Why so much hate for Dragon Age 2?

[Mausthemighty]

Dragon Age 2 was very bad compared to Dragon Age: Origins.
- The combat was quicker and more spectacular, but IMHO too spectacular (exploding bodies from a backstab?).
- The waves of enemies, spawning out of thin air, threw every thought about protecting your mages out of the window.
- The characters were very annoying and differed a lot from their DA:O counterparts. Anders for example was really nice in Dragon Age Awakening and I loved his quirky humour. He was a good replacement for Alistair. In DA2 he became a whiny, possessed mage with terrorist tendencies. I hated his changed personality so much that I killed him off. Merrill was a stupid naïve elf, and should not have been a love interest. The only character I did like was Varric.
- The main character was bland
- The art direction was bad: I hated what they've done with the Qunari. Sten was a really cool character in Dragon Age: Origins due to his dry remarks and he looked normal. In DA2 the Qunari were changed to some kind of demonic giants.
- The story was bad. First story was going on a treasure hunt, second story the growing tension between Qunari and humans, the third about Mages and Templars. At the end of the game I didn't feel Hawke had accomplished much except getting a champion's armour, and getting filthy rich.
- Speaking of armour, why did they remove the option of equipping the other characters. I liked how I could put my old Blood Dragon armour on Alistair, while I got my new Black armour instead. In DA2 this option was removed.,
- The ending was bad. I hated how both choices were bad choices. The templars were evil, but so were the mages. It felt like my actions had no effect at all.
- The blatant reuse of the same dungeon, over and over again is inexcusable.
- No mod kit what so ever. What made the PC-version of DA:O really great were the mods. I liked how you could change the appearance of the characters. You could even install a nude mod if you were into that kind of thing! Dragon Age 2 had none of that.
- The DLC was really not that good. Dragon Age Origins had at least a few short extra missions and an expansion which mad it a bigger game. DA2 only had the Julian DLC which was no more than Day 1 DLC, and a few weapon packs.

The game is bad, if you compare it to its predecessor. It's abominable if you compare it to real RPG's like Baldur's Gate and Planescape Torment.

After this disappointment I set my hopes on ME3, hoping that it was a onetime mistake of Bioware. Sadly... it wasn't.

 

[ForstyNick]

I don't intend to read the whole thread, just to check if someone else have alreadt written what I'm about to say, so here it goes.

Dragon Age 2 isn't a bad game... If it wasn't for the fact that it was made to follow Dragon Age Origins.
I mean, DA:2 didn't have huge problems any more than ME:3, since they just seemed so much the same.

My main problem with DA:2 was the simple fact that: No matter what I chose, it would always end in the same! I side with the Mages and I end up killing them. I side with the Templars and BAM! I slice the throat of the knight-commander.
No matter what I did in the game, it all ended in some kind of repeating story...

Which is also the reason for me not being able to complete the game more than once.

 

[iseko]

I liked what they were trying to do. Telling a story of a man who isn't pre destined to do something great. But who is sort of thrown into it against his wishes. Doing what he must to build a life for him and his family. I liked that part of the game. Eventhough the first act: collect x amount of gold at a very tedious rate, kinda sucked .

What they didn't do right was the following. You had like 5 different dungeons which got reused 100 times over. That is just you being lazy. I wouldn't mind revisiting a dungeon after 10 years in game have passed. But not every fucking time.

Combat sucked. I don't hate console's, for same games they work perfectly. But DA origins was developed for pc users and had a much better combat system. DA2 just had a crappy combat system. It reminded me of god of war ffs. A lot of people would say it was more fluid. Yeah... in a sense that it required no strategy whatsoever and was mainly just a button mashup. I liked that you had to pause the game and issue orders in the first DA. Strategy baldur's gate style. This just doesn't fit with a RPG. But thats my opinion. If someone else liked it, that is theirs.

The fucking loading times...

Overall it felt like a rushed out game with a crystal core, wrapped in shit. They wanted it to be playable by a broader community (I got nothing against that bit), but in doing so destroyed core gameplay. The game's story felt like a prologue to the third dragon age, rather than being a story that can stand on its own and lead up to the next chapter.

