After loving Dragon Age: Origins when it came out, all the negative reviews for the sequel kept me from giving this one a try. So this is my first time playing Dragon Age 2 and I've got to say that overall I found it very disappointing.

Much has been said about the fact that, unlike Origins, this game's story is much more minimal. Instead of globe-trotting round Thedas, you spend all the 25+ hours of gameplay on the city of Kirkwall. This, along with the criminally over-recycled dungeons and assets, really struck a nerve in contemporary reviewers and players alike. More recently, though, the game seems to have been re-evaluated and had a bit of a resurgence. I've skimmed articles that praise it's story, characters and, most of all, it's politics regarding refugees and oppression.

Me, I had no problem with the small-scale story and the recycled levels didn't bother me that much once I accepted them for what they where. I did enjoy the characters a lot. Having a fully-voiced player character reduced the scope of dialogue and player expression compared to Origins, but I had a blast playing as sarcastic Hawke and the small character moments that are the trademark of the series are still top shelf. Some of the dialogue does sound like the first draft that it is, but overall, massive props to the writers who crafted all this in such short notice.

What I did have massive issues with was the terrible, mind-numbingly, dumb combat. Enemies appear literally from thin air, blasting away any semblance of logic or strategic positioning, and the developers idea of difficulty is just throwing wave after wave of the same boring enemies. Failing encounters never felt like my fault; it was always a matter of being stun-locked by some broken enemy ability, getting stuck in geometry, receiving one of the many cheap one-hit kills, or just getting swarmed by numbers.

And it wouldn't be that bad if it were not for the astonishing amount of combat involved in this game. Every single quest and side-quest involves killing at least a horde or two of useless minions. Even missions that at first might look like covert or dialogue-based affairs, quickly devolve into murdering sprees. By the time credits rolled, Hawked has killed literally thousands of people, which should be a sizeable fraction of the overall population of Kirkwall.

Eventually I was literally sighing every time I had to go into combat at the dread of yet another boring encounter that only served to stretch a game that was supposed to be DLC for Origins. The only way I managed to power through it was by editing my character to be overpowered enough to kill enemies quickly and painlessly.

On the politics of the game, there's not much to say. There are some token mentions of the refugee problem in the first Act, but I never felt the story did much with that. Act 3 hinges on what's probably the central issue of the Dragon Age series: that of mages and Templars. Mages are feared by all and are thus oppressed and confined to essentially prisons in the Circle of Magi. However, the conflict cannot be taken too seriously as a parallel to actual oppression since it suffers from the usual problem of oppressed populations in fantasy settings. Unlike the real world, in which oppressed minorities are just human beings, mages are actually powerful people that can not only potentially kill people by thought, but can also turn into literally abominations.

That is only one of the reasons why Act 3 didn't work. The others are the horrible two-sideism that tries to portray both the oppressor and the oppressed as problematic, and the fact that, playing as a mage, there is no tension at all in making me chose sides. Of course I will chose to save the mages, what's the point here? Which is also something that goes against any believability in the story. My character can, as a runaway mage, not only run around freely and openly through the city, but also rise in social standing to the point of even buying a mansion next to the Chantry? And on top of that being friends with two other mages not confined to the Circle? How am I supposed to feel that mages are oppressed by the Templars if my three mages can parade themselves through the main streets of Kirkwall in full mage regalia, staff in hand.

That said, some story beats did land strong. The whole stuff with the mother is creepy as hell and very well told. The problem with the Qunari is treated with an interesting level of complexity (until it devolves into fisticuffs, as all missions inevitably do). And companion quests are appropriate and allow for good world and character building.

In the end, Dragon Age 2 is not an abysmal game, but it's certainly a deep step-down from it's predecessor.

My favorite of the series, a game that ticked a lot of the boxes for me in terms of what I want from fantasy games stories.

