User Review : Dragon Age 2

Dragon Age 2: An in-depth review (Not kidding)

This is my first attempt in writing a review of a game. If you decide to read it all (It is a lot to read I know) and feel like giving criticism, please do so constructively. This review is a part of a task I'm doing for school.

Dragon Age 2 is Bioware’s second game in the Dragon Age universe (not counting facebook games and others, if there are any). This review will look into many aspects of the game and give them credit on their own. This review intends to look at Dragon Age 2 as a game entirely on its own, although comparisons with Dragon Age Origins and other games in the genre will be necessary at some occasions to separate unique features and prove various points. This review is what you could call an in-depth review.

Introduction

Let us start at the beginning. In Dragon Age 2, you have no choice but to play as a family member of the Hawke-family, either a man or a woman. I chose to play as a male-mage. The game features a short tutorial, where you get to familiarize yourself with the interface and learn how to use different attacks.

The first thing I noticed, or rather experienced, was that area of effect-spells didn’t seem to place themselves as I wanted them to, but this was something I only experienced in the tutorial so it was no biggie. The interface itself is very easy to grasp.

Interface

The upper left corner, where the portraits were in Dragon Age Origins, is empty. The portraits and health, stamina/mana bars have moved to the lower left corner which is a nice change since it feels less cluttered this way. The circular bars that represented the different stats in Origins have been replaced by normal bars which makes it easier to keep an eye on your companions, and yourself of course, but the different placement also helps in this matter.

In the upper right corner you find a mini-map where you can see a part of the area that you are in. It also lets you know when approaching a quest-giver, by displaying an exclamation mark or an arrow-ish symbol, depending on whether you are handing in a quest or can get one. The exclamation mark means that you can get a quest from the NPC and the arrow symbol means you can hand one in. Clear symbols that you can’t mistake for something else. If you press M, you can view a map of the entire area, with all these symbols present and also an explanation, to the left of the map, of all the symbols visible on both the mini-map and the larger map. I didn’t grasp all the symbols at first so this helped me out a bit, especially when I wanted to find someone I could sell my loot to.

Selling your loot is very important since money in Dragon Age II, as it was in Origins is kinda hard to come by, even If you do all the quests available, which is both good and bad. The good side is that you can’t buy everything for you and all of your companions and you are forced to choose who is going be better equipped, but this is also what’s bad about this. I understand completely why money is so hard to come by; there wouldn’t be a challenge if you could just buy the best of the best when it comes to gear and potions and hand it out to all your companions (and yourself of course). There is equipment that makes enemies drop more coin, but me personally always found that ridiculous. There is no logic in that and from my experience, I didn’t get that much extra from equipping these said items. No way near enough to make up for the shortage of coin in the game. It shouldn’t be that hard to get some coin, but it shouldn’t be too easy either. But anyway, it is to hard as it is now.

Let’s continue with the interface. In the lower right corner you will find a half-transparent menu and if you have a buff with a “sustained mode” turned on these will be visible in the lower right corner as well. If your companions have a party buff turned on, it will also be visible.

At the bottom of the screen you will find a bar where the 10 first slots to the left are numbered, ranging from 1 to 0 which can be quite handy, but for me this was not something I used. I don’t think I ever used that since you can pause the game by pressing SPACE and then order your character and companions to move, cast spells and drink a potion that way. The ability to pause the game in combat is EXTREMELY handy, especially in the boss-fights where you will have to use real tactics to be able to make it. You can also pause the game by pressing a button at leftmost part of the bar and also to tell your companions to hold their position, but those buttons are really small, especially at higher resolutions so it’s much easier to simply press SPACE or H (Hold position). But the options are there and they don’t take up any space that wouldn’t be used by something else. Options are always good. At the rightmost part of the bar you will find two slots that occupied with a shortcut to potions, health and mana/stamina depending on what the character you currently have selected uses.

All in all, the interface is really nice and very well distributed. This is important because the interface can easily feel cluttered, just look at games like World of Warcraft if you have a lot add-ons. It’s horrible and takes away focus from what’s happening in the world. There are cool-downs on your spells and abilities and these are clearly displayed buy a shadow that is decreased in clockwise motion. The interface, as a whole, is very non-intrusive.

Graphics

Let us move on from the interface to the graphics. The graphics is a mixed. Not because the parts in themselves look bad, but there are parts that feels so empty. All the cities and houses are really nicely done, and it looks nice even on lower settings. But the areas that aren’t in the town feels very empty and you can’t go anywhere except from where you are “meant” to go. I know Dragon Age isn’t an open world, but having partially open areas would greatly increase the sense of strategy, since sneaking up on your enemies would get a whole new meaning this way. As it is now, it is not possible to skip mobs or sneak around them to get to a better strategic position, which is a setback, which would be very helpful especially at higher difficulties. I played on normal, and as a mage, and it was pretty much “just cast all your most powerful spells and you will be fine” –mode, except for on boss-type enemies, but more about this later.

