Why Dragon Age 2 failed...

[Steampunk Viking]

Dragon Age 2 wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. It ranks low on my list of favourite Bioware games but it still ranks above Neverwinter Nights for me (I know, I'm weird, I didn't get on with Neverwinter Nights).

For me, the combat annoyed the hell out of me (why do people randomly jump in everytime!?), the GUI looked far too clean and devoid of any character, Anders went from an amazing and hilarious character in Awakening, to deadbeat, over serious Mage in the sequel, there was alot of de ja vous in each dungeon and the fact it was all in Kirkwall felt restrictive.

Still, Varrick was awesome, the plot was actually pretty good, the Qunari kicked ass and I loved the combat animations and the speed of it. Plus the skill tree made alot more sense and I loved the fact the story was being told by Varrick.

So, yeah, alot of glaring problems outshined the good points, that's why I think people raged at it. It was okay, but ultimately one of Bioware's more forgettable offerings.

Origins, however, was brilliant.

 

[Yopaz]

I honestly didn't think it was that bad. Worse than DA:O, hell, worse than most of Bioware's games, but still not too bad.

This is why Dragon Age 2 failed. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't as good as people expected it to be.

 

[Murmillos]

The only thing that pissed me off about DA2 the most, was that there was only like 2 cave/underground maps for all the caves in the world.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Like this thread is news? Seriously? All I see is hate on Bioware sequels (KOTOR 2 notwithstanding being not a true BIOWARE sequel). "ME2 sux, DA2 sux, I won't buy ME3."

Seriously, learn some constructive points, make some use of your time instead of wasting it on reasons why you hated DA2 (especially this late after it came out).

 

[Revnak_v1legacy]

I genuinely liked only two characters, and then they killed one of them. This is my only major complaint about that game. Oh, and that you can be a blood mage without any real repercussions, but that was present in DA:O as well. In fact, I'm pretty certain you could make Wynne be a blood mage if you'd already unlocked the class. Damn do I hate that problem.

All in all, I still think it was a decent game, I just wish the characters had been handled a bit better. I certainly liked the combat better, but I did feel there weren't enough build options thanks to the limited number of sub-classes. I don't even mind the corner cutting they did. All my other complaints about the game apply to the whole series, so I really think people do go a little overboard in praising DA:O and hating DA2

 

[JamesCG]

I love DA2. I'm actually gearing up to play through it again. Or, I would be, if I hadn't had to format my PS3 and lose all of my save files for Origins. So now I'm just trying to convince myself to slog through origins to get the character that I want to import. (I know there's no MAJOR changes, and I've seen that the hero of ferelden default history does whatever I would've done anyway, pretty much. I'm just one of those guys who NEEDS to import.)

Origins, now, feels like a Slog for me. It doesn't help that I completed Leliana's Song and Darkspawn Chronicles (Ultimate Edition, BTW) and didn't get the trophies for either of em. That just puts me off the game even more. Good? Yes. Buggy as all hell (Having to replay the entirety of Awakening because I didn't know Sigrun's companion quest wouldn't activate if I took a certain sidequest) to the point of making me quit.

All that said, I still /love/ Origins. I just like DA2 a tiny bit more, actually. Not saying it's better-Because, it's probably not-I just like it better.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

The problem I had with DA2 is that every aspect of the game seemed rushed and half finished. I can only hope that Bioware learned from the criticism they received. I will probably wait for player reception for the inevitable DA3 as I did with FF13-2.

Spoiler: I think trees pretty much symbolise how little effort and time was put into it .They look like Christmas trees a child would draw.

 

[endtherapture]

Like this thread is news? Seriously? All I see is hate on Bioware sequels (KOTOR 2 notwithstanding being not a true BIOWARE sequel). "ME2 sux, DA2 sux, I won't buy ME3."

Seriously, learn some constructive points, make some use of your time instead of wasting it on reasons why you hated DA2 (especially this late after it came out).

I liked Mass Effect 2 and preordered Mass Effect 3 so that argument is invalid. Anyway the points being made are being completely constructive.

Just looking at this quote, not reading it but skimming it, it looks like you put a hell of a lot of weight and emphasis on musical score.

I know it's all opinions but why put so much of the failing of the game on the music?

To me it failed 'cos it was dragon age in name alone, it had the odd person from the first game but other than that it was a totally different group of peeps.

It would be like if mass effect two was FFXIII, it would just be a totally different game but with the same name and a number after it.

