Dragon Age 2: Gameplay and Discussion

[Monk]

45 hours

38 hours

Jeeze what kept you guys?

To sum, there's lots of good, and lots of bad. Which is more bad than Origins, imo. Despite being hosed on how much you can converse with your party members, they still manage to shine. Despite poorly balanced fights occasionally rearing their ugly head, combat's generally a lot of fun. The story is good, and though the format isn't to my liking, it generally keeps itself in the background. If it wasn't for level design, I'd honestly say it was a pretty darn good game. But that element just knocks it down a fair number of pegs for me. Overall, I'd say about 7.5 or 8 out of 10. Bearing in mind, I consider Origins a 9.5. :/

That's pretty much how I feel with a few subtle changes here and there. Replace level design with incredibly annoying party interaction and yup, that's me. Party banter goes a long way to saving the experience but it can't quite make up for it in my opinion. Still thoroughly enjoy the game but I can't help but feel Bioware made some real stumbles here and there. Expected much better from this showing. Ah well. Even if it's not great, it's still good in my books.

I'm playing the game through a second time now as a pure Entropy mage, which is crowd control and debuffs (where before I was full elemental, AOE and control). The game is... surprisingly a lot easier. Taking Creation as a secondary tree so i am full on support for my team as well as some nasty status afflictions. It still doesn't help with some fights though. Mainly due to poor balance choices in the encounters. I'm of the opinion that the combat is a great improvement over the first, but just like the first, Bioware didn't bother to tune certain aspects of it to avoid random spikes in difficulty. A shame really, because it seems like combat was the main focus this time around.

The final boss(at least for me, I imagine different choices will alter the order or possibly who you even fight at all, idk, ) was quite fun and enjoyable. Much more well designed than most of the boss fights.

Final Boss fight spoilers:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I supported the Magi and had to fight Orsino first, who turned to Blood Magic to save himself at the end. It was your standard tank+spank until phase 2 where he'd pick a party member and go after them, and then it was a game of keep away. Phase 3, his head jumps off his body and summons tons of additional mobs to fight while running wild on your party. COntroling phase 3 is very very hard. If you kill his head he rejoins together for another go and its just a game of keep away again. Fun, but LONG. Had to take 20 min to kill him.

Then I had to fight Meridith who was possessed by the artifact. A really easy fight mainly because I had built my team for mass AoE. When she summons additional just spam your aoe and kite around until Cone of Cold's up. Then blast 'em. She was the final boss for me, but I preferred the Orsino fight to be honest. It had a much bigger "Ah crap" feel to it.

The reason I suggested people have a back-up mage is.. well, I had to kill Anders for what he did. That was seriously a non-bro thing to do. Not cool at all, Anders.