Dragon Age II Review

[Zom-B]

... the town is severely underpopulated for a place that cant take one more refugee

I've noticed that in a few of the game videos I've seen. For what's supposed to be a large city, there are very few people in Krikwall. I know that developers will say that it's difficult to have a lot of NPCs wandering around, but Yakuza 3 proves that's bullshit. The city areas are teeming with people in that game and there's no slow down, the graphics are great and the backgrounds are vibrant. Sure, the NPCs aren't super detailed, but I'll take a living city with actual pedestrians over what DA2 seems to be offering any day.

 

[Neosage]

DA II, a few hours in and already loving. First one was a right mission to complete. Much more pleasurable experience DA II is turning out to be. Easier on the eyes and ears, the voice acting is top-notch this time, props to bioware for getting rid of the stuff that made the first game a drag in some areas, (not saying the first one was bad, I love the game, but man some parts were boring. The new one is far more immersing)

 

[Buizel91]

The thing is, when you are reviewing something you can't just post things like: OMGOGASGOMGGGGG ITS SO FUCKING AWESOME I WANT TO LICK THE GAME COVER. Why? Because reviews must say what's good and what's bad regardless if you like it or not so that people will know how good it is. A review must be as objective as possible and this game has points that a decent review should punish severely such as repeating maps a hundred-fold the amount mass effect did.

What has the world come to? A "professional" reviewer acting like a mindless fanboy who will shun away obvious flaws just because DA RULEZZZZZZZZZ. I'm not saying reviewers should be merciless judges like yahtzee, but he is the ONLY one who speaks his mind and has the balls to say THIS is good whereas THIS OTHER SHIT is fucking HORRIBLE. This review has no more credibility than a fanboy nerdraging at EA forums about it's awesomeness.

You do know a Review is an Opinion of something? in this case a game? maybe he didn't find any bugs or glitches during his play through? maybe nothing annoyed him?

If you don't like it, read another review, don't blast this guy because he reviewed a game he thought was excellent. if you don't agree then Boo-Fucking-Hoo

A good reviewer will look past his personal bloody opinion and try to encompass a broad spectrum of opinions in relation to his own. I BOUGHT THIS GAME BECAUSE OF THIS REVIEW AND I WANT MY MONEY BACK. This is an UTTER FAILURE compared to DAO I feel so betrayed by the escapist words cannot express. Its hard to even call this an RPG...
Not saying anything about how fans of the original might react to this new IP is a fault. 5 stars would meen the game would have to be amazing...
Reused maps the town is severely underpopulated for a place that cant take one more refugee
Feels like im playing WOW collection quests half the time.
Kirkwall is boring its a boring place that seems like it was done in a couple months in a 3d animation class.
Was there a differant Team working on this because thats how it seems?

-.- He may of gave the game high praise but, i'll say it again, he may not have found anything bad during his play through, no bugs, no glitches, nothing.

He could of named a few bad points, but does it matter? it's HIS OPINION ON THE GAME.

Plus it's a new game, if you hate it so much trade it in, if it's new it will go for a high price.

Yeh I wish. Its called PC.

PC games can be traded in you know ¬_¬'

 

[EonEire]

I guess for me the combat is just the biggest and greatest leap. Nothing annoyed me more then Benny-Hilling around after an enemy Benny-Hilling around after a ranged team mate legging it away. I have lost count of how many times I actually wanted to cram the game disk up the combat designer sewrage pipe.

The biggest failing for me however was the story, not the over arching story but 2 specific things:

The framing device: OOOOOO how I do NOT like this rubbish one bit. This is NOT MASS EFFECT. I did not buy Dragon Age Origins because it was Mass Effect Medevil edition. They are very different and thats not a bad thing as I really like Mass Effect also, but neither of these games needed to be closer to each other. Mass Effects story telling works for it, I just can't be comfortable forgetting the hours after hours I sunk into DA:O and just hearing about it in a sideways way, Its just rubbing it in my face that somewhere my gray warden is there but for some reason I'm not controlling "me".

Dwarfy Mc May-Have-Happened: Having a talent tree that feeds into how he tells the story? This just ruined it almost completely for me. I just dont feel like there is even 1% accuracy and story wise lost a lot of drive.

Its just me and these are just the things that stuck with me, not saying they are universal positives or negatives, just my feelings on my purchase.

 

[Popido]

Hahahaha. People fell for the hype trap!?

Well played Greg. Well played.

 

[Rzepik]

"A pinnacle of role-playing games with well-designed mechanics and excellent story-telling, Dragon Age II is what videogames are meant to be."
What the hell -_o
Excluding the first act, this is simply the worst cRPG I ever played.
Storytelling is a mess, sometimes quality of writing is just horrible

Spoiler

Hawke's mother death is just ridiculous. It only lacked few dead baby seals.

