Dragon Age 2

I had just finished Dragon Age 2. It was $12. You can't complain about a $12 game!

To see what I said about Dragon Age Origin... click here.

Let's start with graphics again:
It was nice. I really liked the Sundermount because when you are up the mountain and look back down, you can actually SEE the village below. I think with graphics, while the big picture (the background, the houses etc) are nice, it is the smaller details that makes the graphics good. I had my mother asked "why are their face so dirty?"
"No mom... it's blood."

For me, music in Dragon Age 2 felt almost invisible. I couldn't hear the awesomely epicness like it did in DAO. The music is very subtle and somewhat disappointing. During fight scene, the music comes on but it missed the oomph that it had in DAO.

The story of DA2 is not that bad. Personally, I am slightly confused. You're able to import your save file. Since I sacrificed myself in DAO, the story somewhat continues on. So in Dragon Age 2, it really had NOTHING to do with the dark spawn, they show up a little in the game but it takes a more political route which I have no problems with. However, I am just not sure how it connects to DAO, just the fact that Hawke is a refugee from Ferelden.

I thought it was interesting how the game is done through Varric's story telling. What I do love is the small talks and characters. No one can replace Morrigan. She is likely one of my favourite evil good guy.

On a side tangent, Kate Mulgrew was in Toronto end of August for the Fan Expo. During Q & A, she saw a fan and screamed "Are you Flemeth?!" The fan responded that she was her daughter Morrigan. Mulgrew then proceeded to speak in Flemeth's voice

In DA2, the character bickering is still there. My favourite companion is Isabela. The conversation between her and Aveline and Merrill is hilarious. Of course, Isabela being Isabela, she makes some... interesting comments. At times, I had to stop and think "did Isabela just say THAT?" Yes, she did.

I like the new dialogue dial and gameplay. There was just one thing that annoyed me to no end. I felt like the graphics engineer and level designer got LAZY. A lot of the caves and dungeons were the SAME map, the only difference between cave 1 and cave 2 was the door that doesn't open.

To put it in simple turn, they created ONE dungeon. They used doors to differentiate cave 1 and cave 2 even though when you look at your mini-map, there is a path that you THINK you should be able to go to.

I would be in a new area and head to the cave, my first thought "hey, I've been here." I proceeded to where I should go and "why can't I get through?! Why won't this door open?" It is just some half-ass lazy game design.

I also enjoyed how they brought some characters back from DAO. Only Anders is playable but to see Alistair mope in the Hanged Man (I didn't make him King) is funny. But it felt like they decided to just throw in the DAO characters and went "look, people from the first game! Yes, this game is still in the same region."

There is 3 DLC content which I am sure would have made the game enjoyable. But no, I am not spending another $30 to play them. Imagine if you had pay $50 for the game and realized you need to pay another $30 for extra content? That just screams GREED.

I enjoyed playing it still. I mean I did pay $12 for it. If I had paid anymore, I might be screaming as a horrible game.