you are introduce to three characters you will see again in the coming acts. First one is Sister Petrice and the second one is Javaris. Both of the exploit you in their own way, but Javaris is the only one you can actually kill. The third one is Grace, a blood mage on the run from Templars following the burning down of her previous circle of Magi

Spoiler: Sister Petrice

Petrice sends you on a quest to 'free a slave Qunari mage'. When you reach your destination it turns out Petrice has led you into a trap where you were to die at the hands of Qunari. After surviving you attempted murder you can confront Petrice - but not kill her. She is a plot device so she is free to leave unscathed with the only thing you can say to her is 'you lost an ally'. She will scoff at you and leave with the final word. She then proceeds to murder the Viscounts only Son and try to pin the blame on you. Yet again you can't kill her, because here her fate is decided by either a Qunari bowman (who will kill her instead of you), and the other is the Grand Cleric, who will spare her but take her title away for being 'too extreme'.

Spoiler: Javaris

Javaris is a business man who isn't too good at the long term thinking. He asks you to kill Qunari deserters hoping to win the favour of the Arishok. This backfires when the favour is granted to Hawke instead, and Javaris tries to get away without paying for your service. In a later quest he is framed for the theft of the Qunari's secret gun-powder. He is innocent but at the end of the quest Hawke is given the choice to murder him for being 'inconvenient'. Javaris is innocent, and really hasn't wronged you in any way, he is still the only one of the two mentioned that you can kill.

Spoiler: Grace

Grace is first met in a quest from Sir Thrask of the Templars. He wants you to convince the group of mages that Grace is in to surrender to the Templars to avoid needless deaths. Grace asks you to murder Sir Thrask so she can escape. Your choices here will invariably lead to Thrask surviving, and Grace will either go to the circle or go free. In either case she will begin to develop antipathy towards Hawke and blame him for the death of the leader of the hiding Mages. She will eventually betray Sir Thrask and kill him because Thrask doesn't want the death of Hawke. Until Sir Thrask's death you can't kill Grace. Ever!

Bioware get a lot of credit for being great at developing stories and characters and all that jazz. But I must say, as a gamer I feel that Bioware has always fallen short in just these areas.

Essentially, Dragon Age 2 to is a functional game, but it won't stand the test of time. It has 'give us more money' spray painted all over it.

 

[Vindestructable]

I thought it was better than DA1, despite its flaws.
As an action game. But it doesn't really matter what genre it is. There's the simple fact that I had more fun with it than I did with DA1.

See this is it right here. I'm currently re-playing DA2 and I think the fact that I haven't played the first one in so long is causing me to see things differently. DA2 is not a good example of an RPG because it's not an RPG, not really. It's the same thing that happened when mass effect 2 came out and that is about to happen with Skyrim. Fanboys will always rage like, well like fanboys whenever things change.

 

[Zydrate]

I bought both at the same time, but I'm still doing WoW stuff before I get to Origins at any length. I've gotten to level 6 on a few different "alts" on Origins.
Decent so far, if a bit dated. Feels like KotoR, Medieval version. I can't judge the second yet because I'm really trying to finish the first one.

 

[Curlythelock]

I didn't think that the game in itself was bad, however as a sequel to DA1 it was terrible.

 

[JediMB]

your friends don't age or even change their clothes, etc.

While I agree on a whole that they could have done more with the time skips (also, I got the feeling that I would have rather played through the very first time skip), I have to at least point out that Aveline does change her uniform a few times.

- Wave spawns of enemies. Why do fifty random thugs throw their lives away at the legendary Hero of Kirkwall, followed by fifty of their friends appearing out of nowhere, followed by fifty MORE of them? Every. Single. Time.

I definitely did like the enemy waves as a concept, but not that it happened every single time.

Also, once you actually do become the Champion of Kirkwall (especially if you accept the duel), it seems unreasonable that there should be so many people in the city that could (or would) challenge you.

 

[A3sir]

Baldur's Gate I/II was, is and always will be my favorite game.

I went into DA:O expecting Baldur's Gate for the 21st century. It was delivered and I was pleased and I still replay it now.

