Dragon Age 2

First off, I am a huge Dragon Age: Origins fan. I’ve gotten all the achievements on XBL and most recently I bought the Ultimate Edition of Origins off of Steam for the PC. Naturally I was excited to get my hands on Dragon Age 2.

I got the Signature Edition and the first thing I had to do was enter a bucket full of codes. Some had to be redeemed on Bioware‘s social network site while others had to be redeemed on XBL. It was a pain to enter a code only to find out that I put it on the wrong site. It would also help if I read the fine print but I was too excited to play the game. As a bonus, playing the Dragon Age Legends game in Facebook unlocks items for your character in DA2.

Finally set to go, I picked my class and let the game start out; the opening scene was pretty much the same as the demo. I know that I’ll eventually play through all three classes, which are warrior, rogue, and mage, however I don’t know if I will play as male Hawke yet. This is the type of game that I plan on playing several times over.

Back to the game. As I said, it starts out just like the demo where you find Hawke and his/her sister being chased out of Lothering by darkspawn. Here you get the chance to familiarize yourself with the controls as this is more of a miniature tutorial. You have the chance to play as a stronger character just before the tale ends.

You then learn that the dwarf Varric is the one telling the story to a follower of the Chantry. The story that you just played out was the false version of the story and Varric is willing to tell the story as it should be.

We now see Hawke and hi/her family running from Lothering but encountering darkspawn along the way. This is like the part two of the tutorial as you learn about managing your party. This takes place just shortly after the events at Ostagar in Origins.

The battle system is the same from DA:O where you have six of your powers available with right trigger and the rest via the wheel (same as Mass Effect). They’ve added a quick stamina and quick mana along with quick heal, which is a huge plus. After having played DA:O on PC, I have to say the controls and gameplay are better on the PC than on the console. In the PC version, it’s set up ala Balder’s Gate and World of Warcraft. However the fighting feels more like Dynasty Warriors than DA:O. NPCs that are trying to kill you now use potions to heal and try to ambush your party much better than in Origins. Once in battle, the first wave of enemies isn’t usually the last. Those out to kill you will try to flank from all side and go after the weakest player. The main thing to remember while fighting is to fight as a group. You are still able to set up tactics for your team but just make sure that everyone fights as a team and sticks together.

The story primarily takes place in Kirkwall and the surrounding area. The map is separated in three different parts: the Free Marches, Kirkwall day and Kirkwall night. Visiting an area in the daytime is much different than at night. During the night you have a greater chance of being ambushed. Each character has their place and can be assessable by using the map. It’s a tad overwhelming at first but once you get the hang of it, navigating around Kirkwall is so much easier. If there is a quest in a certain area, a notation will remind you. It helps to keep the player from getting lost. However, if a companion wishes to talk (or something more) an icon might not appear at their location but going there might prompt a scene. Walking around Kirkwall, I got a Final Fantasy XII vibe and I wouldn’t be surprised if Bioware didn’t use a few elements from SquareEnix’s RPG.

DA2 is completely character driven. The interactions between your companions and you are different than Origins. Before it was easy to gain someone’s friendship but in DA2, it’s harder to read your companions and it feels more real as the relationship either grows for the better or for the worst. The banter and interactions with each other is amazing and even better than in Origins. It gives them more dimensions and personality. Cases in point, if someone is your friend in the game and they disagree with you, they will let you know, instead of blindly follow you, giving the characters more dimension. If you try to give them a gift and they already dislike you, giving them a gift will make it worse.

Unfortunately DA2 is not without its faults and there are quite a few. I’m not even sure where to start, honestly. I’m not sure how it happened, but for a long time in the game, my Hawke didn’t have any lower arms. It showed while fighting, in cut scenes, everywhere, well, more like it didn’t show. It wasn’t until I got new gauntlets did my character’s arms appear again. I even tried walking around in my undergarments and that didn’t fix the problem but I am glad that Lady Hawke isn’t running around in granny panties. My husband, who played the game when I was not, had his Hawke stuck in an awkward position, during fights and cut scenes for several minutes.

Maybe I am being too anal with this game, but I even found the pop-ups to be annoying. This happened when a tip showed up or when a crafting item was found. Is it necessary to have that large of a banner pop up every time my character found a root? Another small tidbit that bothered me was the sound. The conversations would be lower than the music playing in the background, causing me to change the sound settings and I even had to raise the volume. Doing this caused fight scenes to be extremely loud. It was pain having to adjust the volume accordingly.

My biggest issues with DA2 are the glitches and buggy missions. There was a side quest that I could not finish, one that I had to work around and the major issue, an event during one of the final battle scenes did not trigger. I walked around the area trying to figure out what to do next, only having to restart a previous save. I know glitches can happen in a game, but not this many and almost two weeks later there has not been a patch to fix it? I’ve heard about several PC patches already, but what about the 360 and Ps3? My game even froze during a loading screen. I cannot stress enough to save your game as much as you can and in several different slots, just to be on the safe side.

What I do enjoy out of DA2, is that it’s never the same game twice. I spent around fifty-four hours as a good warrior and now I plan on being a mean mage. I love games that give us choice and Bioware is good at this and has been getting better with each game they release. The up dated graphics and character models look great and as I said before, the character interactions really make the game. I liked how there wasn’t a time that I loathed playing, like going through the Fade in Origins. The missions were too the point and not dragged out. I also like how finally a female character looks like a female in armor and actually walks and runs like one as well. One of the issues that I had in Origins and even in the Mass Effect series, is that the lady lead still looked like and felt like a man.

There are still several questions left unanswered and I have to wonder if I missed those answers during my time playing or will it pop up in a DLC or even in Dragon Age 3.

Dragon Age 2 is a great game but the bugs are stopping me from liking it more than I should. Even with the improvements from Origins, I don’t think its better then it’s predecessor. However, that could change with another go or two.

(We’ll be giving away a copy of Dragon Age 2 for the 360, so be sure you’re following us on Twitter, @thegamefanatics!)