Is Dragon Age II As Bad As It's Made Out To Be?

It's just really rushed. The characters and story are not very interesting but it's worth that price.

Act 2 is the best. I love playing the big goddamn hero with a square jaw and a big sword, and Act 2 delivers on that in the best way.

The game has its problems but overall it didn't deserve all of the vitriol it got on release. I really liked it, even if the ending is rather "huh?" and doesn't make a ton of sense. If you're going to get into DA2, make sure you pick up the DLC add-ons. Those are actually better than the main game and make a far better case for the "Origins + modern game design" argument that DA2 was supposed to be.

Isn't it kinda like Deus Ex II - a good game, but just nowhere as good as the original?

Look, I'm not gonna lie, it's not game of the year material or shit like that, but I did enjoy it on my first run, when it came out.

I've since replayed Origins a couple of time (ultimately a superior game) but I've just recently started replaying II and it's a better game than I remember. Or, well, just about as good as I remember, just a lot better than people make it out to be. It's not the sequel a lot of people were hoping for, and it got a bad reputation. It does have some pretty big problems, and a lot of that criticism is justified. I would compare it to ME3. It has some problems with the final act of the story, some of the changes were maybe a bit too streamlined, but underneath there's a pretty enjoyable romp if you're willing to give its charm a chance. Unlike ME3, however, it was however pretty rushed, and that shows in parts.

What I liked (with caveats):

- I liked the characters. Most of them anyway. Varric was great fun, Isabela is ridiculous but I like big tits and girls with a dirty mouth, I felt there was a genuine brotherly love for Hawke's sister (whether you get the cool sister or the less cool brother depends on your choice of character class, I think). Merril managed to be more than a pixie dream girl with her dark side, although if you're into that whole innocent wide-eyed look, you'll probably be all up that shit. Almost all the characters have something going on for them. Except Anders. I fucking hated Anders. Maybe that was intentional on the part of the developers, but god I hated that whiny bitch. Especially after how cool he was in Awakenings. But again, I guess that wass the point - it's even alluded to in the story.

- Better, more action-y animation and the combat in general was more to my taste. On lower difficulties it can become a bit of a mindless mash-fest, it's not as enjoyable or action-y as a proper third person character action game. On harder difficulties, however, it still requires a somewhat tactical approach to combat. The combat is pretty satisfying, altough on my second run I've discovered that sometimes the enemy difficulty seems to vary a bit too much from encounter to encounter, meaning that you get used to a couple of easy encounters and then the game throws something more difficult at you without any warning. Ultimately, however, I don't play these games for the combat, and I guess you don't either, so I don't think it's going to be a problem either way.

- I liked the cinematic feel of the storytelling. It's a lot like Mass Effect 2. If you don't like that at all, you'll probably dislike the system here as well. However, where Mass Effect mostly had a choice of Paragon/Renegade and neutral/investigate, here there's also a consistently available an additional "funny/charming" choice. While I played my first run as a mostly "paragon" mage and enjoyed the mage shit, I'm now playing a warrior who's a regular comedian (though not always landing the joke as well as he thinks... which is kind of funny as well).

- It's a pretty game. Well, relatively. Looked a lot better on the 360 than Origins did. Most of the environments look pretty, with nice lighting etc. Character models are also a lot nicer than in Origins. Animation in both combat and cutscenes looks a lot better.

- The story has a pretty good atmosphere. Especially in the beginning, it really feels like the start of a grand adventure when you arrive in the city. Actually, the story promises a lot and feels pretty good up until the final act.. which...

Things I didn't like:

- ...kinda ruined the story for me, as well as for a lot of people. After the finale, there's a epilogue that again promises a lot of cool stuff. You wish the game continued from there. Not because the game is short or anything, but because of how much of a let-down the moments prior to it are. I guess they're gonna scrap most of the stuff from that epilogue for DAIII, but I kinda wish they didn't. It would be cool to get to play through that game as either Hawke or the Warden or at least get to see those characters in significants roles in the third game.

- While the game in general looks pretty, and you don't really understand what the problem with the overuse of the environments is as first, it does start to get a bit old by the last third of the game. At least there's the deep roads expedition earlier in the game to provide some variety.I wish there had been another thing like that.

