Was Dragon Age II really that bad?

[psicat]

Except for the overused dungeons I thought it was better than Dragon Age: Origins. Combat was much better, characters where more well rounded than the simple high fantasy stereotypes from the first and you weren't accidentally engaging them in conversation in a dungeon, and the storyline was more personal.

People tend to ***** about less choices available in the game but tend to never think that Origins just offers a series of pick A or B moments as it's choices with no major impact on the game for most other than a different summery epilogue, you can try to play as the most evil bastard you want you are still hailed as the Hero by the end.

Another problem is just plain hype. A game is just hyped up like crazy and when it fails to meet that hype people will hate it even more than necessary. Some people played maybe 10 minutes, or just played the demo, and where posting 0 scores on Metacritic. In some respects the same thing happened to Duke Nukem. Because of the hype people where expecting some great, classic, return to old school FPS. Yet, Duke Nukem has never been a great classic it's always been over the top and filled with crude humor, not to mention all the old school mechanics where replaced with modern ones. So people hated it and judged it more harshly than it deserved.

 

[Plumerou]

Honestly i enjoyed more origins, but is not a bad game, yeah copy paste rooms are kinda annoying since i liked seeing different enviorements, but i can get past that

but if there is one thing that annoyed me over all, is how they changed anders so much, i miss old anders from awakening, i know its character development and all but still i didnt like his change :X

 

[pezwitch]

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has one of the best articles on why Dragon Age 2 failed. (Thoughts: What Went Wrong With Dragon Age II).

If you really want a well thought out argument of why there is a lot of nerd rage towards Bioware John Walker's article about why he found the game unsatisfying even though there were aspects of it he liked is a good place to start.

This quote about the begining sums up one of my issues with the game nicely: "Not only is it made clear that the events you?re playing have already happened, but its emphasised upon you that you?re just an observer..."

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Its an okay game, but theres the rub, Dragon Age 1 is like a '10' while DA2 is a '5'. I didn't think DA2 was that bad until I went back and played Origins.

Even the starting zone in origins feels more epic than DA2's later dungeons. Take the werewolf ruins or the temple of sacred ashes and compare them to reused sewer number 3. It's like they took a novel and removed all the descriptive prose from it because hey saves time and money. Mass Effect does the same thing with it's side missions but this isn't about side missions it happens in the main storyline aswell.

The choices in the plot are just 'tricks' really. You never end up with a different story no matter what you do. Like someone has said already the serial killer one especially just makes you wonder what the point was in you making any desicions at all.

I think DA2 would have done better if they had made it an IP then fans wouldn't have had such high expectations from it. It's not just about a name though. The gameplay is totally different which isn't what fans expect from a sequel.

Although I don't want to make this my main point, I adored Baldurs Gates style of gameplay. DA:O gave that back and it was awesome. Then DA2 took it away again and it was kind of a let down for me. That's more of a personal thing but I think thats what a lot of others felt too.

I'm waiting for my new PC to get legacy. I enjoyed DA2 but I think it should have been seperated in the minds of gamers from DA:O and would have fared a lot better.

Hawke: "Prepare to die corrupt guardsman!"
Hawke: "Okay what the hell is going on, all of you stop!"
*Varric friendship -200*

I actually found Varric was the one who agreed with me all the time I was always imagining my Hawke and Varric looking at each other and shrugging. I almost wish he was a love interest tbh becuase he seemed the only sane, normal one there. hehe

 

[Not-here-anymore]

I rarely thought my choices were meant to have consequences beyond how people viewed me.
The whole game seemed to be about playing a character, rather than a story. It was a nice change of pace from the usual 'all of the events here revolve around you, go save the world!' formula.
Yes, Hawke was heavily involved in the goings on in Kirkwall, but he/she was hardly the sole driving force, nor a travelling magical hero destined to fix everything. Just a guy/girl in the wrong place at the right time.

The re-used environments thing was still bullshit, though.

 

[bob-2000]

I really enjoyed DA2. Sure, it was rushed out by EA, but Bioware did a good job considering. For one, the plot is much more interesting than DAOs' re-hashing of the LoTR story-line. The DA2 characters were really well done too.

 

[erto101]

It was average; I shouldn't be paying £30 for average. I paid the same for The Witcher 2, which only just stopped short of giving me a blowjob. By comparison, DA2 wouldn't even let me fondle its tits.

So yeah, basically... DA2 is fucking frigid.

You've got it easy -.- Standard price for a new PC game in Denmark is between 40 and 50 and a PS# is above 50

Anyway, I thought it was a decent game but much more an action-game rather than a RPG

£50 you mean? Because Google says a pound = like 8 Danish Krones, in which case you're getting a mega-deal, surely?

50£, yes. And I actually thought it was 10 danish crowns. This is the retailer price, mind you. Sometimes you can find a better deal on the internet.

 

[Ryan Minns]

Well here is how I've always seen it

RPG fans got an old school RPG with Origins, these games are VERY few and far between and when a sequel was announced they got... something available elsewhere and often.