Conclusion: it sucked and i'll be very wary off buying DA3

 

[putowtin]

Firstly, I love the game, but even I have some issues, I'll stick to character comments (lets ignore the reused area chat)

There's the good,
Fenris: I like his backstory and he doesn't immediately want to jump into bed with you (unlike most of the other companions)
Varric: Always in my party, tells good stories, doesn't kiss you're arse (or you... damn shame!)
Aveline: Solid character, good fighter and seems to care in a "big sister" kind of way.
Bethany: less annoying than her twin, (who I end up with more often as I tend to play DAII as a mage)

The bad,
Anders: Annoyingly annoying.
Merrill: Everyone she cares about dies.... and it's all her fault!
Anders: Did he invent hair dye? his eyebrowns are black and his hair is blond!
Isabela: put em' away love, I'm not interested.
Anders: I've spoken to you once and you're bithcing at my boyfriend that "you'd be better for me" Go jump off a cliff!

 

[iseko]

- The story was bad. First story was going on a treasure hunt, second story the growing tension between Qunari and humans, the third about Mages and Templars. At the end of the game I didn't feel Hawke had accomplished much except getting a champion's armour, and getting filthy rich.

I pretty much agree with you 100% on everything you said except for the bit I didn't cut out. I agree that the story wasn't what it should have been. But what I did like about it was that Hawke was never supposed to be a 'hero'. Not in the traditional sense of a hero anyways. He was just a man trying to flee with his family and start a new life. In happenstance he becomes someone of importance in the city. And at the end he is thrown in the centre of a tragedy. Not because he really chooses to be there. Rather because he doesn't really have a choice.

That is the core of the story for me anyways. The execution of the story however does suck. Your choices don't really matter. You are just along for the ride. But I do like the concept they were trying out. If that matters for anything at all .

 

[LiquidGrape]

It's my BioWare favourite. The Isabela/Aveline relationship alone is the best thing to ever come out of that studio.
It's also one of few games to explore a theme of disempowerment, something I'd love to see a lot more of. Shame the marketing tried to sell it as something completely different. The game was infinitely more interesting than anyone had any reason to expect.

 

[Ishigami]

I love DA. Played through it 6 times.
I also like DA2. It has its fair share of problems like the dungeon recycling, the much smaller scale or the enemy wave mechanics and fewer dialogues. Therefore it is a step down from DA which makes it a disappointment. However I genuinely believe it is still a decent game, not great or anything but simply okay.
Some things are just blown out of proportion e.g. the change in the combat system. If you compare it to DA the only thing they really changed is that they cut the activation/cast times and the isometric view which I have to admit I did not use that much in DA. All in all I liked the combat in DA2 better because of the missing activation times it was more fluently what put the dent in the fun was the wave mechanic and the lack of tactics due to the lackluster AI but tbh DA was plagued by the last two as well.
It had some pretty good moments e.g. the first time around I had Bethany with me in dwarven ruins without Anders. Her death came out of the blue nor can you influence it in any kind of way after you made you choice on who travels with you but it kinda paid off despite being a little bit constructed.
I also felt that your companions were fine. There was nothing game breaking there.
The art I even consider to be improved. Finally Elves and Quanri look really distinguished from humans. Thanks to the personalized armor designs of your companions the diversity was better there as well (too much copy paste designs in DA:O) though I agree that being unable to completely equip your companions is a step back.
Anyway I enjoyed DA2. Not as much as DA:O nor do I think DA2 is a great game. But someone saying DA2 is the worst game ever has either no idea how low quality can get or is simply a hater. Either way it is not worth discussing with someone like this.

I hope BioWare takes some complains too heart and improves for DA3.
E.g. I don't need a voiced protagonists. Instead give me more dialogue options as it was with DA:O. A more open and none linear approach in map design would also be greatly appreciated give me a chance to exploit terrain or formations. Do not recycle maps. The combat mechanics themselves are fine IMO but abolish the waves and improve the AI tenfold so not every fight is a cluster fuck e.g. split up groups and give them a certain visual range and field.
Give me a group of 4 because then I can mix up my party better. With a party of 3 I'm bound to the holy trinity unable to change the set up even in the slightest way.
Give us mod tools on the PC, mods for DA:O were great!
And so and so forth...

