I liked Dragon Age II. I mean, it was an enormous disappointment, with a story that ended up disappointing, laughable combat and so much recycling that it felt old after two hours, but I still had fun with it. The overall structure was bold and pretty unique, the themes were interesting, the companions, well they weren't really memorable, can't even remember the name of the pirate babe I romanced, but they were fun. Same with a lot of the game. Unlike Dragon Age: Origins, I remember so very few details, but I remember that I enjoyed it all the way through. Almost like a Telltale game in that way.

As for Dragon Age: Origins, the only problem I have with it is that most of the locations were too long. Some were much too long, like the tower. Dragon Age: Awakening was much better in that regard. It also had Ser Pouncealot.

All right, so, in preparation for Inquisition, I have finished the original game, Awakening, Witch Hunt and am now mid-way trough DA2. I think I can do a bit more in-depth comparison now, which does make me happy. (Now when I finish that, I will make another attempt to understand what people like about Dark Souls, but that pretty much seems to be a lost case :-P)

I'm fairly sure now I get the wave of hate that game rose amongst the players, no matter how justified it is - I mean, anyone spewing fire and going how DA2 is the worst RPG in gaming history should probably try and get things into perspective, because it really is not. But more to that later.

Let's start off by saying that when I have booted DA2 after finishing Witch Hunt, I wanted to just turn the game off and give up - the fact that I loved -something- about it previously kept me playing, however. Now, why did I want to just give up? It was just so different from the original. Every time I clicked a dialogue responce, there was some person who started talking and it was not a response, pausing combat and switching between characters just seemed to make combat longer as opposed to easier and more tactical, no items in the game had any reasonable descriptions and all the lore I found was basically just stuff taken from the original game - not even talking about the fact that the game quite literally only has a single dungeon for all caves, all it does is to place barricades and start you off at different locations so it's not exactly the same. That's bad. That's really bad. That's pretty much all the values of the original down in ashes.

... But then, based on my previous experience with DA2, I gave it another chance. And suddenly, the whole real-life day passed by without me even noticing. The presentation and writing in that game - it's top-notch, from the main storyline, to all the side characters, along with presentation and overal approach to the story. DA2 completely breaks the traditional bioware 'rails' of Character is THE hero, you get three quests at the beginning, you join a powerful organisation etc. It offers a storyline which starts off very small, offers a unique look on the game's world trough the eyes of a commoner, and then allows you to move up trough the ranks of the city. It's not a heroic storyline, for sure - but it's a unique one, especially in videogaes. And the much smaller scale gives the game chance to evolve stories it tells, and a lot of sidequests have continuations in later acts, which get directly influenced by your previous decisions (what is up with people saying you get more say in Origins anyway? All the quests I have played there got resolved immediately upon finishing them and the only thing you could influence was a couple of companion decisions and the ending), it's just ... Really good in this aspect. I suppose the game could work even better if it was basically a Telltale storytelling experience, but... Eh, we got what we got, and it's 70% dialogue anyway. Yeah, sure, you don't get much say in the ending, but... I don't mind. It's refreshing to not have the main character allpowerful, and you get a LOT of say in how your companions behave and in what happens in the longer-lasting questlines in the game.

Sooo... In the end, I think that the best game in Dragon Age series was Awakening, closely followed by 2 and with Origins sort of tangling behind them all. That is all. I have more that I want to say, especially the excellent character banter in DA2, buuut... Oh well, I'm too lazy :-P

I liked it a lot, I really don't get the absolute hate for it tbh.

I started DAI yesterday on PS3 and its very nice indeed, you are going to like it a lot :).

I'm really curious about the game, altho I'm not entirely sure when I'm going to get it - still, when all criticism that's aimed at a game just excites me about it, I suppose it means I might like it :D I will probably wait with playing it until I upgrade my GPU tho... Then again... Darn it.

Do they ever discount the DA2 add ons?

Considering DA2 DLC is bought using Bioware points, no, they don't. The game's stuffed with content as it is tho, so ... Meh, I'm playing it without the non-free DLC.

Legacy DLC is quite crucial and serves as a set up for DA:I. Tallis' DLC, it's okay. It's more amusing than anything.

And the rest are items.

As soon as Bioware Points go on sale in central Europe, I will drop a lot of money on them and will replay a lot of Bioware games with DLC.

By that time, I will have finished Inquisition in its entirety :-P And I'll probably be about 70 years old, playing it on an emulator.

Not in Ultima3, my first CRPG. It was more "Oh shit, a dragon on the overland map. Runrunrunrun toward the city, oh crap I won't make it!"

But yeah, in many dungeon explorer like Wizardry, enemies appeared out of thin air. "24 Fire Giants? In an underground corridor? And I didn't see them coming?"

I recently got both DA:O Ultimate Edition and DA2 for PS3, ended up buying all the DA2 DLC except the stupid item packs (Black Emporium, Exiled Prince, Legacy, MOTA.

Dragon Age 2 held such great promise, it's a shame it feels like such a wasted opportunity. This conversation must have taken place sometime late in development:

Developer: We've only got 1/3 of the game ready, what can we do? Maybe push back the release date?
Producer: NO!!!! No delays!!! Copy what you already got, paste it twice and release the game like that!!!

It;s pretty ironic that the 2 story DLC - Legacy and MOTA play and feel so much better than the main game itself.

Don't get your hopes up for a reply. SimonG has not been in the Forums for a long time now.

I already miss him along with orcishgamer and Roman5

Hm, about how pricy are the DLC in total? I found an old boxed copy of DA2 that I must have gotten at a bookstore for cheap and the code still worked.

Well, without the item DLC it's ... 24 bucks? Take a look here, all prices are listed there - every 100 bioware points = 1 USD (or 1 EUR), and it's only purchaseable in 800 point increments

Are the item packs worth actually paying? Or are they just filler junk? It was quite a few years ago when I used this rubbish system to get the DA:O things.

It's mostly just getting free overpowered crap that you have no business having so early on into the game, so no, I'd say it's not worth getting.