People who attack those who were disappointed claim if the game was available under a different name it would be praised... THAT right there is WHY it's hated, it SHOULD have been named differently, it SHOULD have not carried the same name of a game that RPG fans are starved of as it is. DA2 is a hack and slash adventure game with NONE of what people expect from Bioware, the game would have a died a slow death and NO ONE would have praised/known of the game if it didn't have Dragon Age in it or been from Bioware

There was also the claims of not making a game as good since Baldurs gate 2

 

[Canid117]

Its not its just that the internet... overreacts... sometimes. The game was actually pretty decent its just that there was that annoying environment recycling that shouted "THIS GAME WAS RUSHED!!!!"

 

[GiantRaven]

Personally, I can't work out why everybody has such a problem with Dragon Age II. I found it to be a great sequel to a decidedly average game.

 

[Cyrax987]

I thought it was alright, part of the problem to me was when I first started it up I was like "Oh man this is awesome and the combat is better and the visuals look nice!" "Oh more spiders in this same cave ok now in this warehouse.... ok I'm bored..."

I felt like I was forcing myself to complete the game towards the end since I stopped doing sidequests since I was getting bored and I even started skipping over dialogue which I never do in a game the first time around!

 

[vivster]

short answer: no

long answer: no. screw fanboys

You mean screw logic, because fanboys are the ones who eat anything a developer pumps out.

nope fanboy is alright
of course specifically meaning fanboys of the first game
i took the liberty to exclude developer fanboys because they are no real fanboys... they like different things
also company fanboys are good for everyone
they help the companies by buying their games and they are good for a forum user's nerves since they won't go on complaining that the new stuff is not as good as the old stuff

 

[Maxtro]

Dragon Age 2 is not a bad game but just not as good as Orgins in certain areas.

What DA:2 feels more character driven that Orgins but in exchange it lost some story direction. It's basically doing a bunch of loosely connected quests, then a couple of story sequences. Then back to more random quests.

I'm on my second play-through and after the Arishok is killed, there is basically no story beyond, Mages and Templars don't like each other, go do random quests for a while until something bad happens.

It's just sloppy storytelling.

One thing I can't understand is why people keep saying the combat system is better than Orgins. Aside from the class combos, which I handle with tactics, the battle system feels exactly like Orgins. BTW I'm playing on a PS3 with auto-attack on. Mashing X for every hit does not equal exciting. Other than that, I see no change.

My biggest gripe is that the game only gives you one healer if Hawke is not a Mage. Bethany doesn't count since you only have her for one act. After that you're stuck with Anders. I ran him off after he killed that Mage girl so I don't have any healer at all. It's just potions and my two-handed sword Reaver-Templar Hawke as tank, which works pretty well on normal.

 

[Simon1]

I like DA2. It works better on consoles than the first.

 

[MBergman]

I was disappointed with DA2, maybe not so much with the actual game itself but I think rather with what has changed in it compared to Dragon Age and even Baldur's Gate.

The dialogue wheel - It didn't feel good to me at all. In Mass Effect I had no problems with it whatsoever, but when my choices in dialogue was reduced to good, funny, bad for ALL dialogue in the entire game, compared to DA:O it felt very poor indeed. And ironically enough, the sacrifice that allowed Hawke to be voiced didn't give him/her more personality, but rather just made him/her feel stereotypical when restricted to good/funny/bad.

Romancing is a joke - Anyone remember romancing in Baldur's Gate 2? A romance stretched through the entire game with more than 30 different romance dialogues or events. You got the chance to actually get to know the character, and you had to, because acting or saying things they did not agree with could end the romance. And they didn't just flirt, they talked about so much else and it made them feel like real persons. Comparing that to DA2, to successfully romance Merill I had to click the dialogue option with the big heart on, like three times and the dialogue that followed pretty much amounted to "I like you".

Story and characters don't always hold up - I think most strongly of a quest with Merill. Now I'm gonna drop some heavy spoilers so I'll hide this paragraph.

Spoiler

After you've gone to confront Merill's demon and her master sacrifices herself for her sake her tribe attacks you. Here I would have at least just wanted to be able to try and run away, or at the very least having Merill not partaking in the fight, but instead she helps in slaughtering her entire clan. Now this, I think I kind of could have lived with, but what follows is that she cries a litte, gets a pep talk from Hawke and then it's all fine and dandy.

It isn't even treated as that big a deal, which I think is just a lot of unused potential. Again in BG2 when Jaheira finds her husband Khalid dead, that colours her for the rest of the game, compared to that a lot of the things that happen in DA2 just doesn't have any weight in them.

Combat - I did enjoy the combat, I liked it better in DA:O but that's just because I favour the more old school approach to RPG fights. Still I never felt bored with it, but the spawning of enemies in every bloody fight is something I really, REALLY did not like at all. It just became tedious in the end.

Those are my major thought of why I think DA2 is inferior to earlier Bioware titles, though I still enjoyed it I probably won't replay it anytime soon.

 

[OpticalJunction]

For what it was advertised as - a sequel to Origins, and a Bioware product - yes, it was bad. Probably their worst game yet. Judged on its own merits however, it was Ok.