DAII - Second Playthrough thoughts

Remove all ads!

After completing DAII a little over a year ago I thought I would give it second try after Bioware patched the game. The game is a lot less buggy and I didn't see the waves of enemies like I did in the first game. Unfair fights where rogues appeared and stabbed my character for instance kill were less common. The game balance has greatly improved since my initial review. The bugs that did not allow me to complete Isabela quest are now fixed and definitely smoothes out some of the issue I previously had with the game.

Adding Legacy and MoA DLCs reduced rusing maps for Chapters 2 and 3. Definitely added some value to the game.

My complaint about companion armor has gone away. I see why Bioware did this and I can see where they are trying to go with DA3 with the most recent release from Laidlaw. I hope they can make that work for DA3.

My biggest gripe is the system used to determine weapons and armors level. Did not enjoy that one bit. I prefer the way weapons and armors were setup in DA:0. This way if you get a powerful item early on in the game you knew what you needed to equip it and what the benefit were.

One of complaints I have also is that I noticed that my mage staff that shoots fire did damage for the fire creatures, why? In DA:O fire did not hurt a monster made out of fire, which makes sense. I did like the fact that they did make these monsters damage to the opposite element higher.

As for the story and PC talking. I enjoyed those moreso now than a year ago. I believe DA:II as it is now with all of the DLCs is 3.5-4 stars out of 5. DA:O is 4.5-5.0 stars.

 

The way I see it, DA2 was made to try out a new combat system, and to get feedback from customers so that they can make DA3 perfect.

 

I never managed to get through a second run through of Dragon Age 2.

I think I did 4 or 5 run-throughs of Origins, and 2 of those with the expansion. DA2 was fun for a single run through, but just didn't have the replayability for me.

Dragon Age 3 is looking like it's going to be a step in a better direction, but I want to be careful not to get taken in by Bioware's fancy marketing.

 

DA2 was disappointing. Had I not expected it to live up to DA:O, I would have considered it a perfectly passable game, if not excellent. I played it on a 360 and Origins on a PC, so i'm not sure if the fighting system is different between the two or if it is just a console thing, but I prefer the action-oriented fighting, though they watered it down tremendously.

I like the concept they tried to use with Hawke, using a pre-set character and story with a lot of customization in between and all, but the problem is the story itself just isn't very interesting. Especially compared to the Blight. Another gripe I have is that there were NO FEMALE DWARVES. I didn't see one the entire game. This annoys me as my favorite DA:O character was a female dwarf ranger with an army of animals. Lame.

And as other people mentioned the entire game, every side quest, takes place in a few pregenerated areas that simply get rearranged. Pathetic and lazy.


Just bought DA3. Hopefully it's better.