I loved the first one with a passion and it reminded me of everything that I love about RPG's, games with a fantasy setting and pretty much anything Bioware have ever made. I played it constantly when it came out and loved every moment. (apart from the end boss)
So almost 2 years after Dragon age 2's release. I've been able to play it and it was pretty much the only thing I played for about 3 days... and I finished it. Since I started another character... which I'm apparently half way through with.... but we'll get onto that.
So this is the start of a new type of post I'll be doing called "Thesp's Belated Reviews" The aim of these would be to tell you whether or not I think, later down the line when the price for a game has gone down, whether or not I think its worth of purchase, whether I think it was worth it's original price tag AND whether or not I think this should be added to a hall of fame and you should slap me across the face for not getting this game sooner...
Ill be doing this via 5 chapters.
Looky Looky - how does the game look, sound etc?
clicky clicky - how does the game play, what's the (in this case) combat like,? Where do you go, what do you fight?
Fluffy Fluffy! - what's the story, characters, setting etc. like?
YAY or Nay! - Did I have fun with it, was it entertaining
So what do I think - Pretty much what it says on the tin
Before I go on, just remember, that Although these are called reviews, Id never count myself as a reviewer, these are my PERSONAL FEELINGS about this game, and ALL VIDEO GAMES are completely subjective.
Oh yeah and... SPOILERS!!
So without further ado, let's start our first ever Belated Review- Dragon Age 2
Chapter 1- Looky Looky
Let me start by saying, that this game most of the time, looks beautiful. The city of Kirkwall is the best looking city I've seen in a fantasy game for the longest time. The character models are STUNNING throughout as do the adversaries you'll be fighting. As for sound assets this is standard Bioware affair. The music sets the mood perfectly, the sound effects immerse you in the world totally and the voice acting that is produced by a Bioware studio sets the standard for all other studios. You are constantly immersed throughout and you'll often take the time to listen to that musical score or replay a section of dialogue.
If this was a TV series, Id watch it twice and buy it on Bluray. If you expected anything less, Flemeth will piss on you from a great hight!
Chapter 1's conclusion - Game looks and sounds great.
Chapter 2 - Clicky Clicky
The game plays identically to how the first game did. You right click and your character will automatically attack and you have a set amount of skills that you can use in the very standard RPG affair. If you've ever played an MMORPG you get the same sorta feel. HOWEVER. When compared to MMO combat this blows it out of the water. Although you can't roll out of the way, you can dodge attacks via moving quickly out of the way and every attack feels satisfying to use. Doing a spin attack with your huge axe and chopping everyone around in in half has never been so satisfying.
You can also have up to three companions who follow you around to help out out. While most of the time they'll have very similar skills to you if you played their class, every companion has their own special skill tree that only they have. This can be stuff like being a master assassin or being possessed by a vengeful spirit who looks after other party members (we'll come back to these character later) You can, during combat, allow switch from your character and play as one of your companions. The only benefit to this is being able to have faster reaction times that the computer AI or if you want someone to do something specific.
When you're not micromanaging your companions you can set the a select "tactic" to do. This can be like healing a specific party member when their health falls bellow a certain amount, using an ability when confronted with a certain enemy or even just getting the fuck out of dodge when being attacked by something of a certain size. This mechanic means that your companions are NEVER useless. In fact, the AI due to this system is the best ever. Never do a shout "Merrill you idiot!" but instead I have a soft sigh of relief and think to myself "thank fuck I have Merrill". When a character is being an idiot, you can safely say that it was because you didn't give them enough/the right tactics.
The majority of the game is set in one place. Kirkwall. Don't like the city? Well... tough. There are a few places in the wilderness to go, as well as one location in the deep roads. However that's really about it. In this sense this was a major downgrade from the first game. And is actually a real shame. It would have been nice to at least seen other city.
Enemy variety is a mixed bag as well. The standard fare of Dark spawn, Dragons Demons and bandits make its return. Qunari have been totally redesigned and feature as an enemy for a short while in this game. I was rather disappointed to not have them as the big bad, even though they're set up to be for a while... Ill come back to that...
The problem is however. There really isn't much (for me anyway) enemy variety here. You end up seeing all the different enemy types by half way through chapter 2. And... well... Let me direct your attention to this picture...
This is a picture from the back cover of the PC case. It's featured at the upper right of the case bellow the blerb. What is this enemy you ask? How many times do you fight it? What's it's back story? Well... it's the penultimate boss. Right at the end of the game. I wont spoil who it is. But that... right there... You fight once. Right at the end... I was REALLY looking forward to killing that thing. And the fight isn't that much of a let down. But to me, this is a very cheeky marketing move... Shame on you...