The music of DA:O was amazing, even listening to the score now makes me all fuzzy and reminiscent and wanting to play the game again. It created the perfect atmosphere, DA2 didn't do that at all so it failed. Creating a good atmosphere for a game is vital. The right art style, music, sound effects all contribute to this. DA2 just is messy in every single respect towards this.

I just wanted to open a thread about how I thought the atmosphere of the game failed, as opposed to people just going on about the copy-pasted environments and bad retcons etc.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Wasn't DA2 still a commercial success and a fairly critical success as well?

Big budget games are not meant for critics and early sales are based on marketing and reputation of the franchise/developer not quality.

 

[verdant monkai]

I absolutely loved DA2 (I'm not going to tell you your opinion is wrong, like a lot of people do, You can hate it that's fine). I got bored as hell in the dialogue bits of Origins it felt a bit like I wasn't taking part, because of my lack of a voice, and expressions. Lets face it in a Bioware game a mute protagonist is an AWFUL AWFUL idea, I know why Bioware wouldn't want to pay for multiple main characters though. They could have replaced my warden with a Fridge, for all the attachment I felt to him. The combat was a bit dull when compared with DA2's. But I agree overall Origins was a better game than DA2.

I found DA2's combat way better, for the reasons you found it bad, it is a fantasy game so who cares if the combat is exaggerated, isn't that the whole point of fantasy.
Yes the story was bad, when compared with Origin,s story. Since you play Bioware games for the story this makes DA2 the inferior game.
I also preferred Origins characters Like Allistair and Sten (my favourites).
I would love to see them re-make Origins with improved combat and a main characters voice.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Like this thread is news? Seriously? All I see is hate on Bioware sequels (KOTOR 2 notwithstanding being not a true BIOWARE sequel). "ME2 sux, DA2 sux, I won't buy ME3."

Seriously, learn some constructive points, make some use of your time instead of wasting it on reasons why you hated DA2 (especially this late after it came out).

Constructive criticism is not when you say "X is good" instead of "X is good and Y is bad," constructive criticism is when you make recommendations to make the work in question better, which includes elements of the work that detract from it. In other words, "this element detracts from the game, please no longer use it" is absolutely constructive criticism.

In a related vein, very few people who get detailed on DA2 shortcomings actually hate Bioware or Bioware games. Hate towards Bioware tends to look more like someone saying "lol, shitty waifu sim with RPG elements" and moving on. "This game would be better if we did X and here is my wall of text supporting this claim" is the sort of thing said by someone who actually likes Bioware and wants them to make the best games they can.

 

[Kungfu_Teddybear]

I agree with you with Dragon Age II failing to create an atmosphere, along with failing to do almost everything else. There's a lot of reasons why I disliked that game, some are just nitpicks some are bigger reasons. I hated some of the new characters and what they did to some of the old characters, for example, Flemeth who showed up looking like she just walked out of a JRPG. Then there was Fenris, don't even get me started on him... I only liked two of the characters, which were Varric and Merrill, even Anders wasn't as good as he was in Awakening.

The combat was awful with Hawke swinging around his sword like there was no tomorrow with moves you would expect to see in JRPG and the gore, the gore I felt was handled very immaturely. In Dragon Age: Origins when you would get in a fight blood would spray on you, there wasn't too much there wasn't too little, it was well handled. In Dragon Age II all of that was thrown out the window and while blood still sprayed on Hawke (only on the front this time which made more sense) enemies would also explode into a puddle of blood if hit with a powerful attack at low HP and it just looked fucking stupid. There was also no reason for tactics in the combat with so many waves of enemies rushing in, there was no real point, it just quickly became the case of just charge in and hit things.

There's also the complaints about it being rushed and how it was a 30 hour long game of 7 copy-pasted rooms, even the part of the world you explored wasn't very big. One city and some area's around the city. I loved Dragon Age: Origins, I've completed it about 6 times and it's one of my favourite RPG's this gen. But I couldn't even do a 2nd play through of Dragon Age II. I bought Dragon Age II expecting more of Origins and I got a rushed out steaming pile of game.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Lets face it in a Bioware game a mute protagonist is an AWFUL AWFUL idea, I know why Bioware wouldn't want to pay for multiple main characters though. They could have replaced my warden with a Fridge, for all the attachment I felt to him.

I don't really agree with this. The warden I actually finished the game with seemed like a fully realized character to me - she had a relationship with her sister reminiscent of Lizzie/Jane from Pride and Prejudice*, a place where she came from (Orzammar slums) a relationship with that place ("you forgot what it's like here, man!"), a personality (ruthless Machiavellian who strongly cares about people in her inner circle), and so on.

