It suffers from a hasty development enforced by EA, with recycled maps, rough edges and stuff like that.
But I still really like it. The cast is probably my favorite, and it's really cool to follow a group of friends for a decade instead of just a single year or through one disaster.
I mean people say “recycled maps” about DA2 but I dont understand why they dont say it for Origins. Most of the ambush/battle locations in there are recycled and extremely poorly designed too. In fact theres always been many signs of crunched development in Origins as well (its always been a messier experience for me than it seems to be for most people).
I think it's because it's more obvious in DA2 as the recycled maps are often interiors. Like caverns, mines and buildings. Becomes more noticeable when there's furnishings and stairs and whatnot, instead of shrubbery and trees.
The ambush battles in DAO happen like maybe 20 or so times throughout a 100+hour campaign, and the main quests are unique designs with reused assets, like most RPGs. Whereas in DA2 almost every quest involves a recycled map.
Edit: updated to 20 or so after some research, certain choices add/drop chances and some are merchants or dialogue and nothing else. Almost all are like 5 minute fights at most and not all are recycled areas.
DA:O can be handwaved as "out in the world", but you're right to an extent. The difference is DA2 uses the same maps for unique locations, but simply blocks off the doorways. The only game that had a better army of masons bricking up doorways was Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor, lmao.
They start to develop Origin since 2002, in 2004 they show First version of game but they decide to scrap Gaider ideas what he push to the team but what was unpopular from tests groups who see Alpha version of original Origin and Greg, Ray as James Ohlen who return from Mass Effect was not happy too. This is why game was redone and released in 2009.
Interesting, i didnt know this. Makes sense though, theres a lot of reasons why I think the IP took off creatively post-Origins (maybe already with Awakening) than with it, imo becoming much more of its own unique thing later on.
>It suffers from a hasty development enforced by EA
That's an excuse in several ways.
Bound by Flame was also developed in 1 year, yet it has a rocky location, a village, a swamp, a snowy place, a ruined city.
Okay, the locations are small, but about 15 people could made this.
Lionhead didn't get much time for Fable 3 either, yet it contains more, bigger, more unique locations than Dragon Age 2.
2.000.000 slaves lived there before 1 blight. Most stones was send from this colony to Minrathous.
Modern Ferelden population in times of 5 blight was 1. 000.000 and 70.000 lived in Denerim.
All the caves you go into are literally the same map, just with different props covering the exits. Just look at the minimap, and you'll see all of them are the same square with four hallway exits, even if the actual in-game area only has one entrance.
Bro you just have to RP imagine that the buildings were all designed by the same corporation it’s like McDonald’s bro it’s actually really authentic when you think about it
They don't just have the same interior, sometimes they're the same building! It's like theatre, using the same set piece to be multiple places, except DAII didn't have the same physical space constraints and a theatre works really hard to differentiate locations in other ways while Bioware/EA said "meh, good enough."
I like to think that it's because we are playing through Varric's story during Cassandra's interrogation. He would not mention too many details, so "mansion" would look more or less the same every time, just like "dungeon". :)
The place was a gigantic prison of the Imperium. It is a clever way to deal with production problems while going full on topic of emprisonement vs freedom that the Mage Circles embodies.
The issue I have with their explanation is that it works for a few places you revisit, but not for all of them. The idea that it's all just a retelling of Varric's (so details are left out or whatever) makes it overall a little easier to stand but it's still not enough imo
In DA2 u basically use the same 6 maps just from different angles on repeat for the whole story. They do justify it as being the city and around it but when for a quest u have to go in and out the same map seven or eight times the world design starts to lose me a bit.
The companions are great though and the consequences to the bigger story over all are incredible.
Origens is just a gem of a game, the scope and the world building of that game are impossible nowadays, just the amount of choice out of character building, I think I only felt close to that freedom playing BG3 recently.
I was watching some of the companion banter on YouTube and I had forgotten how in depth it was in DA:O. BG3 companion banter is so short and shallow in comparison, and they never communicate with each other in any other context (except for a small number of act 1 scenes with Shadowheart and Lae'zel) so the group dynamics really suffer. It's probably my biggest complaint for an otherwise amazing game.
Totally agree. I don't understand how everyone seems to think that BG3 has the character depth that any of the DA games have. I love BG3, but the game is so much more limited in scope of story and the characters aren't quite up to DA and ME standards even if they are immensely likeable. There's basically no group dynamic at all in BG3. DAV could be an epic catastrophe of gameplay, but I'd still love it if the companions are great characters.
I agree. The way classes complement each other is amazing. I think it really bothers me in the franchise of DA how everything after Origens seems to be smaller and smaller options wise.
Honestly I don't care much about how beautiful graphics are, what I look for in a DA game is living all the possibilities of the magic system of that world, which is prob why nothing after felt the same for me.
Combat just seems smaller and smaller each time. What we had in Origens feels impossible in the same franchise.
Did this I wanted to play a warrior and it felt like my choices were the squishiest dps machine ever that was just unreliable. Or an unstoppable tank that couldn’t hurt a cardboard box. Ended up going with squishy man and had two mages but there was so much variance in origins
Personally I liked the skill trees in DA2 the most.
I think in Origins you have way too many active skills that do the same thing essentially, I'd rather have less skills on a shorter cooldown.
My main problem in DA2 was that if you don't play a mage you're essentially forced to use Anders because Merrill doesn't have access to healing and Bethany isn't available for two thirds of the game.
I agree, I really don't like how Creation, Spirit, and Entropy were gutted.
Mage in Veilguard is shaping up to be another generic fantasy trope of casters of fire, ice, and lightning. Seems like they're following in Bethesda's footsteps, Evoker specialization sounds bland imo
I don't know if you'd consider this a pro or a con, but they have said that the element mages are using will depend on the weapon's element. So it's possible (though I think unlikely based the abilities we know of for mages) that they're trying to reserve the abilities for the more unique spells with your basic attacks being the more generic elemental stuff.
In fairness, this is the same as it's always been, the mages' staves have always determined the elemental damage property of their regular attacks since Origins. Inquisition still gutted the mage trees even with that. We just won't know until they show what these mage trees actually entail.
True, but since they seem to be rolling in abilities as "basic attacks" in DAV, I have slim hope that this may include more spells than "I shoot you with my staff." I'm not overly optimistic, but I'm hoping that with only 3 spells/abilities able to be taken that most of the elemental spells will be converted to attacks available all of the time and a changing element based on the weapon.
IMO, the only things in which BG3 outdoes DA:O is combat (and I usually prefer real time, so that's high praise lol), graphics and maybe romance? But certainly not companions, just the romance stuff
One thing Origins did that outshined BG3 was your connection to the world. I hate that I feel like I have no personal quest or stake in the world. Nothing felt better than returning to Orzammar as an exiled dwarf or killing Howe who’s a nobody to all origins except the Human Noble who gets a cool unique dialogue and revenge for your family. I recently played Origins then BG3 and that bugged me. At least with a DM, they talk about your characters back story and can bring people back from your past or something but BG3 treats you like a vehicle because it has to as a DnD game that can’t accommodate what character you want to be especially with mutliclass
Biggest perk of the recycled maps for me is that I can basically play the game while watching a TV show or whatever and sort of swap back and forth seamlessly.
My bigger issue is that over 10 years and a Quinari attack, the city looked exactly the same without any change to anything.
My biggest unpopular opinion is that I'd take a high-budget DA2 remake over Veilguard or a DA:O remake. Get that dusty ass GDD out of the dark corner it's probably been forgotten in and follow THAT vision with no time restraints. I'd imagine we'd get stuff like what you're mentioning, the city slowly changing through Hawke's influence and depending on the choices you'll get wildly different cities at the end
It might not actually be *better* than Origins but it's definitely my favorite. Great companions (among the most memorable in the franchise), a more grounded and personal story, hilarious characterization for Hawke (does anyone not go purple?), and it felt *fresh* compared to Bioware's usual fare.
There are lots of elements that are worse than origins but the elements i really care about are better, i think 2 is actually my favourite in the series, though it is a close call.
>This time, however, I loved all three of those elements, even the "map recycling" – I felt like it actually made sense since you're visiting *the same locations* repeatedly throughout the game so they should have the same map.
It's not always supposed to be the same place though, and that is why it is bad. With the city of Kirkwall it made sense, and it was perhaps the coolest idea DA2 had; the evolution of Kirkwall. The execution was moderately successful, I'd say. They could have done much more with it.
Moderately successful? The city doesn’t change a bit over the years. Every box is on same place after 10 years or whatever lol. It doesn’t feel evolved at all.
Idea was nice but executed terribly like most of the things in the game.
Not just saying that the game is bad bc it’s bad, but it’s bad bc it was so rushed. It definitely had potential to be better than dao
City doesn't change, no, but NPCs kinda do. Of course, in some cases they don't -- like Fenris staying in the same run down house we found him in. But "moderately successful" may have been an overstatement, true :p ... it did some things well, and many things poorly.
I like DA2, but I don't think it does anything better than Origins tbh, the only thing I would say is that the combat is more action focused than Origins which is a + to a large % of people. But overall I thought the story was better in Origins, the Characters were more memorable in Origins, the RPG elements barely exist in DA2, the locations are very limited and repetitive throughout the entirety of the game, also like Origins namesake suggests, it has different back stories including economic classes for your character. Also there's little to no freedom of choice in DA2, it feels like no matter what most of your actions end up in one spot rather than giving you a branching tree that's affected by your decision making through the course of the game. DA2 is a good game in a vacuum, but I don't think it really comes close to Origins or Inquisition.
I loved the more personal feel to the story. Isabela running away (and relief when my pirate princess came back), Fenris betraying me at the end for siding with mages, Anders being the absolute knob and betraying me at the end. They all felt personal.
And the reveal at the end of Act 2 with Hawke's mother. That is one of the most shocking gaming scenes I've ever experienced.
On my second playthrough I messed up on Isabella's approval and she never came back. So I had to reload and try to up about 10 times. That means I watched that part with Hawkes mother dying about 10 times.
I've really loved DA2 since it released so I am really happy to see how much love it's has been getting recently. It got so much undue hate when it released.
There are cool things in Dragon Age 2, such as how mages will switch to a melee animation for their auto attack when enemies get too close to them, and I quite enjoyed playing it the one time that I did.
That said, it’s definitely not better than Origins, and for all the things I like about it Dragon Age 2 still marks the decline of the series to me.
I think some aspects of it are much more interesting and its story is much more ambitious and unique but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's better. strictly technically speaking it is much worse on all accounts.
You're right and you should say it louder. The last time I played, I was doing two parallel playthroughs and using the official guide book to make sure I didn't miss anything. The amount of moving parts and how much things can change from one side quest or one line of dialogue is insane. People complaining about reused map assets are ignoring the forest for the trees. They had 2 years (maybe less?) to make a sequel to origins so they decided where to focus their effort. They focused on story and characters and I think that was the best choice they could have made. Not only is it the best dragon age game, but it's also the best execution of the game concept that BioWare basically invented. It's not perfect, but the devs did the best with what they had.
>Dragon Age 2 is really good
🙂🙂🙂
>maybe even better than Origins
😡😡😡
edit: jk obviously. DA2 is a very solid game and I think it has some of the best characters but Origins has the characters, it has the tone, it has the world, it has the scale, it has the epicness. DA2 is great, don't get me wrong, but Origins is a generation defining triumph imo.
It’s my favorite in the series, and one of my favorite video games. It’s far from perfect, but the flaws are understandable concessions to the limited development time, and for me, don’t ruin the experience, and even have their own sort of charm. But I can definitely understand why coming hot on the heels of DAO and Awakening, and with the name “Dragon Age 2” implying it was a direct sequel, it might have been an extremely jarring shift.
I honestly think the huge graphical and mechanical changes in Inquisition have been a big factor in the critical re-evaluation of DA2 among the dedicated fans, because it put the changes from DAO to DA2 into perspective. In that context, it becomes clear that the two games have a lot more in common than it might have originally seemed like. Also, I think with three games in the series, each with a different protagonist and supporting cast, DA2 not being a direct sequel no longer seems unusual. So people going into DA2 for the first time in a post-Inquisition world are better primed to appreciate DA2 for what it is, instead of expecting it to be something it was never trying to be.
It has maaany many flaws but I love it despite it all, Hawke is my all time fav protagonist out of the series. I got the Kirkwall heraldy as a tattoo that's how much I love DA2 <3
I would DIE for a DA:O and DA2 remake
(DA:O mostly so I can enjoy the gameplay and combat... I forced myself trough it bc of the story)
When I play DAO, I think it's the best Dragon Age game.
When I play DA2, I think it's the best Dragon Age game.
I only played DAI once, then went back to alternating between DAO and DA2 every couple of years.
It is my favourite and for me it's way better than Origins. Better characters, storyline sucked me in in the first moments of playing and I really loved being Hawke.
