PC PC GAMES

Introduction

After Biowares brilliant games, Dragon Age Origins and its expansion Dragon Age Awakenings, they decided to carry on the Dragon age game and to make a second one, which is simply named Dragon Age 2. Now from the start we heard that the game was new in many ways including the combat, which worried some, but regardless of the changes we all went out to buy it anyways. This is the story of that purchase.

About

Dragon Age 2 is by Bioware whom are also the owners of the very famous Mass Effect franchise, they are also currently working on a star wars MMOPRG. Dragon Age 2 was released march 8th in the US and march 11th in the EU to a standard full retail price.

Gameplay

The gameplay has not changed much from the first Dragon Age however a lot of distinct changes can be felt, a major difference, fx, on the consoles is the fact that auto attack had been removed so that the game was a button masher, however we on the PC were lucky to avoid that so it is still a standard auto attack for us. For everyone whom does not know what the first Dragon Age’s combat system was like you can go play any RPG out there and then come back to this review as it is exactly the same, click to auto attack and then deal out spells from your toolbar, and that’s fine, don’t fix what isn’t broke. However my gripes with the game begin to emerge around this part as it is quickly evident how over powered some classes are.

 

The game holds three main classes, warrior, rogue and mage. Warrior is your typical tank that can also specialize as a DPS ( Damage per second, a term for a class that is there for giving damage ), rogue is DPS or ranged DPS and mage just makes wooshy noises and then things die/explode. However the warrior is greatly underpowered in this game as it is almost useless as a DPS and can only really be used for crowd control simply because the rogue and the mage are able to dish out some much damage from almost the very start of the game that a DPS warrior becomes completely useless, that really hurts for players, like me, whom prefer to play warriors for awesome killing via sword.

However combat quickly becomes even more repetitive than in the first one, there is a very normal rhythm to every fight and it goes – Take your mage, cast cone of cold on massive mob of people, cast other area of effect spells on stunned enemies till they die, rinse and repeat –, the game quickly becomes less of having exciting battles and more of just trying to slog your way through boring fights to get to the next part of the story.

Another huge part of Dragon Age has always been the interaction with your companions whom would give you bonuses and help you in the story if you became friends with them. This is still true in Dragon Age 2 and Bioware once again provides some of the best voice acting aswell as some of the most awesome/witty dialogue in gaming. You truly attach yourself to these characters and you soon begin to actually give a damn what happens to them, a hallmark that the game really knows how to pull you in.

The quests in DA2 are also very nicely done and often gives you the feeling that you cannot just leave a quest behind or not do it, however another weak point of the game is that the locations are very limited, several times in the game you will see dungeons be reused over and over even though you are supposed to be a completely different place than you were last time, this really drags on the quest effects because you never really feel you go anywhere new after having been in the same cave 25 times.

Another change is that the wide arrays of answers to a questions from Dragon age 1 has now been turned into the chat wheel from Mass Effect. Instead of having a lot of different answers you know choose between a good responds, a neutral ( often time just straight out ***hole responds ) or a bad/aggressive responds. The game feels a lot weaker with this implemented as everything just seems generic when all you can answer is “ Ofcourse I will help you! “ or “ Help you? Don’t you have someone else to help you or am I just your main guy for jobs now? “ or “ I AM NOT GOING TO HELP YOU I HATE EVERYTHING “, this just causes Hawke to become too stereotypical for the games own good.

Story

The story starts our hero, Hawke, on a flight from his hometown in Ferelden ( The area the first game was centered around ) as he feels to Kirkwall, a city in the Free Marches. The game then follows Hawke as he rises to become the Champion of Kirkwall. The game does this very well actually, following his ascent into riches and glory, it does this mainly through skipping some years where he is off doing something and then the story resumes to see how far he had gotten. This works rather well as it skips years of boring combat and “ go kill so and so “ quests, which is actually rather innovative as the game just pushes away from the parts it know would be boring and just draw out the game.

However as the story progressed I quickly found myself hoping for the game to be over as the game pulls out more and more storylines that just seem to drag out the game. While I won’t spoil anything I found the ending to be very disappointing and indeed the very last chapter of the game very disappointing, it left a very bad taste in my mouth.
As previously mentioned though the game successfully attaches you to your companions and I can only commend it for that.

Multiplayer

None, and that’s perfectly alright with me.

Summary

To sum it up, the game certainly scores points by having an engaging story, good characters and a exciting local, but it suffers in the department of combat, dungeons and the last chapter of the story.

I therefore cannot recommend Dragon Age 2 to anyone whom was not a hardcore fan of Dragon Age one and I have to say this is the first time I have been so disappointed with a Bioware game. I am afraid that for this game I have to give it the abyssal score of 7/10.

This may cause a lot of rage from the fans and the haters but I just can’t give it any higher, it simply doesn’t rank as high as Dragon Age 1 or the Mass Effect series.

This game is ONLY recommended for hardcore fans

Summary information:

Publisher: EA

Developer: Bioware

Website: http://dragonage.bioware.com/

Forum: http://social.bioware.com/home.php?

Demo is on Steam

Price: 49,99€ ( Prices may vary on American Steam )