Okay Geek Farm
PC - Dragon Age 2 Review
Alex Tretrop
Dragon Age: Origins was my favourite RPG of 2009 for good reason; A fascinating story with great characters, strategic combat and almost 100 or so hours of content, Origins captivated me from the start and held my attention right to its glorious end. Dragon Age 2 however, almost feels like a step backwards for the series, with a terrible opening, strange design decisions and needless streamlining of certain aspects of the game that were fantastic to begin with. But even though it isn’t the sequel Origins players were waiting for, it still succeeds at being a much more personal experience with more of the same exciting combat and character development fans have come to love.
Story
Dragon Age 2 throws you headfirst into the shoes of Hawke, a customizable and fully voiced human of your choosing. After escaping the Blight during the events of Origins, your family decides to sail across the seas to Kirkwall, to reach safety and security in their estate owned by their uncle. These early moments of the game are all rather disjointed and because the character of Hawke and his family aren’t developed enough throughout the game, you’ll be at a loss for why you care about him and his family. If we take a look at Origins for a moment, let’s take the Human Noble opening where you’re introduced to your family, cousins and distant relatives before they are horribly betrayed and murdered by one of your allies. There isn’t anything even remotely like that in DA2, nothing to make you care for the plight of your family or yourself. If they had just started the game a little earlier, it would have made the whole game much, much more interesting.
But thankfully, it gets much better as the game progresses. Your new party members are all excellent and memorable, the dialogue between them being as strong as ever. Dragon Age 2 drops the mute Warden for a more Mass Effect approach to the dialogue, with the numerous different options replaced with the dialogue wheel from the fantastic space shooter. The catch here is that your tone of voice is indicated clearly in the center of the wheel. The thing is, I came to Dragon Age for precise dialogue choices and it’s completely lost thanks to the system implemented here. It works well in Mass Effect because you wanted to keep the dialogue flowing but in Dragon Age, where morally ambiguous choices are everywhere, you want to stop and think about the choices you make. There were many times where the choice I chose was taken in the wrong context because of the bullet-point style of the dialogue wheel.
I could go on and on about the lame choice in character and style but here’s the thing: after about six to ten hours, the game starts to get its footing and doesn’t really let up. There are a metric ton of really good and ambiguous choices, fantastic companion characters and dialogue that it almost makes up for its problems story wise. Many of these problems, at least in my eyes, stem from the fact that the story is a little too linear, despite its steps to hide the fact. Many of the dialogue options you choose don’t really change the overall story that much. Usually it ends up changing a line of dialogue slightly, yet you still have the same objective in the end, regardless of the fact that you made an “evil” or “good” speech choice. While this happens less so during the big and important choices throughout the game, you rarely ever stop a battle from happening because of your persuasive skills anymore, which I found hugely disappointing.
Gameplay
Right from the beginning, Dragon Age 2 feels very different, yet familiar for a number of key reasons. The combat, in particular, has received a facelift in many ways — it feels much faster and each of the abilities look much flashier as well. You can still pause and play the game but it isn’t used nearly as often as Origins because the battles aren’t as challenging or complex as the first installment.
But there are two big design choices that have me both baffled me: the lack of an overhead view and the way enemies spawn. If we look at the overhead view, I have no idea why this hasn’t been included. When you played Origins you were zoomed in when you wanted to see the sights, indulge in some dialogue or scrounge up some items and switched to the overhead when you wanted to see where you wanted each character to be positioned and where each enemy was during a battle. In Dragon Age 2, you can’t zoom out at all, making postioning a much harder affair than it used to be, especially if you want to move multiple party members into different areas. It’s funny that many of the bosses in the game also have a large AOE (large area of attack spell) that can destroy your group if you dont get them out of there, but with it being so hard to order your party, you’ll often die to cheap deaths more often than you may like.
This problem gets worse once you discover the way enemies spawn. Unlike Origins, DA2’s enemies spawn in waves. You can start a battle and then have enemies spawn right in the middle of it. Except this happens every encounter you have! You end up using some of your heavy hitting abilities early on because of this and then you realize another group just showed up. They usually spawn all over the place, which would have made the use of an overhead view even more beneficial here. It’s annoying at first but thankfully once you know to expect it, you can change your tactics to compensate.
Still, the combat itself also feels extremely satisfying. As a Warrior, you really feel like your hitting enemies hard, with many of your abilities knocking them off their feet or just destroying droves of enemies in one fatal whirlwind. When you kill your enemies they usually explode into some ridiculous combination of blood and body parts and that never really gets old, even as the game moves forward in its later stages.
Look and Sound
Dragon Age 2 does look a lot better than Origins but it has a major problem that makes Origins look amazing by comparison. But let’s stay focused on the positives for now; the game itself looks a lot more vibrant and detailed than its predecessor, with the city of Kirkwall as an example, looking particularly impressive and each of its districts showing a distinct difference in the population. Hightown looks suitably pretty, with many impressive castles and estates colouring the landscape while Darktown looks terrible, run down and filled with poverty. Sure, it’s a little cliche but it does look much better than the original.
However, the large problem I was foreshadowing is the lack of environments. Whereas you had plenty of varied places to explore in Origins, from the dwarven city of Orzammar to the sprawling capital of Denerim, there were a ton of areas to hang out in. Dragon Age 2 takes place in a city, a mountain, and a few caves. It gets even better when the game gets further in and you realize that every quest that brings you into a cave looks exactly the same, to the point where you can guess where the next wave of enemies will spawn! They all look nice but the problem is that, with an RPG that will still take a sizeable chunk of your time to complete, your going to see reused assets unacceptably often and that’s a huge disappointment to me. They call Hawke the Champion of Kirkwall for a reason: he never leaves the place!
The characters also look pretty detailed, with your companions looking excellent, despite their sometimes creepy and lifeless faces. While Mass Effect has better emotions and facial expressions on its characters, I still believe Dragon Age 2 improves it to a more believable standard.
Moving onto the audio, the voice acting is still top notch with party members like Merrill and Varric standing out from the crowd. Even the NPC’s are fairly well voiced, along with some fantastic cameos from Origins that just add to the sense of immersion you get from a Bioware title. The music is also much better than the first, with some great battle music and interesting themes along with a much better sounding experience during combat. The audio is, as per usual, no slouch in this game.
Final Thoughts
It’s hard for me to sum up my thoughts on Dragon Age 2. For a game that I absolutely adored in Origins, Dragon Age 2 is missing some its magic. There are still memorable characters, fantastic choices, and a fun, if frustrating combat system, but it feels like this more personal take on the Dragon Age universe is the wrong thing for the series. I’ve always felt Mass Effect had a better personal take on things than Dragon Age, whose mute character reinforced the fact that it was more about the world than the personalized story. With Hawke, it feels like I’ve lost some of the wonder I had of exploring the world and the characters inhabbiting them, thanks to the unspecific dialogue and speaking protagonist. He isn’t ever really developed as a character himself, even though this is supposed to be a much more personal experience. That being said, once the story finds its legs and starts focusing more on your party and your experiences with them, it develops into a fun game living in the shadow of its predecessors.
Pro’s
- Fast and frenetic combat
- Its story takes a while to develop
- Graphics are quite a step up from the original
- Party members are all interesting and exciting to learn about
Con’s
- Combat feels imprecise, thanks to the removal of many key elements
- Same environments are used again and again
- Story suffers thanks to the more personal take on the universe
8/10 - Dragon Age 2 lives in the shadow of its older brother which was both a better game and a longer experience. That being said however, Dragon Age 2 stands on its own as a fun game with excellent characters, combat and graphics making it something you should absolutely experience if you enjoy RPG’s.