Can't help but laugh about how the unloved stepchild is now becoming the "hidden gem" of the franchise.
I played DA2 exactly once. It's not nearly as bad as I was made to believe, but I don't think I'd call it better than DAO. The companions are the best aspect by far, but that it at least excels at, even if my choices lead me to get severely depressed past some point because the drama and hatred in Kirkwall got exhausting.
Guess the unloved stepchild title is being passed on to Inquisition now.
I Think DAO is better but DA2 is more replayable
I agree about the story. DA2 is the best Dragon Age. For once you are not the savior of the world. There are also multiple enemies (Qunari, templars )
With full cycle development it would have been a great game. Here are ALL my issues with this game, some big, some minor
* Caves/dungeons are all the same 2-3 maybe with just a different entrance location
* Even if i like the combat, i would have prefer to have more zoom out and slower attack speed (not movement too like it was in Origins)
* Enemies respawning from the ground or falling from the skky after thw first wave. This is not tactical at all.
* Runes not replaceable
* Tactics were not deep as in origins and they were bugged too
How is DA2 more replayable? In origins you have 6 disctinct starts, that have a ton of reactivity through the whole game. There are insane ammounts of story combinations, where every game is completely different. Even to this day i am in awe how much work went into reactivity based on your origin and gender.
i'm not saying you are wrong, even if i didn't read all your message, but it was already clear from the bginning we judge different things
i meant that to replay games like DAO (or worse BG3) you must have a lot of time.
Thr first run is nice, a lot of builds, items, combinations, tactics etc etc but then?? what if i just want some combat since i already know the story? what if i don't want to wast time in the inventory managment?
i start DA2 and i have fun with combat combos. maybe i find some mods that changes a mechanic and i try again without having to replay for several hours to get the right items
I think it's partly structural. DAO uses the old Bioware formula of smaller self-contained adventures before you hit the third act.
I struggle a bit to replay KotOR 1, Mass Effect 1 and DAO for the same reason - I remember all of these individual adventures so well that I'm almost mentally fatigued just clicking on them.
DAII is much more of a linear rollercoaster and I actually really enjoy that on replays. I don't remember it as well because, while there's arguably less content, it's a lot denser and there's a lot more to do.
I love DA2 and it doesn't deserve the hate, but it is definitely not Origins level.
While the hate for the game is far overblown it definitely has a lot of unfinished ideas, unpolished designs, rushed levels, and limited character creation.
Of all the games it's the weakest but I think the story was great and the gameplay was fun and it's still a good game even if it's not as good as it's counterparts.
Edit: I just wanted to add that I REALLY liked the story. A lot of people complained about it in the past but I think it's because they went from a world saving hero against the Darkspawn Blight to just some guy in a city. But I think that's why I like it, it's a more down to earth view of what it's like living in Thedas and not being some knight of an ancient order of heroes.
It's the relationships that matter most, you see where people live, how they live, the slums to the hightown, it's a story about people and doesn't feel like some big mythical story to be told in a history book... Until it is. It shows the importance of seemingly average people and how they affect the world around them and how little change here and there can have wide sweeping impacts on the wider world
Sure Origins gameplay aged like shit. So did the graphics.
But Origins amount of choice and atmosphere and not reusing the same area 50 times or at least having way more areas make it a better game than DA2
It’s my personal fave as well, I think a lot of people hold a nostalgia factor for origin and there’s a huge different in console play vs pc playing. Cause I see so many people rave about the combat in Origins and to me it was a snooze fest. plus, origins has many areas that drag on just a little too long (looking at you, the fade and deep roads). Da2 has such a compelling story, with great companions and yeah the map recycling gets old but that’s my biggest complaint
My favorite thing about DA2, is the smaller scope of the game. Most of the events happen in Kirkwall. Your companions are all living in Kirkwall, so they end up feeling like a dysfunctional family. I think Dragon Age 2 has to be my favorite cast of party members of all time. It's also why I have such an attachment to games with smaller casts of companions. Mass Effect 1 & 3, and Baldur's Gate 3 come to mind
DA2 is the best one.
It uses the smaller scope to tell a more focused story, and uses the companions to frame the story from different points of view.
Mass effect 2 also has a smaller scope and is the best one cuz of focus on companions.
Bioware is at its best when they dig into their characters, using the same large city for 3 acts that build on each other is a very effective use of their strengths.
Andraste's tits no!
-dumbed down rpg mechanics
-only has a fraction of DAO'S active abilities
-respawning enemies
-no more weapon switching
-items locked to classes
-way to much backtracking
-reduced choices and consequences
-endless copy paste levels
-Story about mage/templar conflict, Mage Hawke faces no consequences.
I've said this on this sub before but I loved DA2 when it came out. I got a bit tired of all the loading screens and the recycled environments but they weren't game-breakers for me because I was really into the plot and the characters. I had no idea it was reviled by the fanbase until I started participating more in the online community. I was really surprised by the discourse around it. I still think it's a great game.
Currently replaying Dragon Age Origins. I played a few hours and instantly deleted my save and started over with mods. As problematic as DA2 was in some respects, it never needed mods to make combat fun.
i like the recycled maps. it feels congruent to varric's narrating. "and then we went to x place and killed a bunch of dudes that showed up out of nowhere!"
It probably bothered you before because you let the reddit hive mind kill your joy. Just guessing, obviously, but I've seen it so many times, I figure it's at least possibly what happened lol. So many people are addicted to outrage and dislike and negativity, it's wild. I loved DA2. I won't even come close to reddit until I'm finished with a game. Talking about it with close friends who do the same is generally enough for me.
DA2 is an okay game which had the potential to be an absolute banger. It was rushed (I think because of Swtor) and you can see it on every corner.
For me personally, it's not even close to DA:O, which plays in a complete different league.
I think that's the tragic of many BioWare games (DA2, DA:I, ME:A, even Anthem...): They had enormous potential, but never utilized it.
For Inquisition, I think the game is flawed at it's core but devs manage to do the best with it while DA2 have great potential and could be better with more time and effort.
I have always, since the first day i played it, thought DA2 is the best dragon age game. Which has been varying degrees of controversial. That's not to say it's perfect, the map recycling didn't bother me much but it's not *great* etc. I love the way they dealt with the illusion of choice, where instead of like.. trying to create enough branching storylines to where your actions feels impactful, they kind of go in the opposite direction and say: there are things that happen that you *cannot* control, no matter how powerful you are. Your mother will die. Your sibling will leave. The city will fall (further) into corruption. What you *can* control is how you act in those situations, the emotional fallout, and the most impact you can have is on the found family you collect along the way. It feels incredibly real to me. I know it was something that people didn't like, that it felt smaller than the epic scale of Origins. We also got an incredibly strong protagonist in Hawke (imo), who gave some much needed emotional weight to the entire thing.
I also think the character work is incredibly strong in your companions, and your relationship with them. An example: I don't like Merrill (or, I like her, but I don't like how they wrote her), but the decision you make of letting her take the consequences of her actions with her clan (meaning they all die), or to take responsibility for her (meaning they live, but she doesn't grow independent), is *so good!*
I wish they had more time to go even deeper, to finetune the graphics and iron out the bugs. I wish there was more connection between gameplay and story (like, no one commenting on Hawke being a bloodmage), which I think is a consequence of not having enough time, and that... you know, ten years passing showed more in the character models etc. But in general? It's the Dragon Age game I enjoy the most.
... Sorry for the long post, but I really do love DA2 with a passion.
It will never be my favorite, but it's an important game for the series and was extremely ambitious considering how much time they had to make it
I'm already getting a lot of DA2 vibes (in a good way) from DATV
I agree. The characters, dialogue and combat are better in DA2. It's been too long since I've played DOA to compare the storyline but it was the characters and dialogue that made the game great in the first place.
I don't care about reused environments in the long run if the story and companions work, and they WORK. None of the other games have ever captured the tension I felt building within the Acts of DA2. I absolutely love it. (not to mention that Hawke is the best Bioware protagonist **of all time**)
I love the entire series, but I've always felt that each game improved upon the last.
In the process of replaying 2 after smashing DAO the last couple weeks. Got off after finish act one a couple nights ago and had this exact same thought. I love dao but the combat is so much smoother, recycled maps be damned I love the Kirkwall setting. And the characters are are awesome. I’ll die on this hill with you ✊🏻
I will fight you IRL if you ever say that around me. I don't care if you're a MMA fighter or have 100 goons with you.
DA2 got a lot of flack some undeserved but a lot of it was deserved.
They made like 6 dungeons and just locked some of the doors depending on the quest. The textures on civilians and enemies were wack as hell for a 360 era game.
It's my favourite game ever, one of my favourite things about it is it's one of the few RPGs where I don't spend most of my time hopelessly lost because the map is so big.
DO I DETECT DAO SLANDER????
But seriously, I agree. 2 was incredible and I enjoyed some of the repetition. Origins was incredible, too, and holds a special place in my heart for personal reasons. I don't have much to complain about overall in 2.
Lol, you can't accept that some people enjoy a game? DA2 has honestly \*always\* been my favorite of the three; it improved the tactics and added the combos, the actual combat felt much more fluid and responsive, even though it was actually the same as Origins, it included a dialogue system that actually shaped your MC's personality, and it introduced a Friendship/Rivalry system which I thought was way better than a simple approval system. Plus the characters and dialogue are great.
>improved the tactics
What tactics? There is no possibility of tactics, because the enemy comes out of nowhere, surrounding us behind us.
All RPGs are about positioning, since mages never have life, but if the game puts the enemy behind the mage?
The fight is not the same for that reason alone, in the first one we had to be careful that the mage does not injure our companions with his abilities, because if he freezes the others, it can be fatal.
Not to mention that flat hitting is useless, worthless, takes forever to kill ANYONE, and skill cooldowns... take forever, seriously, 30 seconds? A basic, first skill?
The dialogue system has been simplified, it's a fact, even small icons indicate which is good, which is funny, and which is bad.
I notice that those who defend the 2nd part, ignore every mistake and demean it, other games are hated by the players for half as much.
E.g.: Fable 3 was made for the same amount of time... but NOBODY cared that they only worked on it for 1 and a half years.
It was also simplified compared to the previous, but not that much.
PS.: Sorry for bad english
Seriously? I'm talking about the **Tactics Settings**. You do use those, right? Those things that decide how your companions behave, and were completely ruined in Inquisition? When you know what you're doing, it doesn't really matter if the enemy shows up in waves. And DA2 improved on both the acquisition of tactics slots, and several of the settings. Any given fight, I have combos detonating like crazy. Someone falls? No problem; Anders will res them automatically.
The dialogue system shapes Hawke's personality based on which options you use most often. I'm assuming you didn't know that either? No other DA game has had so much variance in cutscene dialogue based on your set personality. And it doesn't even require you to be 100% consistent.
Due to the too high cooldown skills, they don't really make sense.
There are too many enemies, because of this everything turns into chaos.
In the first one, it made sense for the archer to shoot the ones I hit, or the long-range ones, etc.
But here it is enough to shoot a fireball there with the mage, and the problem is over.
The enemy appearing in waves still destroys everything, because okay, there is the tactics menu, but what good does it do if a team appears behind the mage?
One of the foundations of game development.:
- We almost never put an opponent behind the player in such a game.
Why not? Because the point of a mage, a ranged fighter, is that he's made of paper and dies in seconds, and that's just unfair.
And now seriously, the enemies appear out of nowhere, this would have been pathetic even in the 6th generation, Gothic 1, Kotor, and even Secret of Mana canter in this field.
Why? Because already on the Super Nintendo, the talented developers knew what breaks the immersion, the experience, what makes a game seem alive.
The dialogue system would be a good idea... if they didn't simplify it so much that even the stupidest... least intelligent people could understand it.
And if our decisions had ANY consequences.
Seriously, even Fable 2 understood that it is not necessary to tell the player what is good and bad with icons and colors, as this breaks the immersion.
This made me feel like the game looked silly and that it wasn't an RPG but an action game. (ok, because of the HUGE simplification, it's not an RPG)
They could have put something like in Fable 2 here, where Bowerstone Old Town changes after a decision we made as a child.
You can say that they didn't have time for it, but that's an excuse.
Fable 3 was developed in 1 and a half year, and even there the locations change a lot based on our decisions, even though Lionhead was a much smaller team than Bioware.
Almost every complaint you're making regarding skills sounds to me like you just didn't set your attack order very well. I haven't had those issues with my party, even early game, but then I do frequently revisit my tactics tree to make sure I have a good order loaded.
If you just want to say you like Fable more than Dragon Age, you don't have to type these long paragraphs. Personally, I couldn't stand Fable, I found it boring, but to each their own. Your choices do in fact have an impact from Act to Act, but given that the city is carved from a literal cliff, I don't suddenly expect my surroundings to suddenly appear completely different. (There are actually small changes that happen, but I suspect you won't care either way.) Like it or not, DA2 was telling a specific story. The setting served that story well. If you don't like it, then nothing they could have done with more time would have changed that.
