Dragon Age II (2011)

I am continuing my journey in Kirkwall, about to hit the Deep Roads, which I know is the end of Act 1.

I have a few thoughts.

The characters and their personality here is excellent. Their design, quirks, dialogue is all amazing.

Despite 90% of the game taking place in Kirkwall, I don't feel like it has much personality as a setting. I can't pin down why, I think some of it is that there are constant references to stuff we did in DAO. I also think there are so many typical cliches for fantasy cities crammed in here, the the city itself suffers from a lack of identity. Some of this is also because few of the people in the city beyond quest givers and your party really have much to say or do.

I also think it doesn't help that so far about 80% of the quests have been painfully boring. Go here kill this group of bandits, go here kill this group of spiders. So and so took my item, go there kill them and get it back.

This is compounded by the way the combat flows. Every combat basically starts with 5-6 same-ish looking enemies, half way through 5-6 (or more) spawn from random places, then halfway through that more come, until you finish the fight and usually the quest. Occasionally a boss enemy will pop up, with some of them being legitimately interesting, but mostly its just waves of faceless personality-less enemies that keep coming. This doesn't help the repetitive nature of the quests and setting at all.

I'm still having fun, but I am ready to move on with the main story and hit some major story beats.

I am 10 hours in, and not positive how I feel about this game. There are parts I have really enjoyed, but I haven't been impressed at all with the quest stories or even themes happening, just not pulling me in. It feels like a lot of fetch quests.

There have been glimmers of interest, including saving a boy on the run who is a mage, and helping a noble who was "captured." But, in 10 hours I have been pretty underwhelmed. Normally this would me I jump to main quest stuff, BUT the main quest has a requirement to earn 50 gold, which means I need to keep grinding...

I am hoping that is picks up once I hit the end of act 1 and the big delve with the dwarves.

Overall, having fun, but it isn't nearly as compelling as game one, except for having more fleshed out and interesting companions

Im about 5 hours in now, I am enjoying things, I am noticing, so far at least, it is significantly easier.

The quests are shorter too, which is both good and bad. Haven't hit something which feels like a true boss fight yet.

I am liking all the companions so far though, and the Steam Deck has been great to play this on with a few tweaks to community controller set ups.

Well... act 2 was really strong but now I'm on act 3 and I'm seriously thinking of just putting the proverbial controller down. Even on Casual difficulty combat encounters are becoming more and more annoying. The game's over-reliance on random encounters not only discourages moving through Kirkwall at night but it's also broken. Today I had to go to some back alley in the dock and a random attack was activated just before a cut scene that then resulted in a scripted attack. So I had two fight off annoying multi-wave encounters at the same time.

I really enjoy all the small character moments, and the overall story is not bad. But I just cannot enjoy myself while playing the game if what little narrative thrust there is is constantly being thwarted by these actively unfun sequences.

For people who finished the game, should I power through? Is it worth it?