Dragon Age II – Angry Review
Release Date: March 8, 2011
Platform: Xbox 360, PC, PS3
Developer: Bioware
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Genre: RPG
Players: 1 Offline Player
Angry Joe reviews the sequel to Dragon Age: Origins. Is it better than the original? More importantly is it worth your money? Joe details went wrong in this follow up to one of the most compelling fantasy RPG’s of all time.
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236 thoughts on “Dragon Age II – Angry Review”
Biosh*t totally screw this game. I quite like Origins, but this crap. No way. This is shit. From graphic, characters to story line. Crap.
I agree with every word
I loved Dragon Age: Origins and eagerly awaited dragon age 2, when it came out I was disappointed to say the least, the combat is still needs improvement, not more polish, the dialogue wheel lacks variety found in the last game, the poster or default male Hawke looked like the sheriff of Nottingham from Men In Tights (Joe was right, it was hilarious), all the characters were weak and bland with Varric being the closest to a good one, and the f***ING DUNGEONS WERE ALL THE f***ING SAME, EVEN THE ONE IN THE EXILED PRINCE WAS THE SAME ONE WITH A NEW SKIN, you couldn’t change your companions armor and the city of Kirkwall was badly designed and looked poor and the enemies in this game sucked, crafting was somewhat pointless, the conflict between the two factions at the end was over-exaggerated and ridiculous in comparison to Origin, the dialouge was between your party members and you were bad and uninteresting and the character design for the elves were not good in my opinion, and the deep roads were boring and not as frighting for me then it was in the first game (with the first you get a sense of mystery and discovery, this was just pointless), the combat kill animations were over the top with limbs exploding like fire works and the darkspawn redesigns were terrible (I could go on)
I know I sound like a hater but I played through Origins 7 times because it’s flexibilty and variety of options let you carve your own story while dragon age 2 was linear with 2 options at the end (Side with one side or another) and their was no uniqueness in the endgame with either of them which made playing over pointless.
To be completely honest, I was dissapointed by the combat animations. On one hand the fighting was alot more fluent, which was nice. On the other hand, stabbing people in the back made them explode like the shark in Jaws 4. And hitting people with a two-handed hammer slice them apart. -Slice- them apart, as in cutting with a sharp blade.
And the enemies…When I went to the deep roads in Origins, I was afraid. I was literally afraid to turn around a corner because of the genlock emissary who would no doubt cast Curse of Mortality or the Ogre Alpha waiting to smash my face into the roof or the sudden shriek ambushes. And the hurlocks looked really dangerous and intimidating, even when I knew I was playing on the easiest, least chance of dying, cakewalk setting. In DA2, they shared the movements of Moria orcs from the LotR movies, looked like skeletons and only made scared I would laugh myself to death. And the only mage who wasn’t, or didn’t turn to become a blood mage was my own.
And of course. Where did all the female dwarves go?!
True, and where did they go?
I must say the combat did get a lot better but i hated the fact that they stole your fredom to create your own carecter the carecter of Hawk suked in my eyes expecially the male one the female was hot so it was okay there but i loved dragon age because i was able to create my own char and make him a dwarf there are almost no good rpgs were you can play as a dwarf so i was really pissed to hear about it. Another thing was the story i liked it at first but it suked in comparrison to origins and it has almost no replay value because it dosnt matter what you do it is always the same and even if the final battle was pretty god but it was still completly ridicules and unfitting for a dragon age game expesially the Nightmare rip off pissed me of. The companions also prett bed the only god one was Varik because he was bad ass and i was shoked to see Anders being turned from an awesome comic reliv char to an winny emo bitch, fenriss a bad try to make a second Stan, Isabella was to much of a slut and sucked in comparesin to Zevran because he was perverted but in a god way, the elf girl was probably supposed to take Lillianas place but failed in my eyes at least she did everything wrong Lilliana did right, the gurd woman was the most plain and uninterresting of them all and it suks because you need to have her in your party because tanks are to importend to not bring in battle thats why Alistar was so awesome and the siblings the brother is a douch and i was happy when he died and the sister was the only carecter besides Varik that i liked. The fact that they reused pretty much one map for almost all side missions and only it by putting a dor on a passage to close it off was just sad. The night and day cicles were useles and just give you more generic masses of enemys to kill untill you have the felling of having killed the entire popullation of the town. The one really big problem with the combat was the spawning of the enemys out of mid air it was like they were teleported into the battle and killing hordes and hordes of enemys became boring and dumb pretty fast. Being limited to only Kirkwall and its surownding became boring really fast and i missed creativ sections like exploring the void like in origins or awakaning, batteling inside Orzammers arena but the two major battles inside the city were really well done. Dragon Age 2 tried to be an hack and slay with rpg elements and failed at it. I give this game a 5 ot of 10 it is a god game but it wasnt worth the 60 bucks i payed to play it, I only bought the first game because of the possability of playing as an dwarf but i loved it so much that it made me play through it 8 times with different combinations of races and caleses. I even played as an elven Mage even though i hate eleves and mages thats how god it was but i had to force myself to finish this game because it killed everything i loved about the first one. It bat it to death with an stick burried it under a pile of well done fluit combat, bad companions beside only two god ones and even bad love interests, my Hawk remained a Virgin untill the end of the game because they suked so much. If Varik was an possible option i would go for it he is awesome and an incest relationship with the sister is better then fuking the whore. It is an experience you can only enjoy when you havent played origins.
