Long time since my last post. I got my wisdom teeth out a little over a week ago. I healed pretty fast, only some slight swelling on the third and fourth days. I got sick on the third day though, great time to come down with a sinus infection. I'm just getting over that now pretty much. Needless to say I was miserable most of last week. Other than that, things have been going pretty well. I'm pretty much done with all my final projects (only had one test,a short one in video game history, and that was done yesterday) despite having missed most of last week's classes in my misery. Go me :p I've been playing a lot of Dragon Age 2 lately, so much that I have successfully added another platinum trophy to my collection. I thought I'd share my thoughts on it.
Overall, it was a solid game, but a far lesser game than DA1 was. Yes the combat was more fluid. Fluidity doesn't necessarily entail better though. I found myself pressing x . . . a lot. I'd use abilities on elite mobs and boss mobs but most of the time mashing the trusty x button was the way to go. Also there was no lock on system. This was really problematic. When I'm trying to bring down an elite mage before he goes and nukes my entire team to death I don't want my targeting to be switched the copious amounts of grunt mobs around the mob in question. It was really annoying. Additionally, if there was the slightest gap between you and the mob, as a melee character, you would constantly do your slight charge melee attack, which would then push the enemy back some more, and thus, this chain would continue for quite some time til the mob finally stopped moving. This made it hard to a) build up combos on my Rogue and b) Use my other abilites and my finisher. So in the end, despite it being more fast paced and streamlined, I liked DA1's combat system better, which was supposed to be what DA2 did better than DA1.
The one 100% improvement over DA1 were the graphics. Those I were happy with for the most part, except that they recycled a lot of the character customization options from the first game, and most of those sucked. Bioware, seriously, learn to make better character customization options, I'm really tired of every character I attempt to make being ridiculously ugly compared to the default appearance unless I spend 2 hours getting just the right cheek fatness. I did end up making a decent male Hawke that eventually grew on me quite a lot, so much so that I really prefer that look over default male Hawke. My endeavor to make a smoking hot female Hawke was a bit easier. Another criticism I have is a small one, the new looks for Sandal and Bodahn. They have the first Resident Evil movie's zombie's eyes. It's creepy. Especially on Sandal. I will give Bioware props on Isabela though. She is the finest piece of video game ass I've ever seen. And 100% more charismatic and bad ass than that brick wall Miranda.
Humina, humina
As for the story, DA1 trounces DA2. The problem with DA2's story is that there was no main story. It was just a series of sub plots that all seem to have had the sole purpose of building up to DA3. It really made the game feel like DA1.5 not a true sequel. Each act was essentially a new subplot. They did have a final climatic battle, but since we are only introduced to our antagonist at the end of Act II we have no time to build up any resentment or desire to see the fucker go down, or any feelings about them at all really. It's strange how much Bioware dropped the ball on making you associate with the characters in this game. I felt strongly about every single character pretty much in DA1. I hated that whiny bitch Alistair. I loved Morrigan, she'll always be my #1 video game love
I thought Sten was the ultimate bad ass. Dog was the cutest thing ever. Wynne was a pretty funny old lady. I hated and felt sympathetic at the same time for Loghain. So and so forth. DA2 kind of accomplished the same thing, at least with the companions, but not so much with the other characters. I didn't care for Isabela as much as I did Morrigan, but at least the romance was better than the god awful shit they call romance in Mass Effect. I loved Varric, he was by far the best character in the game. Fenris kind of took the Sten role, though his attitude towards mages kind of got on my nerves (I'm a big supporter of mage liberation ). Anders got significantly more annoying since they decided to drop the funny side of him and make him the Che Guevara of magedom, although I did like the times when Justice took over completely and Anders became Vengeance. That was pretty rad. Anyways I won't go into how I felt about all the characters, just know that DA2 isn't as an emotionally engaging as the first one was, especially with regards to the antagonists. The only antagonist I felt anything towards was the Arishok, and that's just because he reminded me a lot of Sten from DA1.
BAMF
Moving on to the sound (VAs/music/etc) everything was pretty solid. Bodahn was ridiculously annoying though. He had the same VA but the person doing the voice work decided to tweak his voice for whatever reason and it was for the worse. Also, the generic Qunari needed better VAs. Aside from the Saarebas you escort during the quest in Act 1 and the Arishok, all the Qunari sounded distinctly not Qunari. It was jarring. I guess we can't expect all Qunari to sound similar to Sten but still, it was disappointing.
And that's all I have to say really. Looking back, I mentioned Sten a lot. Makes me wonder about myself >.> All together the game was decent and I still love the series, so I'll be looking forward to DA3. I'm sure those of you who are more inclined to play shooters and action games will love it, but for those of you who are veteran RPG gamers, you definitely won't enjoy it as much as the first game.
