Dragon Age 2

To start off I must include the following caveat: I'm a role player, one of those terrible basement dwelling misanthropes from the dark, dank, dust covered realms of pen and paper games. Now that Dragon age II has been out for a week, people have been able to digest the new content and styles and I've managed to gnaw through the title twice, I think we can better come to grips with the game without emotions getting in the way of merit.

The plot is not the epic that its predecessor was but rather a back alley romp about a decade in the life of Hawke, Kirkwall's newest refugee. For one the new story is a lot more low key on the whole. The 6-10 hours of scrambling at the beginning is frustrating when you've played through it only to realize it's not all that different any other time either. It's the end where the story really picks up steam with a more political tone and switches over though it does feel like a combination of several tales and not one unified story. Hawke is a human and a voiced protagonist. On one hand some of the sarcastic replies can elicit a chortle or two but at times serrah Mulberry Hawke esquire sounds a little too wooden for his own good. The tone doesn't lend itself to the more burly warrior type or tenor ranged swashbuckler which diminishes some of the differentiation between playthroughs. The female voice is marginally better but sounds like Morrigan lite. This leads to a problem in the volume of response options compared to Origins because of the voices.

The combat is flashy, if a little too quick paced making some of the more thought out tactical choices rather difficult to really doll out to party members. The overall style has certainly abandoned traditional western style and adopted a much more spiky Conan and eastern JRPG frame of reference. It bothers me as between that and the darkspawn from awakening suddenly showing up in Lothering there's a real disharmony in verisimilitude in the overall atmosphere that means nothing looks familiar even when it should. On the console version the non inclusion of auto attack it means the game overall feels more like Devil May Cry or a typical arcade fighter than a full fledged RPG. Aside from a few scripted events, there's no finishing moves for the big scary monsters. Being as there's more than a couple that's a tremendous disappointment when the game is priding itself on being a stylistic cinematic experience.

Predominantly weak or sketchy AI, unfinishable quests, and poor graphics enhancements in some categories overall show a lack of polishing on the finished product. There's quite a few enemies who just stand there, taking heaps of damage and never moving a muscle. Player and party members have taken a step up graphically at the expense of environment variety. Because of it most of the areas suffer from a distinct feeling of saminess that has nothing to do with the ham-fisted stone walls and broken wagons to block off chunks of the 5 total dungeons which make up almost the entirety of the games non city areas. This is perhaps the most telling developmental issue and one which the producers are being crucified over, each of the dungeons is the same with the very notable barrier being linear obstacles that channel the level. Running around the city for 30 hours really does feel like 30 hours, the breaks in pace are welcomed but the levels rarely stray far enough from home to feel refreshing.

Overall the game lacks a certain charm and character that its predecessor possessed. While there were a few technical improvements most of the key aspects that worked for Origins were scaled back to what I felt was a decidedly poor product. One can't help but feel that the core of the carte blanche projectionist or creative role playing experience is dramatically lessened because of some of these and other implementations made by Bioware. It seems as though it was produced in too short a period of time with direction from a small number of staff that were resting on their laurels to create what they imagined was a sure hit. Unfortunately Dragon Age II overall can be reasonably described as a mediocre title.

I'll start this review off by confessing I'm a huge fan of Dragon Age: Origins for the XBox 360. Needless to say, when the inevitable sequel was announced I waited impatiently for the release of Dragon Age II. Unfortunately, the game is a massive disappointment.

One of the great features about the first game was the interactions with your party. In Dragon Age II, you can only have conversations with party members at their "residences"...and only a couple of times a chapter. The interactions were key to the first game because you actually ended up caring about the other characters: Alistair, Leliana, etc. Playing Dragon Age II, I couldn't care less about Fenris, Merrill and the rest. A good example of "fixing" what wasn't broken by the developers.

The game environments are terribly derivative. Most of the story takes place around one city. The caves and mountains you do explore are recycled from one mission to the next. It gets really repetitive after a while. Equipment management has also regressed. You can no longer equip your party with armor but instead find upgrades for each individual. Again, this is an unnecessary step back from the original game. And the combat is same over and over. Most of the time I felt the computer was just throwing wave after wave of enemies in an attempt to just where my party down by attrition as opposed to anything resembling AI skill.

Finally, the story leaves a lot to be desired. If you're looking for a "save the world" type story, look elsewhere. The story here revolves what amounts to politics in one city and never once did I wonder why I should care.

First things first - if you're looking for an actual sequel to Dragon Age: Origins, this is not the game for you. It's more of a spin-off than it is a sequel, a new story in a familiar universe.

I know a lot of people hate on this game, but I've enjoyed it a lot so far and have almost completed my second playthrough. It's no DA:O, but it still has its own charm and is worth exploration. The first act is a bit of a drag, and can feel like a lot of grinding just to get to the good stuff, but it definitely hits its stride by the second act.

There are some glitches that need to be fixed, the game play can be a bit buggy and occasionally you have enemies just standing around staring into space while you deal maximum damage. The occasional spawning out of nowhere is annoying, and while I appreciate the added detail to some of the background environment, it does get tedious going through the same underground cave over and over again. The companion characters are intriguing, but the interaction is limited. There is no auto-attack for console, so combat can quickly start to feel like button-mashing, and it sometimes feels like they added gore for the sake of having more gore.

DA II is a lot of fun to play though, and the voice acting (for the femHawke anyway) has been great throughout the game.