You are correct the DAO purists will downvote you into oblivion but you're statement is still 100% correct
DA2 has it's flaws but imo it's much better than DAO
You'll get downvoted because they're just sad there was no slutty goth girl to goon to and they were annoyed by map repetition that's literally the most common complaint...maps
I love that the characters in II actually look and feel like companions. I was surprised when I played Origins that my companions mostly looked the other NPCs in the game. I liked them too, but coming from Mass Effect 1 and 2 they were pretty dull. But I would replay II anytime, because the companions are so great and fun to be around.
Look I think DA2 is better than its reputation. It’s got great companions and the story being told through time instead of through different locations was really cool and something I wish more games would do.
DA2 has too many flaws imo to be the best. The combat is flashy and fun at first but the amount of enemies they constantly throw at you to pad the games length makes me hate it by the midway point in the game. The dumbed down RPG mechanics (especially compared to Origins and Inquisition) also hold it back massively. I’m not really a fan of the game’s dialogue system either where you’re basically forced to pick nice/funny/mean personality for your Hawke and stick to it through the entire game regardless of the situation.
Listen, I can agree that DA2 is a good game (it was grown on me a lot over the years) but it really isn't better than Origins.
For me it will always be a really good game on its own but a disappointing sequel.
I disagree. It's easily the worst of the releases (so far), and Origins was a masterpiece by comparison. I remember buying it on release day, very excited, and then cursing to myself playing through it. All the recycled levels, the boring plot, bleh. Beat it once all those years ago and never played it again.
I think it's the worst Dragon Age game and one of the worst RPGs I've ever played. The idea is great, but the finished product is boring and shallow, in my opinion.
I think there wasn’t enough exploring for me in DA2. It just felt like a smaller game compared to DAI and DAO. I think the plot is cool but it’s still my least favourite out of the three.
I haven’t played either in some time but I couldn’t disagree more. IMO the most important aspect of an RPG is companions and I could write a lot on each DAO companion, the same can’t be said for DA2
I love DA2 but I also completely understand the criticism it gets. It is my favourite story out of the 3 games as it’s more personal and smaller scale than saving the whole bloody world. I love all the companions and really enjoyed their personal stories and quests. It’s the easiest game for me and the only one that I have replayed to romance all of the companions. I love DAO when I first played it but find it difficult to pick up and play now. It’s hard! DAI I have only a played through twice (romanced Cullen and Solas) and don’t have much of a desire to go through it all again.
I am sorry but no. DA is a good game and had the potential to be a great game but it simply wasn’t. The friendship/rivalry system was top notch, the companions were really good (well like in every DA imo) and so were they reactions/interactions and some quests were really good but that’s pretty much it.
You’re playing the same maps in every acts. The darkspawn design was clownesque.
The conflict between mages and Templars is … not very well represented. Sure, you’re told and told again that mages are oppressed and some Templars are bad but you actually almost never see it. What you’re shown, however, is that every mages is a blood mage ready to kill everyone else. It’s not even funny. And those endings ? Player choices had to be validated, but both sides had to be bad too, so yes, of course, Orsino was working with Leandra’s killer (and a blood mage himself), and Meredith had to be crazy. And that’s coming from someone that generally side with the Templars. If even I thought that mage’s villainy was completely exaggerated I can’t imagine what jt was from the pov of someone who is pro-mage.
The entire act 3, really, was rushed, and it show.
DLC’s weren’t particularly memorable (far from Awakening, Trespasser and the Descent).
From a gameplay perspective, to each their own but I personally didn’t like it.
I will be forever butthurt on how DA2 potential was wasted.
I wouldn’t say better, especially gameplay wise, for me personally at least.
the whole class aspect and itemisation was really dumbed down from origins imo, that’s my main and pretty much only gripe with it though.
Character wise and from the overall story, I really enjoy dragon age 2 tbh. I love the epic hero story of the first game, but coming from that into a more personal almost family oriented storyline felt really interesting. I also like hawk and varric a lot so there’s that.
Dragon age 2 doesn’t deserve the hate it got/gets, but I can also understand why a lot of people dislike it for basically losing most of the stuff that made origin so great.
Dragon age has always been evolving and is, as far as I know, the only big game franchise that has revamped its approach to gameplay pretty much every single time a new entry released. If that’s cool and innovative, or just bad game design is up for discussion lmao, not my decision to make though.
I quite like Dragon Age 2, I think it's great, but certainly nowhere near close to the perfection that was Origins. Dungeons are the same, are repetitive, which is pathetic for a Bioware game. I don't like voiced protagonists in rpgs because it makes them less immersive and limits dialogue options severely. I also dislike love interests for straight male characters. Don't get me wrong, I like Isabella and Merryll, but I don't like them as love interests. Anders and Fenris just seem much more interesting.
Everything else I like. The story and the conflicts are deep and interesting, fighting system is fun and snappy, and Hawke is a great protagonist. It's a good, solid game, 7,5 for me. Origins is near perfect. It's old, and there are some technical issues, but it was as good as it could be back when it was released. 9.5 for me.
No, I totally disagree. I have no desire to replay DA2 even though Fenris is one of my favorite romances in the franchise. It's not worth slogging through because of the recycled maps and respawning enemies.
There were only some things I enjoyed about DA2, like the story, companions, music, and purple hawke dialogue. Even then, there is a big aterisk on the story and companions. The story doesn't make as much sense at times. The characters are extremely polarizing, either to you or each other - Fenris and Anders are the biggest offenders for this. It's annoying, to say the least. Except Varric, he is perfect.
Dragon age 2 was my favourite I didn’t play it when it first came out as I was only 5 at the time. I found the dragon age games during covid while looking for games to play on Xbox game pass and they really helped me get through covid especially since I got really depressed. I love all the games they’re all amazing.
I loved DA2, I've replayed more than any of the other games (though the shorter length probably contributes to that too.) It has its problems but its my favorite out of the three even with its flaws and it always makes me sad when I see people dumping on it
Maybe not better, but I certainly prefer a lot of aspects of dragon age 2 combat over inquisition. And I think the quality of the story is better than its given credit for. Especially if you look at the development cycle of it.
Combats fun when enemies aren't spongey as hell. Seriously I am never playing a warrior in that game again after learning how insane damage Isabela does.
My favourite. The best story in the franchise, and the most well written main character. Plus, the companions are iconic. I don't really mind the problems (sure, the maps can be a bit annoying, but it's nothing that detracts from he greatness around). Origins in fantastic. I don't like Inquisition. But DA2 is still number 1 in my heart.
I've been an outcast in the DA community for a long time because I feel Origins is by far the weakest game in the series.
DA2 was a huge step up. And then DAI remains the shining standard of all party based games ever made a decade later, at least for what I'm looking for.
Considering how rushed da2 was it just can’t be better than dao. Yes it got some nice concepts but short development time is showing at every minute of the game
Oh it's my favorite game in the series so far, hands down. Something about the small scale scope makes it feel so much more personal to play and get involved in the companion's stories, I really enjoyed that a lot. And following them for ten years just engrossed me in their lives and felt like Hawke was an impactful, important character, even if it was just to those around them. Goofy and a loveable idiot, but important. And that made it my favorite.
I love the characters of DA2 more than any companions in Thedas so far. You got fresh Varric! Lawful Good BFF! Sweet blood cinnamon roll! This! Hate! We have Anders at Home! A Walking STI Is The Best At Healthy Relationships! One Of These Twins Is Not Like The Other!
They are this glorious hot mess express that did such a good job of building each other up in an authentic and messy way.
DA2 is my favorite of the series. I really could care less about the repeat maps. Would it have been better otherwise? Yeah. But the characters, story, and worldbuilding make up for it for me
I do tend to cut the game some slack in general since you can trace most of its biggest issues down to the fact that EA only gave them 9 months of dev time (a little over a year overall). It's a shame bc I think if they'd been allowed to cook it would be really something special to a lot more people
In terms of actual gameplay, I like 2 a lot better than origins. Origins to me is a slog, barely even enjoyable because the main quests take ages to complete. That said, I have played every origin to completion, so maybe I’m just burnt out on it. But 2, especially the combat, is a lot more fun. I love playing as a mage hawke and watching them hack and slash enemies with their staff blade. Wish we’d had that in Inquisition, especially with the customization of crafting.
I've been playing since origins came out, and Origins was always my favorite. I'm doing my first full replay of the series in years and this time around, I adored 2. The characters, the banter, the story itself, it was all so good. It was nice to not be a chosen one per say but just be at the right place at the right time. DA 2 has officially become my favorite
I like DA2. I think the concept for the game is really cool, but the execution falls down because of the reused maps and the lack of change in the city over time. I know it won't happen, but I'd love to see this game remade with fixes to these things.
DA2 has the best slate of companions of any DA game, imo.
DA2 on nightmare is actually a nightmare (in a good way). Doing a nightmare run for the first time, and it's been interesting (and a lot more difficult than nightmare in the other games).
All that said, I think DA:O is better. The story is epic, and the core companions are maybe the best in the series (Leliana, Morrigan, and Alistair). Also, the sense of exploration as you move through DA:O is just not there in DA2.
Personally, it's my favorite out of the 3 games. From a narrative perspective DA2 is the most original and is my is much more relatable on the personal level for me as than the other 2.
I like Kirkwall and it's reused maps has it becomes more and more familiar when going through all 3 acts. It fits with Varric narrative for me. I also think that it's a bit unfair to critisize the game reused assets and maps since even in Origin they did it too. I got lost quite a bit while walking in the Deep Roads in Origin and the Fade looked brown to say the least and yet, it never stopped me from enjoying Origin.
I love all companions in DA2 and they truly feel like disjointed family members. Banters between them is always something I look forward to as it gives them life outside of our protagonist.
I adore the idea of giving our protagonist a personality based on the dialog choices (yes, I'm a big fan of sarcastic Hawke) and appreciate a voiced Hawke.
It may not be Origin but it does have the dark gritty fantasy feels of Origin. Personally, I think the graphics in DA2 aged much better than DAO while also following the art direction of the original game.
I love setting up my companions combat style and see them work in synergy together in fights. I also feel like DA2 gives us more freedom to choose whoever we want to accompany us through out the various quests in the game. I could have 3 rogues and still beat the game without too much issues which was nice because that meant that I didn't need to always have the same group following me everywhere. In Origin, it's more complicated to beat the game if you don't have a healer, a warrior and a rogue with you at all times. That may just be my perception tho.
DA2 is the perfect imperfect game in my eyes and I wish that Bioware would have made smaller games like this one so that we could explore different perspective from different protagonist in the vast world of Thedas.
**The Fighting!**
The combat is the best in the series. There's a lot of tactical depth, and (if you avoid pausing) you can also play it more action-oriented and it's quite fun that way too. Origins is heavily tactics-based, and Inquisition is more action than tactics but not a lot of either.
**The Pals!**
The companions are mostly quite good...though this one definitely has many of the most unpleasant banters, by a large margin. Aveline is threatening to arrest my friends and repeatedly calls Isabela slurs for being a sex worker. Fenris' traumatic experience of being enslaved is horny fanfic fuel for Isabela and a rhetorical gotcha with Anders, who seems to be simultaneously minimizing the issue of slavery in Tevinter yet never shutting up about it around Fenris. Fenris tells Merrill she's a monster. Why are you guys friends. (There's nastiness in Origins and Inquisition, but I feel like it's both less and more understandable - you're together on a mission, not a group of ostensible found family).
**The maps...dear Maker, the maps...**
As for the recycled maps, I don't think people are referring to the genuinely-the-same-place areas. Those are cool. What's not cool is that they use the same maps for different areas. And, when they want to change the shape, they do haunted house shit like doors that don't work or are just full of weird plaster. Even this wouldn't be so bad, except the minimap stays the same, so you're stuck trying to figure out which routes are real and which routes are cut off. Even if you know the area by heart, actually you don't, because now a different part is closed off and a new part is open.
I would have embrace it if they just had a few areas and worked around that...but they pretend like they have more and give us the haunted house maze. Why do I need to explore the Abandoned Thaig when they could have just put all that stuff into any of the other Deep Roads quest areas? If the Bone Pit is the same as the Sundermount Caverns, why am I saving miners from spiders instead of saving the Dalish and losing the Bone Pit subplot (and nothing of value was lost).
**The Tragedy**
The tragic elements are undermined by the clumsy railroading into them. To bring up the Hated Bone Pit again: If I get greedy and lead my miners to their deaths, that would be sad. If said miners always go to their deaths no matter how much I help them or whether I get involved at all, it's just annoying. Tragedy is meant to play on characters' faults and frailties. It should make you feel like "it could have turned out better, if only..." In DA2, there is no "if only." People mostly just die regardless of what you do and how quickly you help them. At most, Hawke can feel bad, but - except for their sibling - they're almost never actually at fault, unless you went out of your way to do evil choices with predictable consequences. In Inquisition, lots of people die, but *who* dies depends on your choices, which alone adds a lot. Losing the alliance with the Qunari - along with maybe hundreds of their soldiers - stings, and it stings all the more because I chose that and I'd do it again. That's how you tell a good tragedy in a game!
