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After finishing the vast Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate Edition, which included the original game, the extensive Awakening EP and most all the DLCs, I decided to try Dragon Age 2 despite a lot of negative comments around the web. 

Well, I loved Dragon Age 2 from beginning to end and thought it was the most cinematic RPG I've ever played. 

The graphics and sound were stunningly good, the cut scenes / dialog scenes were world class, the party system worked like a charm, the combat was lots of fun, and the story was terrific. 

It was also pretty sexy and raunchy compared to most AAA titles, which made the characters seem much more real and believable. 

Otherwise, the overall length was fairly good with plenty of side quests / companion quests, some good / evil choices and just enough freedom of exploration not to feel too linear. 

All in all, I thought Dragon Age 2 was a very good game and wonder why so many people hated it. 

Cheers, Terry 

Originally Posted By Terry Penrod (17 APR 2012 1:10pm)

All in all, I thought Dragon Age 2 was a very good game and wonder why so many people hated it. 

 

For me it was the fact that the game failed to get me emotionally engaged. The game is supposed to tell a very personal story, but I just did not care about what happened to Hawke & his family.

Spoiler AlertWhen his mother died, which should have been a very strong moment, I should have felt something, but all I did was shrug

Also, I agree with the complains about re-used dungeons, with some sections closed off and waves of enemies that predictably would spawn off screen in every battle.

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Hi Fnord - 

The latter seemed like a pretty weak complaint given the enormous amount of new content and vastly improved graphics / cinematics in Dragon Age 2. 

As for your lack of emotional connection with the main characters, I suppose that's just a personal difference. I felt a fairly strong connection with them, especially to Hawke and his sister, but also to most of the other companions.  The villians also evoked some strong emotions for me, as did several of the more sympathetic NPCs. 

That said, I got a great deal on Dragon Age 2 from Steam at under $5 and might have felt a bit differently had I paid full price at release. 

Either way, I thought it was a solid game that got an undeserved bad rap.  

Cheers, Terry 

Reasons why I didn't like DA:2.

1. Bland setting, Kirkwall was sooooooo damn generic, it had no atmosphere, no style of it's own, just generic. With it beign the majority of the setting, having to constantly go back and fourth between area's you'd think Bioware could have made each area more more diverse/varied.

They even reused a ton of assests throughotu the game, for dungeons, etc. It just lacked any real sense of style or variety.

2. Combat. The combat in DA2 was geared much much more toward the "actiony" crowd (and I actually do enjoy actoin games) however it lost all of the fun of the tactical sid eof combat. In DA

IN DA:II all of this was thrown out of hte window because of one huge issue, SPAWNING ENEMIES FROM THIN AIR! you couldn't set up any decent traps/strategy because a ton of the fights had dnemie sthat literlaly spawned all around your group. It made combat less tactical and more button mashing/repetive.

3. Lack of variety for your character and your companions. In DA

In DA:II on th eother hand, you were forced to play Hawke, had 0 choice to make a dwarf hawke, an elf hawk, you had to be generic british sounding human Hawke.

Then your companions, oh man...where do I begin. Story wise, it made sense to me to WANT to take your sister in your party and adventure. The problem? Your sister couldn't be a healer, she wa sa mage, but you COULD NOT build her to what you needed her to be. you want a healer? Anders, no one else (unless you do it). So that made taking her impossible if you had it on higher diffculty/didn't want to die in fights.

O ntop of this you could no longer use new equipment on them, you had to use pre determined items to make their equipment better/change their looks.

3. Story, adventure, or lack thereof. Dragon Age: O felt "epic." It was a great adventure rpg, in DA:II the story was very tiny compared to DA

4. Characters/depth. I just didn't find much depth behind the characters or I just didn't like them like I did in DA

I mean in DA

IN DA:II I just didn't attach to many of the characters that well, They fetl a bit too one-dimensonial/weren't that interesting to me like the others.

