Andyman Messiah
Mr. Ed-ucated
THE DRAGON AGE II REVIEW!
WRITTEN BY ME, ANDYMAN MESSIAH!
BUT FIRST HERE IS A SHORT STORY WITH A HAPPY ENDING!
Please wait, connecting you to the Dragon Age server.
Please wait.
Server connection found. Welcome to your game.
"Fuck this shit. Next time I'll play offline!"
*Next time*
SERVER NOT FOUND. YOU MUST BE CONNECTED TO THE INTERWEBZ TO ACCESS PARTS OF THIS GAME!! CLICK OK IF YOU UNDERSTAND THIS!!
"Ok."
Control panel -> uninstall shit -> Dragon Age II -> are you sure you want to -> OK uninstalled!
The end.
This short story should not be a work of fiction. It is what really should have happened but it didn't because I'm as strong as a brickhouse built in Siberia by hot lesbian pop group Tatu so I can endure stupid shit. I wipe my ass with stupid shit. Welcome to my review of the most awful game of all time. My ass is bleeding but I wear pants. You're fucking welcome.
But first! Let's--
SET THE TONE!
Reviewing some games is like taking retards to the zoo; you wouldn't do it if you didn't get paid for it or if the zoo didn't have a new wicked awesome giraffe or something in stock. I mean, like, come on, retards, let's go deepthroat the new giraffe! Don't forget your apples! Pray to your retard god it doesn't suddenly get hiccups. That would be nasty. Well, unfortunately there are no giraffes in Dragon Age II so I had to stick with my paycheck. I am a whore. Andyman Messiah – whoring is my life. Serves everyone and everything. Except bees. Fuck bees. Not literally fuck bees, I mean. Fuck bees as in to hell with bees. Fans of my other reviews will remember that I once got into a fight with a bee. I thought it was going to be a clean fight but he brought his friends and they all gang-raped me. I walked home that night covered in bruises, honey and a million dead bees. I guess that what's victory looks like but I was eventually rushed to the hospital and when I left the doctors told me that I could never again have relations with a bee again or I would probably die. And that is why I am not bee sexual. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! No but seriously--
WHAT THE HELL IS THIS SHIT?
Dragon Age II is the much anticipated quickly-rushed-out-the-door sequel to Dragon Age: Origins, and rather than continuing on the path of a well-designed, although technically disastrous and pretentious as fuck roleplaying game, it comes with a brand new bag of tricks borrowed from games that were a lot better. It remains to be seen how many of these tricks translate as improvements. How long, you ask? Well, keep reading, fuckdumb. We're going to go through this game systematically, starting with--
THE STORY!
For once it's not quite the usual bullshit. Dragon Age II begins with Varric, the new dwarf prankster guy for the evening getting interrogated by a mean lady. She is a seeker of the Chantry and need to know about the whereabouts of Varric's friend, the Champion of Kirkwall who apparently were involved in some very bad business. Varric offers, after Cassandra puts a dagger through her own book, to tell the story. But alas BioWare tries to set him up as an unreliable narrator! We're treated to a battle tutorial where really nothing is exaggerated except for the breast sizes and the frailty of the darkspawn. Then a dragon appears and breathes fire on the darkspawn. Here, Cassandra stops him for no reason and Varric has to start over even though as will soon be apparent not a lot is going to change.
So the real story begins with the destruction of Lothering, which some of you might remember as the boring, completely uninteresting tutorial town in Dragon Age: Origins where you learned how to craft potions, traps and poisons. As the oldest child of the troubled Hawke family (hereafter referred to as Peecee Hawke, as in "Pissy") it is your responsibility to take your mother and siblings as far away from the orcs as is possible. Eventually the darkspawn catches up to them, an ogre smashes your sibling of choice and the shit quickly hits the fan. How will they deal with ten grunt darkspawn when they've only killed through a whole bunch already? Things look dark indeed, but our heroes are quickly saved from being overwhelmed by Flemeth (sure is recycling DA:O around here) and her cool dragon transforming trick (and also her fantastic cleavage). Flemeth flies them to safety as a premature reward for Peecee Hawke undertaking a fetch quest and the troubled family get to experience the immigrant experience in Kirkwall, one of the three major cities in the Free Marches. Through three acts that span ten whole years (ha!) you're going to rise from a lowly peasant to nobility and become a major player in city-threatening conflicts. The story is refreshingly low-key, there's no big bad demon coming to take over the world, rather it's a tragedy about a family caught in the middle of a power struggle.
