Dragon Age was Bioware’s spiritual successor to their Baldur’s Gate series from the over a decade ago. Baldur’s Gate was the first breakthrough hit for Bioware and holds a special place in a lot of gamer’s hearts. It did the tactical RPG genre right. It was a daunting task to match the expectations that gamers had for Dragon Age but Bioware succeeded easily. Now less than two years down after Dragon Age: Origin’s release, a full-blown sequel has come. And during that time, Bioware put out downloadable content and a meaty expansion. Clearly Bioware have been very busy bumblebees but can they keep their quality consistent at this pace?
The game is told from the perspective of Varric, one of the companions along your journey. He has gotten himself in a predicament and is being forced to tell the real story of how you, Hawke, rose to become the Hero of Kirkwall. He starts at the beginning, with how you became a refugee and ended up in the city of Kirkwall. You quickly realize that Varric has a flair for storytelling and takes certain liberties on first pass but quickly he’s made to tell the true events. The story spans your journey from refugee to Hero of Kirkwall and beyond. After major events, the story is pushed forward a couple years and you see the results of your actions. The events that force you to become a refugee actually happen fairly early in the Dragon Age: Origin’s storyline but the game quickly goes past that game in the time scale. Along the way, you’ll meet several companions, each with their unique past and motivations. You can import your decisions from Dragon Age: Origin’s but they do not have that great of an impact on the game but neat when you hear about the actions of the Hero of Ferelden. The story is also completely independent of that games storyline so other than small homages to the first game, you will not miss anything. The story, largely feels fragmented. The issue is how the game is set up as tons of small quests so you get a lot of self-contained stories and not many overarching threads other than you making your way through this world. Some of those stories are really good and some not so much. The building up in this game and how it turns out can potentially make the third installment amazing but we’ll have to see how it turns out. As of now, the story is entertaining but is no Dragon Age: Origins.
The gameplay is largely the same as Dragon Age: Origins except for some consolidation. The game is a third-person party-based tactical RPG. It mixes some elements of role-playing with tactical choices from the realm of strategy games. You have your choice of three classes: warrior, rogue, or mage. You can be male or female. One big loss at this stage is that you cannot choose from a handful of races or origins. You’re on a single path, a human refugee. The combat has been sped up significantly and while that gives you a great sense of power and style, certain things where forced to change. Instead of each encounter being very tactical and having the potential to be deadly, they’re now reduced to waves and predictability. The waves limit your visibility about what is coming at you so you can’t make very good tactical choices and the enemies that the game spawns (typically in front of your eyes) can be taken out in predictable ways.
The skill trees have been consolidated and neutered. Instead of having both a direct, one-target ice and fire attacks, it’s now been reduced to just an ice attack. The big epic spells that typically ended a tree are now easier to get and not as devastating. The trees have also been rearranged how they work. You now have branching paths that may or may not meet up at the end. In theory, this idea is really nice but with the consolidated and neutered skills, it’s not that fun. Also you have to back out of a tree, navigate to another tree, select it, and navigate to a skill to even attempt to compare. Basically, it’s just not as efficient as before and not as conducive to comparing for the purposes of which route you want to go. The inventory and equipment also got consolidated. Some items along the way are immediately earmarked as junk, making it easy to know which stuff to sell without touching the real items. You still have full control over your character, like which weapons and armor to equip. unfortunately, the choice of armor has been taken away from you for your companions. Instead, along the way you can pick up random improvement pieces for them. Sometimes you will find these at a store and other times on an insignificant dead body. The issue is that there is no central place to go to improve you characters. If you don’t check all the chests, dead bodies, and stores, you can easily miss out on improving your characters. Luckily, the choice for weapons, accessories, and skill points are still up to you. But basically, the game has been neutered for accessibility as the loss of depth and role-playing.