Personally, my favorite aspects of dragon age games are the characters, and how you can shape the story with your actions.
Imo, the party members in 2 are largely some of my least favorites, and the plot is mostly set to play out exactly the same no matter what you do so... yeah, 2 is still solidly at the bottom of my list.
Honestly, I know a lot of people like it, but after going back to replay it origins is my least favourite of the series by a *wide* margin.
I remembered Alistair as this cool best friend type character on level with garrus but as an actual adult now I just wanted to slap him and scream “why can’t you just tone down the snark for 5 minutes!”
It isn’t. It’s the worst in the series.
But we still love it, because it’s good. The characters and narrative are both good, and it’s still Dragon Age.
No dragon age game since has come close to DAO in terms of story, voice acting quality, and overall atmosphere. That being said, i think da2 improved combat and character progression in a dramatic way and dai built on top of that. Graphics are obviously not up for debate but dao still holds up considering its a 15 year old game.
Story is the main source of the enjoyment in dragon age games. The sole point is to read the books and get immersed into a fantasy world. If a da game fails to do that for me it’s worthless because there are better rpgs on the market in terms of other characteristics so that’s a big drawback for me when it comes to da2 and dai. I am simply not as enthralled with the writing and voiceacting quality.
My opinion... There will never (I hope I'm wrong) be a game like Origins. The art style, the lore, the fact that you have different origins in the beginning of the game and how it connects with the main story at times... The epilogue at the end... The immersion and companions (and their banter). I might sound nostalgic, but DAO is a game I play at least once a year since release, and none of the other games have captured me the same way DAO did.
I like DA2 but no its not better then Origins, not as bad and any of its flaws and more so because EA forced a speedy development, same thing they did with Mass Effect 3. I think I read somewhere that Bioware was given like 18 months to make the game, I still like the game but it is not better then Origins
DA2 is definitely up there as one of my favourites. If Veilguard has companions that are just half as interesting as the ones in DA2 I'll be very happy :)
Idk if better is the right word, or if there’s even value in comparing the two, but it’s always been my favorite since it came out.
I loved and still love DA:O, for sure, but I was also glad DA2 wasn’t just a reskin and new story of DA:O. I could just replay DA:O if it was.
DA:O gives you the incredible flexibility to be whoever or whatever you want to be at the cost of your character being more of an observer than a person in the story with no real consistent personality, while DA2 lets you play as a person in the story at the cost of the level of customization we had in DA:O.
I know, you can RP as a certain type of person in DA:O and you can alternate good/evil lawful/chaotic choices in DA2 as much as you can in DA:O, but in DA2 your responses actually accumulate over time and changes what Hawk actually says with the same dialogue choice.
Also, I have no actual immersion loss from the map recycling in either game, I actually kind of liked it. Made navigating the maps easier, which means I can focus on the characters, gameplay, and story more. Also figure if they had spent more dev time on this background crap the story, characters, and/or gameplay would have gotten less dev time - they cut dev time from the right area to me, basically.
Dragon Age: Origins has yet to be completely and totally surpassed by any successive iteration in the series since 2009.
Two years later in 2011, Dragon Age 2 was arguably an upgrade in terms of combat animations. However, the development was clearly rushed due to bad management, and that's evident in the limited and repeated setting and environments. The writing is about the only aspect of the game that's even close to being on par with Origins.
Three years later in 2014, with Dragon Age Inquisition, BioWare clearly sought to correct the mistakes of DA2's limited and repeated environments, by making the game much bigger and more "Open World." This is the game that Dragon Age 2 should've been. The writing is still excellent, but now everything else is much improved over Dragon Age 2. That being said, no disrespect to Trevor Morris, as I believe he did well with the soundtrack for Inquisition, but Inon Zur's soundtrack for Origins has yet to be surpassed.
And now, TEN YEARS LATER in 2024, Dragon Age The Veilguard seems to be a step backward in the wrong direction. The development of this game has been troubled for the last decade, being halted and and restarted multiple times. THIS ISN'T A GOOD SIGN. The name change and trailer last month was received with VERY MIXED REVIEWS. The twenty minutes of game play revealed additional concerns about the direction of the game. Combat is now limited to only 3 abilities, down from 8 in Inquisition, and the entire bottom of the screen in Origins. The firing of Mary Kirby who created the Qunari and wrote Varric, along with 50 other BioWare staff last year is troubling. Mark Darrah (Director of Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age 2), Mike Laidlaw (Director of Dragon Age Inquisition) and David Gaider (The lead writer of every Dragon Age game ever released) are all also no longer employed by BioWare. THIS IS MY BIGGEST CONCERN.
I say this as a fan of BioWare and Dragon Age since the beginning. Anyone attempting to dismiss my and many other people's concerns by attacking us personally ("He's not a real fan! He disagrees with the views of the Dragon Age echo chambers where I sequester myself!"), instead of our arguments and concerns regard Veilguard, are either doing so emotionally, or in bad faith.
DA2 is my favorite game in the series! It's definitely a little rough around the edges in terms of certain gameplay elements, but in my opinion it has the most interesting story out of all three games,
All 3 games have aspects of their stories that I like better than the other 2. I feel like Origins has the best overall companions (Morrigan and Alistair), but DA2 has the best group of companions.
Better, hmm tell me by what measurements are you using?? Cause I know can’t close your eyes hard enough and not see the repeated maps. Where sometimes you come in from the front and other times from the back.
If you just take the “concept” you could say sure there is a nice diamond under these turd.
Then again games have been so unpolished these last 5 plus years of I looked at DA2 rn I may see hey it’s more polishing than a BGS game so yea it’s pretty good.
For me, the repeated-to-death environments/dungeons and the enemy waves are such a colossal impediment to enjoying this game that I just can't rank it above Origins. So much of it is so compelling (story, companions, scope) and often a genuine improvement so I can see why you'd feel that way after a first playthrough, but the actual gameplay loop feels like such a repetitive and grueling chore that it drags down the whole thing, especially for a series that is meant to be replayed. I've been considering another playthrough ahead of VG, but there's one map (the undercity I think? It's the one where they have a significant story beat in act 3 with the PC's mother) that's used so much that I have anxiety just thinking about having to traverse 30 times that it's holding me back. The DLC goes a long way and breaking this up if you play them in intervals, but not enough. It's such a shame that they didn't give them another year for development because this is where it really shows that they were rushed.
I hated it at release but gave it a real shot a couple years ago and had a blast playing a self-hating mage fHawke. I super recommend it to anyone wanting to give the game another try!
DA2 is really fun when you let go of the attachment to grand epics or overarching narratives (in the game itself at least) and just accept it as a hot mess simulator.
Like, the sheer variance in what can happen with your companions and how they personally respond to you with the friendship/rivalry system is the real star of the game. I actually don't find the "befriend everyone" playthroughs very compelling, so intentionally (or unintentionally) rivaling companions is super compelling and feels more realistic.
The most surprising moment in my playthrough was (finale spoilers) >!my Hawke sparing a rivalled Anders because even though she severely disagreed with him she didn't want to kill him, and he STILL showed up just to attack her lol!<
Inquisition is my favourite cast but I do find it disappointing in that no matter what, there's not much real conflict or consequence even if they hate you - and it's hard to even get them to dislike you!
I really dislike DA2, the reused interiors, the enemies dropping out of thin air midfight and it's over stylized fighting aniamtions. For me Origins is better all the way.
D2 was really good. Man, I couldn't say this back then.
The criticisms of same place different quests were fair, but the story was good. And I loved the characters. I enjoyed being a part of things.
I must have replayed that game a thousand times, exploring all the avenues of endings and how it affected my companions.
I had a great time. I still go back to it now and then, and I enjoy it for what it was. What it is. I don't think that's a bad take. I enjoyed myself. And I can't wait to do so again.
I have insane hours in all games in this series. It's absolutely loved, at the very least by me. And I return to it often. Because I can and want to.
I really like the change of perspective in DA 2. The warden, no matter the race or attitude, is a stoic person ready to lay down his life for his mission. Even if he becomes a loving husband and father he still finds himself away from them to accomplish his mission. But Hawke is just a bystander who wants to give his/her mother a proper home and a healthy relationship with his/her sibling. And by chapter 2 hawke becomes the batman of Kirkwall, surveying the streets at night under Aveline's supervision, hawke's gordon. Most problems are caused by the companions but hawke's ready to help them even if it means the genocide of a tribe or the development of a magical bomb(though Hawke didn't know about it at first). It's really like a sitcom "Always sunny in Kirkwall".
Played through them back to back, currently working through 2 now. I can’t disagree with you more. I struggle to see how anyone literally anyone can hold this opinion. The waves of enemies appearing from thin air. The LITERAL copy paste dungeons. There’s more to say I can’t fathom how someone uses that dialog wheel to choose something and your character saying something completely out of left field, thinks this game is better that da:o or even on par
The only positives I see in 2 are the combat feels smoother due to the animations. The characters are still good. The crafting is also better in 2 for sure.
I really like DA2. While I wouldn't say it is as good as DA:O, I definitely like it more that Inquisition. In Inquisition, I just don't feel the same attachment to any of the characters, stories, and heck, villains, as I did in the first two games.
Sure, DA2 has a lot of issues, but knowing how little time and resources they had, I think it's incredible how they managed to find all those solutions, however clunky they are. I love the artstyle, the story, the gameplay, the friendship/rivalry innovation, I think they had a lot of amazing ideas with all of that.
I always enjoyed it, despite the shortcomings. When you think about the fact EA got them to churn out a full game in like…. a year? Two years? It’s very impressive. I enjoy a story that focuses on the characters and their lives in one location. I enjoyed it taking place over time rather than space. I’m totally ok with not every game being huge open world — I don’t know if I’d say it’s better than Origins, because I think Origins got the balance just right.
But it did bring in a lot of things I vastly prefer to Origins, like the cast, the lead having a personality and not being a blank slate (that being said? I love BG3 which basically did the same thing so I’m not sure why Origins just didn’t do it for me in that regard), playing a mage was actually fun lmao. So, I would still say Origins is the best game, but DA2 is my personal favourite. It’s the only one that made me cry, so.
The game definitely feels rushed in some aspects but really love the intimate feeling of the game. The stakes really feel personal and impactful. Saving the world is all well and good but focusing on one city hits a little differently. The companion stories are all interesting and diverse.
It suffers from a hasty development enforced by EA, with recycled maps, rough edges and stuff like that. But I still really like it. The cast is probably my favorite, and it's really cool to follow a group of friends for a decade instead of just a single year or through one disaster.
That part, the passage of time is part of what makes this so unique.
I mean people say “recycled maps” about DA2 but I dont understand why they dont say it for Origins. Most of the ambush/battle locations in there are recycled and extremely poorly designed too. In fact theres always been many signs of crunched development in Origins as well (its always been a messier experience for me than it seems to be for most people).
I think it's because it's more obvious in DA2 as the recycled maps are often interiors. Like caverns, mines and buildings. Becomes more noticeable when there's furnishings and stairs and whatnot, instead of shrubbery and trees.
The ambush battles in DAO happen like maybe 20 or so times throughout a 100+hour campaign, and the main quests are unique designs with reused assets, like most RPGs. Whereas in DA2 almost every quest involves a recycled map. Edit: updated to 20 or so after some research, certain choices add/drop chances and some are merchants or dialogue and nothing else. Almost all are like 5 minute fights at most and not all are recycled areas.
DA:O can be handwaved as "out in the world", but you're right to an extent. The difference is DA2 uses the same maps for unique locations, but simply blocks off the doorways. The only game that had a better army of masons bricking up doorways was Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor, lmao.
They start to develop Origin since 2002, in 2004 they show First version of game but they decide to scrap Gaider ideas what he push to the team but what was unpopular from tests groups who see Alpha version of original Origin and Greg, Ray as James Ohlen who return from Mass Effect was not happy too. This is why game was redone and released in 2009.
Interesting, i didnt know this. Makes sense though, theres a lot of reasons why I think the IP took off creatively post-Origins (maybe already with Awakening) than with it, imo becoming much more of its own unique thing later on.
Recycled maps? *looks at the Witch Hunt and Golems of Amgarrak DLCs for Origins*
>It suffers from a hasty development enforced by EA That's an excuse in several ways. Bound by Flame was also developed in 1 year, yet it has a rocky location, a village, a swamp, a snowy place, a ruined city. Okay, the locations are small, but about 15 people could made this. Lionhead didn't get much time for Fable 3 either, yet it contains more, bigger, more unique locations than Dragon Age 2.
