Dragon Age II Review Roundup

Sure the original Dragon Age had some downsides like exceptionally bad texture work on the Xbox 360 and a terrible frame rate on the PS3, but those “technical” problems couldn’t stop the game from being triumphantly addictive. I’ve personally dedicated countless hours to Dragon Age: Origins spread across the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC platforms. Yes, I have a problem.

After a brief tease with the short but sweet expansion Dragon Age: Awakenings, BioWare has finally committed long-term with the release Dragon Age II. With this new installment also comes a clever new tagline to match a “streamlined” gameplay design: “Think like a general, fight like a Spartan.” But are the alterations to gameplay an evolution of the original or a bastardization of a fan favored classic?

Storytelling:

• “I found the addition of a family augmented the story, making it feel more human to me than Dragon Age: Origins. Your brother, Carver, you sister, Bethany, and your mother figure prominently into the plot (some more than others, of course), and Carver can enter and exit from your life over the course of your story.” -GamePro
• “The ten-year-long story arc adds to the burden of your choices. In another game, I’d have spared the mage boy, tootled off to another town and forgotten all about him. And saved the world next week sometime. But here, with ten years to play with, you have to consider the long game. Letting a danger loose in an earlier year can see it come back to bite you in the arse later, like a timetravelling dog who loves biting arses.” -PC Gamer

 Gameplay:

• “In the vein of Jade Empire, DA2 encourages you to jump into the fray in a team-based rock-paper-scissors format, mashing the basic attack button while milking special abilities and activating talents at opportune times.” -GameSpy
• “The party-based combat is frenetic, with no auto-attack making you feel in the thick of it with constant button-pressing. (If the no auto-attack annoys you, it’s possible to turn this feature back on in the options.) I enjoyed taking a more active role and not being forced to pause after every spell or special move goes off to give more orders.” -EscapistMagazine

 Mission Structure:

• “The trade-off is that the assets are reused a lot. As I mentioned earlier, you’re in the same city and surrounding areas for the entire game and it can get tiresome to see the same sights.” -IGN
• “I don’t mind the focus on Kirkwall, and how you quickly learn Kirkwall’s layout via repetition, what I do mind is how the dungeons are constantly recycled. Quibble about the change to Mass Effect’s dialogue system, but you can at least point to ME’s dialogue as a generally positive thing; by contrast, the way that dungeons get copied-and-pasted a la ME1 in this game seems downright lazy.” -1Up

Will you be playing Dragon Age II?