Surprisingly combat mechanics are decent, but spawning waves of trash mobs are ruining everything.

 

[Pinky's Brain]

The game has issues, but some people like it, some don't, we don't need to attack Greg

Don't you agree he omitted important information relevant to the quality of the game though?

Also, whether he played a review version with autoattack in the options or whether he just made a little white lie assuming it would be in the release version the review should have been amended to indicate it was simply entirely wrong on that ... this had a well known negative impact on people's enjoyment during the demo.

 

[Necromancer1991]

The game has issues, but some people like it, some don't, we don't need to attack Greg

Don't you agree he omitted important information relevant to the quality of the game though?

Also, whether he played a review version with autoattack in the options or whether he just made a little white lie assuming it would be in the release version the review should have been amended to indicate it was simply entirely wrong on that ... this had a well known negative impact on people's enjoyment during the demo.

There's a line between saying he forgot to mention stuff, and calling him a "Corporate flunkie", on auto-attacking, wow it's a feature where I only have to click once as opposed to a few times and he was wrong about it being in the game, HOW DARE HE, it can't be bioware's fault, NO THE BLAME LIES SOLELY WITH GREG! In what fantasy world does a feature like that being absent break a game, or even ruin a review, sorry if you're on the PC and the game is a click fest, but it's being patched in, SO WHY THE FRAK IS THIS AN ISSUE? I mean it's not as though they released a Mario game and forgot to put in a jump button, I'm not saying it's okay for stuff like that to be patched in post-release, I'm just saying in terms of stuff that needs to be in a game, Auto-attack rates pretty low.

 

[Baneat]

The thing is, when you are reviewing something you can't just post things like: OMGOGASGOMGGGGG ITS SO FUCKING AWESOME I WANT TO LICK THE GAME COVER. Why? Because reviews must say what's good and what's bad regardless if you like it or not so that people will know how good it is. A review must be as objective as possible and this game has points that a decent review should punish severely such as repeating maps a hundred-fold the amount mass effect did.

What has the world come to? A "professional" reviewer acting like a mindless fanboy who will shun away obvious flaws just because DA RULEZZZZZZZZZ. I'm not saying reviewers should be merciless judges like yahtzee, but he is the ONLY one who speaks his mind and has the balls to say THIS is good whereas THIS OTHER SHIT is fucking HORRIBLE. This review has no more credibility than a fanboy nerdraging at EA forums about it's awesomeness.

You do know a Review is an Opinion of something? in this case a game? maybe he didn't find any bugs or glitches during his play through? maybe nothing annoyed him?

If you don't like it, read another review, don't blast this guy because he reviewed a game he thought was excellent. if you don't agree then Boo-Fucking-Hoo

A good reviewer will look past his personal bloody opinion and try to encompass a broad spectrum of opinions in relation to his own. I BOUGHT THIS GAME BECAUSE OF THIS REVIEW AND I WANT MY MONEY BACK. This is an UTTER FAILURE compared to DAO I feel so betrayed by the escapist words cannot express. Its hard to even call this an RPG...
Not saying anything about how fans of the original might react to this new IP is a fault. 5 stars would meen the game would have to be amazing...
Reused maps the town is severely underpopulated for a place that cant take one more refugee
Feels like im playing WOW collection quests half the time.
Kirkwall is boring its a boring place that seems like it was done in a couple months in a 3d animation class.
Was there a differant Team working on this because thats how it seems?

-.- He may of gave the game high praise but, i'll say it again, he may not have found anything bad during his play through, no bugs, no glitches, nothing.

He could of named a few bad points, but does it matter? it's HIS OPINION ON THE GAME.

Plus it's a new game, if you hate it so much trade it in, if it's new it will go for a high price.

Yeh I wish. Its called PC.

PC games can be traded in you know ¬_¬'

Most of em now link into steam or something similar, and it's not possible to return or trade

 

[Baneat]

"A pinnacle of role-playing games with well-designed mechanics and excellent story-telling, Dragon Age II is what videogames are meant to be."
What the hell -_o
Excluding the first act, this is simply the worst cRPG I ever played.
Storytelling is a mess, sometimes quality of writing is just horrible
Surprisingly combat mechanics are decent, but spawning waves of trash mobs are ruining everything.

You ****, use real spoiler tags. Skim-readers will slip right past those, I did.

 

[Rad Party God]

Plus it's a new game, if you hate it so much trade it in, if it's new it will go for a high price.