For once we don't have to save the world from big bad guy (origins had the big dragon, 3rd one had the ugly bastard, neither of those I remember the name, that's how compelling they were). I hate that those kind of stories, see you go from rat killer to demon/dragon slayer in the span of a month. Older games knew their scale cause they were based on tabletop rules that kinda enforced this (IcewindDale, Baldurs Gate, dealt with more local problems, manageable for adventures of lower level). DA2 was finally a game that took a similiar approach. Story takes place over multiple years, characters evolve over them, and solve local problems that are bigger in scale each time, but never get too big. It makes sense, its more relatable and believable, which makes it easier to get invested. I am not getting invested in another story that is based around a generic bad guy that wants to flood the world with demons (looking at you Dreadwolf/Veilguard) , or a dragon that wants to take over the world. I can however get invested into a story of an immigrant that tries his best to do his best for his family and city he grows more and more attached to, as it becomes his real home.

That's the story and along with characters its my most beloved part of the game.

Combat is good, I'm glad they didn't just copied Origins. Games need to evolve, getting the same thing again would be just boring. Instead the fights are faster and more flashy. I love the combat of old Infinity Engine games, and Origins tried to bring that to the 3D world like games NWN but with even better graphics and more flashy animations. That was in the cost of mechanical depth, which eventually lead me to still prefering the combats of neverwinter nights, Icewind dale, baldurs gate etc.

The biggest flaw is in the world. I don't mind the smaller scale as mentioned above, I do enjoy smaller scale stories. However the city and the area do not evolve enough with time. There is too much copy-paste content. Those stuff I understand that could be attributed to rushed production, and while I feel sorry for the devs that it went like that, it won't change the final product.

Qunari are awesome too.

Dragon Age II is not a good game. It is widely reviled among the gaming community for various reasons, and I agree with all of them. I highly enjoyed the game anyway and consider it a camp gaming classic alongside Final Fight: Streetwise and the first Kane & Lynch.

The main reason the game is so entertaining is that every single character is an asshole or a moron, and deserves all the bad things and failures that they jump headlong into. Maybe I just stumbled upon the right story choices to make it "click", but I played as a mage who almost entirely bought into Anders' bullshit, and the only times I didn't side with mages was when it would completely go beyond the bounds of credulity. Seemingly in line with the approval system overhaul in this game, this actually didn't cause me to lose the most anti-mage party member -- rather, this maxed out the "rivalry" side for him and reinforced him to stay by my side out of spiteful respect for my steadfastness and possibly a desire to engage in a little hatesex. Most NPCs I assisted in the first two acts almost universally met unfortunate fates by the end of the third. -- those that didn't carried on the same in their shallow stupor. The meaningless calamity all came to a head near the end of the game, where a character completes hands-down the dumbest thing in the entire game (no small feat), you beat the tar out of someone whose paranoia and iron fisted approach were completely justified, and then a supposed ally betrays you and does the second dumbest thing in the entire game.

It all just goes to show that being Captain Save-a-Ho just ends up with everybody screwed, which oddly seems to be what Bioware were going for in the first place.

DA2 is writing-focused and thus died largely on the flimsy plots and poor characterizations, but there were also criticisms directed at the gameplay. Compared to Origins, the map is greatly contracted in scope -- there are only a handful of maps and environments in the game, and they are heavily reused with sections being blocked off depending on which quest you're involved in at the time. I agree that this decision was cheap and not fitting of an alleged AAA RPG released in 2011, but at the same time I felt a little relieved at running through smaller areas as game progression was very speedy (if I remember this took 20 hours for me versus the 60 that Origins took for the first playthrough).

Some people also disliked the combat overhaul, preferring the more robust skill trees and the CRPG style "click on target" fighting from Origins. Again, maybe it's just cause I played as a mage, but I much preferred fighting in DA2 with the "keep pressing buttons to attack while Hawke does some Donatello shit with the staff" style. It felt snappier than Origins, and if DA2 was not going to respect my intelligence then it made damn sure to be courteous about my time.

As said in my intro, DA2 is not a good game. This doesn't mean that it can't be a fun game. Once you accept its botched pathos, I don't see how you can't be entertained -- or even amazed -- at the sideshow quality of it all.

Summary
Story: "More Eszterhas than Eszterhas himself!"/5
Gameplay: 3/5
Waifu Factor: 0/5 (nobody likes Isabela or Merrill)
Husbando Factor: 5/5 (let's be real this game sold so well thanks to the fujoshis going nuts for Anders and Fenris. I admit that I wasn't totally immune to this myself. I almost wish that Varric had been an option.)
Overall: 2/5