Dragon Age II [PC, 360, PS3]

[crocky-chocky]

I'm a Dragon Age newbie, just a coupla hours in and have been enjoying this more and more as it progresses. At least until last night, when it crashed 3 times in a row at varying points in the same dialogue scene.

Finish your games developers, for chrissakes.

The combat is syooperb anyway, so visceral and streamlined, with just the right amount of leveling up for me to keep a good handle on...any more and I'd forget which characters have learned what. The world has just enough flourishes in its design to be interesting, and some of the characters are excellent.

I like that elf gal, they've handled her awkwardness really nicely.

Maybe it's because I'm new to the series, but it doesn't seem dumbed down to me. It's hardly a Final Fantasy XIII style slaughtering.

[Eight Rooks]

Hated Morrigan with a passion, and her sarcastic bickering with Alistair was the laziest narrative cop-out imaginable, one which stopped being funny after about thirty seconds. Wynne I didn't use, but I saw nothing to show she was anything but typical all-knowing elderly lady. Shale was Carry On Dungeons & Dragons, a one-note joke taken to ridiculous extremes.

The worst moments in DA2 were when the original characters showed up for cameos, much like the point in ME2 where Liara appeared and I thought 'Oh, God, not you again'. There's nothing in DA:O that moved me as much as practically any one of Merrill's conversations - the depth to her character, next to the ciphers from Origins, is astounding.

[mekanor]

So finished this last night with about 40 hours on the clock (did every mission). Pretty fantastic game I have to say. Really ramped up at the end. It was pretty tense trying to keep the peace and having everything falling apart around you.

->Open Spoiler<-

I'll never forgive you Anders!

.

All in all a much more accessible game than the first while managing to keep most of the gameplay intricacies for those who are interested (still baffled as to why they removed the option to use the tactical view though). I'm also convinced this game was really rushed. The same maps are used over and over for different locations and 90% of the game takes place in the city you start in. I want a whole country to explore, not a single city and it's outskirts.

Anyhow, whilst the story was very good for what it was, it really wouldn't have mattered if they called the game Bioware Fantasy RPG 6, the game had so little to do with origins. It really does feel like bioware are trolling when all you get is a few "go visit this character from the first game" missions in the third act and there are about 100 loose ends by the time the game wraps up.

->Open Spoiler<-

I mean what was the point of Merril's mirror? Absolutely nothing came of that. Aside from seeing her crying in her house directly after, it didn't seem to have much affect on her either. Leliana and the seeker make some secretive comments about some plan and how the warden and the champion are missing,

but if Bioware follow in the trend of Awakening and DA2, DA3 will have absolutely nothing to do with the first two games anyway, and we'll still have a whole bunch of stuff unresolved.

Anyway, my second negative sounding post, but I did really enjoy the game. Worth a try for people who didn't enjoy the first too. Not like you're missing out on anything story wise

[Guts]

I have to scratch my head at people who have finished this in 20+ hours. I'm 15+ hours in (on Hard) and I'm still in Hawke's first year after the beginning! Now, I'm not a fast player, I like to explore every nook and cranny, talk to everybody and do all quests, but finishing this in 24 hours sounds bizarre. Are these people just rushing through it on easy and ignoring side missions? I just managed to accumulate the 50 gold coins for the expedition and feel like the game is about to start really.

For the record, I finished Origins in little less than 60 hours, did pretty much everything.

[Adam]

Was at 29 hours when I finished Act 1, playing on Hard. Was pretty efficient with doing quests too, didn't waste much time

[mugetsu]

34 hours in and i've just started the final 3rd of the game and absolutely loads of new quests have oppened as well as a good few unmarked npc quests.

[mekanor]

On something like Dragon Age I like to do everything in the game I can, and I certainly don't rush. DA2 took me around 40 hours, but from memory it was more like 60 in origins.

[mekanor]

So, I remember thinking it was pretty weird that I couldn't select the highest quality visuals on the PC version. Apparently, you need to download a separate high resolution texture pack. Would have been handy to know that before I finished the game...

Downloading now and will report back. Oh first patch is out too.