Fun! Well, maybe. Let's count--
THE PROBLEM WITH THE STORY!
Oh yes, there's a problem. It might not be your problem but it was certainly my problem and since you're reading my review that makes them my opinion that I simply MUST force on you. Preferably down your throat until it comes out of your ass and sodomize yourself from within in a glorious moment of passion. Because this review is love. Alright, story problem, let's go!
In short, ten years? Uh huh? Yeah, too damn long to use as padding. I mean, obviously you're not going to follow Peecee Hawke's adventures for ten whole years. 90% of the shit is shit that is happening off-screen and that you have no control over. Say you side with the smugglers to get into the city. You're treated to a little cutscene where Varric says how worked for them for a year and how you made a name for yourself in the underworld. And then when you're in control again you can run around town and meet people you *apparently* worked with. Never once is it brought up again by the game that you're a big name in Kirkwall's underground. Considering the game is supposed to be a ten year chronicle of Peecee Hawke's rise to power, it's problematic to have several year-long gaps when we don't get to see what is happening and then it has no effect on anything. But okay, sure, the first year he's busy smuggling shit. But then? After the first year you get to play for a long, long while where you do quests until you eventually can go into the deep roads to advance the story. After the deep roads there's a 3 year long gap where Peecee apparently doesn't do anything except spend the adventuring money to buy a house. Then you play some more and then there's another 3 year old gap where Peecee seriously just sits around doing nothing until the cutscene is over and you're free to start questing again. These periods of time are like a horrible vacuum in time and space. There's no development in anything, story or character. It's too damn long. It makes no sense. They should have trimmed that down to five years, tops. And to be perfectly honest, they should have trimmed down the period of time spent playing the game too, because--
I FUCKING HATE PLAYING THIS SHIT!
It's true. If you manage to get through the entire game without at some point going "fuck this shit" and rushing everything, skipping dialogue and whatever or using cheats I dare you then you are a fucking mutant psychopath on MDMAs. There is something so fundamentally wrong with you that it cannot just be attributed to mere drug problem, mutation, mental illness or profanity. This is an unplayable game. Dragon Age II is at its best when it isn't played at all. The cutscenes can sometimes be exciting and sort of fun to watch, but actually getting to these fun, exciting cutscenes is another beast altogether and I'm going to tell you why.
1: Combat. There is a lot of things wrong with the combat. First of all, it's horribly drawn out, it really lasts forever. Not because it's difficult but because the game throws a lot of shit at you and enemies get reinforcements that spawn from out of nowhere. If you're planning to go through everything that the game has to offer, you're going to have to fight off a million fucking spiders, darkspawn, bandits, dogs and qunaris AND IT TAKES FOREVER! Especially considering there are spawn points for almost every room/area. It's not even fun combat. It takes way too fucking long for no real reward. It sucks. End of the line, lockdown, get the fuck out of here before I beat you to death with my Sailor Mars doll.
2: Boss battles. Yes, we covered regular combat. Now let's talk about the fucking boss battles. Imagine what I just wrote, but times 100. Bosses have ridiculous amounts of health, go into hibernation mode and force you to fight regular enemies, and takes forever to kill. There is a mission in Mass Effect 2 where Adam Baldwin (who made up a third of the only good voice talent, btw) explains that standard procedure when dealing with huge geth bosses is to chip it down slowly, kill it with bug bites. That's exactly what you do over and over again in DAII. You take down some health, you avoid the attacks (easily, I might add), you run around killing regular enemies while the boss excuses itself from the battle for a while and then it comes back for a little while and you can start taking down some health before it excuses itself again. And this takes forever and it's not fun.
3: Dungeon design leaves a lot to be desired. Like everything! There is only one warehouse level, only one cave level, only one temple level, only one deep roads level and only one forest area. And the way Bioware "tries" to make every single quest that takes place in the same level feel and look "unique" is to close paths, but sometimes they don't even bother doing that and the minimap always shows all of it anyway, including the routes that are mysteriously blocked off. I shouldn't have to explain why this is so fucked up. It's lazy on an entirely new level. There should be a new word for this kind of laziness and it should be the sound of a fat guy shitting his pants because he didn't want to spend the effort taking them off. BROMPH! Who knew there would one day come a game that would make me put the following down black on white: come back, Oblivion, everything is forgiven. Yeah, that's right. Say whatever the fuck you want, at least Bethesda were decent enough to make more than one fucking cave variation. They didn't just seal off parts of the same area over and over again in absurdum. Fuck this shit.