I really liked it. I love the characters maybe its me but i dont find them boring. I love the game place its seems to have more action especially the mage. The one character that was a disappointment was the 6 dollar sabastian. He was a waste. Didnt mind that he was all church preachy but the ending and him being chasind was what pissed me off lol. I do play this more then the first one it seems to go threw faster or better. BUt i doo love the first one.
Just cant wait till the third one comes out maybe the warden and hawke will meet and have awesome adventures with god baby
Only thing I remember disliking was seeing the same rooms over and over and over and over and over and over and……
Thank you for the review. It’s a lot of fun to watch your opinion and at the same time laugh at the jokes you make on the video.
.I really didn’t like the game, i don’t even remember any of the “fun” i had on the game.The only thing i really noticed in the game were the imeges representing the choices: either a pulsating heart, a heart ,or a broken heart filled with flames of darkness….
.The only fun i had on the game was talking about the romance options on the game.My Hawke was male, and i could only choose between the Meryl (who didn’t had any character develepment, in my opinion) and Isabela romance options.
.If the two of them were the only faulty characters i would not have a problem in choosing the homosexual options.But even them were, irritating, they weren’t even boring, i really started hating the mere presence of them in the game.
It seems like with Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 3 Bioware is on a very slow, but steady decline that will only get worse, god I hope I’m wrong
Dragon Age 2 is a solid 7/10. It’s entertaining and okay, but not great. I have fun with it and like a lot about it, but it’s really not something to get all exiting about and that you would try hard to convince others to play.
“Fans might have good fun with it”. But buy it only second hand, as it’s not worth full price.
to me the only problem about dragon age 2 is the envirnoment and sex options the story seems more like a setup to dragon age 3 so kirkwall and poor details are the only minus in my book
while i find origins to be the superior game i still really like dragon age 2 it got a bit better the second time around for me. the thing i found the most annoying though wasn’t the dull combat changes or the pain in the ass characters (Varric excluded) or even the reused dungeons it was the bullshit filler combat they had to add to everything. in origins if i spoke to a guy and his bodyguards lets say there’s 3 of them i know i have to fight 3 guys on the odd occasion maybe a bit more but in dragon age 2 same situation you engage combat and next thing you know there like 20 guys coming out of nowhere EVERY SINGLE FUCKING FIGHT. it got old really fast but besides that dragon age 2 is still worth playing and especially liked the Arishok scared the crap out of me the first time i fought him
while i find origins to be the superior game i still really like dragon age 2 it got a bit better the second time around for me. the thing i found the most annoying though wasn’t the dull combat changes or the pain in the ass characters (Varric excluded) or even the reused dungeons it was the bullshit filler combat they had to add to everything. in origins if i spoke to a guy and his bodyguards lets say there’s 3 of them i know i have to fight 3 guys on the odd occasion maybe a bit more but in dragon age 2 same situation you engage combat and next thing you know there like 20 guys coming out of nowhere EVERY SINGLE FUCKING FIGHT. it got old really fast but besides that dragon age 2 is still worth playing and especially liked the Arishok scared the crap out of me the first time i fought him
When you pick a convo option in DA2 for Hawke, “nice option” is so unalike “rude option” that Hawke sounds like he has two personalities in the same conversation. This made RPing a bit difficult for me compared to Shepard from Mass Effect1/2 or the silent MC in Origins.
I didn’t ‘connect’ with the characters in DA2 like I did in Origins. That was one of the great things about DA:O, that you began to care for some, if not all, characters.
Sure, a “pirate captain who ‘lost’ a treasure” or a “dalish elf into blood magic” like LockDown has said, sounds interesting, but those are only background stories. The actual personalities of your companions weren’t as deep as they were in Origins. A “dwarf that was stolen at birth by the dalish and put into their ranks” sounds interesting, but it doesn’t mean shit all if the actual character is shallow.
