I’m pretty much maxed on games right now with Rage coming out tomorrow and the latest DLC for Fallout New Vegas and new Shogun II expansion out a few weeks ago, but I’m thinking about getting an RPG type game, and I’ve been sort of sniffing around Dragon Age II lately, especially since they are putting out another DLC in a few weeks. Has anyone played it, and if so would you recommend it? I played through the entire Dragon Age I plus DLCs and expansion and really like it…will I like Dragon Age II as well? I’ve seen it at Walmart for $19.95…worth getting?
Don’t. It’s bad. It’s very, very bad. Worst disappointment of this year in gaming by far.
If you want a good RPG, I’d suggest giving The Witcher II a try instead.
Dragon Age 2 is not bad by any definition, except when comparing it to Dragon Age 1. If it was the first game in a new series without a recognizable name, it would be one of the top 5 games of the year.
The complaints about Dragon Age 2 are mostly that the story is more railroaded than the first. It’s true that the game tells a pretty much linear story, which you can’t really choose to alter. I’d get it for 20 bucks in a heartbeat. I spent 50 and don’t regret it.
Witcher 2 is very good, perhaps even better than the first. Cd Projekt just released a free patch/DLC (these guys do not do things halfway) for it, which is auto-updated. Aside from that, it’s a tough, but fair and very exciting game which mixes action abd RPG deeply.
Basically, Dragon Age 2 is a cheap action game where you buy character abilities and pretend you have an impact on the plot. In the Witcher (1&2), you DO have an impact on the plot. It’s complex at every turn and you make moral choices based on what you think right, which will change later events in sometimes predictable ways and sometimes unpredictable.
Thats said, The Witcher does suffer at times from making its plot a little dense. They’re almost making history porn with the constant cultural (game/books world culture) references. But still, fantastically good game.
Basically, if you want to play around with a cheap game, get DA2 but wait until it’s down at least to 15 bucks. If you want a great game, grab Witcher 2. You could also give Witcher 1 a try - it’s a strong game on its own and the choices you make can be imported to Witcher 2.
I’ll second what smiling bandit and Mosier said. Dragon Age 2 isn’t a bad game IMO, but Witcher 2 is a better one - stronger visually, better acting, better story, richer setting, better ( if a little tough to get a handle on first exposure ) mechanics. DA 2 is worth picking up, I think. But if I were choosing just one RPG right now, I’d go with Witcher 2.
Strategy-wise, and as a bookend to STW 2, you might note that Paradox’s Sengoku is also now out. I’m just starting to try it and Paradox games typically have a necessary patch cycle to really bring out their strengths, so I can’t definitively recommend it yet. But the clan map sure is pretty :). I’m trying it earlier in release than I normally would for a Paradox game because it is Crusader Kings-like and I was a big fan of that one.
Also a deep feeling of lack of purpose ; repetitious missions & asset re-use all over the place ; respawning mobs/waves that crap on any notion of strategy or planning ; bland, cliché or downright embarrassing NPCs and romances ; Flemeth retconned into a T&A vehicle (wut ?) and darkspawn as Marvel villains lookalikes (WUT ?)…
If it wasn’t the sequel to a great game, it would still be pretty damn meh.
And of course, there’s the matter of its complete redesign from a hard-ish, old-school style RPG to a hack & slash console action game with token RPG elements tacked on. Worked for Mass Effect, didn’t work at all for DA as far as I’m concerned.
Agree with the general sentiment on DA 2. The only bioware RPG that I didn’t replay at least once fully through, never mind the four replays of origins I enjoyed.
The on rails plot, the lack of focus, the less developed npcs, the flawed combat and the embarrassing asset rehashes (there is like 1 cave map in the whole game which you visit over and over again), make it the biggest disappointment for me this year.
I would not say don’t give a try at some point, but I’d pick the Witcher 2 first if I were you.
I would say this: the plot and story of da2 are not very good, but the story telling IS good. Tat might be enough for some people.
What Kinthalis said. It’s a bridge game to the third (and presumably last in a trilogy) game, so lots of certain things have to happen for the plot to progress. Somehow Bioware pulled that off much better in Mass Effect 2. Still, it was fun enough, but I replay Dragon Age: Origins much more often than DA2.
Get it if you liked DA:O and DA2 is cheap, just to see how the plot progresses, but I wouldn’t make it a priority. If you haven’t bought DA:O, get that first, by all means.
Nope, that particular bit of corny is gone, thank god. Then again, I don’t think I’ve read any review of the game that didn’t mention them, with a generous helping of :dubious: to :smack: so…
For that matter, there’s much fewer of the getting laid in the first place (although you do get a flash of tits like 2 minutes into the game, presumably to get your attention ;)).
To add a little positive, as someone else said, DA2 is only lackluster in relation to the game that came before it. It was different from the previous game and did have some issues I suspect were due to it being rushed and/or targeted at consoles but it is a fun game.
I really liked DA and was eagerly awaiting DAII. I ordered it the day it was available and haven’t got much farther than the beginning. It doesn’t have any of the heart and sould of the original game and feels like just another generic console port to me.
Witcher II on the other hand is great, I’m about to play through it again while I wait for Skyrim to come out.
The original was a good game, but it was “adult” in a rather hokey way. The new one is a substantially better game IMHO and “adult” in a somewhat more naturalistic way. It keeps the sex and boobs, but drops the “collect them all!” approach to Geralt’s assignations and also scales them back to the point that they are more flavor and a little less intrusive ( opening sequence aside, as noted ).
I played the first game up until you reach the first major city. Several things led to my abandonment of the game at that point:
I didn’t find the controls on the PC to be very intuitive. A lot of folks liked them, and maybe they just had a high learning curve. My very limited gaming time (about 45 minutes every few days) means I don’t deal well with high learning curves any more.
The last area I was exploring was really boring: wandering around a city at night with an endless supply of low-level thugs and assassins to kill. I had lost all interest in the game’s quests by this point.
The corny getlaid cards made me feel genuinely pathetic every time they came up.
If all thos problems are fixed, Witcher 2 might be one of the games I look at on Steam around Christmas.
What I tell people is that Dragon Age II is a $20 game that I paid $50 for. It turns out to be more of a one-off set in the same world than a full sequel.
I never finished The Witcher, but it’s a full-blown RPG. Because I haven’t finished the first, I haven’t invested in the second, but I understand that quality hasn’t gone down. It’s a solid story in a dark world. You have to make exclusionary choices that are hard, with no simplistic Good <–> Evil meter like you get in a lot of BioWare games. I didn’t find the gameplay to be too difficult except in one early fight, and for the most part I took more interest in collecting herbs than actually making them into potions.
The controls are still a bit dodgy. Supposedly the recent patch did a lot to address that (haven’t played the game since it came out) but on release at least they did feel a bit… sluggish ? Laggy ? Not sure what the right word would be. Once you get used to it it’s not so bad though.
There’s much less of the endless Drowner hordes to deal with (there are still some parts of the game where respawning, quickly dispatched monsters bug you, but at least this time around it’s not every area all the time, and you don’t really have to come back there over and over either). And yeah, Vizima at night could be a bit of a repetitive PITA - no more of that either. For the most part, and as much as I remember, most combats you get into have a point to them.
No more feeling dirty, and no more feeling “pressured” to turn Geralt into a total slut because there’s collectibles gotta catch them all!. There’s still some sex, but it’s tied to the story and doesn’t feel out of place or skeevy IMO.
).