Dragon Age II PS3 Review

Dragon Age II is the successor to the wildly popular Dragon Age Origins game. Dragon Age II tries to surpass the success of the first game, but fails to deliver a memorable experience. The game takes place after the events of Dragon Age Origins, with the main character Hawke fleeing from his homeland of Fereldan with his family and being pursued by Darkspawn. Hawke and the survivors of his family and other refugees flee to Kirkwall and begin their adventure amidst the chaos of their new home. Dragon Age II allows for the import of a completed game save from the previous game or to start a new game based on one of the endings from Dragon Age Origins. Importing the game save from the previous Dragon Age will alter the background story in Dragon Age II.

Dragon Age II graphically looks like a step down from the previous game. Player characters and enemies have clunky, stiff battle animations that seem more on par with a last generation game. The environments are very small and sparse, which leads to the main gripe of the game: repeatedly having to traverse the same small vacant areas over and over again to hack and slash a few enemies.

The combat mechanics are overly simplistic, which leads the player to tediously hack and slash their way through battles using one or two skills. Bioware should have stuck with gameplay mechanics of Dragon Age Origins, which were honestly perfect and needed no refinement at all. Allies that the player can control perform horribly when controlled by the AI. The player can customize how the AI treats each ally’s strategy in the battles, but rarely does the AI actually perform said duties. I set my healer to defend and heal allies as needed and instead, the healer attacked the enemy and watched my main character die. The only way to have a competent party is to have the player switch through characters on the fly as needed. This strategy works fine in easy and normal mode, but on the harder difficulty levels, it becomes difficult to keep track of where everyone is on the screen.

The plot behind Dragon Age II seems rushed and overall uninteresting. Hawke becomes involved in a series of diplomatic missions where the player must choose which side to support. As a result of these choices the story should evolve, but no major changes in the overall story occur and the final bosses are still the same regardless of the choice. The expectation is that with giving the player choices, the story will change dramatically considering the importance of the allegiances the player takes. The main story is fairly short with plenty of side missions to distract the player from the quest at hand. Unfortunately, all of the side quests are just as boring as the main plot, kill enemies, and pick allegiance, rinse and repeat.

Expectations of Dragon Age II were high considering the success of the first game, but unfortunately this game is leaps and bounds below anything out right now. One reviewer from PC Gamer U.K. had the nerve to say this was the best game of the decade. Sure, when it is the only turd out right now this decade in the RPG genre, I guess it is the best in a pile of crap, but is that saying much?

It seems that Bioware is following in the footsteps of all developers acquired by Electronic Arts, making crap games to turn a buck out of unsuspecting gamers. Watch in the near future the mass exodus of programmers and artists from Bioware leaving to greener pastures and hopefully creating better games elsewhere. It is a shame when such a great developer becomes acquired by a garbage publisher and loses control of the one thing they used to do, making great games. Do not buy this game, rent it if you really want to try it or go back to playing the gem that was Dragon Age Origins.