Dragon Age II Review

Dragon Age II has quickly become one of the most polarizing games I've ever seen. People either love it or they hate it. This can seen by it having one of the lowest Metacritic scores that a BioWare game has ever gotten. It's also been a PR nightmare for EA and BioWare with the rumors about SecuROM DRM, the accidental banning of a forum poster from the game, and the tracing from a positive review to a BioWare employee.

But with all the changes made by BioWare, is Dragon Age II really a weak game or are the complainers overreacting? I've spent a lot of time playing as every class, both genders, and with each playstyle to give you my full impressions. Aren't I great to you guys? Well, let's get started.

STORY

With a BioWare game, we expect a strong storyline and we get one here. Though it will take a little while to describe my full feelings. The story takes place in flashback with a dwarf named Varric Tethras telling the story of the rise of "The Champion of Kirkwall" while being interrogated by Chantry Seeker (think internal affairs), Cassandra Pentaghast. She is seeking this information from him as "The Champion", Hawke, was in the middle of events that have brought the world to the brink of war. What follows is a 3-act structure showing Hawke's rise to power and the beginning of the war.

It's a great and compelling set-up but let's get the negatives out of the way first. First off the game tries to make a more focused story through its flashback but that focus falters in quite a few places meaning that sometimes the pacing gets a little slow. Also there was a character from Origins that I really thought would take a bigger role but she's only in the game for about 10 minutes and that was disappointing, especially how much they hyped her at the end of the last DLC for Origins. I hope she plays a bigger part in Dragon Age III given her mysterious nature.

The game uses the save-file transfer system that Mass Effect 2 uses but its effect is nowhere near as strong and that makes the errors in the system all the more notable. Whereas Mass Effect 2 brought an enormous amount of variables and had so few errors (and even those minor), Dragon Age II brings a minimal amount over and has quite a few big continuity problems. That was irritating to say the least.

Like every BioWare game, the characters are remarkably well-written. Giving the main character, Hawke, a voice was a great decision and led to the personality tracker. In other words whatever personality you predominantly choose for dialogue will be the personality s/he has when you don't choose dialogue. You'll really care about Hawke as the game goes on and feel a great deal of sympathy for him/her with where the story goes.

Male Hawke and Lady Hawke

The other characters are also great. Varric and all the other companions such as Merrill, Fenris, Aveline, Isabella, etc. are all well-written with great backstories that give them life. This is aided by BioWare's always excellent dialogue which makes them feel so real. The friendship/rivalry relationship system will make you feel a true bond to these characters whether for good or ill.

The game's real strength though is its morality. Maybe not in the choices, but in terms of the conflicts in this game, it's one of the grayest I have ever seen in this medium. The game deals with a brewing conflict between mages and the Chantry templars who are meant to keep mages in check given how feared they are. While at the beginning you may be totally on the mages' side, the game does an amazing job of showing why people are so afraid of mages. There are really no pure characters or sides to this tale.

Dragon Age: Origins had more black and gray morality but DAII is pure gray (even with a little wrench thrown into the cog at the end). Both the mages and templars are equally flawed and reasonable in both their ideology and arguments. Playing as a mage, I also felt, gave the story more weight as well. Then you add a third party, the qunari, who's morality is so different from anyone else's it's nearly impossible to call them good or evil. You'll definitely see one character as a villain late in the game but even then, said character has understandable intentions taken too far.

Qunari: Not as simplistic as they look

In the end, despite the missed opportunity of a mysterious character, an annoying cliffhanger ending, and a bit of a lack of focus, the story succeeds through its characters, dialogue, and brutally gray morality that gives no true heroes or true villains. In the end I'm anticipating to see how Hawke's story will pan out.

GAMEPLAY AND DESIGN

The gameplay has been changed and simplified from Origins, but is the simplification a good thing? With Mass Effect 2, it made a game that was superior to its predecessor in almost every way. Well Dragon Age II is an example that simplification is not always the best thing. Mass Effect 2 kept the identity of its predecessor and still felt like its own game and this is where Dragon Age II falters.

It feels like crossing Dragon Age: Origins, with Mass Effect, and Jade Empire (if you made Jade Empire slightly more tactical) and they just kind of clash. Auto-attacking is gone on the consoles and replaced with pressing "X" or "A" over and over for a single basic attack which can get really annoying and repetitive. It is faster-paced than Origins which is fine but the tactics have also been slightly reduced. They just don't feel as necessary as in Origins which is disappointing, partly because with a few exceptions the game is pretty easy.