After finally giving in and buying both dlc’s (yes that includes the prince), I decided to play through the game for the second time. Now most of my original complaints about a lack of interesting characters and the reused maps remain roughly the same.
I have to say that I greatly enjoyed this new dlc. Now only does it provide an interesting story, but the length aswell as the variety in the enviroment were way above my expectations.
As a last note, I would really love it if BioWare added some of Varrick’ stories to the game. I mean, other than the ones that are about Hawke that arrive as dlc’s. They don’t even have to be interactive or super long. It would just be nice to actually listen to him telling tales at the hanged man.
In Dragon Age 3 i want Them To Bring Back Origins And i Want To See A Crow Origin Or The Game Taking Place In Antiva And You Are A Crow Taking MIssions To Assassinate Kings And Nobles LIke Assassinating A Tevinter Magister Or Political Intriuqe In Orlais Maybe The Crows Betry You And You Have To Find Zeveran To Hide From The Crows Or Get a Misiion To Assassinate HIm Or a Qunari Origin Traveling Thedas To spread The Qun
I just hope dragon age 3 will be better and longer.
i think dragon age 2 is really good but dragon age origins is better but ever one stop calling dragon age 2 shit its good so i give dragon age 2 gets
a 8 out of 10
i only had one major fault with this game LACK OF OGHREN!!!!!!! GET UR SHIT TOGHETHER BIOWARE
i really really really liked this game. just, i hope bioware knows that it was a terrible idea that they took so little time to come out with a new dragon age…
Played it twice times one with mage and one with roque/
And i the story puch you too do the good thing and i hate that!
Because if you did the good thing you got rewarded for what you did and if you did the bad thing you got nothing or loose a frindship and they gonne hate you all and so you don’t get free things etc.
But it was a good game with a ‘fine’ story and with a great combat gameplay.
For a RPG player defently worth checking out.
I found Dragon Age 2 to be mediocre fare, at least when compared to the first game. I was especially enraged with the removal of the alternate races and origin stories that gave the original game so much more variety and personalization. I just can’t believe that such a promising franchise has taken such a disappointing turn in only the second installment. I thought we’d get at least one faithful successor to the original before we went down that road.
Bottom Line: More fun to play, less rewarding experience.
I’d like to thank you for not bashing the game to tiny bits like a lot of people are doing. It’s not a bad game. It’s not as good as Origins, but there are a lot of games out there that aren’t as good as Origins and that does not mean they’re total crap.
There is one element I think you forgot though: Anders. Yes I know you mentioned him, but you forgot that in Awakening he was actually a fun character, always cracking jokes and complaining about how dangerous wherever you were was. That was annoying, but it was okay annoying, like that friend you have who thinks he’s funny but you put up with it because he’s an okay dude. DA2 Anders? I know he absorbed Justice, but both those guys were my buddies and I do NOT remember either of them being rude assholes. There were a lot of times in 2 when I wished there was a “Punch Anders In The Back Of The Head” option because he was bitching at somebody who hadn’t been bothering him.
Also (and I know you don’t know this because you’re not a chick) his romance is way creepy. During the first kiss between him and Hawke, he makes…sounds. Yes I know that’s how actual making out sounds. No I do not want it in my video game thank you. Not actually a problem, just an unsettling note.
Also what up with how freaky all the Origins characters looks? Alistair looks like…hell, I don’t know what, apparently that archdemon blood is one hell of an ager though. Zevran…well I suppose his is explained by the overhaul of the elf look, but still kinda creepy. Leliana looks dead and why is an agent of the Divine wearing that much makeup? And of course there’s Flemeth who apparently managed to steal the body of a woman in her early twenties and forgot to take the head too.
Game needed more time. It does not suck, but it could’ve used a little bit more beta testing.
The characters were so meh, the romance options lack-luster, the main enemy was functionally retarded and the final boss was such a let down. The combat quickly became a forgettable slog and being forced to go through tons of it back to back, over and over and over just got tiring. Some of the dialogue choices made no sense, and the best moral decisions were undercut by bad design that robbed them of any real potency. Half the time I wanted to reach through the screen and kick a character in the nuts and give them a dressing down for being such retards. Nobody acted relative to the actual import of their actions, and the “evil” characters even when in your own party seemed more interested in twirling mustaches than actually acting in their own best interest. Half the plot falls apart if you really look at it. In the end, the whole story line just comes off as pretentious.
