Major disappointment. The first game was certainly flawed, especially in terms of usability for people new to RPGs, but it more than made it for its flaws by giving us memorable characters, a richly-detailed world to explore, and a deep backstory and main story to immerse ourselves in. A lot of people found a special place for Dragon Age Origins in their hearts and I was certainly one of them. I didn't expect anything revelatory out of the sequel, after all, it's coming hot off the heals of the last game (roughly a little less than 2 years?) and I don't exactly have a lot of faith in the games industry in the first place. I expected a reasonable upgrade to the combat system and a roughly equivalent level of story-telling, which has been a staple of every Bioware game they have ever released, even less-loved ones. My expectations were not met.
Despite what previews may have led you to believe, the combat system is pretty much exactly the same as the first game, which is great for me, because I actually had a blast with combat in the first one. There are a couple minor tweaks that make it feel like you're more in the control of your characters, which is a nice touch, but it's pretty minor stuff. Combat has been toned down to be much easier, to the point where you can virtually spam X or A in all of your fights and win on normal difficulty. Most people will want to play it on hard or higher assuming you want to play it at all.
The reason you should not play Dragon Age II is because it cheapens the Dragon Age series. I found myself pining for characters I hated in the first one (Sten and Zevren anyone?) because every single character is unmemorable and all of their dialogue boils down to "hey guys! let's get the band guys, ok?" it's impossible to know how characters are related to each other unless they're spelling it out in poorly-written bland dialogue. You could be forgiven for not knowing the hot old lady with giant cans is your mother and Carver is your brother, because they, like every other character, look like random tavern NPCs and have a very limited set of animations to convey emotion. Also, there isn't nearly as much voice acting in the sequel as there was in the first one. NPCs, vendors, side-quest givers and even some major plot characters usually have one or two sound bytes that repeats no matter how many times you talk to them. When you finally find a character that has more than a few things to say, they always seem to glaze over in vague jargon and often leave you with more questions than before you talked to the character-- and since your dialogue options are more limited than in the first game, talking feels meaningless and boils down to do you want to be a pessimist, optimist, or flip.
"Dungeons" are just a series of narrow passages and rooms with little to no distinguishing landmarks to make you feel like you're actually making progress or seeing anything new. Some major quests have their conclusions take place in environments that aren't much better than some of the random outdoor encounters from the world map in the first game. Kirkwall looks identical to Stormwind in World of Warcraft minus the canals. Orzammar in DA:O was very close to Ironforge, sure, but at least it felt like a living city. Kirkwall is an empty series of spikes white brick walls.
I'm probably being too harsh, but it's a shame when I can no longer say that a Bioware game is a day one purchase at full price without reading reviews. It feels rushed, forced, unnecessary, and I can't help feeling like I wasted my money. Even though the combat is still fun and improved, I don't hate myself quite enough to slog through this mess of a game.
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