Just got Dragon age 2 from my brother : V - Skyrim

» Tue May 08, 2012 6:13 pm

Well even if DA2 didn't live up to expectations after DA:O, I'm still looking forward to DA3.

» Tue May 08, 2012 6:27 pm

It's a decent game.

It's no Dragon Age: Origins, but DAII is by no means terrible. Just... disappointing.

» Tue May 08, 2012 4:12 am

Well even if DA2 didn't live up to expectations after DA:O, I'm still looking forward to DA3.

I'm like that too, even though i have very very little good to say about DA2, i still want DA3. Its just the universe is amazing, and DA:O was just incredible. DA2 will be the nightmare that never was as far as i'm concerned.

» Tue May 08, 2012 5:46 am

The only awesome button in DA2 is the uninstall button... true story!

The way I see it's it's just crap to fill the gap till you can play TES5.

» Tue May 08, 2012 5:12 am

Play it, you'll get bored by the time skyrim is out, but passes timeee.

» Tue May 08, 2012 6:21 am

i would suggest if u havend played origins to go with that, da2 is completely bs and a waste of time (yeah im a fan)

» Tue May 08, 2012 8:47 am

Dragon Age 2? No.

This guy said it

» Tue May 08, 2012 4:02 am

I tried to sit idly by as the rampant hate for DA2, that (in my opinion) was unwarranted, perpetuated this thread.

You broke that attempt.

Alright, first of all, to the person I quoted: I completely disagree. Oblivion has allowed me to spend hundreds of hours in the game, which no other game in existence besides MAYBE Minecraft, other TES/Fallout games, and WoW, can say. It's one of the greatest video game masterpieces of all time. It had a grand, open world, and a very good atmosphere. For it's time, the graphics were great, and the combat was awesome. I don't have to explain my case any further, because Oblivion is one of the greatest games that ever blessed the market.

Now, onto DA2. If it were not for the fact that it was the successor to DA:O, it would be a very good game. Bioware attempted to fix the problem with the XBOX's version of DA:O's evident sluggishness in combat. I commend them for that, as most developers rarely change anything about their games. Not to mention the fact that EA was clearly rushing the hell out of them. They barely took a year to develop the game, and the had to ship out a sloppy game. For all the odds against them, DA2 was a good game.

The characters in the group were fairly deep, and I genuinely liked many of them. Aveline, Varric, and Isabela were some of the best characters I've seen in games. Mainly because they LOOKED like a flat, two dimensional character, unless you dug deep and took every ounce of their personality out. Others weren't as good, and had several design flaws, and weren't as deep. On the outside, looking at the group made you think that some teenager slapped it together. But, digging down, they all had good design and stories. Fenris, in particular, knocked me on my ass when I finally got around to bringing him along. Here I thought he was some JRPG, white-haired emo elf, and he turned out to be a loyal and brutal, and actually changed throughout the story, depending on what you did.

I truly liked DA2. I'm not saying that to be a hipster. When I finished it, and went on to various forums and saw all the hate, I had to double take and ask if we played the same game.

Edit: Regardless of any of that, I still got about three playthroughs from the game. To me, that was more than 60 hours, not to mention the playthroughs I started. Most games can't boast that much.

Word to everything you said - especially Fenris. Very few characters will change during the course of a game. Unfortunately, you're still going to get rampant hate. The dungeons were over used (which was the only thing I can really say irked the hell out of me), and some people just didn't like the combat. Here, it's all about Skyrim, so any RPG will be second class anyway. What matters is that YOU enjoyed it, and got your money's worth. And so did I. Just ignore the rest. Arguing over what you disliked about a game is pointless.

» Tue May 08, 2012 4:01 pm

Now, onto DA2. If it were not for the fact that it was the successor to DA:O, it would be a very good game. Bioware attempted to fix the problem with the XBOX's version of DA:O's evident sluggishness in combat. I commend them for that, as most developers rarely change anything about their games. Not to mention the fact that EA was clearly rushing the hell out of them. They barely took a year to develop the game, and the had to ship out a sloppy game. For all the odds against them, DA2 was a good game.

The characters in the group were fairly deep, and I genuinely liked many of them. Aveline, Varric, and Isabela were some of the best characters I've seen in games. Mainly because they LOOKED like a flat, two dimensional character, unless you dug deep and took every ounce of their personality out. Others weren't as good, and had several design flaws, and weren't as deep. On the outside, looking at the group made you think that some teenager slapped it together. But, digging down, they all had good design and stories. Fenris, in particular, knocked me on my ass when I finally got around to bringing him along. Here I thought he was some JRPG, white-haired emo elf, and he turned out to be a loyal and brutal, and actually changed throughout the story, depending on what you did.

I truly liked DA2. I'm not saying that to be a hipster. When I finished it, and went on to various forums and saw all the hate, I had to double take and ask if we played the same game.

Edit: Regardless of any of that, I still got about three playthroughs from the game. To me, that was more than 60 hours, not to mention the playthroughs I started. Most games can't boast that much.

I disagree.