Oh, wait this isn’t about DA:O? DA:II? Yeah, well pretty good for a Dragon Age game I suppose. 7/10 sounds about right.
I think this is a good game and I enjoyed playing it but I wanted to play as my warden again and was hoping the story was about the the last 2 blights not templars vs mages thats childsplay
on my list of personal favs this is my 4th after fallout[both], oblivion,and mass effect
this game was trash. yeah they improved the combat but made it dull. the character creator was horrid i just went with the basic preset. gah i really should stop buying Bioware games they all suck.
the only prob i had ith it was how short it was.
I wasn’t sure about DAII. But once I played the demo I made the decision to buy it. The gameplay is improved a lot, as is the UI.
Diagree about the ‘sausage fest’ part. You have two men, and two womeen to sleep with. can’t sleep with your sister/brother obviously, can’t sleep with the knight captain, can’t sleep with the dwarf. So yeah you do have some female romance options up in here.
And forgettable characters? An elf with lyrium embedded in his body who is an escaped slave? A pirate captain who ‘lost’ a treasure? A comedic and easy going dwarf? A dalish elf into blood magic? A mage who is essentially, an abomination and is struggling to control it the entire game? You don’t find ANY of that interesting? I call bullshit.
Personally I think Hawke is a great character. Voice actor is fine, and if he reminds you too much of Nottingham, that’s why you can edit his face. You get to see the character of Hawke grow from just a refugee trying to get into the city into someone who is respected and almost runs the place.
I agree the story jumps, and then someone you met during that time you weren’t allowed to play is like “Hey I’m your friend.” What? How come I can’t play those in between parts?
You don’t actually become the ‘champion’ until the 3rd act. All the ‘busy work’ you mentioned happens in the first two acts. Even then the story is pretty good.
Everyone was just hoping to save the world again from Darkspawn.
One thing that bothers me is that, when BioWare went from ME1 to ME2 and dumbed down the RPG elements and made it a bit more of an action game, it was hailed as the second coming of Christ. (It is a good game though.) But when they dumb down the RPG elements and make Draon Age more of an action title, it’s like the end of the world.
Anyway, my opinion? DAII is great, loved the ending! Eagerly awaiting DLC.
Lock down the story of DA2 is extremely fragmented most would say that it’s not even a whole story i myself say that act1 and 3 are part of the same story but the stupid ass Qunari invasion of Kirkwall was a useless side plot that simply only made you recognized enough to become the champion, and besides that, even though we know it’s coming unlike DA1 DA2 leaves you with an obvious Sequel ending. And the RPG elements Dumbed down From DA:O were meant to be for tactical play people complained they wanted a fucking button masher “RPG” whereas the RPG elements stripped from Mass effect to make Mass effect 2 yeah they over stripped out mechanics but oh dear lord what is that Bioware is reintegrating things that didn’t need to be stripped out In ME3.
I want to thank you Joe because i will never buy this game and chances are i will never play it from what i seen it sux and all it would do is piss me off because i loved the 1st one and was expecting an awesome sequel. Honestly single map games turn me off the poor graphics is another turn off the fact that if you turn down a dude as a dude they get pissed off is lame as ****. IMHO from what you described this should have been an expansion to the 1st 1 not a stand alone game in itself……
Gotta agree with you Joe. I was way more angry with this game until I played it. But I worry the game is giving me stockholm syndrome for actually enjoying it. Not for the same reasons as origins of course. But still. And wow I have to be one of the rare Anders fans. His preaching is annoying yes but he’s quite tolerable in his romance. ( I’m a sucker for mush even if he sounds like Edward Cullen sometimes ) They just sort of bugged up his character development so that no one would care for him in the end. Some of the stuff with characters is hit and miss. But that happens in other games too. I think the only reason the characters can be faulty here is the rivalry/friendship thing. Rivalry seems only interesting for a romance but that’s me being a drama person. The fact that you absolutely have to be full rivalry/friendship and I THINK do all their quests. It just makes me think of the Loyalty system in Mass Effect 2. However with ME2 you had a suicide mission. You wanted ( for the most part ) to have these people live. *incoming spoilers* With Dragon age 2 you can sell Fenris to a slaver. Give Isabella to the Qunari. And all sorts of others. Not exactly helping you want to keep characters around. If you don’t have their bars all the way full, some will leave the party for good. Whether at certain points or I believe the end of the game. But I sort of cheated and used a guide to who to bring with me on quests just to prevent this. I mean yeah Anders is whiny but damnit he’s the only healer in my group. Not sure I’d be sane either if I had a spirit in my body that wont shut the hell up. I kept mostly Isabella and Varric in the party because they didn’t talk about mages and templars 24/7. Their banter is pretty funny too. Actually most of the banter is. My fav is whenever the party teases Anders about those fluffy feathery shoulders. It’s fun to annoy him lol. I loved your descriptions on the companions though. I’ve been told by some friends that I act like Merril so hearing you call her a Pixie had me laughing. “YAY I’m a pixie!” Sorry about the wall of text. This game is kind of like the red headed step child. It gets picked on a lot but there are times you want to at least give it a sympathy hug for existing and trying.