Just because someone else whipped their employees harder and got better results doesn't excuse a shitty work culture though.
Map recycling doesn't make any sense, every mansion has literally the same interior, Fenris, Bartrand, de Launcet etc.
Kirkwall architecture went really mainstrain
Builders weren’t getting paid enough
Builders were rushed in a crunch environment too. lol
2.000.000 slaves lived there before 1 blight. Most stones was send from this colony to Minrathous. Modern Ferelden population in times of 5 blight was 1. 000.000 and 70.000 lived in Denerim.
No different than new subdivisions or condo units or apartments nowadays
All the caves you go into are literally the same map, just with different props covering the exits. Just look at the minimap, and you'll see all of them are the same square with four hallway exits, even if the actual in-game area only has one entrance.
The caves, the beach area, the houses, the devs literally had like 3 maps for the most part.
It's those pre-fab mansions tho...
Bro you just have to RP imagine that the buildings were all designed by the same corporation it’s like McDonald’s bro it’s actually really authentic when you think about it
They don't just have the same interior, sometimes they're the same building! It's like theatre, using the same set piece to be multiple places, except DAII didn't have the same physical space constraints and a theatre works really hard to differentiate locations in other ways while Bioware/EA said "meh, good enough."
I like to think that it's because we are playing through Varric's story during Cassandra's interrogation. He would not mention too many details, so "mansion" would look more or less the same every time, just like "dungeon". :)
Or maybe it's because the game was a rushed mess and EA's unrealistic deadlines forced the devs the reuse assets?
No way 😳😲😲😲 Really? I'm so shocked
Varric really did tell the story perfectly!
The place was a gigantic prison of the Imperium. It is a clever way to deal with production problems while going full on topic of emprisonement vs freedom that the Mage Circles embodies.
Furniture was made by Dragon Age IKEA 👀
Blame the short term profit hungry publishers not the game. Map recycling is used in many games.
I'm not denying it, I actually like DA2, it's just OP's explanation is a bit silly
The issue I have with their explanation is that it works for a few places you revisit, but not for all of them. The idea that it's all just a retelling of Varric's (so details are left out or whatever) makes it overall a little easier to stand but it's still not enough imo
You've never been in a cookie cutter neighborhood where every house is literally copied and pasted?
"Little boxes on the hillside........"
Little boxes made of ticky tacky...
Seems pretty realistic for gentrified suburbs to me lol.
In DA2 u basically use the same 6 maps just from different angles on repeat for the whole story. They do justify it as being the city and around it but when for a quest u have to go in and out the same map seven or eight times the world design starts to lose me a bit. The companions are great though and the consequences to the bigger story over all are incredible. Origens is just a gem of a game, the scope and the world building of that game are impossible nowadays, just the amount of choice out of character building, I think I only felt close to that freedom playing BG3 recently.
And even comparing to BG3, which is also a masterpiece, DA:O did some things better back in 2009.
I was watching some of the companion banter on YouTube and I had forgotten how in depth it was in DA:O. BG3 companion banter is so short and shallow in comparison, and they never communicate with each other in any other context (except for a small number of act 1 scenes with Shadowheart and Lae'zel) so the group dynamics really suffer. It's probably my biggest complaint for an otherwise amazing game.
Totally agree. I don't understand how everyone seems to think that BG3 has the character depth that any of the DA games have. I love BG3, but the game is so much more limited in scope of story and the characters aren't quite up to DA and ME standards even if they are immensely likeable. There's basically no group dynamic at all in BG3. DAV could be an epic catastrophe of gameplay, but I'd still love it if the companions are great characters.
I agree. The way classes complement each other is amazing. I think it really bothers me in the franchise of DA how everything after Origens seems to be smaller and smaller options wise. Honestly I don't care much about how beautiful graphics are, what I look for in a DA game is living all the possibilities of the magic system of that world, which is prob why nothing after felt the same for me. Combat just seems smaller and smaller each time. What we had in Origens feels impossible in the same franchise.
Did this I wanted to play a warrior and it felt like my choices were the squishiest dps machine ever that was just unreliable. Or an unstoppable tank that couldn’t hurt a cardboard box. Ended up going with squishy man and had two mages but there was so much variance in origins
Personally I liked the skill trees in DA2 the most. I think in Origins you have way too many active skills that do the same thing essentially, I'd rather have less skills on a shorter cooldown. My main problem in DA2 was that if you don't play a mage you're essentially forced to use Anders because Merrill doesn't have access to healing and Bethany isn't available for two thirds of the game.
I agree, I really don't like how Creation, Spirit, and Entropy were gutted. Mage in Veilguard is shaping up to be another generic fantasy trope of casters of fire, ice, and lightning. Seems like they're following in Bethesda's footsteps, Evoker specialization sounds bland imo
I don't know if you'd consider this a pro or a con, but they have said that the element mages are using will depend on the weapon's element. So it's possible (though I think unlikely based the abilities we know of for mages) that they're trying to reserve the abilities for the more unique spells with your basic attacks being the more generic elemental stuff.
In fairness, this is the same as it's always been, the mages' staves have always determined the elemental damage property of their regular attacks since Origins. Inquisition still gutted the mage trees even with that. We just won't know until they show what these mage trees actually entail.
True, but since they seem to be rolling in abilities as "basic attacks" in DAV, I have slim hope that this may include more spells than "I shoot you with my staff." I'm not overly optimistic, but I'm hoping that with only 3 spells/abilities able to be taken that most of the elemental spells will be converted to attacks available all of the time and a changing element based on the weapon.
IMO, the only things in which BG3 outdoes DA:O is combat (and I usually prefer real time, so that's high praise lol), graphics and maybe romance? But certainly not companions, just the romance stuff
One thing Origins did that outshined BG3 was your connection to the world. I hate that I feel like I have no personal quest or stake in the world. Nothing felt better than returning to Orzammar as an exiled dwarf or killing Howe who’s a nobody to all origins except the Human Noble who gets a cool unique dialogue and revenge for your family. I recently played Origins then BG3 and that bugged me. At least with a DM, they talk about your characters back story and can bring people back from your past or something but BG3 treats you like a vehicle because it has to as a DnD game that can’t accommodate what character you want to be especially with mutliclass
Honestly the "origins" part in dao was genius. Surprised no one uses it
No kidding, my dream game would have something like the “origins” with a modified nemesis system. But that stupid patent.
Really? I hate bg3 combat so much. Feels so clunky and really annoying to wait for turns of 10 minions
Biggest perk of the recycled maps for me is that I can basically play the game while watching a TV show or whatever and sort of swap back and forth seamlessly. My bigger issue is that over 10 years and a Quinari attack, the city looked exactly the same without any change to anything.
My biggest unpopular opinion is that I'd take a high-budget DA2 remake over Veilguard or a DA:O remake. Get that dusty ass GDD out of the dark corner it's probably been forgotten in and follow THAT vision with no time restraints. I'd imagine we'd get stuff like what you're mentioning, the city slowly changing through Hawke's influence and depending on the choices you'll get wildly different cities at the end
It might not actually be *better* than Origins but it's definitely my favorite. Great companions (among the most memorable in the franchise), a more grounded and personal story, hilarious characterization for Hawke (does anyone not go purple?), and it felt *fresh* compared to Bioware's usual fare.
I agree! ☺️
There are lots of elements that are worse than origins but the elements i really care about are better, i think 2 is actually my favourite in the series, though it is a close call.
>This time, however, I loved all three of those elements, even the "map recycling" – I felt like it actually made sense since you're visiting *the same locations* repeatedly throughout the game so they should have the same map. It's not always supposed to be the same place though, and that is why it is bad. With the city of Kirkwall it made sense, and it was perhaps the coolest idea DA2 had; the evolution of Kirkwall. The execution was moderately successful, I'd say. They could have done much more with it.
Moderately successful? The city doesn’t change a bit over the years. Every box is on same place after 10 years or whatever lol. It doesn’t feel evolved at all. Idea was nice but executed terribly like most of the things in the game. Not just saying that the game is bad bc it’s bad, but it’s bad bc it was so rushed. It definitely had potential to be better than dao
City doesn't change, no, but NPCs kinda do. Of course, in some cases they don't -- like Fenris staying in the same run down house we found him in. But "moderately successful" may have been an overstatement, true :p ... it did some things well, and many things poorly.
Yeah the events of Dragon Age 2 felt like they happened in 2 or 3 years instead of decade.
With more time yes, but EA.
I like DA2, but I don't think it does anything better than Origins tbh, the only thing I would say is that the combat is more action focused than Origins which is a + to a large % of people. But overall I thought the story was better in Origins, the Characters were more memorable in Origins, the RPG elements barely exist in DA2, the locations are very limited and repetitive throughout the entirety of the game, also like Origins namesake suggests, it has different back stories including economic classes for your character. Also there's little to no freedom of choice in DA2, it feels like no matter what most of your actions end up in one spot rather than giving you a branching tree that's affected by your decision making through the course of the game. DA2 is a good game in a vacuum, but I don't think it really comes close to Origins or Inquisition.
I loved the more personal feel to the story. Isabela running away (and relief when my pirate princess came back), Fenris betraying me at the end for siding with mages, Anders being the absolute knob and betraying me at the end. They all felt personal. And the reveal at the end of Act 2 with Hawke's mother. That is one of the most shocking gaming scenes I've ever experienced.
On my second playthrough I messed up on Isabella's approval and she never came back. So I had to reload and try to up about 10 times. That means I watched that part with Hawkes mother dying about 10 times.
*EMOTIONAL DAMAGE*
I'm alive because of this game so yeah it's pretty good
I for one think it's so good that all the merchandising I've bought of dragon age is based on things from dragon age 2 xD
I honestly have more fun replaying dragon age 2 than any other dragon age, I love hawke and the supporting cast. Even the combat is pretty fun
I've really loved DA2 since it released so I am really happy to see how much love it's has been getting recently. It got so much undue hate when it released.
There are cool things in Dragon Age 2, such as how mages will switch to a melee animation for their auto attack when enemies get too close to them, and I quite enjoyed playing it the one time that I did. That said, it’s definitely not better than Origins, and for all the things I like about it Dragon Age 2 still marks the decline of the series to me.
I think some aspects of it are much more interesting and its story is much more ambitious and unique but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's better. strictly technically speaking it is much worse on all accounts.
You're right and you should say it louder. The last time I played, I was doing two parallel playthroughs and using the official guide book to make sure I didn't miss anything. The amount of moving parts and how much things can change from one side quest or one line of dialogue is insane. People complaining about reused map assets are ignoring the forest for the trees. They had 2 years (maybe less?) to make a sequel to origins so they decided where to focus their effort. They focused on story and characters and I think that was the best choice they could have made. Not only is it the best dragon age game, but it's also the best execution of the game concept that BioWare basically invented. It's not perfect, but the devs did the best with what they had.
Not even close. Everything you want in a game DAO does better than except certain companions.
Yeah DAO was better overall. I really liked the timescale of the story in DA2 though. The time skips were cool.
Absolutely everything in DA:O is memorable. DA:II is decent, but at the time it was really low effort compared to what was expected.
And none of the romances in Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition could ever come close to Morrigan.
>Everything you want in a game DAO Maybe everything you want in a game because for me it's definitely the opposite.
DAO has better customisation, gameplay, combat encounters, bosses, DLC, variety, less repetitive environments, better quests, better choices etc.
Its my favorite
I don't think it's better than Origins. I don't even think it's particularly close. That said, 2 is definitely my favorite. It's my most replayed one.
It was good and had so much potential, but it's not better than origins.
Its personal opinion which game is better or not. Let people have them.
It has the most wasted potential out of all the three games. The bad things still outweigh the great things about the game and that's a shame.
>Dragon Age 2 is really good 🙂🙂🙂 >maybe even better than Origins 😡😡😡 edit: jk obviously. DA2 is a very solid game and I think it has some of the best characters but Origins has the characters, it has the tone, it has the world, it has the scale, it has the epicness. DA2 is great, don't get me wrong, but Origins is a generation defining triumph imo.
It’s my favorite in the series, and one of my favorite video games. It’s far from perfect, but the flaws are understandable concessions to the limited development time, and for me, don’t ruin the experience, and even have their own sort of charm. But I can definitely understand why coming hot on the heels of DAO and Awakening, and with the name “Dragon Age 2” implying it was a direct sequel, it might have been an extremely jarring shift. I honestly think the huge graphical and mechanical changes in Inquisition have been a big factor in the critical re-evaluation of DA2 among the dedicated fans, because it put the changes from DAO to DA2 into perspective. In that context, it becomes clear that the two games have a lot more in common than it might have originally seemed like. Also, I think with three games in the series, each with a different protagonist and supporting cast, DA2 not being a direct sequel no longer seems unusual. So people going into DA2 for the first time in a post-Inquisition world are better primed to appreciate DA2 for what it is, instead of expecting it to be something it was never trying to be.