Overall, it was a solid game, but a far lesser game than DA1 was. Yes the combat was more fluid. Fluidity doesn't necessarily entail better though. I found myself pressing x . . . a lot. I'd use abilities on elite mobs and boss mobs but most of the time mashing the trusty x button was the way to go. Also there was no lock on system. This was really problematic. When I'm trying to bring down an elite mage before he goes and nukes my entire team to death I don't want my targeting to be switched the copious amounts of grunt mobs around the mob in question. It was really annoying. Additionally, if there was the slightest gap between you and the mob, as a melee character, you would constantly do your slight charge melee attack, which would then push the enemy back some more, and thus, this chain would continue for quite some time til the mob finally stopped moving. This made it hard to a) build up combos on my Rogue and b) Use my other abilites and my finisher. So in the end, despite it being more fast paced and streamlined, I liked DA1's combat system better, which was supposed to be what DA2 did better than DA1.
The one 100% improvement over DA1 were the graphics. Those I were happy with for the most part, except that they recycled a lot of the character customization options from the first game, and most of those sucked. Bioware, seriously, learn to make better character customization options, I'm really tired of every character I attempt to make being ridiculously ugly compared to the default appearance unless I spend 2 hours getting just the right cheek fatness. I did end up making a decent male Hawke that eventually grew on me quite a lot, so much so that I really prefer that look over default male Hawke. My endeavor to make a smoking hot female Hawke was a bit easier. Another criticism I have is a small one, the new looks for Sandal and Bodahn. They have the first Resident Evil movie's zombie's eyes. It's creepy. Especially on Sandal. I will give Bioware props on Isabela though. She is the finest piece of video game ass I've ever seen. And 100% more charismatic and bad ass than that brick wall Miranda.
Humina, humina
As for the story, DA1 trounces DA2. The problem with DA2's story is that there was no main story. It was just a series of sub plots that all seem to have had the sole purpose of building up to DA3. It really made the game feel like DA1.5 not a true sequel. Each act was essentially a new subplot. They did have a final climatic battle, but since we are only introduced to our antagonist at the end of Act II we have no time to build up any resentment or desire to see the fucker go down, or any feelings about them at all really. It's strange how much Bioware dropped the ball on making you associate with the characters in this game. I felt strongly about every single character pretty much in DA1. I hated that whiny bitch Alistair. I loved Morrigan, she'll always be my #1 video game love
I thought Sten was the ultimate bad ass. Dog was the cutest thing ever. Wynne was a pretty funny old lady. I hated and felt sympathetic at the same time for Loghain. So and so forth. DA2 kind of accomplished the same thing, at least with the companions, but not so much with the other characters. I didn't care for Isabela as much as I did Morrigan, but at least the romance was better than the god awful shit they call romance in Mass Effect. I loved Varric, he was by far the best character in the game. Fenris kind of took the Sten role, though his attitude towards mages kind of got on my nerves (I'm a big supporter of mage liberation ). Anders got significantly more annoying since they decided to drop the funny side of him and make him the Che Guevara of magedom, although I did like the times when Justice took over completely and Anders became Vengeance. That was pretty rad. Anyways I won't go into how I felt about all the characters, just know that DA2 isn't as an emotionally engaging as the first one was, especially with regards to the antagonists. The only antagonist I felt anything towards was the Arishok, and that's just because he reminded me a lot of Sten from DA1. BAMF
Moving on to the sound (VAs/music/etc) everything was pretty solid. Bodahn was ridiculously annoying though. He had the same VA but the person doing the voice work decided to tweak his voice for whatever reason and it was for the worse. Also, the generic Qunari needed better VAs. Aside from the Saarebas you escort during the quest in Act 1 and the Arishok, all the Qunari sounded distinctly not Qunari. It was jarring. I guess we can't expect all Qunari to sound similar to Sten but still, it was disappointing.
And that's all I have to say really. Looking back, I mentioned Sten a lot. Makes me wonder about myself >.> All together the game was decent and I still love the series, so I'll be looking forward to DA3. I'm sure those of you who are more inclined to play shooters and action games will love it, but for those of you who are veteran RPG gamers, you definitely won't enjoy it as much as the first game.
VIEW 11 of 11 COMMENTS
drusylla:
A whole slew of people would have to click "I love it" for the % to go up enough for the set to be considered to get bought (like 96% and up). Once the % goes down, it's hard to bring it back up 
drusylla:
The lowest I've seen was like 94%. And that was months and months and months later. I really don't think it's going to miraculously jump high enough to get considered.