my Dragon Age 2 review

So here is my Dragon Age 2 review for you all. *updated with more info*



*NOTE* may contain small spoilers

So out of a lack of anything decent to play recently I decided against my original wish to buy Dragon Age 2 which is a role-playing video game developed by Bioware, and published by Electronic Arts. It is the second major game in the Dragon Age franchise.



The game is set in the world of Thedas, and Dragon Age II tells the story of Hawke, who fled the nation of Ferelden during the events of Dragon Age: Origins and arrived in the neighbouring state of Kirkwall as a refugee.

The game covers roughly a decade and is told in a very interesting a novel way, through the eyes of one of his companions at that time in a series of flash backs, fleshing out the story of how Hawke worked his way from a refugee up to the champion of Kirkwall.

The story begins with Hawke and family (their mother Leandra and twin siblings Carver and Bethany) fleeing from Darkspawn after Ferelden's defeat at Ostagar (a major part of the first Dragon age, origins), I really don’t want to get into the story line here, its in-depth and does a fabulous job of filling out events and adding the the lore of Thedas, it is engaging and very enjoyable to be part of.

the story seems to be running just before events of dragon age origins or parallel, but actually i found it a little hard to place exactly when these events where going on, mainly due to the huge time line of this game as stated earlier covering around a decade of time.

quests in this game are obtained from main story NPC's which advance the main storyline, random NPC's giving quests which are you normal type of go here do this/ save this person and return for xp/loot, you can also receive quests upon completing previous ones depending on what choices you made during the quest.

Each companion has its own storyline which adds to the lore and relationship you choose to have with the person, and your actions will often allow you to directly influence whether a companion is friendly or competitive towards you, the good thing is if you can get it to sway enough in either direction you can get passive bonuses in combat which is helpful.

the companion quests do a reasonable job of giving you more story and background to each of the companions and just like in Dragon age origins you can have romantic interaction with companions depending on choices you make through out the game.

There are a lot of quests and although some seem a little pointless most where interesting and fun to fully engage in from start to finish, and the quests are marked clearly in both the journal and in the transition map, which transports you between the varying parts of the city and the outskirts.



One of the reasons I wasn’t going to buy the game to start off with, was the path they decided to take which was to lead combat away from the more tactical paused based strategy and make it more of a Mass Effect 2 clone with a more fast paced and action rpg designed battle system, well I was pleasantly surprised, yes you can play it as a direct action rpg on lower difficulty settings but if you turn the difficulty up you will still need to use the pause button to order commands to your party, of which you can have a total of four at any given time.

I believe there are a total of 9 or 10 possible companions you can have, and switching between them is much more stream-lined in this game, as the only real things you need to worry about with companions is accessories like rings and a main and off weapon. The main armor is not something you can directly switch out, but rather can be upgraded and have rune slots added at various points in the game.





This game has a huge loot pool and most of it is for the main character and at the start of the game you get to choose between being a male or female MAGE, WARRIOR, or ROGUE but no matter what choice you make you will still play as Hawke, also this game introduces a Junk feature which sorts loot into items that are useless except for generating income, this is all stored in your junk tab and as a quick and easy one button sell feature to clear it out easily.

Once again you can add runes to weapons and armor to upgrade them as well as craft potions and bombs, poisons etc, you must find the required recipe and ingredients before you can produce them, and reproducing them is very simple after that, by just visiting a merchant or your home base.

Fighting is a blast, it really is, once again you can directly play as any of the party members you like, pausing and issuing attacks manually, i really like the defining of roles in this game, more so than in dragon age origins, my main party always consists of a main tank which generates threat on multiple mobs, a warrior dps 1 healer/dps and a ranged dps. as stated earlier, on lower settings you can play the game as a hack 'n' slash, but bump the game up to hard or higher and you have to pause and view the battle feild and act accordingly which is always fun, especially when a plan falls in place well.







it’s fast paced and enjoyable, as well as the enjoyable combat I feel as though you can level slightly more quickly in this game, when either yourself or your companions level up you can manually add attributes and abilities or have them done automatically,









as well as that you have a a lot of control over what tactics your companions directly have in battle and I think its better than the first.