I just hope with DA:III they return to the grand epic adventure scale of the game, bring back the more tactical combat and MOST of all give us back choice and variety. I Want to build my party and shape them how I want, I want to outfit them in what I want (you can easily have a seperate "outfit/equipment" tab so you can chooes to view a certain outfit, which is the MAIN reason they said they did this in DA:II, where you'd put Morrigan in Chantry robes because they were better but ti didn't "fit" her character, sot hat's a simple easy way around it without taking tihe CHOICE away).

Variety, choice, tactical combat, well rounded INTERESTING characters in an epic grand scale aventure, that is all I want from DA:III.

Overall DA:II just lacked in about everything that made DA

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Howdy Stiler - 

There is no doubt that Dragon Age: Origins was a far deeper game with a much bigger story and a lot more of the traditional, D&D-style choices we used to see in BioWare's RPGs.

I too would love to see them create another deep, epic adventure with more tactical command over party combat and character creation / devlopment in the next installment.

Although they deviated from that great formula in Dragon Age 2, I still enjoyed the game quite a bit - especially at today's bargain-basement price. Simply put, the sequel was more fun and the story / characters / setting were more engaging for me than for either you or Fnord. 

The cinematic production values were extremely high throughout and I suppose that's where most of the resources were spent. To maintain them at that level in a massive game world for a significantly longer, deeper game is probably asking too much. 

It would be nice though....

Cheers, Terry 

HAve you played Mass Effect? It feature sthe same (if not more) cinematic features (full voice worked main character, npc's, etc) and a MUCH MUCH grander scale storyline/adventure.

I agree with most of what Stiler said. There is one point where I disagree though, and that is in regards to the choice of making a less "epic" story. I actually welcomed the fact that they were trying to do a more down to earth and personal story, where you don't have to save the entire world, but rather just focus on a single character, and his issues.

But this is where emotional involvement comes in. For such a story to work, you need to care about the characters, they have to mean something to you, but in DA2, they did not, at least not to me. Varric was the only companion that I actually cared about (and I did not care nearly as much about him as many of the Dragon age 1 characters)

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Originally Posted By Stiler (17 APR 2012 3:34pm)

HAve you played Mass Effect? It feature sthe same (if not more) cinematic features (full voice worked main character, npc's, etc) and a MUCH MUCH grander scale storyline/adventure.

Yes Stiler, I have played Mass Effect 1 and 2, and have 3 on my list of newer CRPGs right behind Skyrim and The Witcher 2. 

I agree they are very cinematic and the galactic setting feels more epic. But for some reason, I did not care for the main character or most of the companions as much as I did those in Dragon Age 2.  I also found the  whole save-the-universe story a bit hackneyed. 

Otherwise, there were several more relatively weak aspects to Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2 that included the numerous, annoying, unavoidable land-vehicle sequences in the original game; the terribly repetitive, unavoidable hacking minigame in the sequel; and 99% of the entire galaxy-system-exploration / planet-resource-harvesting gimmick in both.  Also, I found most of the environments to be very sterile / bland.  IMO, the original Star Wars: KOTOR was a superior game in almost every meaningful way. 

That said, I think KOTOR was also superior to Dragon Age 2 in almost every meaningful way. 

Cheers, Terry 

What the...?  I posted a long post here and it's just gone????

EDIT BEWARE HUGE SPOILER ALERT

I can't seem to be able to get these stupid spoiler tags to work.  ..and in fact all the formatting options seems to have gone just wonky now.

[size= small]Anyway, mainly what Stiler said re gameplay and combat.  Also I personally really disliked the look of the main town and found the "look" of the town itself boring and generic with hardly any variety.