Now.. this next point kinda links to the next chapter but. As you well know, the staple in a lot of bioware games is the famous dialogue wheel. And it makes a return in this game. Now to start with, it's nothing out of the ordinary. You can respond in a different way, the voice acting will accompany this decision and this will effect the story, how characters interact with you and ultimately, how a quest forms out and what reward you get. However, keyed into the gameplay is an addition to this normal set up which I adore.
Picking a particular opinion, for example with my character, being a sarcastic jack ass. Will play into how the character feels and even how he acts when he's left to his own devices. When playing as him he would drop a one liner in combat, as well as put jokes into neutral lines of dialogue to mirror how I've been playing him. For example, being the Han Solo type, his highest motivation would be getting some sort of reward for what he's doing. This would mean that when left for this own devices he would open a chest first instead of attacking an enemy. Seems annoying, but it was brilliant.
There's a little crafting here and there, but you'll never really need to do it. Why? Well... this game shares a problem that I have with another game called GTA4. What is this problem?
MONEY! All the money! The most expensive thing I found in this game, was 10 gold pieces, 27 silver and 14 copper. The problem is, by HALF WAY through the game I had 108 gold 99 Silver and 10 Copper. IF you're going to have that much money in a game, by the half way mark, give me something to spend it on. I found myself only buying supplies at the beginning and end of each chapter (of which there are 3.) and then all the time saving ridiculous amounts of money. It's bad enough that a quest reward for the end of chapter 1 is 70 gold and it's really not hard to spend the 50 gold to go on the expedition at the end of chapter 1. So yeah... for me a bit of a let down.
Chapter 2 conclusion- Good game play, okay enemy variety, Really good mechanics, bad monetary system little to no focus on making your own gear the best AI I've seen in a while from companion characters.
Chapter 3. Fluffy Fluffy. (this is ganna be a long one people)
Story- The story is set out as the account of one of your companions years after the events of the game have transpired. The seeker Cassandra (the over the top eastern European hotty from the Dragon age Anime film Dawn of the seeker) is trying to find out as much as she can about Hawke and his/her effects on a major event
(if you don't like spoilers SKIP NOW!!! OH GOD SKIP NOW, DESE PLOT TWISTS OMG BRA! )
Last chance... Go... Quick
She's trying to find out whether or not he (I'll be referring to Hawke as him) was to blame for the current Mage Vs Templar mini war that's rocking the world at its foundation. Depending on how you effect certain events in the story via your decisions effect her final conclusion on Hawke and whether or not she should blame him for everything or wish to find him to resolve the situation (if he can)
As Hawke we follow his rags to riches story, his family and their hardships as well as different companions we meet along the way, including Merrill.
(better than Tali in every way, yet I do get a lot of Tali vibes from this character and although she will probably only be in this game :(. Ah well. She's welsh, what can I say! Although if I hear her say "by the dread wolf" one more time I'm going to throw my Daemon Mouse at the wall, honestly, it makes "Calibrations" sound like a punch line)
Along the way (a 5 year journey which takes us past events of the first dragon age) We meet Templars , crazy mages, Flemeth and others as we unravel mysteries and settle political airfares.
Although I really enjoyed the story I felt as if it was too short and would, oddly benefit from actually being part of its own series and have certain elements fleshed out more. I often felt rushed into things at times, and would have liked to have got to know certain elements of the story more ... I just wanted more. I didn't feel at the end that I had my fill, I wanted seconds. and when they weren't given, I complained to the chief. To find that he was done with this certain dish.
What is there however is, for me anyway, quite enjoyable. However I would think that someone who never played or even heard of the first game may be a little lost. There's an opportunity to import you dragon age 1 save to have certain elements that you chose to happen, happen in this game. (There's even a joke when King Alistar tells his uncle "He has a name you know..." only to have the convocation drift off at the end ...
Characters- There are so many here worthy of note, It would literally be me sucking the **** of the Bioware writers till it turned blue! I'm going to go over a select few of my favourites.
Starting with... Merrill
My personal favourite character. The little welsh knife ears is a blood mage wanting to unlock the past of her people. This means that a lot of the time she's bumping heads with her clan who view not only her to be dangerous but also a danger to the clan as a hole. Which has being sent to accompany Hawke in his adventures.
In terms of story arch here, it can go multiple ways. Though what I ended up doing was treating her as a romantic choice. She, during her story, finds out the dangers of blood magic, dooms her clan to total extinction and cries a bit. It's here where the rushed nature of the game is MOST evident. And for this. I'd like to point towards a character in another Bioware game.
