I finished Dragon Age II yesterday and I felt it needed a review. I think this is the best fantasy RPG since Baldur's Gate II. In my opinion the original Dragon Age and it's expansions were just an average 7/10 but DA II definitely gets a 9/10. They pretty much took every element of DA and made it better. The combat is better, the story is better, the characters were better. I finished the whole game in about 45 hours and that included most of the quest. The game could have easily taken over 60 but the quest system was so smooth that it always got right to the meat of things. There was never any aimless wandering. On the negative side they re-used a lot of maps so there was some redundancy in the combat but it really wasn't too bad. I wont recommend this game to anyone that didn't like DA because it's just to similar. I also wont recommend this game to anyone that doesn't have the patience for long story's and long games. But if you really like RPGs this game has a lot to offer.
I've owned DA I for quite some time, but I've only played it a few minutes. I guess it didn't grab me the way some other RPGs have. I guess I'll have to get to it eventually.
That's odd, because the reviews for DA2 were pretty negative and indicated that it was nowhere near as good as the first. It's probably not for me anyway. I didn't like the first one at all when I tried it. Turn based combat is so 1990s. I think the reason I've enjoyed RPGs like Deus Ex, System Shock 2, the Mass Effect series, and Fallout 3 is because they have interesting combat in addition to the story and RPG elements.
The reviews were more mixed than the first. Perhaps it was the pace of the story. The story was very long, like a multi chapter novel, and each chapter was sort of un-epic. PC Gamer still gave it a 94 and I usually agree with their reviews. Dragon Age combat is just like Fallout 3. It only pauses when paused. I'll go as far to say that it was much better than Mass Effect. It had to be the best NPC AI I've ever seen. I never saw any bone head moves and NPCs usually made the same combat decision I would make. Here was PC Gamer's Verdict.
Ha, The Witcher 2 is probably an 80 hour game. It will be a few months before that happens. Besides, even thought Dragon Age has blood galore it's still a game targeted for "everyone". The Witcher is directed at an adult audience so the two games have a very different RPG feel to them.
Oh, yes, how could I be so blind! A problem arrises from that though, which buttons function similarly on the PS3 for games like Uncharted, where all you do is punch?
Well like I said they made the game better in every way. They also removed the Grey Warden element of the story which I never liked. The combat is fast and furious yet full of strategy. The story doesn't have a grand final. It's just the beginning of a larger story. A few of the friends from DA will come back and you will have a chance befriend them. The game also lets you have a romance with anybody. I accidently jumped into a gay romance with another mage before I realized what was going on. Not that there is anything wrong with that.