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

The reason why it gets a lot of "ITS THE WORST" isn't that its the worst game ever made but it was one of the worst disappointments in recent years in almost every respect. Even ME3 was great in so many ways up until that ending.

This is, honestly, the reason. The game isn't, all told, actually bad. The sins people point to are committed in some form or fashion by the first. The problem is that the game isn't what DA:O fans wanted. It basically suffers from Invisible War syndrome. That game, also, wasn't really a bad one; it just wasn't the game a Deus Ex fan wanted from the franchise.

 

[Legion]

A summary would be:

- Re-used levels, that were pretending to be something else. That is to say, they used the same warehouse, but put it in a different location and a different name. Rather than simply going back to it. Considering the city itself was pretty damn small, it made the game feel very small.

- The story lacked pacing. The three chapters feel very disjointed. I didn't feel that it was so bad between the first and second. But the second and third felt like they were hammered together. The third chapter was completely underwhelming as well.

- The lack of obvious consequences. Being an apostate mage made no difference. Nor did being an apostate blood mage. Both of these should have drastically changed the events of the game considering how the Templars treated even the most innocent of legal mages.

- Two choices, both providing the same outcome. Pretty much everything you choose to do has the same consequence, bar a line or two of dialogue. If a choice doesn't affect anything, it may as well not be there.

- The combat was too over the top. Personally I quite liked the mechanics more than Origins, but the visual aspect felt like an extreme anime. Enemies would explode into a bloody mess when you stabbed them with daggers, for example. The two handed swords also belonged in a JRPG. Plus the magically appearing waves of enemies.

- Most of the companions lacked any subtlety and were pretty much stereotypes and clichés. Except Varric, who is quite possibly the best video game companion ever.

- Auto-dialoge. Sadly they have said this will be in DA3 as well. Putting words into our characters mouths stops them from being "our" characters. People don't want their own personal character expressing opinions and desires that may contradict the character they have created.

Would it have been better if instead of being advertised as *2*, implying a sequel, instead it had a subtitle like the first one, like say "DA: Kirkwall" or "DA:Hawke's Story"? And DA3 being "DA: Inquisition"?

So it might alleviate the thoughts it was a sequel as opposed to another story in the same setting?

In some ways I think that may have helped.

Some people would have no doubt still complained, but I think it is generally accepted that sequels tend to follow in the same "mould" as the game before it. Dragon Age 2 tried to be something different I think.

Personally I don't hate the game, and it didn't bother me, I just felt that it needed another year in development to be above average.

 

[ThriKreen]

It was supposed to be called Dragon Age: Exodus

Fun dev fact: sometimes game projects have a code name for the initial development phase until a proper game title has been decided on, so you'd often seen legacy resources referencing it as it might not have been caught and removed or renamed in time. Not saying you're right or wrong, just that one should be careful and take legacy references like that with a grain of salt.

Although from some digging around, that subtitle existed in some script reference here and there, and it had a logo.

I can't comment on why they went from Exodus to 2, other than maybe the game's themes itself didn't have much to do with an exodus at all (haven't played it), and there wasn't any good alternatives to use so they stuck with 2. Or it was a PR move to get people to buy it thinking it's a sequel.

Some people would have no doubt still complained, but I think it is generally accepted that sequels tend to follow in the same "mould" as the game before it. Dragon Age 2 tried to be something different I think.

Yes, that's my thinking, they should have stuck with a subtitle to temper expectations. One would notice there's no need for a subtitle for ME1 to 3, since it's all of the same character and story. Even the DA:Awakening expansion had a subtitle, as it could have the Grey Warden continue their story, or a new one.

Personally I don't hate the game, and it didn't bother me, I just felt that it needed another year in development to be above average.

