Review – Dragon Age II (PC, PS3, X360)

So there is a lot to the gameplay, and it all plays very nicely aside from the plethora of bugs people have encountered. Though I did not run into many bugs in Origins, the sequel is riddled with them. Dana, Richard, and I have run into different ones, and Richard has encountered one that won’t let him continue in the game. The bugs range from bizarre (such as story movies playing in the wrong order) to detrimental (such as not letting you interact with NPCs to finish side quests). Some are even beneficial. For example, I managed to make the enemy stop tracking me all together with one of the Rogue skills while I was in a duel, which allowed me to dispatch him without problem. This was supposed to be a significant fight, so it sucked the drama out of it.

The difficulty of the game is a bit easier this time around on normal difficulty, especially if you didn’t go for the Blizzard cheese in the first game. However, it is still fairly difficult on hard even with the variety of bonus items available to me. They kept the dragon fights hard, which is fantastic, and most of the boss fights are a decent challenge. However, veterans of RPGs should have no problem killing their way through this adventure.

When EA acquired BioWare what seems to be so many years ago, I thought one way the relationship could be beneficial for the gamers is that a big budget would allow BioWare to build very polished games, much in the way that Blizzard does. But the number of bugs is just very disheartening in terms of the expectation of quality of BioWare titles. Another example of this poor quality is that many of the dungeons and caves have the same layout. As you may remember, this was one of the problems that was plaguing the first Mass Effect – a problem that they remedied in Mass Effect 2. So why did they go back to that in this game? The entire game takes place essentially in one city, so you’re exploring many of the same locales over, and to also have the dungeons and caves look and feel the same… that just seems lazy.

The graphics added to this lazy theme. The graphics look quite good, don’t get me wrong, and much better than the first game, but in order to get them to the level you’d expect, you have to download the hi-resolution texture pack (available for PC). I was quite impressed that the game ran perfectly on medium settings on my old PC, and even on high settings it runs smoothly most of the time. It really should have launched with the texture pack included, but considering EA’s downloadable content (DLC) policy, I guess I should feel lucky that they didn’t charge money for it. The colour palette seems limited in the game due to the stagnant locale, but I didn’t mind this limitation as much as some of my peers.

The sound in the game is once again led by the fantastic voice acting. Both male and female protagonists are impeccably voiced, and all the characters are convincing. Listening to them really feels like listening to a movie and never get in the way of enjoying the game, which is the best compliment I can give to any voice acting crew. The sound effects from the skills and spells are great as well, and you really feel the oomph of your Firestorm. You’ll also take notice when one of your party members activate Rally with a commanding shout. The music is also quite good, especially in the opening menu. It gives an epic feel to the game and I kept it on for the whole way through, which is quite unusual for me.

The tricky discussion comes when trying to evaluate the story of Dragon Age II. The scope of the story is not as large as the first one and is divided into three acts. Much like a Dungeons & Dragons campaign where you start as level 1, the protagonist refugee Hawke must seek fortune and establish themselves in the city of Kirkwall. As the years roll by you gain fame or notoriety and eventually participate in events that shake the structure of the social world. Once again, the central plot is supported by the personal plots of all the people that join your party, but whether you do them is up to you. There are some truly suspenseful sequences, and the narrative exemplifies what BioWare does so well: It forces you to make choices that you don’t necessarily want to make. At times, it puts you in these hard spots and makes you feel good or bad about them afterwards. Sometimes, these choices do not actually have a significant impact even though they seem like they should, and this can be disappointing. There are some AI limitations that break the immersion of the story. For example, you can cast magic right in front of the mage-hunting Templars and they wouldn’t bat an eye. But even aside from that, there may be some inconsistencies with your playthrough of Origins that may be a bit jarring (such as certain characters that may have died but reappear in Dragon Age II), but nothing more outrageous than what was committed in Awakening. While you’re going through the story, you really do get a chance to roleplay out a character if you want to, and people react appropriately for the most part. I was not disappointed by the main story at all, even though it is not as epic as the one in Origins.

The dialogue system that plays into the story is a bit flawed in that the choices are short summaries of what you’re choosing to say, and may not actually come out sounding like you imagined. I did not struggle with this personally, as there are helpful icons that tell you if the response you’re giving is benign, aggressive, humourous, judgmental, or some other kind, and I mostly focused on these more than the summary. Still though, I was shocked once or twice by what I actually said and what I thought the choice meant.

The supporting cast of characters is where the game really falters. While Origins had possibly the best duo in videogame history in Alistair and Morrigan, the characters in Dragon Age II are… hard to like. I had to choose among an overbearing knight, a magic-hating warrior, an ex-Grey Warden who is not charismatic and a terrible friend, a venereal disease-ridden and selfish pirate, Hawke’s whiny little brother, or Hawke’s plain and boring sister to fill out my group. The wise-cracking, streetwise dwarf Varric is actually amusing at times, but the shining light of the cast is Merrill, a socially awkward elf that has abandoned her home in order to save her people’s history. She has cute lines that are well delivered and awkwardly funny moments that put a grin on my face.

The last point that I want to touch on, and it’s a beef with all EA games really, is the downloadable content and the extras. The only DLC available right now is an extra character for your party called The Exiled Prince, which costs $7 USD. This is over a tenth of the cost of the entire game, and I think this price point is too high. On top of that, this DLC has been reportedly broken for some people. Having DLC at launch is a very sketchy business model to begin with. Couldn’t you have been using that time to squash the mountains of bugs or design different layouts instead? Or could you not have included the DLC into the game? I really dislike the way this is handled, but at least it doesn’t give you additional functionality like Warden’s Keep did for Origins. In addition, though having unlockable extras is cool and all, Dragon Age II takes this to a ridiculous level. You get one for signing up for their newsletter, for playing the demo, for liking them on Facebook, just to name just a few ways – it’s a maddening chase that will most likely leave you feeling left out because most people cannot get all the rewards. Especially the ones that are limited to pre-ordering at certain retail chains, but that is a rant for another time.

Even given all the grievances I have with the game, I can’t deny that it’s a well designed and fun game. It’s a grand adventure that is a little slow at the beginning but is still enjoyable enough to keep me playing. The systems are good, the battles are entertaining to both watch and play without the interface getting in the way, and the way the economy works makes money as well as the experience points feel rewarding. The voice acting is once again top notch and the graphics are really quite good, especially the spell effects. The story reminds me of old D&D adventures I used to have with hard choices that have to be made. However, the game stops short of surpassing Origins because of how easy it was to just plow through the quests, the lack of enjoyable characters, and the laziness in the execution of the game. These were my main problems with the game as I did not get immersed into the world and it became more of a game of efficiency, much like an MMO. I did not care about my party members except for unlocking their friendship talents. The many bugs and the repeated layouts just destroyed any illusion that BioWare put a lot of love and care into the game.

Review made possible by

Pages: 1 2