"I'll buy it at a high price"

 

[Pinky's Brain]

There's a line between saying he forgot to mention stuff, and calling him a "Corporate flunkie"

I have to admit, I think he is too ... not a single mention of the copy past jobs, the programmer art UI, the occasional low detail/lifeless areas ... combined with calling it better than DA:O and the fact that the Escapist has run a lot of DA2 specials lately, which were probably sponsored. The preponderance of evidence is against him.

on auto-attacking, wow it's a feature where I only have to click once as opposed to a few times and he was wrong about it being in the game, HOW DARE HE, it can't be bioware's fault, NO THE BLAME LIES SOLELY WITH GREG!

I said regardless of who was to blame it should have been amended, it was factually wrong. Nothing to do with opinion, a review should strive to get facts right. This being the web not getting it right the first time is no excuse not to fix it.

In what fantasy world does a feature like that being absent break a game

In the fantasy world where people don't all have the same opinion as you ... this is purely a matter of taste, weren't you defending his right to his opinion just before now? Lots of people found this objectionable in the demo, he found it important enough to remark that it could be turned on in the options because of that, so it should be important enough to get his facts straight.

I'm just saying in terms of stuff that needs to be in a game, Auto-attack rates pretty low.

This isn't about the game, it's about the review ...

 

[Excludos]

I know -Nothing- about this game, and even I can tell that this review is incredibly biased. Even by looking at the video I can come up with more negativity than that.

This is why I love Zero Punctuation. Sure it tends to lean a bit too much on the negative side, but at least he's honest.

Whoever reviewed this, is not.

 

[Necromancer1991]

Snip

Running a site isn't free, they run ads to pay for the site (Bigger games get more adds and get reviewed sooner), also why do people have such a hard time believing this game is good (IT'S BIOWARE), fine he heaped an odd amount of praise (Second time I've said this), but I more or less agree with his review on most points, which either makes me a coporate flunkie (Despite the fact that I payed for the game 0_o), or means the game isn't as terribad as you guys make it out to be, on the matter of editing the video/article so as to clear up the issue of auto-attacking, I'm not sure you CAN edit those articles (I may be wrong so don't quote me on that), I just think a minor mistake like that doesn't warrant attacking someone, if a chef under-seasons your chicken at a restaurant you don't go barging into the kitchen to insult him (yes it's an odd analogy but it works). Yes IMO it's a minor mistake and it could be amended in the forums (And greg could and should have done so). Also this IS about the game, it's about the review getting something about the game wrong.

 

[Greg Tito]

I honestly wonder if you guys are playing the same game that I am. You are all entitled to your opinion, of course, but I honestly loved the game and enjoyed all of the features I discussed in the review. Many of he complaints you have, I describe in the review, but they just weren't dealbreakers for me.

I want to clear up a couple of things:

First, The Escapist received no money for my review and I am not a corporate shill. If I were, I would be a lot more comfortable financially than I currently am. Alas, I'm poor as dirt, and only give good reviews to games that I love. I made the class party guides because I thought it would be content you guys would like. They are not sponsored in any way.

Second, I did make a mistake regarding the auto-attack. As I was putting the finishing touches on the review, a source that I trust made sure that I say the option was there and I included it without verifying for myself if the feature was indeed on the shipped game. I take full responsibility for the error, and I've removed it from the written review. Hopefully, BioWare will patch it in later, but I doubt it.

For that, I apologize. I do not apologize for loving a game that you had probably decided to hate even before reading my review.

Thank you so much to the people in this thread who have tried to keep it from being a hatefest. I respect that although you might not agree with my opinion, you see no reason to accuse me of being on the take, or that all gamers will agree with my personal thoughts on a game. Thanks for that.

Greg

 

[Pinkjello]

I honestly wonder if you guys are playing the same game that I am. You are all entitled to your opinion, of course, but I honestly loved the game and enjoyed all of the features I discussed in the review. Many of he complaints you have, I describe in the review, but they just weren't dealbreakers for me.

I want to clear up a couple of things:

First, The Escapist received no money for my review and I am not a corporate shill. If I were, I would be a lot more comfortable financially than I currently am. Alas, I'm poor as dirt, and only give good reviews to games that I love. I made the class party guides because I thought it would be content you guys would like. They are not sponsored in any way.

Second, I did make a mistake regarding the auto-attack. As I was putting the finishing touches on the review, a source that I trust made sure that I say the option was there and I included it without verifying for myself if the feature was indeed on the shipped game. I take full responsibility for the error, and I've removed it from the written review. Hopefully, BioWare will patch it in later, but I doubt it.

For that, I apologize. I do not apologize for loving a game that you had probably decided to hate even before reading my review.