Animations are nice, facial expressions as well, and the graphical qualities of those are great. But there are some “glitches” that always bugs me. Items that go into each other when they should be solid, like shields and weapons on the backs of the characters. There are also some jagged edges and other minor stuff that doesn’t really affect the gameplay, but when noticed, it’s passable. There are other bugs, like getting stuck at weird places, the AI is not the best, although the mechanics of Dragon Age 2 isn’t built for smart AI, the existing AI is fully functional for the average player who just wants to experience the story, but to get the best you have to set the tactics as you want them.

The graphical representation of spells/abilities are a bit neutral. I like when a lot is going on visually, and I would have liked to see more in this department. A spell that has a symbol looking like a snail was my favorite, and it created some sort of gravity well which would slow enemies down, how much depending on how close they were to the center.

There isn’t much else to say about the graphical features, at least from my point of view. Gameplay always takes precedence over graphics.

Gameplay

The gameplay in Dragon Age 2 is multi-layered. Depending on what difficulty you want to play on, the more complex it gets. At higher levels, offensive “area of effect”- spells might affect your companions which forces you to be very careful, and plan your tactics.

The possible actions you can take in the game are very limited. You can talk, cast spells, collect loot, sell items and turn enemies into piles of flesh. What truly makes the gameplay worthwhile is the options within these actions. In dialogues, you often have three choices where you can choose an answer depending on how you want your character to act in-game. The dialogue options DOES NOT represent what your character will say, they merely display the tone of voice your character will have and roughly what will be said. You can be sarcastic, blunt, understanding and a lot of other options, depending on what the dialogue is about. You might be thinking: “What’s the point of all that?” and it is a justified question. The reason, or at least one of them, to this is that the active companions that you have with you when engaging in dialogue with an NPC (Or one of your companions for that matter) can be affected by your choices. Also, you often have an option to investigate matters further, which can be really handy. But those options does not affect your companions. They are there to help you decide how you would like to address the matter at hand, moral decisions and other things of various importance.

Your companions will have a slide that moves towards “Friendly” or “Rival” that might change, it doesn’t do that in every dialogue, and if they reach either side of the slide, they will get access to unique abilities, or rather skills that will grant different bonuses. And this is a subtle, but only one of the ways that Dragon Age 2 shows what it is all about. You have to pick a side, in everything. Some things are not important to the game itself, but other choices might not only affect your relations with your companions, but also the outcome of certain events in the game. And this is an amazing thing and one of Dragon Age 2’s greatest features. Important to notice is that you can play the game without ever really care about what your companions will think, but it’s a really nice addition that grants a depth to the game.

But enough about your companions. As in Dragon Age Origins, you can only choose between a Rogue, a Mage or a Warrior when creating your character. As an old-school RPG-fan, this was annoying when playing the first Dragon Age for the first time. Compared to how many classes that was available in for example Neverwinter Nights or Baldur’s Gate, it certainly looked bad. But the thing is, The Dragon Age games have never been about having a million different classes. It has always been about the story. The classes are merely a way to determine the way you want your character to damage your opponents. It is nothing more. And this is not a bad thing. You get a really easy way to determine what type of attacks or other abilities that will be accessible. I have always preferred the magical ways.

One problem that I “encountered” is a flaw in the design, but may simply exist because I played on normal difficulty, but I still don’t think that that’s an excuse. Dominant strategies in games are never good. Why should I not use the abilities I have, the way that gives me the advantage? Well if you think about it, dominant strategies, or rather the possibility of their existence makes the gameplay dull. I always tend to find dominant strategies and as I mentioned before, a lot of the battles was just “cast all your most powerful spells and you will be fine” –mode. Thankfully, the story plays such a huge part, and is driven forward through your actions, and at least for me, it didn’t matter much that I could just blast my way through a greater part of the game. But it is still a flaw, and the game loses some points there.

However, not all battles are simple, and certainly not easy. One of the more interesting fights that I experienced (And I don’t want to think about how this fight is on a harder difficulty) was my encounter with something called a “High Dragon”. The fight had different phases, you needed to use some real tactics, like stand close, but not to close during this phase, stay far away from each other during that phase etc. And I had to set certain tactics for this fight to get a better control. It lasted for like ten minutes and it was very intense. Battles like this are a bit rare in the game to be honest, and they shouldn’t be. There should be more tactics on all difficulties. But the problem is that the more tactic -options you have the dumber the overall AI becomes. The tactic-slots in Dragon Age 2 is absolute, in the sense that they are executed all the time, in every single battle. You can of course shut them off/turn them on, but then you would have to do the opposite when needed. But the options are there, and that is what’s important. What I think about them is merely personal preference. AI in games could, in general, be described as automated tactics.