y is every one saying dragon age 2 is a shit its a good game the combat is good hell the characters are good well i want to kill that male mage i cant spell hes name right sorry and i have to say i agree with the story its boring its not as good as dragon age origins had a great story over all dragon age 2 gets from me a 8 out of 10
As Erik said, the sequel of Dragon Age is half bad, and half good experience. In my opinion a voiceover for Hawke was a great idea (I loved that in ME too) but the story is so boring that i almost fell asleep and I hate the drawing of some NPCs (like the Qunaris) like it’s a totally different world. Stupid designers….
Erkin*
this game is a bitter sweet experience, but i cant even finish the game, i get about halfway and get bored. sorry, but this game failed to entertain me. if anyone else likes it, then good for them. im just saying my 2 cents
Dragon Age 2 was terribad.
The more you reflect on it the more you realize how utterly shitty it is.
It is no higher then a 6, 7 is way too generous, 5 is a little too low.
what is up with every one being so enthused of “fast paced” combat in games today. every oen wan’ts faster paced combat , RPG’s are not about combat only infact that shoudl only be a small aprt of what makes an rpg an rpg. and for heaven’s sake it should certainly remain more tactical especaily in a party based rpg game. sure action combat works for Elderscrolls and mass effect thats good , i love both those series. but i was also a BIG of the way combat was handled in the original baldur’s gate games (not the ps 2 off shoot series). and to me dragan age was all about bioware gettign back to that sort of game play with a new ip. and from the sounds of this review bioware totally screwed it up going this route with teh sequel. also what’s up with “character Forcing” i got tired of it in the FF series , it semi annoys me in ME series (though not as much becasue tehs tory otu weights this negative ). but in dragon age ??? in the first game we got tons of race options and we can change the face to look however we want , and in DA we get no race options , and can’t even make the character look different the slightest, major turn off since bioware origianlly sold this series as the “return to BG” style of game. and now i hear that most the male chars int eh game are bi and constantly hit on you ??? yikes scary at least no one can complain that bioware didn’t give girl palyers any options this outting (a major complaint over the years with bioware games cos most bioware games attracted lots of female players) . sounds like this game is gonna pisse me off worse than not being able to hook up with aribeth in Neverwitner nights 1 and then finding out in the second expansion that she got sentenced to death even after nasher said he would be more light handed with her. ( i still wish i could kill nasher in NWN 2, even though the main charactrer is not the same one from nwn 1 ) . jsut so many things about this review reek of 4 or 5 out of ten to me , and sorry no i can’t give a game a 7 or higher just becasue of the company that made it has a good history.
i’ll hold my money til i can pick this game up on amazon for 20 bucks or less.
Funny you should say Fenris is similiar to a Final Fantasy character, he was voiced by the same guy who voiced Balthier in Final Fantasy 12.
So basicly we have characters who could give Brian Griffin lessons in a whinny and preachy annoy]ince.
Great cause that’s what we need in video games, whinny preachy dumbass who can’t even walk without complaining.
i gotta defend this one this game is excellent and i think it deserves a 9. the story is smaller in scale but i dare say that this works in the games advantage. also i felt a greater connection to these characters than in da1. you may not agree but i think this is an equal to da1. the first game had the upper hand in hours but the lack of a speaking main character and th BORING combat turned me off and to be honest it felt like wow to me and i can’t stress how much i hate wow. also as to the voice acting play as the female hawke, she has i think a much improved voice actor and her joke dialogue is awesome. hopefully da3 will take all these pluses from da2 and combine them with the hours and cale of origins in da3, and if not at least mass effect 3 is in november so you can gt your fill of excellent bioware gaming.
I thought it was just me the amount of male companions that were coming on to me made me go with Mereil the elf woman despite me not really liking her :/
I liked the game but its true what you say about the companions/ Kirkwall in general and how each story arc does not really get resolved.
Also I hate Anders
Its too bad they cut corners on the quantity of maps. sure it saved alot of time and money for them but it really limited options for the writers and instead a 15 good long missions, its 50 short repetitive missions.
I really hope they don’t try to get away with this again in da3.