While I do not have the same complaints as some others, I was still extremely disappointed with Dragon Age 2. It absolutely squandered the momentum Origins had put behind the series:

Now, I enjoyed the combat changes, unlike everyone else. I think that auto-attack is stupid. However, the storytelling and character development was absolutely atrocious. First of all, the over-arcing narrative was... nothing. The game was simply "things happening to a guy." While this might have flown had the "things" been engaging, they simply were not. Absolutely everything that happened in this game could have simply been the backstory to an actual decent narrative. Not to mention, the quests were tedious, either "fetch this" or "kill that" with absolutely no variation, and no choice, no alternate paths to take. It was linear, bland, and off-putting. Especially considering that it was the sequel to what I considered the best traditional RPG ever.

And the characters... eh. They ruined Anders, who had been one of my favorite characters even though he was only in the extremely short Awakening. Otherwise, they turned them all into one-dimensional one-liner machines. In DA:O, you got the sense that everyone with you was real, complicated, and deep. Even if they tended to act a certain way (Alistair being a goofy moron), they still had facets and hidden parts of their character. In DA2, they simply brought one trait to the forefront, made it overpoweringly strong, and dispensed with the rest. Aveline was a Lawful Good, period. Merrill was innocent to the point of stupid. Fenris was emo. Varric was a dashing rogue. Isabela was a [censored]. Anders was passionate. Sebastian was annoyingly religious. Carver was a stupid little [censored], and Bethany had no personality. Just badly done.

To add to that, the environments... They svcked. The caves and dungeons were literally all the SAME EXACT MAP with different entry points. This is no doubt a product of how rushed they were creating the game, but it is inexcusable.

Overall, DA2 wasn't a bad game, but it was disappointing enough that it might as well have been. The story was not up to typical Bioware standards, the characters were annoying, the graphics were dated, the mono-thematic city got boring in the first act, exploration was pointless, the gameplay was linear and unengaging, and it completely lacked all the epicness that made Origins memorable.

EDIT: Also, the lack of customization. You couldn't change the equipment on any other character. The gear itself lacked any appeal, and, face it - you ended up in the Champion armor no matter what.

» Tue May 08, 2012 4:22 am

dont bother with dragon age 2..screwed over origins.. it was just wayy to linear and repetetive.

» Tue May 08, 2012 8:12 am

i saw a lot of rage about da2 but i really liked it, it's not dao but sure fun time

» Tue May 08, 2012 6:40 pm

I would understand if it was witcher 2, that one is great on all levels for me. Great story, great replayability and just great in general.

Unfortunatly Dragon Age 2 is a dissappointment, re-used enviroments. Bland evil artifact story and just plain stupid decisions overall.. Seriously, sith like jump powers? Enemies appearing out of nowhere, people doing backflips in PLATE ARMOR from the top of some house.
I would advice playing Skyrim first, though you could ofcourse beat Dragon Age 2 before Skyrim comes out, its not that lengthy.

» Tue May 08, 2012 8:32 am

Yeah play it now.
Once you play Skyrim you'll want to take your Dragon Age 2 disc, [censored] on it, set it on fire, and smash what's left with a hammer.
Such a horrible game, and it's a shame because DA 1 was pretty good.

Naaaa, I just took it in with the rest of my trade ins and got my pre order for TES V for next to nothing with all the discounts.

» Tue May 08, 2012 9:26 am

After i played DA2 i was very satisfied with the game, it is not as good as DAO, but i did not really expect it to be since they did not spend nearly as much time in development on DA2. And DAO is a very big game, if you were to play all the origins you will have to spend like 500 hours or something like that, including the expansion. DA2 also has many ways to play the game depending on your choices, but since it is only one characters story it is smaller than DAO.

But to me the character of Hawke is much more developed as he/she has his own voice and the story in itself is very emotional. I found the story to be more unique than DAO, maybe not as epic, but on some level it was much more interesting. I found many of the "improvments" to be good, the combat system is fine, though i wish they did not change it so drasticly, like finishing moves could still be implemented. The graphics are much improved over DAO, and the artstyle is very nice, the music is stellar. The hawke family theme still makes me think of home when i hear it.

But DA2 has a major flaw that holds it back from being a amazing game instead of a great game. And the flaw is how they used locations, the places in the game looks ok, but for some reason Bioware thought that reusing locations over and over again for quests would be fine. And it is not at all, I enjoyed the game imensly, but near the end i was very fed up with having to go through the same places again and again. If they had just had another year in development and made much more locatitions to explore I think the game would not get so much heat as it has. Hopefully they will not do the same mistake with DA3.

But i digress from the point of this thread.

If you do not mind waiting for Skyrim, and you really want to play DA2 then play it, it has gotten lots of patches that fixes many bugs so it will probably be a more polished experience than Skyrim on release. And Skyrim is not going anywhere so you can always just play it after you are done with DA2.

» Tue May 08, 2012 2:12 pm

I'm playing through Mass Effect 2 again to tide me over till tomorrow night. Almost done. DA 2 was a not so good game. I wouldn't recommend it.