Dragon Age II Review

I don't know if it's because this game is disgustingly immersive or I'm getting more and more perverted, but this game made me push back my chair, stand up, point at a character on the screen and shout "I will fuck that!" just because I could.

Probably the perversion...

Dragon Age 2 is a very, very good game, as long as you stick by a few golden tenets.

1) Dragon Age 2 is not Dragon Age or Dragon Age: Origins

2) Do not expect a cerebral storyline

3) Do not try to take any of the ingame writing to be serious

4) Don't try and force the game to be an old school role-playing game a la Baldur's Gate

5) People will try to fuck you.

Dragon Age II has gotten a shit-ton of flak since the release of its demo a few weeks ago. The hunchbacked denizens of the internet have come out in force, voicing their disgust at the game, just because, as far as I can see, it's not the original Dragon Age.

It was at this point that I realised the childbirth had gone horribly, horribly wrong.

It appears that the people from the internet don't like change. A phrase is getting thrown around (and I know I tend to throw around the phrase thrown around a lot but bear with me) at the moment is "consolification", a lot of PC gamers view that companies are dumbing down PC games to cater to much more lucrative console gaming market. However, this is being applied to EVERY aspect, of EVERY game at the moment. 

Dragon Age 2 (Electric Boogaloo) has indeed been made slightly easier, I'll concede that. The combat has been made a lot faster and slightly "button bashy". This however is not that bad a thing. It's still quite challenging at high difficulties and in my view the benefits of having much more exciting combat vastly outweigh the price of lowering the challenge slightly. Dragon Age 2's combat is amazing. It's exciting, gory, visceral, ridiculous and various other adjectives used to describe the more brutal aspects of games that the media is claiming are turning me into a serial killer (I found her like that...). It feels almost exactly how I imagine picking up a girder and laying into a corridor of people would feel like. The original Dragon Age's combat got very dull. The mobs just had so much fucking health and you seemingly did absolutely no damage at all. It got to the point with some bosses that the only difficulty came from the fact you were essentially flamboyant dandies throwing used tissues at them in a vague attempt to get the enemies to leave you to eat your aperitifs. 

The tactical view (in which the camera goes to a quasi-bird's-eye-view has been removed as well. This means positioning your squad is slightly more difficult as you don't get a full overview of the battlefield, but all it really means is you have to change through your characters are have a look around before making decisions. I hardly used the tactical view in the original personally, so it may be worse than I'm putting it out to be.

Graphically, Dragon Age 2 (Liverpool 1) is beautiful. The character models look realistic and crisp, the engine is smooth and runs better than the original game in many cases. It continues the trend from the first game by making everything as gory and grimy as possible, with every battle ending looking like you've had a seriously bloody sneeze, which is fine by me. The only downfall on this front is the environment. Most of the game is spent in a city, but whenever you venture away from this, you are presented with the same map over and over again, maybe with certain paths blocked off (but still showing on the minimap) to try and trick you it's a different place. This is especially apparent underneath the city when you go in the sewers and warehouses. There are about 3 maps that are constantly reused and do get very boring. 

The storyline does also leave much to be desired. You are running away from the evils that are plaguing the lands from the first game. You go to the city of Kirkwall. You build yourself up; be it your income, your reputation or just your social life. The story isn't great. It's not a new idea. But it's just a vessel for the game to play through. The real gold of the game comes from the interaction with the characters.

Dragon Age 2's characters are great. They're engaging, amusing, you actually care about the majority of them. They're not the usual featureless heroes of most modern games (see Bulletstorm review). I felt actual emotion for my party of brigands and renegade mages. This is all helped by the fact that each character has amazing voice acting. My party, which included Merrill (Welsh accented Elf Blood mage who is constantly trying to overcome her defeatism by envisioning kittens are claiming muggings are just a "welcome to the area") , my sister (renegade mage who is constantly trying to live up to her brother's image) and Varric (Dashing dwarf scoundrel who is showing far too much chest hair, is essentially every blokes best mate and is constantly talking to his crossbow which he names "Bianca") stayed with me through most of the game, not because they were the best characters for the job (Especially fucking Varric, I have to essentially keep him on a drip the amount of times he's knocked out) but because I liked having them about. They banter together, they contribute differently to decision making, it's like a little family to plug up the hole of loneliness of my real life.

I found myself wanting to do the silly side quests your companions give you just to see how they adapt to you as you become closer allies. This happened for all the quests to be honest. I didn't feel like I had to do them, I felt like I wanted to do them. I did every side quest I could find (apart from one where a male elf tried to get me to pay him to have sex with me... *shudders*) just to experience the quests and improve my party. 

Of course, it wouldn't be an RPG without a twist death in your party, so I had to replace a party member (I won't say who just in case anyone is going to play it) with a dick head called Anders, who is constantly complaining and hitting on me, merely because I needed the heals. I moped around for a while after finding out my party member had died and there was nothing I could do about it, but the quest had to go on!

This connection with the character reached a height today when Varric was knocked unconcious yet again, and myself and my character in game shouted "They got Varric! The Bastards!". I had to take a little break after that, I shouldn't be getting this involved in games. 

They scripting for some of the dialogue is comically poor at times, but I think it's been written that way, I've chuckled at quite a few abysmal lines such as:

"The caravan came back and everyone was dead, I don't know what happened, the only survivor was a horse, AND HE CAN'T TALK!"

Whereas other times I've been amused by the quick-witted main character's quips, as I've essentially chosen the "Funny" response in every given situation, there's been quite a few.

There were quite a few occasions where I was made to choose between certain groups throughout the game which have effected how the city was controlled which seemingly have had huge effects on how I've played the game. I don't know if it's because I'm a complete bastard, or if the game is supposed to be like this, but almost my entire family have been killed off, and there have been two city-wide genocides of certain ethnic and caste groups (they started it!). It's probably my fault...

It all adds up to a very enjoyable experience however, the game feels like it tailors itself to your choices, not the bullshit "karma choices" that Peter Molyneux insists on jamming down our necks, in which you can either been a holy angel or Lord Cunt of Kittenpunt, but just general decisions that influence political agendas and change who comes to help you in the future and who comes to kill you. 

Overall this game takes the world and ideas of the original Dragon Age and makes them more exciting and changes the pace completely. You not fighting to save the world most of the time, you're fighting just because you can. You can be as selfish or as benevolent as you like. The fighting is quick, gritty and fun (an aspect that was missing from the original). The characters are wonderful. The story is shite. But you can't have it all.

Rating 13/7

(That's not 13 out of 7 by the way, it's more like approximately 1.85714286 I haven't come up with a system yet, try and apply your own to this arbitrary number!)