Graphics are very nice, with lovely shading and colours, and of course the sound track is once again very good, along with sound effects and voice acting.







Now for the cons to this game, I feels like it was made for a console, they have taken away a lot of control over companions as mentioned earlier regarding armor etc which I loved having control over in the first,



as well as that, the only real gripe I have with the game is the whole game (30-40hrs) is set in or around the city of Kirkwall, and you will see a whole lot of the same areas, dungeons and caves, they have copy/pasted a lot in this game, and although I looks great I feel they were very lazy in this regard, 1 prime example of this is visiting the same cave for a different quest-line and finding a grey slab blocking of a door they don’t want you to go in…meh lazy in my view.

Following recent trends there is downloadable packs for this game, which include weapon and armor packs specifically designed for one of the three roles you choose, and a small expansion pack called Legacy, and although this reviewer hasn’t played through it, I have heard it is unpolished.

So all and all I have enjoyed this game, it is a lot of fun, I think what some of you might have to do, is say oh hey is in the dragon age universe but I shouldn’t relate and expect it to be like origins.

the game would suit people that enjoy action rpg's it has a good if not great story and i think as a stand alone game it holds its own very well Personally I don’t think of it as a sequel to origins, but more of a game that adds to lore and fleshes out the world of Thedas.

the game has decent reply value due to being able to play as different job classes, as well as that because you can choose to react and respond differently during dialog with NPC's and companions you might end up with some different quests or relationships with others, one thing that i personally shutter about is although all those points about replay value are valid i would have to play through the game in the same areas yet again, it was starting to wear very thin by the end of the second act, i personally couldn't see myself play it again.

I liked it and have given it an 8/10, which some of you might say is very high, but compared to the 9.5/10 I gave the first it was still a slight let down overall, I would have loved to explore more of Thedas, would have liked more game time and more control over my companions.

System requirements:
Recommended:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4 GHz Processor or equivalent
CPU: AMD Phenom II X3 Triple core 2.8 GHz or equivalent
RAM: 2GB (4 GB Vista and Windows 7)
Video: ATI 3850 512 MB or greater
Video: NVIDIA 8800GTS 512 MB or greater
DirectX 11: ATI 5850 or greater
DirectX 11: NVIDIA 460 or greater

Minimum:
OS: Windows XP with SP3
OS: Windows Vista with SP2
OS: Windows 7/vista
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo (or equivalent) running at 1.8 GHz or greater
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 (or equivalent) running at 1.8 GHz or greater
RAM: 1 GB (1.5 GB Vista and Windows 7)
Video: Radeon HD 2600 Pro 256 MB
Video: NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS 256 MB cards
Disc Drive: DVD ROM drive required
Hard Drive: 7 GB
Sound: Direct X 9.0c Compatible Sound Card Windows Experience Index: 4.5

I am playing the game on the notebook in my sig and have the game at max settings with Vsync off.
So hopefully that was helpful to you all if you have any questions please feel free to ask

 

Nice review!

 

Thanks for the review.

One question though: what do you think about the story in general? is it as good as DA:O?

 

nice review man!!!
+rep

 

I concur with most of the OP, and I would add the following

PROS:
Combat is much more tactically challenging on Nightmare mode compared with DA:O Nightmare. There are lots of immunities, enemies that use tactics like stealth mode, stealing your potions, backstabbing you. In DA:O you could simply spam incredibly cheap healing potions to get through any battle. Now potions cannot be spammed because there are long cooldowns

CONS:
1. The minor sidequests were terribly implemented. Over and over, you end up finding out that you just completed a quest - retroactively. In other words, you meet some random NPC in the street who gives you money and you have to click on your quest journal to figure out why he have you money. You never get a chance to speak to the person and receive a quest, rather, you just find some random, generic item and give it to some random, generic NPC, only realizing there was a quest involved after the fact.

2. The inventory system turns the vast majority of loot into worthless junk. Diamonds, torn cloth, books that you receive as rewards for quests, all of this stuff serves no purpose and has practically no monetary value. There is nothing you can do with it, and I wonder why even include any of this in the game. It was really disappointing to receive a cool book as a gift from Keeper Marethari as a quest reward and then find out it was only worthless junk.

