If you’re new to PC RPGs, and looking for the best RPG
games, the choice is simple. Buy Dragon Age by Bioware, which is on discount
now, and skip out on Dragon Age 2 entirely. No Dragon Age 2 – nada, never. Additionally,
don’t bother waiting for the upcoming Dragon Age Inquisition, as key Bioware
Founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk left the company, leaving dim prospects for
good future installments.
Dragon Age 2 got rid of Choice
Let’s start by getting why Dragon Age 2 isn’t
worth buying out of the way. The worst, most damning element of Dragon Age 2, is the lack of character
choice: ie the inability to pick a race, lack of choice over family, last name
or origin story. It was such a huge reversal of basic RPG game mechanics from
the days of Baldur’s Gate I all the way to Dragon Age to do away with character
customization. In Dragon Age 2 you had to basically play as a white anglosaxon human
whose last name was Hawke and had a pre-determined family set. Hell, even Cloud
Strife would have been better. That restrictive anti-role playing decision is
just brutal and unforgiveable. Unlike most RPG games you couldn’t pick the
inventory of your other party members.
Dragon Age 2's Story was made from the leftovers of the original Dragon Age
Some story elements that only made the
B-list in the original Dragon Age, as mere sidequest fodder, have been promoted
to the plot of the main storyline in Dragon Age 2. For example the simmering
tension between the Templar and Mages, already well ploughed ground from Dragon
Age, is forcefed down your throat in Dragon Age 2 – to the point where you just
get sick of it. The overall plot of Dragon Age 2 is fairly linear with the key
events being predetermined regardless of your player’s choice. Fine, that’s not
such a big deal, except that the sidequests were lacklustre as well. Major optional
bosses that should have been impressive, were placed in boring contexts with
lacklustre stories. Most disturbingly, you play through the same maps over and
over so the element of surprise, wonder and exploration is removed from the
game. Some designer thought it was ok for you to shuffle through the same
underground mine or woodshed over and over again.
Dragon Age 2 Had a thematic Identity Crisis
The game lacked a certain “gritty realism” throughout. Yet
it never quite adopted a totally cartoon like Yoshi’s Story theme either. The
game just had a mixed, confused identity-crisis of what it was trying to be. The
excessive cartoon like animations, ie crossbow bolts from the sky, felt like a
need to appease newer gamers, but in the end it accomplished nothing. Former
fans were alienated as Bioware’s old secret sauce was watered down; and new
gamers may have found the combat accessible, but hardly impressive, compared to
modern “twitch” action games. The lure of Dragon Age was overall game-world
coherence coupled with tactical strategic combat. Bioware used to make great RPGs,
and they went downhill, probably irreversibly, with Dragon Age 2.
Dragon Age 2 had cheesy cartoon-action combat in a pausable game
Additionally, Dragon Age 2’s combat system emphasized the least
fun combat elements of RPGs of healing-management and endurance in combat over
careful planning and finding the right strategy for the situation. There were too
many endless easy mobs that swarmed you. There was an unnecessary focus on
immediate party “positioning” during fights, akin to a console action game,
that felt out of place. For example there was a rock boss that had random
explosions where you had to hide behind pillars during the fight. This might be
exciting in a spontaneous action game like Devil May Cry, but not in a strategic
pausable game where you simply pause and command your party to move out of the
way. Basically the combat wasn’t strategic in a way that requires you to think
ahead to how to use of all of your party members’ abilities to overcome
interesting bosses.
Dragon Age: Origins had Freedom and Good SideQuests
Dragon Age: Origins, on the other hand, allowed you to play
as any one of a variety of different complex races, such as dwarves, elves, and
humans. Additionally it allowed you to pick between different class origins in
society, such as between Dwarven Nobility or Dwarven Commoners. Even the origin
stories, which were short 10-15 minute segments at the start of the game, were
gripping and entertaining. By the end of the story, you customized your entire
party, made fateful choices that could result in character deaths, and got to
pursue a variety of intriguing, well-crafted unique quests, including quests
for ancient relics and exploration of the strange otherworldly “Fade”. The game
maintained an emphasis on gritty realism throughout, and because of the
seriousness of your choices, you tended to feel satisfied by the finale of the
game – which was frankly a great end to a great game. The only problems were
that the combat might have actually been too hard for newer entrants to RPGs
and there might have been too much emphasis on the overcoming-the-blight-and-killing-darkspawn
main theme that limited the developer’s ability to produce more sidequests.
Nevertheless, Dragon Age was a far better game than Dragon
Age 2, and one of the best RPG games on the PC in a long time.
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