Garrus Vakarian. The Turian Space bad ass.
Garrus is up there with my top 10 best video game characters ( I might do a top 10 list one day, and he might be up there at the top) He's super detailed, he's a smooth talking flirt, he's everything you wanna be times a thousand. He has touched the hearts of many a female gamer and in a Bioware poll on companion characters, not only was he the most used by everyone in mass effect 3. But he was also the least likely to fall in battle... See, even his AI was bad ass!
Now Merrill could be as good as Garrus in terms of character. But She'd need to do what Garrus did, get past the first game blues.
In Mass Effect 1. The character was at times not as fleshed out as he could have been, he was also back then, not even considered to be a romantic choice, There was even a option for gamers to not take him at all if they didn't want to.
Then the fine writers over at Bioware saw the opinion on him and developed what people wanted to see. His writer put hours upon hours of time fleshing out the character which turned him to a good character, into a great character. Mass effect 3 took this the extra step making Garrus, in my opinion one of the greatest characters of all time.. BUT if you would have asked me at the end of Mass effect 1... I would have said that he's ... alright I guess...
That's the problem with MOST of the characters here (thought Id make this point with Merrill cause it effects her character the most) It comes back to my saying "There's only so much you can polish a turd before you get shit all over your hands"
Merrill to be truly a great character needs more development. She needs more time for players to experience her story. But here... It seems rushed. we're rushed into knowing her and not given enough time for us to catch our breath.
Now I know what you're saying "But ThespianHunter... DRAGON AGE 3" but the way this story is structured and forms its conclusion (as well as how the story of Dragon age 1 was treated) indicates to me that characters in the next game may only get a mention UNLESS Hawke is the main character... if this is the case... I shall spend a week in my house celebrating.
Conclusion of Merrill - best character in my opinion... but needs more time to be fleshed out.. she seemed rushed, which is a real shame.
Anders/Justice
Anders for me, is a brilliant example of why Bioware characters are the staple for all good characters in video games.
Anders is an Ex-Grey Warden, the individuals put in the defence of the world from the blight, they literally have the blood of dark spawn in them and are cursed with vision on what they're doing... it's pretty shit.
But this is a small shade of how fucked up Anders is... You see... in the fade (the plane where Mages get there power (much like the warp from Warhammer 40K) Anders met a spirit of Justice, who possessed him, and now they share conciousness. This results in Anders having major split personality disorder and makes him stronger than any mage twice fold... It also means that if anyone found out this fact, he would be pretty screwed over. Anders is not only a strong believer in the rights of mages... but he's also (SPOILER) the root of the problem that causes the war between Mages and Templars. He also likes cats. To the point where he puts milk out for kittens.
His story arch is very deep and there are twists and turns around every corner. The voice acting is second to none, both for Anders and Justice. The writers truly did a magnificent job with this character. SO SO good. BUT! Yet again, could have benefited with more time, there are moments where he seemed really rushed. I just wanted to keep clicking on him to find out what he thought, yet his opinion wouldn't have changed.
All in all. Story -Okay/good yet rushed. Characters - amazing, but because they're rushed they're okay/good.
Chapter 4 - Yay or Nay.
Hopefully a picture has been painted. And you can probably tell that I did enjoy my time with the game. Although its not as good as the game which came before.. It's pretty good. I would have liked maybe this been turned into two games rather than just the one. But the story of Dragon age is very deep and it can be forgiven that Bioware would want to move onto other things.
Now this game, has received negative review from gamers and critics. And I can kinda understand where they're coming from. But I think that some of this may be missed place in my opinion. I very much enjoyed my time with this game... but this is 2 years on... I paid £10 for this game. Back on release. The game was a full priced release (about £40 if memory doesn't betray me) (I sold the game when it didn't work and then got it again recently) is this game worth £40. In my opinion. No. It's got very very good production values. I would personally fork out the extra £30 just because its a Bioware game, sad but true. And that's a testament to Bioware. that I as a customer, because they did it, I would pay full price.
However... the fact of the matter is. The end pay off is poor, the story and characters seemed rushed and as a result so does the monetary system and certain game mechanics.
So. Final thoughts. I would rate this game pretty well in my personal opinion. If you like Bioware games, or like RPG's in general then you've probably already played it. However if you missed it. Its probably worth a belated look. Does this rank high in my personal fan of video games? Probably not, although I like the characters... Maybe I'll read a few fan fics !
So there you have it. My belated look at Dragon Age 2. Tell me what you thought of the game? Or even drop me a suggestion of what I should do a belated review of next? Let me know
My name's been ThespianHunter, Id be Merrill's sheep any day! And Ill catch you next time.
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