- There's a lot of combat. I mean a lot. I wish there was more variety to it and they would've experimented with other kinds of "scenes" like they did in ME2 and 3. Maybe 1 as well, don't remember anymore.

So, take from that what you will. I feel like with a bit more time in development it could've been a really good game, though it still probably wouldn't have been what some people were waiting for. I would recommend it, but I can look past a lot of stuff in games if they have the right kind of character stuff, storytelling and charm.

I genuinely like it, but there's no discounting that it's not a great game. Some of the things it does though... Like the way the game subtly alters the tone of Hawke's responses depending on what dialogue choices you've picked before, or the way your party members actually interact with one another instead of each existing in a vacuum (Anders and Fenris might hate each other, but they can both agree that they hate Merill more). That doesn't really make up for the way the game goes batshit insane during the last third, or any of the other, blatant problems it has, but it's not the complete trainwreck that some say it is.

@tdot: @jadegl: See now this is where I enter a quandary and taking money out of the equation this is a weird proposition for me as you've both said 'it's worth this' but.. It's how I view Steam Sale games - Time x Money / Enjoyment = Worth. I'm okay with paying £4 for something I may enjoy but then is that enjoyment going to be impacted by the amount of time I have to put into it and the flaws in it thus has. (Btw I'm saying this now having bought the game).

It's one of those things, okay the game wasn' expensive to buy but now I'm at a place of, is my time worth getting through it (people in this thread have said Act 3 sucks but I hate leaving games unfinished) just to see it through to the end? In the end is my time more valuable not to play it than play it the way through, sorry for being semi existential with this. Sometimes I feel like I actually do myself a favour not playing through games. Anyway I'll give it a try because I like Bioware's sense of storytelling through character moments.

There are a lot of interesting things in it but it still feels rushed and incomplete. Along with the fact it doesn't feel anything like Dragon Age: Origins, it really put some players off.

So that is the rub: Do you reward EA by buying this game because it feels rushed and incomplete just because it has a few good things? That is up for you to decide.

Poor story, crappy dialogue, bad art design, bad level design, cheap tie in to DAO. In my opinion, DA2 is where Bioware lost it.

There is a lot to this. Although this "change" to Bioware seemed to help Mass Effect 2 and ME3 it seemed to do nothing but cause problems for Dragon Age where it all comes back to being folded into EA made them to shift the focus away from "Hard Core RPG" to...whatever this is.

It's not bad, but it's pretty lame compared to the original. I liked the combat, the graphics and the characters, but its flaws are many fold.

I don't know, I didn't have any interest in it.

My mom has played it a billion times, though, so it must be good to somebody =P

no

It wasn't the original. It's still better than an average game.

A sentence I never thought I'd read in regard to Dragon Age II.

@hailinel: No lie. Shes 66 and she loves Dragon Age and Mass Effect games haha

Shes pretty cool like that. When I was growing up me and her used to play Atari 2600 a lot.

Like other says there are huge problems that come down your own feeling's. I like the characters I didnt like the one small city enclosure, I liked the story at points then utterly hated other points.

However DA2 in my eyes....isnt DA. I love the old combat this made it just button mash and no tactics. Then you have the massive lore changes. Sten was a Qunari....now he isnt, they remade Qunari then made them a centre part of the annoying story.

Its worth a play and at such a low price yeah go ahead. But....its not DA:O at all. Its a separate game to me, Mass effect 1 and 2 changed combat and switched out characters. DA2 just changes everything.

@hailinel My sister played DA:O and DA2 a ton herself. She has also completed ME1 to 3 so many times now. I think these games are the only ones she plays nowadays. Still she isnt a 66 year old mother.

My dad who is 56 loved DA:O and was dissapointed just like me with DA2. He played ME1 all the way to the last part of walking up the citadel tower and nope...stopped playing. Never touched an ME game again weird i think.

@razielcuts: The Game is fine. I actually liked it a good bit where people really complain about it is that it changed quite a few things about the original game. Some were actually for the better some of them for the worse its not a "bad" game by any means its just not nearly up to snuff with what the original was doing.

I liked the story and the characters to an extend. The rehashed dungeons however was embarrasing for a bioware title.