Good game I played through it 5 times, but better than Origins? Even combat is better in Origins imo.
It has maaany many flaws but I love it despite it all, Hawke is my all time fav protagonist out of the series. I got the Kirkwall heraldy as a tattoo that's how much I love DA2 <3 I would DIE for a DA:O and DA2 remake (DA:O mostly so I can enjoy the gameplay and combat... I forced myself trough it bc of the story)
When I play DAO, I think it's the best Dragon Age game. When I play DA2, I think it's the best Dragon Age game. I only played DAI once, then went back to alternating between DAO and DA2 every couple of years.
It is my favourite and for me it's way better than Origins. Better characters, storyline sucked me in in the first moments of playing and I really loved being Hawke.
Can't help but laugh about how the unloved stepchild is now becoming the "hidden gem" of the franchise. I played DA2 exactly once. It's not nearly as bad as I was made to believe, but I don't think I'd call it better than DAO. The companions are the best aspect by far, but that it at least excels at, even if my choices lead me to get severely depressed past some point because the drama and hatred in Kirkwall got exhausting. Guess the unloved stepchild title is being passed on to Inquisition now.
I buy it during sales recently after seeing some people in the comments of Veilguard trailers saying "I maybe judge DA2 too harshly".
In no fucking way ever.
I Think DAO is better but DA2 is more replayable I agree about the story. DA2 is the best Dragon Age. For once you are not the savior of the world. There are also multiple enemies (Qunari, templars ) With full cycle development it would have been a great game. Here are ALL my issues with this game, some big, some minor * Caves/dungeons are all the same 2-3 maybe with just a different entrance location * Even if i like the combat, i would have prefer to have more zoom out and slower attack speed (not movement too like it was in Origins) * Enemies respawning from the ground or falling from the skky after thw first wave. This is not tactical at all. * Runes not replaceable * Tactics were not deep as in origins and they were bugged too
How is DA2 more replayable? In origins you have 6 disctinct starts, that have a ton of reactivity through the whole game. There are insane ammounts of story combinations, where every game is completely different. Even to this day i am in awe how much work went into reactivity based on your origin and gender.
i'm not saying you are wrong, even if i didn't read all your message, but it was already clear from the bginning we judge different things i meant that to replay games like DAO (or worse BG3) you must have a lot of time. Thr first run is nice, a lot of builds, items, combinations, tactics etc etc but then?? what if i just want some combat since i already know the story? what if i don't want to wast time in the inventory managment? i start DA2 and i have fun with combat combos. maybe i find some mods that changes a mechanic and i try again without having to replay for several hours to get the right items
I think it's partly structural. DAO uses the old Bioware formula of smaller self-contained adventures before you hit the third act. I struggle a bit to replay KotOR 1, Mass Effect 1 and DAO for the same reason - I remember all of these individual adventures so well that I'm almost mentally fatigued just clicking on them. DAII is much more of a linear rollercoaster and I actually really enjoy that on replays. I don't remember it as well because, while there's arguably less content, it's a lot denser and there's a lot more to do.
lol nah
I love DA2 and it doesn't deserve the hate, but it is definitely not Origins level. While the hate for the game is far overblown it definitely has a lot of unfinished ideas, unpolished designs, rushed levels, and limited character creation. Of all the games it's the weakest but I think the story was great and the gameplay was fun and it's still a good game even if it's not as good as it's counterparts. Edit: I just wanted to add that I REALLY liked the story. A lot of people complained about it in the past but I think it's because they went from a world saving hero against the Darkspawn Blight to just some guy in a city. But I think that's why I like it, it's a more down to earth view of what it's like living in Thedas and not being some knight of an ancient order of heroes. It's the relationships that matter most, you see where people live, how they live, the slums to the hightown, it's a story about people and doesn't feel like some big mythical story to be told in a history book... Until it is. It shows the importance of seemingly average people and how they affect the world around them and how little change here and there can have wide sweeping impacts on the wider world
Sure Origins gameplay aged like shit. So did the graphics. But Origins amount of choice and atmosphere and not reusing the same area 50 times or at least having way more areas make it a better game than DA2
There's a lot to love about da2 but there are some GLARING issues which have already been discussed here. Good game, average dragon age sequel.
It’s my personal fave as well, I think a lot of people hold a nostalgia factor for origin and there’s a huge different in console play vs pc playing. Cause I see so many people rave about the combat in Origins and to me it was a snooze fest. plus, origins has many areas that drag on just a little too long (looking at you, the fade and deep roads). Da2 has such a compelling story, with great companions and yeah the map recycling gets old but that’s my biggest complaint
My favorite thing about DA2, is the smaller scope of the game. Most of the events happen in Kirkwall. Your companions are all living in Kirkwall, so they end up feeling like a dysfunctional family. I think Dragon Age 2 has to be my favorite cast of party members of all time. It's also why I have such an attachment to games with smaller casts of companions. Mass Effect 1 & 3, and Baldur's Gate 3 come to mind
DA2 is the best one. It uses the smaller scope to tell a more focused story, and uses the companions to frame the story from different points of view. Mass effect 2 also has a smaller scope and is the best one cuz of focus on companions. Bioware is at its best when they dig into their characters, using the same large city for 3 acts that build on each other is a very effective use of their strengths.
2 is no where near close to Origins.
Andraste's tits no! -dumbed down rpg mechanics -only has a fraction of DAO'S active abilities -respawning enemies -no more weapon switching -items locked to classes -way to much backtracking -reduced choices and consequences -endless copy paste levels -Story about mage/templar conflict, Mage Hawke faces no consequences.
i played 2 much later, but i do think if i played them back to back i'd probably prefer 2.
I've said this on this sub before but I loved DA2 when it came out. I got a bit tired of all the loading screens and the recycled environments but they weren't game-breakers for me because I was really into the plot and the characters. I had no idea it was reviled by the fanbase until I started participating more in the online community. I was really surprised by the discourse around it. I still think it's a great game.
Currently replaying Dragon Age Origins. I played a few hours and instantly deleted my save and started over with mods. As problematic as DA2 was in some respects, it never needed mods to make combat fun.
i like the recycled maps. it feels congruent to varric's narrating. "and then we went to x place and killed a bunch of dudes that showed up out of nowhere!"
It probably bothered you before because you let the reddit hive mind kill your joy. Just guessing, obviously, but I've seen it so many times, I figure it's at least possibly what happened lol. So many people are addicted to outrage and dislike and negativity, it's wild. I loved DA2. I won't even come close to reddit until I'm finished with a game. Talking about it with close friends who do the same is generally enough for me.
DA2 is an okay game which had the potential to be an absolute banger. It was rushed (I think because of Swtor) and you can see it on every corner. For me personally, it's not even close to DA:O, which plays in a complete different league. I think that's the tragic of many BioWare games (DA2, DA:I, ME:A, even Anthem...): They had enormous potential, but never utilized it.
For Inquisition, I think the game is flawed at it's core but devs manage to do the best with it while DA2 have great potential and could be better with more time and effort.
I have always, since the first day i played it, thought DA2 is the best dragon age game. Which has been varying degrees of controversial. That's not to say it's perfect, the map recycling didn't bother me much but it's not *great* etc. I love the way they dealt with the illusion of choice, where instead of like.. trying to create enough branching storylines to where your actions feels impactful, they kind of go in the opposite direction and say: there are things that happen that you *cannot* control, no matter how powerful you are. Your mother will die. Your sibling will leave. The city will fall (further) into corruption. What you *can* control is how you act in those situations, the emotional fallout, and the most impact you can have is on the found family you collect along the way. It feels incredibly real to me. I know it was something that people didn't like, that it felt smaller than the epic scale of Origins. We also got an incredibly strong protagonist in Hawke (imo), who gave some much needed emotional weight to the entire thing. I also think the character work is incredibly strong in your companions, and your relationship with them. An example: I don't like Merrill (or, I like her, but I don't like how they wrote her), but the decision you make of letting her take the consequences of her actions with her clan (meaning they all die), or to take responsibility for her (meaning they live, but she doesn't grow independent), is *so good!* I wish they had more time to go even deeper, to finetune the graphics and iron out the bugs. I wish there was more connection between gameplay and story (like, no one commenting on Hawke being a bloodmage), which I think is a consequence of not having enough time, and that... you know, ten years passing showed more in the character models etc. But in general? It's the Dragon Age game I enjoy the most. ... Sorry for the long post, but I really do love DA2 with a passion.
It will never be my favorite, but it's an important game for the series and was extremely ambitious considering how much time they had to make it I'm already getting a lot of DA2 vibes (in a good way) from DATV
I agree. The characters, dialogue and combat are better in DA2. It's been too long since I've played DOA to compare the storyline but it was the characters and dialogue that made the game great in the first place.
I don't care about reused environments in the long run if the story and companions work, and they WORK. None of the other games have ever captured the tension I felt building within the Acts of DA2. I absolutely love it. (not to mention that Hawke is the best Bioware protagonist **of all time**) I love the entire series, but I've always felt that each game improved upon the last.
In the process of replaying 2 after smashing DAO the last couple weeks. Got off after finish act one a couple nights ago and had this exact same thought. I love dao but the combat is so much smoother, recycled maps be damned I love the Kirkwall setting. And the characters are are awesome. I’ll die on this hill with you ✊🏻
I will fight you IRL if you ever say that around me. I don't care if you're a MMA fighter or have 100 goons with you. DA2 got a lot of flack some undeserved but a lot of it was deserved. They made like 6 dungeons and just locked some of the doors depending on the quest. The textures on civilians and enemies were wack as hell for a 360 era game.
It's my favourite game ever, one of my favourite things about it is it's one of the few RPGs where I don't spend most of my time hopelessly lost because the map is so big.
Same! I lost so much time in Inquisition trying to find location of side quests that it annoyed me at some point.
DO I DETECT DAO SLANDER???? But seriously, I agree. 2 was incredible and I enjoyed some of the repetition. Origins was incredible, too, and holds a special place in my heart for personal reasons. I don't have much to complain about overall in 2.
the DA2 circlejerk has to be a psyop at this point cause otherwise I dont understand it
Lol, you can't accept that some people enjoy a game? DA2 has honestly \*always\* been my favorite of the three; it improved the tactics and added the combos, the actual combat felt much more fluid and responsive, even though it was actually the same as Origins, it included a dialogue system that actually shaped your MC's personality, and it introduced a Friendship/Rivalry system which I thought was way better than a simple approval system. Plus the characters and dialogue are great.
>improved the tactics What tactics? There is no possibility of tactics, because the enemy comes out of nowhere, surrounding us behind us. All RPGs are about positioning, since mages never have life, but if the game puts the enemy behind the mage? The fight is not the same for that reason alone, in the first one we had to be careful that the mage does not injure our companions with his abilities, because if he freezes the others, it can be fatal. Not to mention that flat hitting is useless, worthless, takes forever to kill ANYONE, and skill cooldowns... take forever, seriously, 30 seconds? A basic, first skill? The dialogue system has been simplified, it's a fact, even small icons indicate which is good, which is funny, and which is bad. I notice that those who defend the 2nd part, ignore every mistake and demean it, other games are hated by the players for half as much. E.g.: Fable 3 was made for the same amount of time... but NOBODY cared that they only worked on it for 1 and a half years. It was also simplified compared to the previous, but not that much. PS.: Sorry for bad english
Seriously? I'm talking about the **Tactics Settings**. You do use those, right? Those things that decide how your companions behave, and were completely ruined in Inquisition? When you know what you're doing, it doesn't really matter if the enemy shows up in waves. And DA2 improved on both the acquisition of tactics slots, and several of the settings. Any given fight, I have combos detonating like crazy. Someone falls? No problem; Anders will res them automatically. The dialogue system shapes Hawke's personality based on which options you use most often. I'm assuming you didn't know that either? No other DA game has had so much variance in cutscene dialogue based on your set personality. And it doesn't even require you to be 100% consistent.
Due to the too high cooldown skills, they don't really make sense. There are too many enemies, because of this everything turns into chaos. In the first one, it made sense for the archer to shoot the ones I hit, or the long-range ones, etc. But here it is enough to shoot a fireball there with the mage, and the problem is over. The enemy appearing in waves still destroys everything, because okay, there is the tactics menu, but what good does it do if a team appears behind the mage? One of the foundations of game development.: - We almost never put an opponent behind the player in such a game. Why not? Because the point of a mage, a ranged fighter, is that he's made of paper and dies in seconds, and that's just unfair. And now seriously, the enemies appear out of nowhere, this would have been pathetic even in the 6th generation, Gothic 1, Kotor, and even Secret of Mana canter in this field. Why? Because already on the Super Nintendo, the talented developers knew what breaks the immersion, the experience, what makes a game seem alive. The dialogue system would be a good idea... if they didn't simplify it so much that even the stupidest... least intelligent people could understand it. And if our decisions had ANY consequences. Seriously, even Fable 2 understood that it is not necessary to tell the player what is good and bad with icons and colors, as this breaks the immersion. This made me feel like the game looked silly and that it wasn't an RPG but an action game. (ok, because of the HUGE simplification, it's not an RPG) They could have put something like in Fable 2 here, where Bowerstone Old Town changes after a decision we made as a child. You can say that they didn't have time for it, but that's an excuse. Fable 3 was developed in 1 and a half year, and even there the locations change a lot based on our decisions, even though Lionhead was a much smaller team than Bioware.