[MrKirov]

I'm nearly 30 hours in and only just started the second act, people doing this game in 20 hours must be missing a hell of a lot!

The missus is playing through her own game at the same time, she's also just finished act 1 on 25 hours, and noted she found some quests that I didn't, and I'm pretty thorough!

I'm loving it though, really enjoying it. There's certainy niggles, but it overcomes it I feel! The age old quest for better equipment gets me again

I'm not a fan of the characters so far, certainly not as good as DA:O, I like Isabella (who wouldn't!) but I'm using aveline, haven't got a choice, she's the only sword and shield warrior, and Anders only because he's the only Mage with a healing ability!

Still, can't wait to get back on it when I can! Any idea when a 360 patch is coming to fix the forbidden tomes quest ( ffs don't take the tomes, it'll bug the quest!) and the DLC achievement bugs?

[crocky-chocky]

Hmm...a few more hours in, and..well...

Is it just me or do they use the same bit of scenery for different locations? Because for me, an RPG needs a satisfying sense of progression to hold my interest, and right now I feel like I'm just taking on the same sub-quests in the same handful of settings, with gradually tougher enemies so the sense of levelling up is barely noticable.

There's a sense of freedom given just how many quests there are, but what's the point if I'm confined to just one city and 3 identical looking caverns?

S'a shame given how much I enjoy the characters, but yeah, dunno if I'm cut out for this game.

[Guts]

Yeah, there's some really heavy recycling with the areas, there are probably something like 5 different dungeons and all dungeons in the game are slight variations of those. It's indeed a damn shame, but seeing how rushed this game is (I mean it came out less than a year after Awakening) I don't think it's surprising. I hope Dragon Age 3 will be handled with more respect.

[mekanor]

Is it just me or do they use the same bit of scenery for different locations? Because for me, an RPG needs a satisfying sense of progression to hold my interest, and right now I feel like I'm just taking on the same sub-quests in the same handful of settings, with gradually tougher enemies so the sense of levelling up is barely noticable.

There's a sense of freedom given just how many quests there are, but what's the point if I'm confined to just one city and 3 identical looking caverns?

Yep, the recycled maps gets old very very quickly. Biggest hint that the game was massively rushed. I think there are only about 3 dungeon maps, and different missions just use small sections of them. You can tell by looking at the minimap, certain paths are just blocked off.

I'm not a fan of the characters so far, certainly not as good as DA:O, I like Isabella (who wouldn't!) but I'm using aveline, haven't got a choice, she's the only sword and shield warrior, and Anders only because he's the only Mage with a healing ability!

This actually annoyed me a bit. I probably would have used Anders anyway, but the fact that he is the only healer pretty much forces you to use him. For reasons unknown, Merril doesn't even have access to the creation spells so you can't use here as a healer. Pretty restrictive actually. It meant I pretty much stuck with Anders, Aveline and Isabella (occasionally swapping her out for Varric) for the entire game.

[Adam]

If you're sick of Aveline, try and have a go without a tank. I've done alright so far without one and I've killed some of the bigger (optional) bosses. There's lots of defensive abilities for everyone witch helps loads, just set up "Self: Being attacked by Melee or Magic > Defensive ability" for everything you have access to ie. Evade, Barrier, Stealth etc.

One of the things they got right here, was letting you respec with those potions you can buy...only problem is each characters unique talent set. You can respec Aveline, but she will always have that tank biased talent set so it seems pointless to play her any other way. Then they go and give Anders a talent set that is half healer half nuker and if you want to have him set up good, he'll most likely want to stick to one of those roles rendering half of that talent tree useless.

[Finsbury Girl]

Picked this up on the cheap on PC. It's ok thus far. Camera is totally broken making some combat almmost impossible as you can't see spamming enemies with bows. Grrrrr.

Will probably still finish it, but will go back and finish Awakening and final DLC bits I haven't done from the first one before I do.

[Cepp]

I just picked it up as well, same issues with the camera, I just want to raise it but all you can do is zoom out a little, quite maddening. Character models look much better though, it's supposed to be a short game as well so I'll stick with it.