So being a sequel, I expected DA2 to be Shadows of Amn for the 21st century, but instead I got Mass Effect: Fantasy.

I don't play Mass Effect, I don't like Mass Effect. I'm not saying Mass Effect are bad games, I thought they were great games, but they just aren't my playstyle. I also didn't like the KOTOR games either, which is what the whole thing is cut and pasted out of. Again KOTOR I/II are great games, but not my playstyle. People went in thinking that DA2 was going to be DA:O with a new story, spells, etc, but it was completely different.

 

[Furioso]

It isn't that the game is terrible, it's just that it was so much worse than origins. It really felt like the developers were just lazy for this game

 

[Gluzzbung]

True, Origins was an incredible achievment in game developing but Dragon Age II could have been so much better. I adored the complex and tactical combat in D'age O though it got a bit unforgiving at times, D'age II's combat was so dumbed down it actually made it difficult to do what I wanted to do in game. Healing, with a 40s cooldown? and even combat abilities have a 30s cooldown or so. There wasn't much choice and there was no story, you seemed to just be milling about kirkwall not doing a great deal. I also liked how intuitive the map screenw as in D'age 1 and it was so because you didn't have to flick through three different map screens to get where you wanted and, although the dialogue system in D'age II was better, it just didn't seem as imersive because of the little symbol next to what you wanted to say

 

[Negatempest]

Depends on what side of the pond most effected you. For me, it was Tank spec. In DA1 it was extremely useful and fun to play as the tank of the group. In DA2 Tank spec is ****ed for the main protagonist. Aggro doesn't work well for a tank, nor did taunt. So yeah, I got hurt bad by DA2.

p.s. If I did not clarify, I love to tank.

 

[Hyper-space]

If it was made by any other game developer by any other name, it would be considered a decent to good RPG that tried a little too hard to be Dragon Age on Red Bull.

Whether it's fair to judge it as how it differed from the first game and because it was Bioware who made it, I suppose that is up to the individual. I can see why a lot about the game people would dislike, but I thought despite many niggling flaws it was still quite good and more importantly an important stepping stone for Bioware. They've been sitting pretty in their safe-zone for a long time, its time to branch out, even if it's scary and doesn't work out perfectly every time. In an industry such as ours that is plagued with a follow-the-leader mentality and only the tiniest steps forward in sequels, we sorely need that bold action. Even if it means we occasionally fall flat on our faces

edit: It should be noted for the record that I am also a big fan of Obsidian entertainment, a studio (in)famous for its buggy releases and often wonky gameplay. I have a lot of experience putting up with flaws to get to the gooey center of a game, which could be why DA2 doesn't bother me nearly as much as it does most people.

This. Bioware, for the first time, gave us actual well-rounded characters (Fenris was the only annoying one) whose development was not centered around the main character (this is a bigger thing than people expect) and a story that wasn't just cookie-cutter RPG-fare.

And that's where the back-lash comes from, that it went from DA:O, a game that prided itself on being nothing but nostalgia-bait with the same flaws that its inspiration had (clunky AI, generic story, trite character-archetypes and slower-than-fucking-BG2-combat) to something that went out of its comfort-zone and tried new things. Hell, even the Qunari were now an interesting culture (Shepherding Wolves is one of the best quests that i have played and the ending genuinely stunned me) , unlike in DA:O where they were simply taller humans with pointier ears and the standard "PROUD WARRIOR RACE" cliche.

Fans expected BG2, but they got something new, which is simply the crux of the matter.

 

[The_Emperor]

Personally I wasn't big on the first one, it was good but it got boring and samey imo, the story wasn't THAT good.

The second one just didn't excite me. It was just Dragon Effect. Strange considering I liked Mass Effect 2.

Bioware are making too much money, I think when companies get bigger it gets harder to retain the passion they felt for the game and it gets to be more about the money. The profit incentive ruins everything artistic imo. Either that or they start handing responsibility to inferior devs because they have too much on their plate and the game suffers for it.

The Witcher 2 was simpler, yet much better.