In a vacuum? No, it's not a bad game. I like a Bioware-style game better than most games. Measured against general expectations? Yes, it's rather bad for a Bioware game.

Even taken within a vacuum there's some rather glaring issues. The production value is questionable, with plenty of recycled geometry, that's poorly disguised at that. Also - you have to play the game on the highest difficulty to get the full depth of the game, but it's rather shoddily balanced for it, and comes with its own slew of problems - hence many felt like there was a lack of challenge gameplay-wise. It also has an ending that's rather hamfisted.

I still had a great time with it (playing the hardest difficulty to experience combat with friendly fire), but it's likely the weakest Bioware RPG to date.

It's a great game with a couple of glaring flaws that are kind of difficult to ignore. It made a few much needed improvements over Origins but most of them were overshadowed by stuff like there only being 6 environments in the entire game. We put a texture where a door was before! Unique environment!

In my opinion, it got far less scorn than it deserved. As a standalone RPG without the DA or BioWare labels, I'd say it would have been at best an utterly mediocre or below average ARPG with a bad story; however, given the expectations DA fans and BioWare fans had for it, what I got in the box was just downright awful. Seriously, the whole "repeated environments" and "spawning enemy waves" things are 2 of an incredibly long list of serious problems with that game, and I wouldn't consider either to be even in the list of 10 most serious problems.

I can pick up a crappy game like Duke Nukem Forever or Ride To Hell: Retribution any day, and laugh at how bad it is. Heck, I might even enjoy it in a playful sort of way. However, no bad game has drawn as much disappointment and frustration from me as DA2... so much so that I would consider it by far my least favorite game of all times, based purely on just how bad of a time I did have with it. If you ship a game with names like DA and BioWare attached to it, you need to be prepared to meet a certain level of expectations, and expect that failing to do so should be met with a fairly high level of scrutiny from the community; this is the main consequence to consider when you will likely sell many copies based on the name of the game and publisher alone (I was one of those sales...). Honestly, I wouldn't recommend it even if it was free, as there are better games out there to spend your time with, many of which are free.

With that said, there are people who like the game, and as much as I'd hate to support the sale of crappy games like DA2, I have to respect that it's OK to hold that opinion, since different people like different things. Heck, I think it's a lazy, shoddily made, uninspired action button-masher with awful characters and a piss-poor story with really stupid twists, but I know some people disagree, and I know other people that enjoy that kind of thing (hell, I like DW games but I expect them to be what they are when I buy them). If you like games like DA:O, Baldur's Gate, PS:T, and want something like those, you should avoid DA2 like the plague. But if you want to play a forgettable action game with mindless "press X to win!" mechanics, DA2 is your best choice out there, provided you absolutely hated DA:O. Man, I hate that game so much.

Dragon Age Origins = The Matrix

DA2= The Matrix: Reloaded

@flavioli:

Combat is by no means necessarily restricted to *Button Mashing*. Ramp up the difficulty, and you'll find a game that's plenty challenging in a good way for the most parts (and somewhat broken with some overlong fights and cheesy gameplay).

On the highest difficulty with friendly fire active, it's as stop 'n' go tactical as any Bioware game before it. And it's has some of the better boss fights in Bioware history.

And some of the worst. That rock golem thing? ugh.

Oh boy a bunch another thread filled with hyperbolic hatred.

DA2 was a good game, but a very different game from DAO in terms of mechanics and scope. I totally understand anyone who felt DA2 was a disappointing game, but the people claiming it's straight up bad are being haters. I felt way more attached to my Hawke than I ever felt with my Warden. Also Merrill.

I'd call it average. Lots of repetition in environments and none of the encounters really feel fun. Characters and story are alright but not spectacular. In a vacuum its a decent game. Compared to DA:O its sad. In my opinion of course, but I'm also heavily biased towards the older computer rpg style ala baldurs gate, etc. For that price buy it. As long as you don't pay full price.

Did you read the thread? I'd say a large majority was very level-headed people coming down on both sides. And I think the flaws are numerous and large enough that if someone called it straight up bad, I wouldn't necessarily call them a hater even if I don't share the position (I liked it more than I didn't, in the end).

It isn't really the price that's the issue, but simply the time investment.

There are countless better games you could be playing.

