DISCLAIMER: Before I even begin let me state something that I know I will get a lot of flack for… I’ve never played Dragon Age: Origins… there, I said it. So this review will be just based on my experience with just Dragon Age 2 and a few of the DLC options. Now with that out of the way, let the hating (or, if you would be so kind, the enjoying) of this review to commence.
There’s always something about good old-fashioned fantasy that can bring out the imagination and wonder of the reader/viewer. Go read “Lord of the Rings“, some of the classic “Dragonlance” or even the Narnia series and it’s there… true, it might be a little trying to get through some of the dialogue sometimes, but what kid (or person reading this review) hasn’t dreamed of being a brave knight, powerful wizard or crafty rogue? I will admit I did play Dungeons and Dragons back in my youth and loved every second of it, just imagining the scenes and scenarios that myself and our brave band of warriors got into made those times where we played into the wee hours of the night more than worth it.
If you can’t guess I have quite the love of most things dealing with swords and dragons, so you’d think I would LOVE Dragon Age 2… and you would be about half right. It has all the ingredients to make one great game. A “regular joe” type of character who raises to defeat an evil, a band of secondary characters that provide witty banter and interesting back stories, what you think is a clear-cut villain and, of course, dragons. Unfortunately, like most sword and sorcery type games, it starts out strong and falls flat in the middle only to recover for a great ending.
Like most games of this type you usually have around 5 to 10 side missions going on at the same time, as well as the main story. You start out choosing between the typical warrior, mage or rogue class and choosing between a male or female. Like almost all other Bioware games, you then enter a face and head customization screen. The default faces of both genders are the best choices as they are the highest rendered, the customized ones are generally decent but unless you spend about an hour sliding the bars you’ll probably get a homely looking hero. There are plenty of options but it can be almost a chore, moving on from the physical you name your hero and then choose a tiny portrait pose for your save file. After you confirm that you move into the game, one thing I did think was interesting was that the story opens with your mother, sister and brother and depending on the physical choices you make it affects how your family looks. So if you have a dark tanned female or pasty white male, it will be reflected on your siblings.
The combat ranges from quite enjoyable to slightly tedious depending on your class choice. Let’s start with the worst and go up: First is the warrior class. I found this one the most straight forward as well as the most dull. Most of the skills involve just casting spells that improve your stats and a few attacks, the most useful being a radius sword swing. Outside of that playing this class devolves into just keep pressing the attack button, stop occasionally to drink a potion, then continue with the attack button. Second, but not far behind from the front is the rogue class. This one is close to the warrior class but specializes in get-in, get-out techniques and uses either double short swords or bows and arrows. This class is great at damage per second (which gets stupidly high) and can take out most enemies quite quickly. Then, last, but not least, is the mage class. As a mage you have an incredible amount of crowd control with spells like calling fireballs down from the sky or spreading an arc of spiked ice in front of you. Plus there are defensive spells like rock armor or a telekinesis spell that pushes enemies away.
The graphics of this game look quite well, but there is some screen tearing. One of the biggest complaints is that Bioware reused the same caves and interiors of buildings over and over again. It does get a little silly to enter some super big bad cave and have it look like another cave you were in ten minutes ago looking for crafting supplies. Overall the characters look great but the environment could do without the copy-pasting. What isn’t a cave or interior looks quite nice though, the city of Kirkwall and its associated districts look nice and convey the city’s storied history.
Gameplay: The options available for each class is nice, but the game gets a little button-mashy. I prefer the dialogue options and other areas of the game better but there is something to be said for raining fiery death down on your enemies. 6 out of 10.
Graphics: As mentioned above, outdoor environments look nice but a little sparsely populated for such an important city. The interior stuff gets a little old toward the half-way mark. 5 out of 10
Story: If I could rewrite the middle of the game this would be an incredible highlight, sadly I can not. The beginning is good, the middle is a mild meh and the ending can pull it together and (SPOILER) make you hate one of your party members (/SPOILER) 6 out of 10.
TOTAL SCORE: 7 out of 10 (not an average)
Dragon Age II
Systems: Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Windows and Mac OSX
Release Date: March 8, 2011
Players: Single Player Action RPG
Rating: M for Mature