[size= small]But that's not what my biggest problem with the game was.  My bigest problem was how the story stunk - no, reeked.  They used one of the cheapest tricks imaginable...- making your own faction (or if you were not a mage, then your follower's faction) and your own character just fall apart  for something "different".  ..and worse, make it seem like they were rotten at the roots all along, which even spoils the story and lore of the first game for you and leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

 MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT

Spoiler Alert  

 Anders blowing the Chantry up was the point where the game just TOTALLY fell apart for me. Keep in mind, here I am, this female mage Hawke, and I have this hot romance going on with Anders, believing all along that he's actually a good person and all. ..and then he pulls this stunt. I was so angry that I personally executed that damn roach SOB
Right there on the street, I spilled his blood and his guts into the dust. I would have spat on him if I could. No fury like a woman scorned and all that, you know. ..but what he did besides that! Ugh.
..and then the whole thing with suddenly all mages are evil. Imagine you've been playing a mage all along in the games, they were fine in the first game, and now suddenly...-we're all demons? WTF? ..and after I already felt compelled to kill my disgusting lover, I have to go and destroy my entire own faction? Oi.
..and the ending? What's up with that? I don't even know what happened to my non-hero.

No, really, if I have to deal with plotlines like that in my RPG's, then i prefer to rather stick with playing skirmish mode in strategy games, where "plotlines'  don't have to spoil one's enjoyment of the game.

Oh, and BTW, just compare the amount of content you get from CDProjekt Red for free, even after offering 2 games that were both substantially cheaper than the retail for DA2 when it was released.  DA2 did not come cheap, but guess what, you only paid for the bare bones.  Just because I didn't want to fork out in spadefuls for the DLC,  I missed out on some of the characters and story.  Nice.  What's worse, they made their DLC an integral part of the game, not even sidequests or additional quests like you got for the Witcher 1 FREE DLC.

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Like I said Trav, if I had paid full price for Dragon Age 2, I probably would have felt differently about the value. 

As for the story, I liked it and the major incident you mention in your spoiler actually came as no big surprise to me. 

Spoiler AlertAnders was highly conflicted and had long since lost himself through a strange merging with a very vengeful spirit.

He even warned Hawke several times about his loss of control, his hatred of the whole Circle-Templar thing and offered to leave the group. 

Moreover, the chief protagonist was a power-mad Templar and the Inner Circle was rotten to the core.

He did the only thing he could to end that cycle of persecution and pain for mages everywhere. 

Cheers, Terry 

Originally Posted By Terry Penrod (18 APR 2012 8:47am)

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Like I said Trav, if I had paid full price for Dragon Age 2, I probably would have felt differently about the value. 

 

As for the story, I liked it and the major incident you mention in your spoiler actually came as no big surprise to me. 

 

Spoiler AlertAnders was highly conflicted and had long since lost himself through a strange merging with a very vengeful spirit.

 

He even warned Hawke several times about his loss of control, his hatred of the whole Circle-Templar thing and offered to leave the group. 

 

Moreover, the chief protagonist was a power-mad Templar and the Inner Circle was rotten to the core.

 

He did the only thing he could to end that cycle of persecution and pain for mages everywhere. 

 

Cheers, Terry 

...but by Spoiler Alertblowing up the Chantry? ..and along with it the only neutral person in power who still interceded for the mages? He simply made things worse, not better, and he forced me to kill my buddies.

Let's see if my spoiler alert function is working again.  No matter what I did, I couldn't get it to function properly in my previous post - perhaps that spoiler was too long.

Also, my whole point was that in the first game the mage's Circle was not rotten to the core, the baddies were peripherals who had actually specifically left the Circle in order to practice their naughty blood magic.

Spoiler tags on this forum cannot contain empty lines. So don't use enter in between lines 

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Yes Trav, but...

Spoiler AlertThings changed for many people in many lands during and after the Blight. The Mage Circle and Templars had been abducting kids of all races, forcing them into a lifetime of serving their masters (including the most corrupt ones), and essentially lobotomizing any who so much as questioned their authoritarian power. They had to go, even those who tried to mediate between factions. Of course, the renegade Blood Mages also had to go. But that would have been necessary with or without the Circle's influence. As for the Templars, they were no better than the Third Reich. 

P.S.

Spoiler AlertI forgave Anders after he destroyed the Chantry and he stayed in my party, helped defeat the Templars and traveled with us for a time in the epilogue. In my case as a heterosexual male Hawke, feisty Isabelle remained at my side for good.

Cheers, Terry