Another Look at Dragon Age 2

Written by Michael Rohde Saturday, 16 April 2011 05:00

I finally finished my first playthrough of Dragon Age 2 a couple of nights ago. And I gotta say, I love the game. I know the critics out there bash it because of the repeated environments, you can’t put armor on members of your party and at times the game has extremely gay characters that like to flaunt their sexuality; but to me those are pointless arguments as to whether or not a game is fun, which has always been my number factor in determining if I like a game or not. Let me explain.

I judge a game by how much fun I’m having with it. I can tell how much fun I’m having if I play it for over a couple of hours in a sitting and I have no idea how much time really elapsed. I can also tell if I like a game if I repeatedly play it day-after-day without any other game entering my 360. Another way I can tell if I like a game is if I want more after I finish the campaign. I can enthusiastically say that Dragon Age 2 fulfills all of those criteria. There was more than one evening while playing Dragon Age 2 that I stayed up way later than I should have, just cause I wanted to complete one more quest or I wanted to see how a particular companion quest ended. In the past few weeks since Dragon Age 2 launched I’ve barely played anything else. I think I put in Guitar Hero maybe once and I tried out Toy Story 3 to see if my kid liked it. Other than that, nothing else from my library was touched. Last, after I finished the campaign as Hawke the Fighter who sided with the Mages and picked every Good dialogue option, I wanted to play again as a Thief who sides with Meredith and picks every Bad dialogue option. Then I’ll play again as a Mage who goes neutral. To say that I’ll get $60 worth of value out of Dragon Age 2 is an understatement.

As for the gameplay, it’s fast, action-oriented and packs a punch. Sounds like a hack-n-slash, right? But then add in some elaborate skill trees with several options to explore, tons of new armor and weapons, companions that can think for themselves and don’t mind if you step in during the heat of battle and you got yourself an in-depth RPG. Bioware has set the gold standard when it comes to Action-Adventure RPG games. Nothing else I’ve seen comes close.

Something easy to do is compare Dragon Age 2 to Dragon Age: Origins, which I think is a mistake. To me, Dragon Age 2 is not a sequel. It’s a stand-alone game that happens to take place in the same world as Dragon Age: Origins with similar -- yet improved -- graphics and gameplay. But that’s where the similarities start and end. Dragon Age 2 could have easily been named The Champion of Kirkwall with no reference at all to Dragon Age and it would have been aptly titled. The thing is, Dragon Age: Origins has a large fan base and tacking on the Dragon Age branding is simply a marketing tactic to improve sales. And you really can’t blame EA and BioWare for that. After all, they are a business and they need to make money to keep making more games.

To address the critics and their complaints, I think their points are rather minor and a little whiny. As for the repeated environments, I never grew tired of them and it did make sense to the storyline. You’re not really travelling all over the country this time, the story is concentrated in Kirkwall and the immediate surrounding area, so it only makes sense that you travel in the same areas. As for outfitting companions with armor, yes, at first that was a bit frustrating and a little confusing to me, but as the game wore on and I noticed their armor did change through the course of the game, I didn’t mind it so much that I was not in control of their clothes. I could still equip their weapons, but it does make sense that the companions were just that -- companions with the ability to think for themselves. And for the gay issues, well, hell, get over it. I read on some other site that Aveline was an out-and-out lesbian, but in my first play through she had a crush on Donnic and eventually married him. As for Anders, Zevran and Fenris, I was starting to feel outnumbered as a heterosexual, but at least I had good ole Varric to drink with at The Hanged Man and I did get Merrill to not only sleep with me but she moved in and married me. So there’s that. The game offers choices in sexuality right alongside having choices on who to side with, who to be friends with and who to have a rivalry with. It’s all part of the game. A great game at that. Dragon Age 2 lived up to its expectations and I’m happy to play it, again, and again and again. Long live the Champion.