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Dragon Age 2 Review

Following a solid debut, the Dragon Age series takes a step back as the sequel attempts to reinvent the formula that only needed tweaking
Posted by SpectralShock
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Many players will recall Dragon Age: Origins with fond memories. It was a staple of the RPG genre for BioWare, and though it had some issues, most players were able to get behind the classic formula. Combined with a good story and characters, it was a great start to the franchise. Arriving less than two years after the original, Dragon Age 2 (DA2) is actually best described as a revamp of the franchise. Questions must be asked, of course, why the developers would spend so little time on the sequel, as well as decide to reboot the franchise on just the second title. There are similarities in DA2, and they are unsurprisingly among the best parts of this sequel. Had it been a spinoff title, this RPG would have likely found a solid place among action RPG fans, on consoles in particular. As it stands though, you can’t help but compare this to Origins and see just how much was lost in translation.
 
Unlike in Origins, players in DA2 will no longer select from a series of characters each with their own background story. This time, players must take on the role of Hawk, a refugee who fled the nation of Ferelden during the events of Dragon Age: Origins. Upon arrival in the neighboring state of Kirkwall, Hawk and his family find themselves locked out, and must work off the debts of their uncle before they may enter the city itself. From there, Hawk is thrown into various political and military situations, with player choices once again affecting the outcome of the story.
 
Dragon Age 2
 
At this point, it’s clear that this is a much more streamlined narrative experience, as players will no longer get a choice of how the world responds to their actions based on their past. There are some new conversation options if playing as a mage, but that’s about it. The game doesn’t necessarily suffer from a lack of races and backgrounds to play as, but it’s a noticeable omission from the previous game. On the plus side, Hawk is an actual character that players can relate to and who’s able to speak. This adds to the narrative in the long run, compared to Origins, adding immersion to the experience.
 
The story itself takes place over 10 years’ time, but don’t be fooled into thinking that this makes it any more exciting. Years pass by in simple cutscenes that tell a short tale of what happened in the meantime. There’s no affect on the gameplay world, at all, and the narrative would have had the same effect if it was 1 month or 1 year that passed by. This was a real opportunity for the game to take a shot at changing the game world, be it locations or characters, to make it a game where time has a strong impact. As it stands, the story could have happened over the course of a one year instead of ten, and players wouldn’t have noticed. Clocking in at under 20 hours with most of the side quests complete, the game’s significantly shorter than Origins, around just half the time taken.

There is a bit of a problem with DA2 in keeping things interesting – the overall story of the campaign is actually broken up into three parts (with the “years passed by” cutscenes separating them). This means that there is no single goal from the beginning to the end of the game – rather, it’s like three smaller storylines sort of crammed into one. There’s nothing here that’s on the same level of sheer scope of the Origins story, and nothing too memorable either. The whole game takes place in the city and small surrounding area, which only adds to the sense of claustrophobia and relatively tiny size compared to Origins – but more on this later. Like other BioWare games, there is the option to import a savegame or pick one of the three presets. This doesn’t affect the experience much, and will only affect minor dialogue and which characters from the original game will make an appearance.
 
At the core, DA2 is still a classic quest-based RPG that lets players adventure through the game world and complete various tasks. BioWare does well to stay away from the MMO-like fetch quests, but most assignments still end up as a series of conversations and combat sequences. The quests are broken up into main story, companion quests, and side quests. As players can expect, side quests are mostly throwaway assignments that you can grind for XP and items. The main story quests are numerous, but they feel relatively disconnected from each other, as discussed earlier. Meanwhile, the companion quests range from a simple conversation to a whole quest – the game using the fast-forwarded timeline to reset all companion quests. This means that, after time passes, players can re-visit their companions and speak to them about current events. Completing companion quests nets you a deeper branching story, as well as increasing the relationship level.
 
Dragon Age 2
 
As you’ve read so far, DA2’s is a noticeable step down from the great Origins, and it unfortunately doesn’t stop there. The full dialog text during conversations has been replaced by a Mass Effect-like dialogue wheel. Containing only a few words (and an icon, in case players need further hand-holding), each conversation is limited to a few responses. There’s the peaceful way, a funny response, and an aggressive/angry response. To save you from some very flat and cliché one-liners, it’s recommended to stick with the good/bad options during your talks. It can certainly be argued that some players will appreciate this change, but one can’t help but feel it’s a downgrade from Origins’ robust dialogue options.
 
Combat system is probably the one feature that has received the most noticeable tweaks. The zoomed out isometric camera has been eliminated from the PC version, and it often results in some clunky and frustrating chaos. The combat has been tweaked to be much more aggressive and rapid – cooldown timers on spells have been reduced, and energy requirements lowered. The battles are now fast and furious, but can get a little hectic so pausing the game is still recommended. Players might often find themselves switching to the mage for a better overview of the battle. The difficulty of the game is noticeably easier compared to Origins, likely as the result of the combat changes.