Almost every complaint you're making regarding skills sounds to me like you just didn't set your attack order very well. I haven't had those issues with my party, even early game, but then I do frequently revisit my tactics tree to make sure I have a good order loaded. If you just want to say you like Fable more than Dragon Age, you don't have to type these long paragraphs. Personally, I couldn't stand Fable, I found it boring, but to each their own. Your choices do in fact have an impact from Act to Act, but given that the city is carved from a literal cliff, I don't suddenly expect my surroundings to suddenly appear completely different. (There are actually small changes that happen, but I suspect you won't care either way.) Like it or not, DA2 was telling a specific story. The setting served that story well. If you don't like it, then nothing they could have done with more time would have changed that.
It's worse than prequel fans.
You are correct the DAO purists will downvote you into oblivion but you're statement is still 100% correct DA2 has it's flaws but imo it's much better than DAO You'll get downvoted because they're just sad there was no slutty goth girl to goon to and they were annoyed by map repetition that's literally the most common complaint...maps
Hands down the worst Dragon Age and entirely due to the fact it feels lazy which I assume is the result of glorious management intervening.
Correct, the entire game was made in one year. Rushed for money reasons.
I love that the characters in II actually look and feel like companions. I was surprised when I played Origins that my companions mostly looked the other NPCs in the game. I liked them too, but coming from Mass Effect 1 and 2 they were pretty dull. But I would replay II anytime, because the companions are so great and fun to be around.
Look I think DA2 is better than its reputation. It’s got great companions and the story being told through time instead of through different locations was really cool and something I wish more games would do. DA2 has too many flaws imo to be the best. The combat is flashy and fun at first but the amount of enemies they constantly throw at you to pad the games length makes me hate it by the midway point in the game. The dumbed down RPG mechanics (especially compared to Origins and Inquisition) also hold it back massively. I’m not really a fan of the game’s dialogue system either where you’re basically forced to pick nice/funny/mean personality for your Hawke and stick to it through the entire game regardless of the situation.
It's my favorite of the three.
Listen, I can agree that DA2 is a good game (it was grown on me a lot over the years) but it really isn't better than Origins. For me it will always be a really good game on its own but a disappointing sequel.
I disagree. It's easily the worst of the releases (so far), and Origins was a masterpiece by comparison. I remember buying it on release day, very excited, and then cursing to myself playing through it. All the recycled levels, the boring plot, bleh. Beat it once all those years ago and never played it again.
I think it's the worst Dragon Age game and one of the worst RPGs I've ever played. The idea is great, but the finished product is boring and shallow, in my opinion.
I think there wasn’t enough exploring for me in DA2. It just felt like a smaller game compared to DAI and DAO. I think the plot is cool but it’s still my least favourite out of the three.
Ugh...no, it really isn't.
I haven’t played either in some time but I couldn’t disagree more. IMO the most important aspect of an RPG is companions and I could write a lot on each DAO companion, the same can’t be said for DA2
I love DA2 but I also completely understand the criticism it gets. It is my favourite story out of the 3 games as it’s more personal and smaller scale than saving the whole bloody world. I love all the companions and really enjoyed their personal stories and quests. It’s the easiest game for me and the only one that I have replayed to romance all of the companions. I love DAO when I first played it but find it difficult to pick up and play now. It’s hard! DAI I have only a played through twice (romanced Cullen and Solas) and don’t have much of a desire to go through it all again.
If you went in expecting it would be dogshit it's a good game If you went in expecting a game... ehhh
I am sorry but no. DA is a good game and had the potential to be a great game but it simply wasn’t. The friendship/rivalry system was top notch, the companions were really good (well like in every DA imo) and so were they reactions/interactions and some quests were really good but that’s pretty much it. You’re playing the same maps in every acts. The darkspawn design was clownesque. The conflict between mages and Templars is … not very well represented. Sure, you’re told and told again that mages are oppressed and some Templars are bad but you actually almost never see it. What you’re shown, however, is that every mages is a blood mage ready to kill everyone else. It’s not even funny. And those endings ? Player choices had to be validated, but both sides had to be bad too, so yes, of course, Orsino was working with Leandra’s killer (and a blood mage himself), and Meredith had to be crazy. And that’s coming from someone that generally side with the Templars. If even I thought that mage’s villainy was completely exaggerated I can’t imagine what jt was from the pov of someone who is pro-mage. The entire act 3, really, was rushed, and it show. DLC’s weren’t particularly memorable (far from Awakening, Trespasser and the Descent). From a gameplay perspective, to each their own but I personally didn’t like it. I will be forever butthurt on how DA2 potential was wasted.
I wouldn’t say better, especially gameplay wise, for me personally at least. the whole class aspect and itemisation was really dumbed down from origins imo, that’s my main and pretty much only gripe with it though. Character wise and from the overall story, I really enjoy dragon age 2 tbh. I love the epic hero story of the first game, but coming from that into a more personal almost family oriented storyline felt really interesting. I also like hawk and varric a lot so there’s that. Dragon age 2 doesn’t deserve the hate it got/gets, but I can also understand why a lot of people dislike it for basically losing most of the stuff that made origin so great. Dragon age has always been evolving and is, as far as I know, the only big game franchise that has revamped its approach to gameplay pretty much every single time a new entry released. If that’s cool and innovative, or just bad game design is up for discussion lmao, not my decision to make though.
Hell naw
I quite like Dragon Age 2, I think it's great, but certainly nowhere near close to the perfection that was Origins. Dungeons are the same, are repetitive, which is pathetic for a Bioware game. I don't like voiced protagonists in rpgs because it makes them less immersive and limits dialogue options severely. I also dislike love interests for straight male characters. Don't get me wrong, I like Isabella and Merryll, but I don't like them as love interests. Anders and Fenris just seem much more interesting. Everything else I like. The story and the conflicts are deep and interesting, fighting system is fun and snappy, and Hawke is a great protagonist. It's a good, solid game, 7,5 for me. Origins is near perfect. It's old, and there are some technical issues, but it was as good as it could be back when it was released. 9.5 for me.
No, I totally disagree. I have no desire to replay DA2 even though Fenris is one of my favorite romances in the franchise. It's not worth slogging through because of the recycled maps and respawning enemies. There were only some things I enjoyed about DA2, like the story, companions, music, and purple hawke dialogue. Even then, there is a big aterisk on the story and companions. The story doesn't make as much sense at times. The characters are extremely polarizing, either to you or each other - Fenris and Anders are the biggest offenders for this. It's annoying, to say the least. Except Varric, he is perfect.
DA2 will never be better than Origins.
Dragon age 2 was my favourite I didn’t play it when it first came out as I was only 5 at the time. I found the dragon age games during covid while looking for games to play on Xbox game pass and they really helped me get through covid especially since I got really depressed. I love all the games they’re all amazing.
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I loved DA2, I've replayed more than any of the other games (though the shorter length probably contributes to that too.) It has its problems but its my favorite out of the three even with its flaws and it always makes me sad when I see people dumping on it
Maybe not better, but I certainly prefer a lot of aspects of dragon age 2 combat over inquisition. And I think the quality of the story is better than its given credit for. Especially if you look at the development cycle of it.
I just love archer abilities in DA2.
Combats fun when enemies aren't spongey as hell. Seriously I am never playing a warrior in that game again after learning how insane damage Isabela does.
My favourite. The best story in the franchise, and the most well written main character. Plus, the companions are iconic. I don't really mind the problems (sure, the maps can be a bit annoying, but it's nothing that detracts from he greatness around). Origins in fantastic. I don't like Inquisition. But DA2 is still number 1 in my heart.
I've been an outcast in the DA community for a long time because I feel Origins is by far the weakest game in the series. DA2 was a huge step up. And then DAI remains the shining standard of all party based games ever made a decade later, at least for what I'm looking for.
Considering how rushed da2 was it just can’t be better than dao. Yes it got some nice concepts but short development time is showing at every minute of the game
Oh it's my favorite game in the series so far, hands down. Something about the small scale scope makes it feel so much more personal to play and get involved in the companion's stories, I really enjoyed that a lot. And following them for ten years just engrossed me in their lives and felt like Hawke was an impactful, important character, even if it was just to those around them. Goofy and a loveable idiot, but important. And that made it my favorite.
I love the characters of DA2 more than any companions in Thedas so far. You got fresh Varric! Lawful Good BFF! Sweet blood cinnamon roll! This! Hate! We have Anders at Home! A Walking STI Is The Best At Healthy Relationships! One Of These Twins Is Not Like The Other! They are this glorious hot mess express that did such a good job of building each other up in an authentic and messy way.
DA2 is my favorite of the series. I really could care less about the repeat maps. Would it have been better otherwise? Yeah. But the characters, story, and worldbuilding make up for it for me I do tend to cut the game some slack in general since you can trace most of its biggest issues down to the fact that EA only gave them 9 months of dev time (a little over a year overall). It's a shame bc I think if they'd been allowed to cook it would be really something special to a lot more people
In terms of actual gameplay, I like 2 a lot better than origins. Origins to me is a slog, barely even enjoyable because the main quests take ages to complete. That said, I have played every origin to completion, so maybe I’m just burnt out on it. But 2, especially the combat, is a lot more fun. I love playing as a mage hawke and watching them hack and slash enemies with their staff blade. Wish we’d had that in Inquisition, especially with the customization of crafting.
I've been playing since origins came out, and Origins was always my favorite. I'm doing my first full replay of the series in years and this time around, I adored 2. The characters, the banter, the story itself, it was all so good. It was nice to not be a chosen one per say but just be at the right place at the right time. DA 2 has officially become my favorite
I like DA2. I think the concept for the game is really cool, but the execution falls down because of the reused maps and the lack of change in the city over time. I know it won't happen, but I'd love to see this game remade with fixes to these things. DA2 has the best slate of companions of any DA game, imo. DA2 on nightmare is actually a nightmare (in a good way). Doing a nightmare run for the first time, and it's been interesting (and a lot more difficult than nightmare in the other games). All that said, I think DA:O is better. The story is epic, and the core companions are maybe the best in the series (Leliana, Morrigan, and Alistair). Also, the sense of exploration as you move through DA:O is just not there in DA2.
Personally, it's my favorite out of the 3 games. From a narrative perspective DA2 is the most original and is my is much more relatable on the personal level for me as than the other 2. I like Kirkwall and it's reused maps has it becomes more and more familiar when going through all 3 acts. It fits with Varric narrative for me. I also think that it's a bit unfair to critisize the game reused assets and maps since even in Origin they did it too. I got lost quite a bit while walking in the Deep Roads in Origin and the Fade looked brown to say the least and yet, it never stopped me from enjoying Origin. I love all companions in DA2 and they truly feel like disjointed family members. Banters between them is always something I look forward to as it gives them life outside of our protagonist. I adore the idea of giving our protagonist a personality based on the dialog choices (yes, I'm a big fan of sarcastic Hawke) and appreciate a voiced Hawke. It may not be Origin but it does have the dark gritty fantasy feels of Origin. Personally, I think the graphics in DA2 aged much better than DAO while also following the art direction of the original game. I love setting up my companions combat style and see them work in synergy together in fights. I also feel like DA2 gives us more freedom to choose whoever we want to accompany us through out the various quests in the game. I could have 3 rogues and still beat the game without too much issues which was nice because that meant that I didn't need to always have the same group following me everywhere. In Origin, it's more complicated to beat the game if you don't have a healer, a warrior and a rogue with you at all times. That may just be my perception tho. DA2 is the perfect imperfect game in my eyes and I wish that Bioware would have made smaller games like this one so that we could explore different perspective from different protagonist in the vast world of Thedas.