Thank you so much to the people in this thread who have tried to keep it from being a hatefest. I respect that although you might not agree with my opinion, you see no reason to accuse me of being on the take, or that all gamers will agree with my personal thoughts on a game. Thanks for that.

Greg

I did not decide to hate the game prior to reading or playing through the game. I decided to hate it when the credits rolled at the worst spot for a cliffhanger. Nothing being resolved and your involvement destroying the city you became a part of seems counter productive and plain silly. A much better game would have been cutting all the previous acts other than the final battle and a few lead in battles to get the flow of the game. Also, Bioware kicked its PC audience in the balls when it decided to make it more console friendly, in turn removing all that contributed to the great gameplay on the PC.

All my thoughts can be found here:

I heard it is much more console friendly. The first one was awful trying to play on the xbox 360. Too many spells too few hotkeys. The spell amount in this game is reduced severely so that should help. Gameplay wise it is not bad, way too easy past the major boss in the first major plot event. Other then that everything falls flat, character dialog is restricted and limiting. The options at the end return the same outcome regardless of choice. The story is an unframed wreck. By the end I was happy that I no longer had to deal with the constant barrage of pointless conflicts exacerbated by my futile efforts to intervene upon a purely linear and closed story. Linear story telling is not always a terrible thing, but presenting the illusion of relative freedom of choice only to disregard your decisions creates a reprehensible dynamic story.

To sum up further:

Dragon Age 2 has an awful story and the game takes a difficulty dive so severe the last encounters are equivalent to mowing down helpless civilians in a Russian airport. 30 hours of act one waiting to get to the important parts of the overall interesting premise which abruptly ends just as a true catastrophe happens (and the primary story arch being revealed) is piss poor story progression. In which a company, primarily concerned with setting up future expansions to generate revenue, will resolve this conflict over a two year period in which dollars will funnel to an undeserving development team. The lack of depth to the final choices within the game reflects the inept writing and hurried finished to an overall lackluster game. Bioware's narrative concerning Hawke's rise to "power" is beyond abominable and conveys blatant disregard for the genre and Bioware's strength: Well written literature.

 

[Krantos]

I did make a mistake regarding the auto-attack. As I was putting the finishing touches on the review, a source that I trust made sure that I say the option was there and I included it without verifying for myself if the feature was indeed on the shipped game. I take full responsibility for the error, and I've removed it from the written review. Hopefully, BioWare will patch it in later, but I doubt it.

For that, I apologize.

For that, we thank you. That was your only actual mistake in the review. Glad to see you're being up front about that. Fingers crossed that they fix it eventually. After playing the demo, there's no way I'm buying the game until I no longer have to mash the A button.

I do not apologize for loving a game that you had probably decided to hate even before reading my review.

OH GOD! ABORT! ABORT! You NEVER want to make a statement like that. Do I agree that most people had their minds made up before they watched it? Yeah, I do, but you should never SAY that.

For one thing, it's going to cause a lot of backlash from the community. You never want to accuse your readers of anything negative.

For another, you don't know that. Thus, you accusing people of that is just as unfair as them accusing you of getting paid off. Unless you have proof you should never vocalize assumptions like that. Of course, being an internet journalist, you probably shouldn't even then.

For myself, I'm not a fan of the game. I don't like the direction BioWare has taken the franchise and I let my purchasing decision reflect that. Which puts me in an awkward position, because my entire exposure to the game consists of the demo. On the one hand, I don't want to buy it, because consumers speak best with their wallet. On the other, I really can't talk about the game from a knowledgeable position since I've not played the entire game.


Regarding the amount of backlash the review has received, I think it has a lot to do with the fact that no other review was as positive. For a controversial game like this, that's like painting a target on your back. To an extent, blame metacritic for attaching the 100 score to the review.

On the other hand, it's bringing in lots of attention, and traffic is life to these sites. I guess take that for what it is.

 

[Grey_Focks]

I don't know what spoiler tags are!

Stuff that can be considered "spoilers" here< /spoiler>

Remove the extra spaces and voila, you just saved yourself from taking away from other peoples' enjoyment of the game! Now edit your post, please, as you did just give away the ending of the game for me, something I do not appreciate. Regardless of how you feel about the game, that is quite a dick move.

Is this REALLY too much to ask?

 

[ksn0va]

Wonder when this will blow over? It's like someone took away their baked beans or something.

Anyway, I liked the game. A bit too much on the praise there Greg. Cheers.

 

[PinochetIsMyBro]

Great game, can't wait for Yahtzee to do it. Whenever he gets around to it anyways.


Oh Anders, you're so awesome.