Remember to add a year of dev to your estimates, there's always a stage of planning and prototyping before a game is actually announced. Usually as a small team works on what it would be about, make a sample level of gameplay, a vertical slice, to show to the publishers to insure funding and a green light to start on development. Some sort of roadmap has been made (a game design doc) for the game's progression as well. So a sequel usually goes faster as the engine has been developed and the content creators are used to the tools, the setting is more familiar to the writers, etc. Anything after that though, well... feature creep, planning, scheduling, dev team decided on another direction, who knows.

 

[Exius Xavarus]

Would it have been better if instead of being advertised as *2*, implying a sequel, instead it had a subtitle like the first one, like say "DA: Kirkwall" or "DA:Hawke's Story"? And DA3 being "DA: Inquisition"?

So it might alleviate the thoughts it was a sequel as opposed to another story in the same setting?

Yes, yes it would. At least, as far as I'm concerned. I didn't mind it as a game, I just don't think it's a sequel. It uses the same universe, some previous characters and references some previous events in the last game...but I don't think it's a sequel. It's not a continuation of Dragon Age: Origins, it's a different story in a different area in Thedas that has little to nothing at all to do with Origins.

One of my least favorite things about the game was the shift in art direction. I really, really did not like how any of the previous characters looked in DA2. Especially Alistair and Zevran. I didn't particularly care for the cast of companions this time around, either. Especially Merrill.

"I'm going to use blood magic and do anything else that's forbidden to learn about Elven history! What? You don't like that? Well fuck you I'm right, not wrong and I'm doing it anyway!"

I'd like Anders more if he wasn't so whiny.

Fenris is a total dickbag about mages, even mages that help him. I can understand his dislike, but Jesus, dude, shut up about me being a mage, already.

Carver's a total twat toward you if you don't actively agree with everything he thinks and says and throws a total hissyfit if he can't convince you.

I didn't have much of a problem with Varric, Isabela or Sebastian, honestly. And I've got nothing to say about Bethany because I've never had her for longer than the intro(My Hawke was always a mage).

 

[Images]

The reason why it gets a lot of "ITS THE WORST" isn't that its the worst game ever made but it was one of the worst disappointments in recent years in almost every respect. Even ME3 was great in so many ways up until that ending.

This is, honestly, the reason. The game isn't, all told, actually bad. The sins people point to are committed in some form or fashion by the first. The problem is that the game isn't what DA:O fans wanted. It basically suffers from Invisible War syndrome. That game, also, wasn't really a bad one; it just wasn't the game a Deus Ex fan wanted from the franchise.

Whoa, don't get me wrong, I still think the bad outweighed the good in DA2. It is a badly made game.

 

[spartandude]

- The story lacked pacing. The three chapters feel very disjointed. I didn't feel that it was so bad between the first and second. But the second and third felt like they were hammered together. The third chapter was completely underwhelming as well.

Ok im going to admit i did not complete the game so i can comment on act2-3 transition but i thought the change between the first 2 was terrible

if i recall it was 3 years? but whenever you talk to people after that they almost act as though that was the first time you spoke to them in those 3 years which i find so stupid. they all reminisce slightly about meeting you 3 years ago and each one brings up the term "3 years" and no indication is given to ever talking to them or spending time with them. heck even with your own mother who was in the same house does this. it drove me nuts and made me nearly quite right then! however i stayed on for a few more quests before giving up

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

I think the more important question is why are we still talking about Dragon Age 2? The game is a thousand years old!
On topic; I didn't hate Dragon Age 2. I thought it was fine. I actually beat it 3 times. It is an enjoyable albeit shallow little adventure. I mostly liked playing on Nightmare and making some new builds.

 

[Raikas]

Carver's a total twat toward you if you don't actively agree with everything he thinks and says and throws a total hissyfit if he can't convince you.

Heh, I actually loved the Carver rivalry. I actually felt like it was one of the most realistic sibling relationships I've seen in a game.

 

[Exius Xavarus]

Carver's a total twat toward you if you don't actively agree with everything he thinks and says and throws a total hissyfit if he can't convince you.

Heh, I actually loved the Carver rivalry. I actually felt like it was one of the most realistic sibling relationships I've seen in a game.

I'd enjoy it more if Carver wasn't such a total child if you didn't do everything how he wanted it. :/