Why the above becomes a problem is because of the resources such as potions. Potions are not that cheap in the game, and if you set tactics to automatically use potions when a certain percentage of health, then the risk is that you will use a lot more potions than you would want. This is useful in hectic fights like the one with the High Dragon, but if you forget to turn those options off, then you might end up with a lower amount of potions than you need in the Big Fights, and that makes those fights extremely hard. And potions costs a lot, and the money in Dragon Age 2 is, as I mentioned before, rather hard to come by. So it’s a problem, but not an insurmountable one.

As I mentioned before, a lot of the battles in Dragon Age 2 are very simple and have no need for tactics of any kind, but there are problems, especially in the battles that takes place in a cave or similar cramped area. When you want to place an area of effect spell/ability, the ground gets highlighted with a circle showing the exact area that is going to be affected. And that is of course a feature that needs to be there. The problem, however, is that this “indication” is extremely annoying when you want to place the center of the attack in places like stairs or hills and such. The indication is not placed and mapped exactly to the ground, which can be very, very confusing. If an enemy is within the area that will be affected by the spell/ability they also get highlighted, but the indication on the ground might seem to float in the air and it is very hard to place it if you don’t have a clear view of the area. This is a big flaw, the indication should be mapped to the ground and changed depending on the terrain; there isn’t an excuse for not doing that.

Leveling

Leveling in Dragon Age 2 is obviously based on experience. But the way you pick spells has become a lot different. The different “schools” still exist, but they work in a whole new way in Dragon Age 2. In Dragon Age Origins, each school had a number of rows that had 4 skills in each of them. In order to gain access to the skill furthest to the right, you would need to have the previous skill in the row, as well as a certain amount of a certain stat, depending on what class you chose in the beginning.

In Dragon Age 2 you still need previous skills to get the “best” skill in the path you have chosen, but the “rows” are instead branching ones, so you don’t need to pick all talents to reach most of them. However, you will need to have placed certain amount of points in each “school” to be able to access new talents in the same. The big difference here is that you do not need a certain amount of any stat any more. Having that requirement in Origins was quite unnecessary since unless you have no idea what’s good for your character, like strength is for warriors, there is no way you are going to have a low amount of that anyway.

In Dragon Age 2 you also have the choice to upgrade certain abilities and make them last longer, be more powerful etc, which is a nice improvement because it makes your choices seem even more meaningful when it comes to shaping your character the way you like it. You focus on the skills you like and only take the main skill in others, if you only want to reach a skill beyond that one in the tree.

The only thing that really bugs me about leveling and gearing up in Dragon Age 2 is that certain gear requires certain amount of a stat, just as it does in Origins. Some parts of this system doesn't make any sense. Why does it require a certain amount of magic to carry around a staff? Or why do you need a certain amount of strength to carry an armor if you’re a warrior? The main-stat of each class is used to determine if you can carry most of the gear. I think that this is a flaw. They should make it so that each items starts out with certain abilities/attributes that changes depending on how many points you have in your main stat. The better the gear is, the better the attributes they have from the start and the more they gain from each of the point you have in your main-stat. I think that would be better and feel more natural. But the system works, but it is not as good as it could be.

The Story

The story in Dragon Age 2 may look weak and shallow to some. But what you need to remember is that Dragon Age 2 features a branching story with choices that will ultimately affect the way the game ends, or in this case what side you are on. Don’t worry; I won’t reveal anything more than that about the story.

A branching story is complicated to make. Especially if it has multiple endings. The story in Dragon Age is as I would call it, a passive one. It is driven by your actions, and unveils as you progress further. You do not know where it will take you, or what is going to happen. You don’t know your purpose. In an active story however, you have a clear understanding of exactly what’s going on, with a clear purpose. I myself prefer the passive ones. There isn’t much else that can be said about the story without revealing details about it. It’s a good one, and a kind that I am not used to. Morality plays a huge part, and I like that.

Sound

The only thing that remains, that I feel I should mention is the sound and the sound-effects. When I thought about this I couldn’t remember any sounds from the game. But they are there, obviously. The thing is, the sound effects, music etc are so well crafted that they feel extremely natural and like a part of the world. I don’t have any more comments on that, I think this part is brilliant.

Voice-acting

This has to be mentioned since this is a Bioware game. They have terrific voice-acting in Dragon Age 2. All the dialogues are voice-acted which creates an amazing atmosphere and makes the game-world even more immersive. The characters come alive and it feels like you get to know them on a personal level almost.

But this is not all. Your companions will talk with each other randomly as you move through the game world. Depending on whom is in your party, they will speak differently, mostly because all the characters have different opinions and morality, which can create arguments among them, but not to the point that they leave the party, at least not from my experience. There are options however in the game that will make characters unavailable but they will still be present in the game world.

This concludes this review and I hope you enjoyed reading it :)
/Andan