Dragon Age II unlocked for me just after midnight Tuesday night, so I have only gotten a few hours to play so far. But I have had a number of folks ask me for my initial thoughts on the game … so here we go!
First off, since Dragon Age II is a sequel to a game released in November of 2009 (less than 16 months ago if you’re counting), I am looking at this as a ‘delta’ review – in other words, I assume you’ve read my Dragon Age review … and I am starting out basically thinking that as a new game just over a year later, the game SHOULD start off with an assumption that fans of the original will be able to continue their play style just as they can import their save data.
And in case all of those caveats and qualifications didn’t hint strongly enough – so far I am not a fan of Dragon Age II, and I am REALLY not a fan of whatever Bioware has become.
Here are some thoughts:
- Getting Started: The game blasts you into combat right away, leaving character selection and other stuff for later. You play as Hawke, and choose from three basic archetypes in two genders. You can adjust your eye color and hair style 47 different ways with a dozen gradations each … but you can’t even choose your first skill/spell! Bioware might as well call this Sim-RPG!
- Dialogue Options: In case the typical Bioware dialogue choices (Angelic / Mercenary / Evil) aren’t obvious enough, especially when put in the typical Bioware dialogue order (Angelic / Mercenary / Evil) … now you get little icons that tell you exactly what sort of choice you’re making (including angel wings with halo as a choice!). Dialogue for idiots.
- Character Development: As mentioned, you don’t get to choose your first skill, and when you DO get a choice, there is seldom more than a single skill/spell to choose. For example, with a warrior where I chose an offensive blade skill first, the second time I had no choice but a defensive skill … and the third time I only had a modifier (upgrade) to the offensive skill available! Character development for idiots.
- Combat System: Combat is easy – VERY easy. I had to work hard on ‘Normal’ in Dragon Age, but here I went up to ‘Hard’ because the combat is trivial … and I still haven’t had a single person fall in battle so I might need to raise it to ‘Nightmare’ or whatever the hardest setting is! And you auto-heal out of combat so it makes things a no-brainer.
- Tactics & Strategy: None required. I pause to start battles, but there is really no need. This is combat for idiots.
- Getting THE GAME Started: Once again, even after logging into Impulse and downloading Dragon Age 2, I had to then authenticate with the serial number when I started the game, log into EA in order to do so. Then once THAT happened, the game started and I needed enter the serial number again and log into my Bioware account to link in my saves and so on. Then to get my DLC (downloadable content) I needed to click in the main menu which booted to a web browser and I needed to separately go to Impulse to get THAT serial number to enter into the Bioware ‘social’ site to access my game content.
- Graphics (non) Options: this one is mixed. On the one hand the game selected maximum everything for me, and it runs smooth without any issues and looks very good – at least as good as the original game and I think it performs better. However … since I have a very capable 1GB DirectX 11 video card … I wanted the advanced graphics that Bioware talked about. Sadly that means a separate 1GB download … I have read the excuses, but they are just that.
- Floppy Disk Shuffle: Take a look at the image below – it shows ‘my content’ at the Bioware site. I got the ‘standard’ Dragon Age II, but because I pre-ordered early got the ‘Signature Edition’ upgrade. Yet there are *10* items I needed to click, download, activate, or whatever in order to access. On DAY ONE!
Does this mean that Dragon Age 2 is a BAD game? Not at all – the voice acting is solid, Ian Zur once again did a good job with the soundtrack, the story is interesting so far, and so on. It is an overall solid game, but …
It is without a doubt the WORST Bioware game … by quite a bit.
There are other things: combat comes in ‘waves’ like a combat-action game, but the waves make little sense in this context. This is particularly true when you see enemies popping up out of thin air and rocks and corners and so on. This is worse than the ‘ghost spawning’ of FPS games nearly a decade ago!
And very early on there is a moment that should have emotional impact … but doesn’t. In Dragon Age: Origins, the game set up your character through the ‘Origin Stories’, and there was often an emotional attachment formed. In Dragon Age II they skip the origin, launch you into turmoil, have bad things happen around you to people you should care deeply about … but don’t.
I will keep playing and put up a review in the next couple of weeks once I finish with my mage and a warrior as main characters.
A couple of final thoughts – first, there is little reason to pay full price anymore. Steam will have this on sale for 50% off within 3 months, and the others will all follow suit soon enough.
Also … my thoughts are definitely based on a ‘delta’ – comparing DA1 PC to DA2 PC. DA 1 was a PC cRPG game, DA 2 is a console action-RPG game. That distinction is important because some folks who played on the console version of the original might welcome some of the changes – which makes sense since it is clear Bioware is going for the Mass Effect / Call of Duty/ Halo crowd here, and really doesn’t care about the fans who were responsible for Baldur’s Gate being such a financial success 13 years ago.
Has anyone else been playing? What are your thoughts?