3. The chanter's board and Mage's boards only had about 2 or 3 quests during the entire game. They should have added lots of side quests and put them on these boards.

 

Overall, I like DA2, but I feel like it could have been better. The inventory system is kind of annoying. The combat is better than DA:O, imo, but there's still room for improvement. Standing there auto attacking because everything is on cooldown or you are out of stamina is kind of boring, though it's not as frequent as it was in Origins.

Oh, also, I don't have anything against g-a-y people, but the homosexuality in DA2 was kind of surprisingly pushy, to the point where one character gets mad at you if you tell him you aren't. The whole "g-a-y" option kind of seems shoehorned in at several points.

(word filter, but I don't think I'm abusing it in this case)

 

I can't say I didn't enjoy it when I played it half a year ago but for me it was a pretty underwhelming game (both story & gameplay) when compared to a few others great games such as Mass Effect 1 & 2, Witcher 1 & 2 and Dragon Age: Origins... I would give it 7 out of 10.

 

Way too high score in my opinion. 5/10 is more like it. I simply Hated (with a capital H) the uninspired environments. I always find the places you visit are a big part of any RPG. And I'm not talking graphics here, it has to do with art direction. Diablo 2 (or any previous BW RPG for that matter) has better and more interesting environments than DA2. And that is inexcusable.

 

Nice review. My one suggestion, is that you add a section on the games performance, with Crossfire and a single 5870M.

 

I cant call this a "review", it is almost one paragraph and a bunch of screen shots. The system specs almost took up as much space as your written part and half of that is not even review content its just about the game story that we can get from wikipedia or the game store page or game box and why you got the game.

A real review should be structured and have a ton more content. Explain about how the game scales with graphics settings, The voice over quality, the controls, the game length, replay value, purchase value, who you would recommend the game to, who you would not recommend the game to. I would call this your opinion on the game and screen shot collection.

It's cool that I am willing to be negative right? I mean if I see something I dont agree with I can just stay quiet about it and just pretend it was good but I would be doing you a disservice instead of offering constructive criticism so you can get better. I didn't come here to bash you I came to read a review on the game because I am interested in it, and I honestly felt disappointed with the lack of review content and like the title was misleading.

 

I played many RPG; KOTOR 1 & 2, The Witcher 1 & 2, Oblivion, Fallout 3 & NV, Dragon Age: Origin.
I tried Dragon Age 2 (played for about 6 hrs.) and can say without hesitation that is the worst RPG sequel and very disappointing game in many aspects.

 

thanks im playing the game on hard mode, so havent tried nightmare, sounds fun though, and yeah your right some of those sidequests where a little random, infact so much so that alot of them i just ground out, en-mass, not really thinking to much about them more than a little gold and xp

i enjoyed the story it was well written, but it wasn't anywhere near the scale of the first game, i cant really see this game as a sequel, more of a chapter in dragon age lore, filling in some detail and focusing on a small group of people and events leading up to and events unfolding during origins.

suggestion noted

of course, some of your points are duly noted, im sorry you got nothing out of the review, and i have added some more info.

im a bit lost on your suggestion regarding game scaling with graphics settings, i stated that i was playing the game on 'X' machine on 'Y' settings and that it runs well, what more does a normal gamer need, i cant speculate how it performs on other machines, or other settings, i didn't need to, it ran on my machine.

and also i disagree with your comment " I would call this your opinion on the game and screen shot collection." all reviews are the reviewers opinion on the game......

 

I was able to get excellent framerates at 1920x1080 with all settings maxed, including 16 x AF and the official high res texture pack installed, but with AA reduced to 4x or 2x. Increasing the AA to 8x or 16x caused a major drop in fps and didn't really improve the visuals very much. The game did slow down to a slideshow in cutscenes with a lot of fire in the background, however.

I was playing on Envy 15 with 5830m, which is essentially a gimped 5870m, and my laptop is limited to GDDR3 only.