Enjoy!
I want to
talk about Dragon Age 2. As you may have guessed from my previous reviews; I am
a Bioware fan boy and almost everything they do will win me over, and this was
no exception.
I absolutely loved Dragon Age 2, from its story to
its gameplay, I loved the characters, the dialogue, it was absolutely amazing,
however... I do understand most of the issues people have had with the game.
True; the graphics aren't amazing, true; there has been a lot of customisation
taken away from the player and true; the re-use of maps does seem a little
cheap and tedious.
Since I'm such a fan boy we'll get the positives
out of the way first so I can pretend there are negatives in more detail. The
story was great; it was based around Hawke, the protagonist. He or she starts
out as a refugee, recently forced from his home in Lothering (you might
remember Lothering as the first place you went after you escaped Ostagar) with
his mother and brother and sister. You decide to go to Kirkwall, where your
mother has family.
From arriving in Kirkwall to the end of the game
the player is constantly trying to move up in the world, from refugee to lord
all the way up to Champion of Kirkwall.
The story doesn't have one over arcing villain or
any impending doom that directs you, however the player is told at the
beginning that something happened. Throughout the story there is a general
undercurrent that the Templars and the Mages are at war, secretly and that is
generally what the story is about. However even if I did love the story,
without the intensity of a master villain to slay the story does seem
unfocussed and lacks drive until the final act.
From the outset the player is told that the
champion was there when this major event happened, and that he is the only one
that can put the world back together, you're also told that he vanished, but
you're told this by one of your party members. There’s something about giving
the story narration from one of your main characters that takes away from the
risky choices, at least when it comes to that characters general survival.
My major problem with the games narrative,
regardless of my love for it, was (without giving too much away) in the end it
felt like a massive introduction to the next game. most games where it starts
as a story to learn something at some point you learn it and then you are able
to do what needs to be done, with Dragon Age 2 the character doing the
interrogation does not find the information they seek, they simply know that
the Champion, just like the Warden disappeared and the world is falling apart.
I also loved the characters from DAO popping in
every now and then, Zevran, Leliana, Alastair... would have liked to see Sten
or Shale, but I loved the other guys’ appearances none-the-less. Gameplay wise
I thought that the quick paced action of this game worked a lot better than
with the previous iteration. It kept the player on their toes with the need for
constant control of your character and your whole party. So far I've only
played through as a Mage, but I played the demo as both the Rogue and the
Warrior and all classes are incredibly fun to play. All of the abilities are
more showy and, in some cases, far more useful. The only thing I can fault is,
and this is purely personal preference, the inability to target team mates for
spells. In DAO I would often let my Alastair get all the enemies crowded around
him and then cast blizzard of lightning storm on him, in DA2 I was forced to
target the floor or an enemy. It's only a minor thing, but then I did also
really, really enjoy the game.
The Missions were well put together, and while many
people complained that the game re-used a lot of maps to me that made sense.
Your in a city, one city, working your way up, you're likely to visit places
more than once, when a place has been swept of enemies you're not likely to
come back three years later and find it still empty or with the enemies bones
resting on the floor. Still, it was a big city; more locations would have been
nice. Maybe some different shaped estates. I don't know, you'd have to poke a
Bioware level designer to see what went wrong there.
My main grievance with the game was that they took
a lot of customisability out of the user’s hands. In DAO my character was a
mage, but he was a mage with sword, shield and armoured up to the chin. I
understand that the lack of powerful armour could be chalked up to there not
being anyone to teach the Champion Arcane Warrior to transfer Str/con stats to
Mag/Wis stats, but then I didn't even get the choice to give the sword and
shield character a great sword, even though she had the stats. The archer
couldn't wield daggers, it annoyed me. I like to dictate what my characters can
do, I don't like it when that choice is taken away from me.
That said, of course looking at it from a narrative
point of view I agree with it, a person trained with a sword and shield would
lose a lot of skill when faced with using a great sword, just as an archers
skills are not in tuned to using twin daggers.
Still, on a petty note, I wanted my mage to wield a
sword.
Over all I loved this game, but there were some
major flaws, too few locations, the removal of customisation, the lack of drive
to the story and the feeling at the end that I just paid £29.99 for a massive
advert for the next game.
I'd give it a biased 9/10 and an un-biased 8/10.
- James
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