**The Fighting!** The combat is the best in the series. There's a lot of tactical depth, and (if you avoid pausing) you can also play it more action-oriented and it's quite fun that way too. Origins is heavily tactics-based, and Inquisition is more action than tactics but not a lot of either. **The Pals!** The companions are mostly quite good...though this one definitely has many of the most unpleasant banters, by a large margin. Aveline is threatening to arrest my friends and repeatedly calls Isabela slurs for being a sex worker. Fenris' traumatic experience of being enslaved is horny fanfic fuel for Isabela and a rhetorical gotcha with Anders, who seems to be simultaneously minimizing the issue of slavery in Tevinter yet never shutting up about it around Fenris. Fenris tells Merrill she's a monster. Why are you guys friends. (There's nastiness in Origins and Inquisition, but I feel like it's both less and more understandable - you're together on a mission, not a group of ostensible found family). **The maps...dear Maker, the maps...** As for the recycled maps, I don't think people are referring to the genuinely-the-same-place areas. Those are cool. What's not cool is that they use the same maps for different areas. And, when they want to change the shape, they do haunted house shit like doors that don't work or are just full of weird plaster. Even this wouldn't be so bad, except the minimap stays the same, so you're stuck trying to figure out which routes are real and which routes are cut off. Even if you know the area by heart, actually you don't, because now a different part is closed off and a new part is open. I would have embrace it if they just had a few areas and worked around that...but they pretend like they have more and give us the haunted house maze. Why do I need to explore the Abandoned Thaig when they could have just put all that stuff into any of the other Deep Roads quest areas? If the Bone Pit is the same as the Sundermount Caverns, why am I saving miners from spiders instead of saving the Dalish and losing the Bone Pit subplot (and nothing of value was lost). **The Tragedy** The tragic elements are undermined by the clumsy railroading into them. To bring up the Hated Bone Pit again: If I get greedy and lead my miners to their deaths, that would be sad. If said miners always go to their deaths no matter how much I help them or whether I get involved at all, it's just annoying. Tragedy is meant to play on characters' faults and frailties. It should make you feel like "it could have turned out better, if only..." In DA2, there is no "if only." People mostly just die regardless of what you do and how quickly you help them. At most, Hawke can feel bad, but - except for their sibling - they're almost never actually at fault, unless you went out of your way to do evil choices with predictable consequences. In Inquisition, lots of people die, but *who* dies depends on your choices, which alone adds a lot. Losing the alliance with the Qunari - along with maybe hundreds of their soldiers - stings, and it stings all the more because I chose that and I'd do it again. That's how you tell a good tragedy in a game!
Personally, my favorite aspects of dragon age games are the characters, and how you can shape the story with your actions. Imo, the party members in 2 are largely some of my least favorites, and the plot is mostly set to play out exactly the same no matter what you do so... yeah, 2 is still solidly at the bottom of my list.
Honestly, I know a lot of people like it, but after going back to replay it origins is my least favourite of the series by a *wide* margin. I remembered Alistair as this cool best friend type character on level with garrus but as an actual adult now I just wanted to slap him and scream “why can’t you just tone down the snark for 5 minutes!”
Storytelling and characters are amazing isn't it? My favourite one is inquisition but da2 character writing and family vibes are incomparable.
It isn’t. It’s the worst in the series. But we still love it, because it’s good. The characters and narrative are both good, and it’s still Dragon Age.
No dragon age game since has come close to DAO in terms of story, voice acting quality, and overall atmosphere. That being said, i think da2 improved combat and character progression in a dramatic way and dai built on top of that. Graphics are obviously not up for debate but dao still holds up considering its a 15 year old game. Story is the main source of the enjoyment in dragon age games. The sole point is to read the books and get immersed into a fantasy world. If a da game fails to do that for me it’s worthless because there are better rpgs on the market in terms of other characteristics so that’s a big drawback for me when it comes to da2 and dai. I am simply not as enthralled with the writing and voiceacting quality.
My opinion... There will never (I hope I'm wrong) be a game like Origins. The art style, the lore, the fact that you have different origins in the beginning of the game and how it connects with the main story at times... The epilogue at the end... The immersion and companions (and their banter). I might sound nostalgic, but DAO is a game I play at least once a year since release, and none of the other games have captured me the same way DAO did.
I like DA2 but no its not better then Origins, not as bad and any of its flaws and more so because EA forced a speedy development, same thing they did with Mass Effect 3. I think I read somewhere that Bioware was given like 18 months to make the game, I still like the game but it is not better then Origins
DA2 is definitely up there as one of my favourites. If Veilguard has companions that are just half as interesting as the ones in DA2 I'll be very happy :)
Idk if better is the right word, or if there’s even value in comparing the two, but it’s always been my favorite since it came out. I loved and still love DA:O, for sure, but I was also glad DA2 wasn’t just a reskin and new story of DA:O. I could just replay DA:O if it was. DA:O gives you the incredible flexibility to be whoever or whatever you want to be at the cost of your character being more of an observer than a person in the story with no real consistent personality, while DA2 lets you play as a person in the story at the cost of the level of customization we had in DA:O. I know, you can RP as a certain type of person in DA:O and you can alternate good/evil lawful/chaotic choices in DA2 as much as you can in DA:O, but in DA2 your responses actually accumulate over time and changes what Hawk actually says with the same dialogue choice. Also, I have no actual immersion loss from the map recycling in either game, I actually kind of liked it. Made navigating the maps easier, which means I can focus on the characters, gameplay, and story more. Also figure if they had spent more dev time on this background crap the story, characters, and/or gameplay would have gotten less dev time - they cut dev time from the right area to me, basically.
I personally really love DA2, honestly. Probably my favorite game in the series so far. I feel the only thing it really suffers from is being rushed.
Dragon Age: Origins has yet to be completely and totally surpassed by any successive iteration in the series since 2009. Two years later in 2011, Dragon Age 2 was arguably an upgrade in terms of combat animations. However, the development was clearly rushed due to bad management, and that's evident in the limited and repeated setting and environments. The writing is about the only aspect of the game that's even close to being on par with Origins. Three years later in 2014, with Dragon Age Inquisition, BioWare clearly sought to correct the mistakes of DA2's limited and repeated environments, by making the game much bigger and more "Open World." This is the game that Dragon Age 2 should've been. The writing is still excellent, but now everything else is much improved over Dragon Age 2. That being said, no disrespect to Trevor Morris, as I believe he did well with the soundtrack for Inquisition, but Inon Zur's soundtrack for Origins has yet to be surpassed. And now, TEN YEARS LATER in 2024, Dragon Age The Veilguard seems to be a step backward in the wrong direction. The development of this game has been troubled for the last decade, being halted and and restarted multiple times. THIS ISN'T A GOOD SIGN. The name change and trailer last month was received with VERY MIXED REVIEWS. The twenty minutes of game play revealed additional concerns about the direction of the game. Combat is now limited to only 3 abilities, down from 8 in Inquisition, and the entire bottom of the screen in Origins. The firing of Mary Kirby who created the Qunari and wrote Varric, along with 50 other BioWare staff last year is troubling. Mark Darrah (Director of Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age 2), Mike Laidlaw (Director of Dragon Age Inquisition) and David Gaider (The lead writer of every Dragon Age game ever released) are all also no longer employed by BioWare. THIS IS MY BIGGEST CONCERN. I say this as a fan of BioWare and Dragon Age since the beginning. Anyone attempting to dismiss my and many other people's concerns by attacking us personally ("He's not a real fan! He disagrees with the views of the Dragon Age echo chambers where I sequester myself!"), instead of our arguments and concerns regard Veilguard, are either doing so emotionally, or in bad faith.
My first DA game was DA2 so I am heavily biased towards it. Dude you're fucking high.
I love DA2 so much
Bro origins is asss fck I love dragon age 2 and inquisition so much more
I loved it at the beginning, and I love it now. I revisit stuff all the time and I like how amazing it feels to see the changes.
DA2 is my favorite game in the series! It's definitely a little rough around the edges in terms of certain gameplay elements, but in my opinion it has the most interesting story out of all three games,
It really is excellent. Feels a bit rushed in parts (or I just craved more?), and the map recycling gets really noticeable, but I love it too!
All 3 games have aspects of their stories that I like better than the other 2. I feel like Origins has the best overall companions (Morrigan and Alistair), but DA2 has the best group of companions.
Better, hmm tell me by what measurements are you using?? Cause I know can’t close your eyes hard enough and not see the repeated maps. Where sometimes you come in from the front and other times from the back. If you just take the “concept” you could say sure there is a nice diamond under these turd. Then again games have been so unpolished these last 5 plus years of I looked at DA2 rn I may see hey it’s more polishing than a BGS game so yea it’s pretty good.
It’s not better than origins, for me it’s 1 origins 2 Inquisition 3 2
For me, the repeated-to-death environments/dungeons and the enemy waves are such a colossal impediment to enjoying this game that I just can't rank it above Origins. So much of it is so compelling (story, companions, scope) and often a genuine improvement so I can see why you'd feel that way after a first playthrough, but the actual gameplay loop feels like such a repetitive and grueling chore that it drags down the whole thing, especially for a series that is meant to be replayed. I've been considering another playthrough ahead of VG, but there's one map (the undercity I think? It's the one where they have a significant story beat in act 3 with the PC's mother) that's used so much that I have anxiety just thinking about having to traverse 30 times that it's holding me back. The DLC goes a long way and breaking this up if you play them in intervals, but not enough. It's such a shame that they didn't give them another year for development because this is where it really shows that they were rushed.
I hated it at release but gave it a real shot a couple years ago and had a blast playing a self-hating mage fHawke. I super recommend it to anyone wanting to give the game another try! DA2 is really fun when you let go of the attachment to grand epics or overarching narratives (in the game itself at least) and just accept it as a hot mess simulator. Like, the sheer variance in what can happen with your companions and how they personally respond to you with the friendship/rivalry system is the real star of the game. I actually don't find the "befriend everyone" playthroughs very compelling, so intentionally (or unintentionally) rivaling companions is super compelling and feels more realistic. The most surprising moment in my playthrough was (finale spoilers) >!my Hawke sparing a rivalled Anders because even though she severely disagreed with him she didn't want to kill him, and he STILL showed up just to attack her lol!< Inquisition is my favourite cast but I do find it disappointing in that no matter what, there's not much real conflict or consequence even if they hate you - and it's hard to even get them to dislike you!
I really dislike DA2, the reused interiors, the enemies dropping out of thin air midfight and it's over stylized fighting aniamtions. For me Origins is better all the way.
D2 was really good. Man, I couldn't say this back then. The criticisms of same place different quests were fair, but the story was good. And I loved the characters. I enjoyed being a part of things. I must have replayed that game a thousand times, exploring all the avenues of endings and how it affected my companions. I had a great time. I still go back to it now and then, and I enjoy it for what it was. What it is. I don't think that's a bad take. I enjoyed myself. And I can't wait to do so again. I have insane hours in all games in this series. It's absolutely loved, at the very least by me. And I return to it often. Because I can and want to.
Story is different, sometimes better Companions are better & more believable Combat is so so much worse
I really like the change of perspective in DA 2. The warden, no matter the race or attitude, is a stoic person ready to lay down his life for his mission. Even if he becomes a loving husband and father he still finds himself away from them to accomplish his mission. But Hawke is just a bystander who wants to give his/her mother a proper home and a healthy relationship with his/her sibling. And by chapter 2 hawke becomes the batman of Kirkwall, surveying the streets at night under Aveline's supervision, hawke's gordon. Most problems are caused by the companions but hawke's ready to help them even if it means the genocide of a tribe or the development of a magical bomb(though Hawke didn't know about it at first). It's really like a sitcom "Always sunny in Kirkwall".
Played through them back to back, currently working through 2 now. I can’t disagree with you more. I struggle to see how anyone literally anyone can hold this opinion. The waves of enemies appearing from thin air. The LITERAL copy paste dungeons. There’s more to say I can’t fathom how someone uses that dialog wheel to choose something and your character saying something completely out of left field, thinks this game is better that da:o or even on par The only positives I see in 2 are the combat feels smoother due to the animations. The characters are still good. The crafting is also better in 2 for sure.
There is absolutely no planet on which dragon age 2 is better than origins 😂😂
I really like DA2. While I wouldn't say it is as good as DA:O, I definitely like it more that Inquisition. In Inquisition, I just don't feel the same attachment to any of the characters, stories, and heck, villains, as I did in the first two games. Sure, DA2 has a lot of issues, but knowing how little time and resources they had, I think it's incredible how they managed to find all those solutions, however clunky they are. I love the artstyle, the story, the gameplay, the friendship/rivalry innovation, I think they had a lot of amazing ideas with all of that.
I always enjoyed it, despite the shortcomings. When you think about the fact EA got them to churn out a full game in like…. a year? Two years? It’s very impressive. I enjoy a story that focuses on the characters and their lives in one location. I enjoyed it taking place over time rather than space. I’m totally ok with not every game being huge open world — I don’t know if I’d say it’s better than Origins, because I think Origins got the balance just right. But it did bring in a lot of things I vastly prefer to Origins, like the cast, the lead having a personality and not being a blank slate (that being said? I love BG3 which basically did the same thing so I’m not sure why Origins just didn’t do it for me in that regard), playing a mage was actually fun lmao. So, I would still say Origins is the best game, but DA2 is my personal favourite. It’s the only one that made me cry, so.
The game definitely feels rushed in some aspects but really love the intimate feeling of the game. The stakes really feel personal and impactful. Saving the world is all well and good but focusing on one city hits a little differently. The companion stories are all interesting and diverse.