I haven't played it since it came out, but I remember not really liking it that much. The repeated environments REALLY killed it for me, and I genuinely started to get a headache due to how mind-numbingly boring the side quests were, but the problem is that the side quests are REQUIRED to advance the story, so that really sucks. The third act was also really, really stupid. The whole game builds up the stupid mage vs templar angle, and at the very end, it doesn't matter AT ALL which side you end up going with, and it's particularly stupid if you side with the mages.

Edit: Though there are some good things, I thought most of the companions were genuinely interesting (Anders being the exception), and a lot of people mention act 2 being good. I definitely remember that act being the high point of the game, since it revolves around two sub-plots that are honestly way more interesting than the actual main story, and both of them have a really strong ending, which again contrasts the main story's terrible ending.

Not to mention the duel with the Arishok, which is especially broken if you're a mage.

Anywhoo overall I consider DA2 to be a 3/5 sorta game. It has its share of qualities, like the improved art style and faster combat animations, but it is deeply flawed, as has already been elaborated on by a lot of the users in here. That and certain decisions like locking you into the role of a human really didn't sit well with me, nor did the inclusion of the dialogue wheel, or at least the way it somewhat obfuscates just what it is you're actually going to say and how it blatantly highlights the 'good' and 'bad' response Mass Effect style.

Given that DAIII is supposedly going to be released this year, I would maybe recommend the OP just skip DAII altogether and wait for that instead. That way he could jump back into the franchise with what'll hopefully be a significantly better game, one that is supposed to basically be another Origins scale game, just with some of the improvements made with DAII mixed in. Storywise I would imagine it'd be pretty easy to jump into as well, since it's building off of the mage/templar war that only really kicks off during the (utterly ludicrous) last stretch of DAII.

Dragon Age 1 sucked so I imagine 2 sucked as well.

It's a very bad game. Boring story, boring setting, extremely tedious gameplay full of MMO-esque fetch quests. Don't look at the price, just think of all the better things you could be doing with your life than playing that game. You certainly will while you're playing it.

It absolutely is THAT bad. Dragon Age II is seriously one of the worst games I've ever played.

Mindless "Press A to Awesome" wave-based gameplay. Egregious recycling of environments. The city you spend most of the game in is bland as fuck. Bad graphics. Directionless plot. Forgettable characters. Ridiculous "everyone is bisexual" romances. Those horrible "reverse fetch quests" that later made their way into Mass Effect 3 debuted in this game. Cut corners everywhere. Overall rushed feel to the entire package. Ten hours in I was bored out of my mind, and I literally had to force myself to play 20 or 30 more hours to finish it. I honestly can't recall a time that I had less fun playing a video game. My fault, I know. I should have just stopped playing, but keep in mind up until that point I had been a huge Bioware fan since Neverwinter Nights, played all their games, they never let me down, one of my favorite and most-trusted developers, etc.

And that's coming from someone who was super excited for the game and defended it (and Bioware in general) against its detractors prior to release! Over the course of that 40 hour, slow-motion trainwreck, I kept telling myself, "It'll get good. Just wait. Bioware would never put out such a bad game!" As the horror slowly dawned on me, I could only think of all the Bioware haters. "They were right! They were right all along!" I won't say they converted me to a Bioware Hater, but I'm definitely a Bioware Fence-Sitter, and between The Old Republic and Mass Effect 3 they haven't exactly done much to win me back since then.

Dragon Age II wasn't without its bright spots though. I liked the new art style. I thought the Hawke family drama early in the game was well done, and I would have liked more of that. I actually really loved everything about the Qunari subplot, and The Arishok is one of my favorite "villains" in any game. The way that stuff was playing out, I was SO hoping he would let you join them and lay waste to those those Kirkwall shits.

For what it's worth I think Dragon Age: Inquisition is looking pretty rad so far. You couldn't pay me to buy it day one though. IF I feel like I want to buy it, I'll be reading many reviews from professionals I think I can trust and as many fan impressions as I can.

The game was released a year too early. A costly lesson they've obviously taken to heart with the time being taken on Inquistion.

@razielcuts: I feel like your thread is a copy and paste of one of my previous threads on this game. That's not a bad thing, I'm just saying. That being said, I too haven't played it yet, and I don't think I will now... I am interested in Inquisition though, and that's where, even if it doesn't connect in any huge way, I'll feel kind of down for not playing two.