On the plus side, playing as a mage was awesome. The other two classes were also good but I got the most fun out of the mage. Calling down fireballs from the sky, showering enemies with ice to freeze them, crushing them in a prison, etc. was blissful. There were also quite a few well set-up fights with creatures like dragons, and others that score you nice achievements. Also one final boss near the end of each of the three acts which are well done (though the one at the end of Act II is a pain in the ass).

For leveling up, you've got a new "abilities tree" which I felt was implemented well, giving a feeling of progression on different set-ups and playstyles or spelltypes. This is a design choice that I particularly liked.

In terms of design, you'll mostly stick to the city of Kirkwall. This game's map is nowhere near as large as Origins which again is disappointing. Yes it makes sense storywise but it still is too much of a sacrifice of gameplay and design for storytelling. In Origins you had every environment imaginable, large cities, enormous forests, snow-covered mountains, lava-filled caves, etc. In here you've got a city and a few outlying environments with not much variation.

As for the different dungeons and caves, inexcusable BioWare. You've got around 30 dungeons and caves in the game but only about 4-6 maps in total. So what does this mean? You'll be revisiting recycled dungeons almost every time. This was a real annoyance and gave the game even more of a feeling of being overly-repetitious. This was just a poor design choice that I'm amazed no one looked at and said "Where's the variety?"

GRAPHICS AND SOUND

Graphically, I expected more. It doesn't look bad but it really doesn't take a big step over Origins. Textures look somewhat weak up close and the environments, as I said before, lack variety and you're mostly looking at a brown city most of the time.

The biggest problem was that during cutscenes the screen would get very jumbled, and it do that for entire conversations. I don't know if my disk was just scratched or what but that was incredibly annoying and really took me out of the scene (if my disc just somehow got scratched then it shouldn't be a problem for other people). I'm sure the PC version looks better but this game could have looked better than it did.

Dwarves and elves got very slight redesigns in order to make them look a little less traditional. The biggest redesign were the qunari who look nothing like what Sten looked like in Origins. I like this redesign and they look incredibly badass and intimidating, especially their leader, The Arishok.

The Arishok: Just try to imagine this guy running at you when pissed off.

The voice acting is outstanding. Did you really expect anything less from BioWare on that part? Almost everyone plays their part well. Just like in Mass Effect I feel that Lady Hawke was better acted than Male Hawke. Jo Wyatt who voices Lady Hawke delivers a strong performance giving the character a vulnerability that I felt was missing in Male Hawke. She may not quite hit the incredible bar set by Jennifer Hale as Shepard but I wasn't expecting that given how amazing Hale has been and she still delivers. While I don't feel the voice acting is quite as consistently good as in Mass Effect, it's still remarkable.

The real standout in the voice acting department was Brian Bloom as Varric Tethras. Bloom gives his character a witty and snarky personality and delivers every line with such conviction that he's the most convincing character in the entire story. It helps that he's also the narrator. Brian Bloom's performance as Varric is the best I've heard so far this year.

Brian Bloom steals the show as the storytelling dwarf, Varric Tethras and delivers the best performance so far this year.

Just like the voice acting, the music is strong and gives further weight to the storyline and the different characters and situations in the game. The composer admitted that it was rushed but it's still a strong score with a few standout pieces, primarily the end credits theme, "I'm Not Calling You a Liar" by Florence and the Machine (which admittedly was not written for the game but it's still a great and fitting piece).

CONCLUSION

I've made a lot of complaints in this review and Dragon Age II definitely has a lot of flaws that can't be excused and also feels like it lacks its own identity. Storywise, I thought this was a better and more personal story than Origins ever was. But as a whole it's definitely not as good as Origins. However, that doesn't mean the game sucks. It may be one of BioWare's weaker games but that's still better than the best that we get from most companies.


Dragon Age II feels rushed and overly-simplified. But it's excellent story, characters, some of the grayest morality imaginable, remarkable voice acting, and still fun even if simplified combat make it a game worth trying out. I wish I could give my first reviewed BioWare game a full recommendation but I can't given its flaws. I will say rent it and go in with an open-mind because while there's a lot wrong with this game, there's also a lot right.