The first time I tried to play it, I was so disenchanted with the map set-up that I bailed after like 3-5 hours. I hated the menus: too dark, too hard to see my character or her abilities, too many things to click. I didn't like that I couldn't customize my companions' armor. I felt confined by the city and the re-used dungeons surrounding it.
And I was definitely not on board with my romance options. I mean: a slutty pirate, a super creepy abomination, the overly-innocent elf, the former and definitely traumatized slave, and ... oh wait, that's it. And not ONE of them has a sexy voice. That's a fail, in my book.
Plus it kept doing this:
I mean really. My computer can run Inquisition --which is brand new still-- on its highest graphics with no issues, and it can't texturize a game from 2011??
So I turned it off. I'd loved Origins, but felt let down by DA2.
Then, almost a year later, I played Inquisition.
Anyone reading this knows I love Inquisition -- I won't get back up on my soapbox about it.
One of the biggest things I love about Inquisition (aside from Cullen, brief swoon before I refocus) is the world of Thedas: it's not huge, like the Mass Effect universe, but it is so richly imagined that I get sucked in almost instantaneously.
And as I played Inquisition, I started to realize: I was missing something. Sure, I could figure out the mages vs. the templars war, and Varric and Cassandra's tension combined with Cullen's backstory was enough to piece together what happened in Kirkwall, but I was missing the details -- the details of Dragon Age 2.
I picked it up again. It was still incredibly hard to play -- none of my former issues with it had vanished, plus now I'd played like 100+ hours of Inquisition, which has a really easy combat system and a combination keyboard/mouse control style that I found very intuitive. Yeah, that doesn't happen with Dragon Age 2.
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| It is difficult to express how much I hate this menu. |
But the more I played/forced myself to play it, the more I started to appreciate DA2. It's not a great game -- too much weird stuff that I've already bitched about for that. But it did attempt something new, which was to keep the story running over measurable years, and to keep the main character stable in a city.
In this way, DA2 is more realistic in terms of real life, and I think that's why a lot of people didn't like it.
Think about it: this game covers roughly 7-10 years of time. It breaks up the storyline with big events, much like a real life. I can, for example, break up my life according to big events, and most of them aren't within a year of each other -- they're spread out. So that's realistic of the game.
The other part, the city, is also pretty realistic. If you live in the same area for almost ten years, you are bound to re-visit some spots. You'll hit the same bars, explore the same areas, and while you might not be killing dragons or fighting Arishoks, you'll see the same places multiple times. Again, that's realistic. Hawke lives in Kirkwall for a long time; it makes sense for her to visit the same market place, the same church, her friends' homes, over and over.
But that level of realism reminds people too much of their actual lives, and thus the reviews for the game suffer. I understand that, and at times, I agree. Walking to the top of Sundermount for what feels like the thousandth time gets tiring. I'm not playing a video game in order to experience that kind of mundane daily event -- I'm playing it to escape that, to explore a different world, to try on a different life! So I get it.
I don't think that inherently makes DA2 a bad game though. It's a pretty unique concept, and it's executed reasonably well.
What I think actually hurts DA2 is that it is not a plot-driven game. In that way, again, it's realistic -- few people are set up as the one person who can stand against evil, and I know almost no one who has an actual villain as an active part of their lives. Instead, events trundle along and occasionally shitty people pop up and must be dealt with.
This is what DA2 has done -- Hawke scrounges up money for a year or so and then heads off into the Deep Roads. Politics with the qunari in the city gradually bubble over in the course of about three years and then Hawke has to fight the Arishok. Things are quiet for a few years, and then Anders blows up the Chantry. There is no one bad guy, no one driving force for the plot that carries throughout the game.
Yes, realistic, but it doesn't not make for great game-play, and that's my biggest argument against Dragon Age 2.
I liked this game. It's been my experience that I won't play a game for more than a few hours if I'm not enjoying myself, and I played this one for close to 30 hours. It was entertaining, and it definitely filled in the lore about the world of Thedas that I'd been missing before.
The big question is this: Would I play it again? Thus far, I've played every Bioware game I've touched at least twice all the way through. Some, like Mass Effect 2 and 3 and Inquisition, I've even started a third time. But I don't think I'd play Dragon Age 2 again.
I've enjoyed my time in Kirkwall, but much like Hawke, Varric, and even Cullen by the end, I think I'm done. Once is more than enough.
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