Well, even though it's made out to be, it's not the black plague of the gaming world. It's a functional, if kind of mediocre RPG with typically silly modern bioware stuff. YMMV.

I actualy like Dragon age 2.

In my opinion, absolutely. There were a couple of characters I like but Bioware should literally be ashamed at how hollow that game was. I could have ignored it if this was some sort of European or indie title that was released on Steam for $20 or $30 but to be a AAA title from EA/Bioware that was a sequel to critical and fan loved game makes it appalling. Boring combat, atrocious level design, overly reused areas, and more. I don't know if EA pushed them to do what they did but at the end of the day I think its a shame they went from a great game to a subpar mess.

DA2 isn't as bad as it's made out to be and Origins isn't as good as it's made out to be. Origins is still the better game though (with the Awakening expansion being better still).

My advice for DA2 would be to put the difficulty as high as you can manage. The combat system is actually pretty engaging at the higher difficulty levels, which I found to somewhat mitigate the effect of the repetitive environments and enemies.

Make sure you enjoy the Qunari storyline because it's the only genuinely interesting piece of narrative in the whole game. Act 2 is probably better than anything in Origins tbh.

Agreed.

It's massively disappointing after the first game and drops a lot of things that made that one great. The third game seems to be fixing many of the problems though, so yeah, if you can get it cheap and your invested enough to want to see everything and carry your save forward, it's probably worth it. Just expect a very linear story and a lot of tedium. It's not about "you" or your actions and choices, despite what the game may try and imply. It railroads you into very specific outcomes very blatantly and even when you are given choices, the final outcome for them is usually the same.

They wanted to tell a specific story and it ends up feeling more like a glorified action game with very shallow moral dilemmas, instead of an RPG.

I just want to say that I loved it. It's a great game, despite it's dungeon design.

I would have to be paid handsomely to play that game again. Played 10 hours of it. Biggest gaming disappointment I've had, ever. LOVED DA:O. After a decade of no really good baldurs gate like tactical RPG's, Dragon Age Origins was just amazing. DA2 was mid way between Baldurs Gate and Diablo. It was an absolute piece of shit. The game felt like a total conversion for Dragon Age: Origins. Felt rushed and sloppy. And the combat was just so fucking dull. No way I'm touching that game again. Price is irrelevant. Playing it is basically just inflicting pain upon yourself if the gameplay aspect is important to you. The story is said to be mediocre, so if you can suffer bad gameplay to experience a mediocre story, this is the game.

It has enough redeeming qualities to make it worth it. Those being - a couple of awesome characters that alone are enough to elevate the game, interesting mix-and-match skill trees which continues the idea of different skills (both of that party member's "class" and other classes) playing off one another, and some interesting story bits. The combat is still tactical, but for the PC version in particular, that locked camera with no tactical view was the biggest hurt.

I also played it after the dust had settled a bit, and going in knowing what to expect really helped me through some of the more sloggy aspects, such as the cookie-cutter environments and some deep lows in the story and absurdity of some of the characters and their motivations.

I really enjoyed Dragon Age II. The two problems I had with it was the repeated environments and the way enemies spawned into combat, making it really difficult to make tactical decisions. You want to defend this room by blocking the door? Good idea, too bad enemies will drop in behind you suddenly from god knows where.

All in all though, I didn't regret buying it at full price so it's definitely worth $4.

It's exactly like that. Some stuff it does even better, like Invisible War did some things better than DX1 (namely the grey-area morality of the different factions, that stuff was great). But everything else was so bad in comparison to how amazing the first game was that it's impossible not to be disappointed.

Dragon Age: Origins is a fantastic game and Dragon Age 2 is a really boring pale shadow of that game. It was made by BioWare, so it has a certain amount of quality to it, but anyone who enjoyed Origins as much as I did cannot help but be constantly disappointed with the flagrant mishandling of the world and gameplay. I wouldn't say it is worth playing at any price for that reason.

And even better, The Witcher exists!

I find the Rock Golem rather great, if a bit on the long side. I was talking Arishok, which was just dumb and tedious, and some other encounters I can't quite recall.