Shep, on the other hand, is a bit of a vehicle for inspirational speeches/awesome action hero stuff as opposed to a real character (which is okay), and Hawke feels more like trying to pick which of three obnoxious personalities you hate the least than an actual human being.

This is not to say that voiced protags are inherently inferior (case in point: Geralt) but that unvoiced protags can be done very well indeed.

*I may need to turn in my man cards for saying that

 

[Slycne]

I thought the music was fine. Perhaps it simply felt stale the second time around since it draws on a lot of the same themes? They were both composed by the same person, Inon Zur.

 

[endtherapture]

I absolutely loved DA2 (I'm not going to tell you your opinion is wrong, like a lot of people do, You can hate it that's fine). I got bored as hell in the dialogue bits of Origins it felt a bit like I wasn't taking part, because of my lack of a voice, and expressions. Lets face it in a Bioware game a mute protagonist is an AWFUL AWFUL idea, I know why Bioware wouldn't want to pay for multiple main characters though. They could have replaced my warden with a Fridge, for all the attachment I felt to him. The combat was a bit dull when compared with DA2's. But I agree overall Origins was a better game than DA2.

I found DA2's combat way better, for the reasons you found it bad, it is a fantasy game so who cares if the combat is exaggerated, isn't that the whole point of fantasy.
Yes the story was bad, when compared with Origin,s story. Since you play Bioware games for the story this makes DA2 the inferior game.
I also preferred Origins characters Like Allistair and Sten (my favourites).
I would love to see them re-make Origins with improved combat and a main characters voice.

You do know that Bioware protagonists only started having voices when Mass Effect came out in 2007?

What are considering their finest works, Baldur's Gate and KoTOR both had mute protagonists. Hell Planescape Torment/BG didn't even have fully voiced NPCs, most of it was text only, and they're considered among the best story based RPGs ever.

Voiced NPCs were only the standard after KoTOR really.

I really like Bioware, they're one of my favourite game developers, and that's why Dragon Age 2 got so much hate. Because their other games were so revered and great, and this one was very average compared to them.[/quote]

 

[JediMB]

My problems with Dragon Age II are primarily...

1) Enemy waves. I'm not against them by principle, but using them in nearly every single battle in the game was too much. If for no other reason that you've probably killed enough people to fill up Kirkwall twice over by the end of the game.

2) Rushed story sections. At about the halfway point of the game, the whole action->consequence aspect of the story unravels almost completely, and you're forced to fight both sides of the conflict regardless of your choice. Not just in the final battles, but also several missions leading up to them.

3) Terribly unbalanced boss fights. For some reason they thought it a good idea simply pump the bosses full with Damage Resistance and HP to provide a challenge, which tends to turn those boss fights into chores rather than fun challenges.

That aside, I loved the premise and overall direction of the story, its characters, the basic battle mechanics, and the dialog system's improvements from the Mass Effect series.

And I would say that the game failed financially mostly because it was discredited by people who hadn't even played it, as it was bombarded with criticism based mostly on speculation. Wort-of-Mouth was important to DAO, and no less to DA2.

 

[Kahunaburger]

2) Rushed story sections. At about the halfway point of the game, the whole action->consequence aspect of the story unravels almost completely, and you're forced to fight both sides of the conflict regardless of your choice. Not just in the final battles, but also several missions leading up to them.

Apparently they did this because some of the higher-ups wanted moar boss fights - regardless of whether they make sense in the context of the story - because that would make the experience more epic or something. As a result, you wind up with an entire third act that rests on everyone involved being insane and/or stupid.

 

[verdant monkai]

You do know that Bioware protagonists only started having voices when Mass Effect came out in 2007?



I thought (my opinion, no one kick off now) Bioware made boring games until mass effect graced our consoles in 2007

 

[remnant_phoenix]

Why does this thread keep coming up?

Most of those who hate Dragon Age II have good reasons for doing so.

Most of those who like Dragon Age II have good reasons for doing so.

Those two groups have a hard time maintaining civil and constructive conversation.

I understand that the OP may just be late to the party and he has every right to share his opinions, but when the "party" involves flame-baiting and beating dead horses, maybe it's best to keep those opinions to yourself.

 

[endtherapture]

I understand that the OP may just be late to the party and he has every right to share his opinions, but when the "party" involves flame-baiting and beating dead horses, maybe it's best to keep those opinions to yourself.

I wouldn't say it's beating dead horses, my post is about the atmosphere of DA2 which I felt had failed, however most threads complain about other things. It was essentially opening a new line of discussion, not beating on the same old dead ones.