There will be players who appreciate the change in combat (console players in particular), but when it comes to PC users there’s likely to be some frustrations. The battles are now faster, and feel less tactical – enemies spawn out of thin air quite often, leaving any strategic and positional party planning go down the drain. The mages are still overpowered, with a number of Area of Effect spells that can decimate enemy groups very quickly. The bosses are still disproportionally powerful, leaving your group to hack away at them for 10 minutes at a time.
 
There are changes in gameplay that will be welcomed by everyone, though. For example, the Tactics are still an important part of the game. Setting up your characters’ action trees still feels tedious at times, and they remain completely useless if no attack conditions are met. At least though, there are now pre-set tactic layouts based on the character’s available skill sets – it’s a welcome addition that eliminates the requirement to build tactics from scratch. Skill trees have also been revamped into a much nicer layout so it’s easy to track your character’s abilities and upgrade weaker areas.
 
Dragon Age 2
 
The inventory has been overhauled and now presents a better way to manage your items based on categories as well as a personalized star rating of the item’s usefulness to a particular character. Unfortunately, things have been streamlined too much in some cases – no longer are players able to customize their companion’s armor. It can only be upgraded via arbitrary rating system. The customization still extends to accessories and weapons though – but even so most items purchased from vendors are restricted to Hawk, leaving you to find weapons for companions elsewhere.
 
While the original game was an expansive epic tale that concerned the whole kingdom, Dragon Age 2 focuses on just a single city and the surrounding areas. Thus, the game feels rather small and restrictive. Ferelden is not that breathtaking to look at, with fairly simple architecture and no memorable locations. The game offers the players to explore the city either during the day or at night – with only differences being lighting and lack of NPCs. It’s really an artificial way to present the players with an alternative game world to explore, but it’s the same exact city so the effort falls flat. The outskirts are a bit more reminiscent of Origins, featuring open (though not very detailed) areas and multiple paths through. This is where players will encounter additional environments to explore.

Dungeons, found outside the city, play a fairly significant role in the game as they are oft visited during the main story as well as side quests. And it does look alright, if linear. That was a singular “it” indeed – there is merely one dungeon in the game to explore outside of the city. Yes, you read that correctly. One. By what ungodly power BioWare thought they could get away with doing that, is beyond me. Players will get to explore this one short dungeon multiple times; with the only things being different are the enemies and the start/exit points. It’s seriously appalling to see a renounced developer actually ship a game with something like this. It’s a single small dungeon with absolutely no variation of light, textures, or even resource spawn points. But it doesn’t stop there – inside city walls, players will also get a chance to visit some underground sewers and basements – which also look very much alike. Considering this fact, and summing up the rest of the game world, it’s safe to say that players will be able to visit and fully explore every single location in the game in under 2 hours. Comparing DA2 to Origins at this point is simply embarrassing.
 
The music and voice acting are sufficient – nothing really stands out. When it comes to voiceovers, the actors do a great job of creating the various accents across the characters you get to meet. The dialogue is fairly basic, but the actors do the best with what they’ve got. On the other hand, even though the voice acting is technically efficient – it never quite has any real emotion behind it. Perhaps it’s the somewhat rough facial animations, but there’s never a real sense of characters and their passion during dialogue. It can also be argued that none of the characters are as memorable as those from Origins – likely due to a lack of a coherent story to tie them to a vital role in the player’s mind.
 
Dragon Age 2
 
One area where DA2 surpasses its predecessor is the visual department. Running on a further improved engine, the game looks quite good for most of the time. By downloading the high resolution textures patch and cranking the game’s settings into DirectX 11, Dragon Age 2 becomes a very good looking game with some impressive texture work and sharp character models. Still though, the game world is filled with lower resolution textures that stand out more noticeably when everything surrounding them has been maxed out. There are some problems with DX11 performance, causing unsteady frame rates and technical glitches – but it doesn’t add a whole lot to the game, so DX9 is a good alternative. Given the game’s wide variety of options, it’s easy to get it running even on older PCs, and it still looks good.
 
There’s a very notable trend with BioWare these days. Mass Effect quickly springs to mind – a game whose sequel went through a number of significant changes but still ended up on top. Unfortunately, while ME1 to ME2 was a renovation of the franchise, DA2 is a reinvention. And it simply doesn’t work. From a short campaign to simplified inventory and dialogue, Dragon Age 2 has taken radical cuts at every step. Some changes are for the better, such as revamped skill trees and tactical templates – and it goes to show that the best parts of DA2 are those that closely resemble Origins. It might forever remain unclear why BioWare decided to completely rebuild the franchise instead of growing and expanding on it – as it stands, this would have been a decent spinoff RPG project. Once the game took on the sequel title however, comparison are to be drawn, and it simply can’t stand alongside the great Origins that came before it. In a year where major franchises are planning new entries; Dead Space 2 and Little Big Planet 2 have already shown us how a great sequel can be done – Dragon Age 2 stands as an example of how not to do it.