Depending on how you like to play, the way the quests are done can be a blessing or an issue. You can easily play for 5 minutes and have a satisfying experience and beat a quest. The issue is that nearly all the quests fit within a nice 5-10 minute timeframe. Dragon Age: Origins had a handful of large complex quests and that is what was loved about the first. In this, they are gone. It definitely breaks up the Bioware mold and improves accessibility but still needs work to satisfy the gamers that enjoy a strong meaty quest. As for the quality of the quests, they range from good to pretty nonsensical. Early on in your travels you’ll pick up random items and mysteriously know exactly whose they are and where they are. But on the flip side, there are some very good self-contained stories that thread themselves across several quests.
In the preceding paragraphs, I have been exceedingly harsh in some parts. The game is still fun to play. There are no game-killing changes that will completely ruin the experience for anyone. I really appreciate the switch from the Bioware mold. It’s worked for them since Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic but I longed for a change since it started to get old. Finally they switched it and it works but the changes to the core gameplay mechanics were disappointing. The game’s mechanics have been consolidated and simplified to improve accessibility, which were needed in some areas, but Bioware overreacted and it hurt the experience.
The graphics have the same ups and downs that the waves in the waters surrounding Kirkwall seem to have. The city of Kirkwall is your staple for most of your journey and it’s fairly bland. You’ll see the same beggars line the streets. It’s not as interactive as before. In Dragon Age: Origins, none of the towns were of this scale but in those areas, most of the NPCs were interactable, even if you got back just a one-liner. You could choose to donate to beggars. It felt as good as this style could become but this sequel pulls it back a bit. The city and surrounding areas are not even open, just an interconnected group of maps linked together by a map and selectable points of interests. It has the perk of letting you get around quick but at the loss of some immersion. Another is that most of the areas are reused time and time again. They aren’t even randomly generated and use a lot of the same pieces, they are the same areas. Sometimes objects will be placed slightly different but you can’t deny they are practically identical. Even iconic areas that should be unique and hold meaning are reused in other areas. Bioware tried to switch it up by letting you enter from different locations and closing off certain passages but it only works for so long before it gets tiresome. On the flipside, the characters got a bump in quality and look good. The most noticeable addition is a much more stylish combat look. The attacks are quicker and fiercer than ever. The trend in your clothes overtime is quite nice as well. You start as a pathetic looking refugee and turn into looking like a badass at the end. Also the cutscenes and conversations have benefited from a more cinematic style with better cuts and angles than before. It seems what brought the graphics down was more due to rushing the project than what the ideas Bioware had in store for us but it still does not make it excusable.
The one aspect that hit the Bioware quality standard was the voice acting. While there aren’t many iconic characters that warm your soul at night like other Bioware titles, what’s here is quite well done. The Arishok sounds menacing yet collected and Merrill sounds innocent and naïve without being generic. The sound design is also done well. The weapons and powers all sound great and powerful. The stylish edge definitely leaked over into the sound design in this regard. The music is well done as well but not as good as the first game. There are certainly some decent parts but not many iconic songs that impact you after the game is finished. Overall what’s here is competent and enjoyable though may not carry past the end of the game.
I am pleased that Bioware tried to deviate from their formula but what they chose has already struggled heavily in the past and they rushed it. You can see glimpses of it succeeding but consistently held back by repetition and lack of polish. It would have been nice to see what another year or two in the baby maker would’ve yielded for this title. What’s here is definitely a step down from Dragon Age 1 but still a fun, engaging experience. The more stylish combat worked well but the consolidated spells and skills left a little to be desired. The wave-based combat also took a tactical edge out of the title that was present in the first. Each battle was no longer lethal and has now become more predictable. I could rehash all the negatives in Dragon Age 2 but it’s a symptom of seeing potential. Dragon Age 1 was great. The refined combat system is fun and certainly makes it more accessible. The story is entertaining if albeit fragmented. These elements keep pushing you through all the stuff that doesn’t meet the Bioware quality standards and you won’t regret your time investment. It may feel like an expansion pack but when the price drops, it’s a worthwhile pickup for fans of the series.
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Buy Dragon Age 2 for Xbox 360 Online from EBgames.com
Click here to buy Dragon Age 2 online for Xbox 360 from EBGames.com
