Premise
Dragon Age 2, unlike most sequels, actually takes place during the adventures of Dragon Age: Origins. While the Grey Warden of Origins is having their adventures, this story focuses on Hawke, a person fleeing with their family as the demonic blight covers their homeland. Hawke and his family make it to a distant land where, instead of their problems being behind them, their adventure is just beginning.
Just a heads up now, you’re going to want to play Dragon Age: Origins before playing this, as the story of the first game is frequently referenced and someone jumping into the franchise with this title may get confused or overwhelmed. It also pays to play the previous game first as the player can import their save from that game as a backbone to the story you play in Dragon Age 2; there are a few pre-ordained placeholder story lines to choose from, but it’s just so much cooler using a past game save, knowing what you did in a previous game is effecting the world of a current one.
The story is told in a very fascinating way, as an ally of Hawke’s is being interrogated and he is recounting the story. The game opens with you in a huge battle, overwhelming numbers of enemies falling at your feet, then a dragon comes down and destroys you with fire, followed by your ally mockingly saying “that’s how the legend goes, but here’s what really happened.” It’s a very clever way to drive the narrative of the tale, though the game allows the player to travel at their own pace, like Origins, it makes the player eager to move on to the next part, especially seeing if the approval, or disapproval, of that character towards you will effect the telling of the story.
Gameplay
The game plays like one would expect of a Bioware action RPG. A third person view follows the player and their party through adventurous terrain and conversations run on a choice system for responses, leading the character down a heroic path, a reckless one, or something in between.
A big change for DA2 is the combat system. Where most Bioware games are move, click, wait, DA2’s combat is much more streamlined and plays almost like a hack and slash title, like a Dynasty Warriors game with RPG and strategic elements to it. I love how this works, as the combat in past games often felt sluggish and anticlimactic, the combat in DA2 has that sense of urgency that should come with life or death battles.
Graphics
Bioware games always look great, oftentimes being ahead of the time graphically. Dragon Age 2 doesn’t have earth-shattering graphics that we’ve never seen before, but it still looks damn good. The characters look infinitely better than in Origins, environments are beautifully crafted and textures are extremely well done.
Which is good, because you will be seeing a lot of them due to lack of locations; the world, as beautiful as it is, seems small, so thankfully at least the repetitive environments are visually pleasing.
Sound
Bioware games always have outstanding music and Dragon Age 2 hasn’t let the team down.
The musical score of this game captures every mood and emotion flawlessly, aside from the occasional over-buildup in some situations where a sweeping epic will be playing but your character is still just having a conversation; this can be distracting and maybe could have been better utilized.
Speaking of conversations. One of the biggest complaints about Dragon Age: Origins was that your character never spoke, you could choose responses in conversations, but they never verbalized them. This felt like a huge step backwards since Mass Effect, a game that came out quite a bit earlier than Origins, had that and this newer title didn’t. Hawke now speaks when you make a conversational selection and it is such a welcome addition.
The voice acting is also wonderful. Line delivery is well done and conversations flow nicely. The characters’ dialogues are well written and strong voice-acting delivers the appropriate emotional attachment to these lines.
What I liked
The characters. Though arguably are made by numbers (there’s the badass, the troubled angry character, the wise-cracking jerk, the emotionally delicate potential female romantic interest etc etc) so though the supporting cast is by the books as far as these kinds of games go, they’re memorable because they fit their roles so well.
I love the new streamlined combat system, it makes the game feel much for action-packed and gives the battles a far more climactic sense.
That your actions in a previous game can effect the world this game takes place in, very nice.
What I would change
The world feels smaller than the last game. More to do but fewer locations, or maybe not fewer but more similar locations, where Origins’ locations had distinctive environments.
Maybe not something I would change, but definitely something I need to bring up: the Qunari. This was the race of Sten, one of the supporting characters in Origins. This race was, essentially, large men. They looked like men but were just bigger. Their minds were simpler and less complicated than the mind of a human, but at a glance it would be easy to confuse one of these giants for a tall human. In DA2 they are extremely different with skull plating protecting the tops of their heads, and long horns grown out of the sides of their heads. Oh yeah and they have purple skin too. This isn’t a bad thing, I quite like the look but did they really think no one would say “hey, wait… the Qunari looked nothing like that in the other game…” couldn’t they have just taken this awesome look and applied it to a new race by a different name?
I don’t care for the lack of customization of my supporting characters. In Origins you could specifically equip your allies with equipment, weapons and armour to get the most out of their talents. In DA2 there is very little the player can do to customize the equipment of their allies; yeah they can buy the occasional armour upgrade now and then if one shows up, but the fun in optimizing your parties’ equipment has been taken out and leaves a very big hole in my customization-loving heart.
Final Thoughts
The game’s awesome. This is what we need after being exposed to terrible fantasy game bombs like Two Worlds 2 and Knight’s Contract. This is a fantasy action RPG that fans can really sink their teeth into and anyone who has a love of great storytelling with fun characters and fantastic gameplay mechanics owes it to themselves to grab this one.