4: Quest design also leaves something to be desired, as is normal when BioWare is involved. It's less than everything however and there are some interesting quests in here. They tie into the interesting cutscenes. The work involved in getting to them however... well, we've already covered that with the shitty combat and dungeon design. Kirkwall is a busy place to say the least with a whole bunch of conflicts running around just waiting to be resolved. Most of them are about the templars vs magicians. Should people with magic power be free just like the next axe-swinging psychoelephant or should they be locked up and/or forced to wear a sun on their forehead? Peecee Hawke can choose to walk the neutral path or side with one of the factions. As is standard BioWare design it doesn't matter one assbleeding bit since it is all going to come crashing down in the end regardless. If you don't do X then X will happen anyway and if you have a choice between killing Y or Z then once you've killed Z, Y will most likely also die shortly thereafter or it won't have an effect at all because the dreaded V intervened. As is usual BioWare I always get the feeling that some things are destinied to happen regardless of my input. Some people will undoubtably think the templar/mage conflict is interesting. Good for them. I'm still waiting for some motivation.
The qunari quest line surprised me a little bit. These uncool douchebags start to act up and you're sent to calm them down. This is the one quest in the entire game that rewards you for not just going to point a to b immediately. It's entirely optional but keeping the qunari informed before you act on things and choosing your words when talking to them will eventually earn their respect and pay off in the end. It's a small thing of coolness unfortunately surrounded by too much mediocrity like oh hi, the templars/mages need your help, kill the mages/templars in this place please.
Some quests tests the boundaries of how much stupid I can handle. As an example, a herbalist has you running around gathering miscellaneous items. One of the things is sacred dalish ink or whatever. Quest description says it might be difficult to get since it's fucking sacred and sure enough, you run over to the dalish and ask for it and they start screaming at you. How to get the ink, hmmm, there's nobody else I can talk to, hmm, oh hey look an unlocked chest right by the entrance. What's inside oh look it's the sacred ink! Lazy, uninspired, just put the fucking thing down in a container somewhere. A lot of the quests in Dragon Age II, both major and minor, work like this unfortunately.
5: The companions. Yeah, I'm going to diss the companions. Shocker, I know. I'm not going to do a roll call or compare them to previous Bio characters but I will say that I never thought for one second that I would miss Oghren or any of the old companions. Yes, the new guys are THAT shitty, and the old characters that do return from Origins and Awakening are little more than a shell of their former selves or they've been so overexaggerated that it's like they're playing themselves in a parody. The merchant and enchanter duo, Bodahn and Sandal makes a return and Sandal has evidently gone, as they say, "full retard". It's awful and hurtful to see how BioWare uses this for cheap laughs. "Look at the funny retard. He wants some pie. Look at him. Laugh as he says the word "enchantment" over and over again with the characteristically stupid "hurr durr" voice!" When do you laugh at Sandal instead of with him? I think we both know the answer, considering he is a fictional character created only for the purpose of cheap comic relief. Download the black emporium and he gets to interact with "funny dog!"
Regarding the companion homes, I do like the idea of them all having their own "base" where they hang when they're not doing stuff with you, but all it really boils down to is a loading screen. The bases only provide a backdrop for the conversations you have with your companions, which is neither exciting nor interesting. Furthermore, they're just standing. They don't actually do anything in their houses. Maybe they'll release a DLC or something, "Ass scratching animations" for 5 dollars. I'll bet you anything they're already working on useless DLC like alternative appearance packs. Write to Bio and tell them to cancel that. Have them animate Isabela's withered hand going under the flimsy ass cover. It'll sell, trust me. And speaking of withered hand, let's talk--
SHITTY GRAPHICS!
Yes, I know, graphics whore, etc. Unfortunately I don't care. There are parts in Dragon Age II that, simply put, look fucking awful and I'm not sure if EA is going to commission another graphics restoration patch seeing as the first one clocked in at, what, 1 gigabyte and still didn't manage fix less than shit even though it offered VERY HIGH graphics? I can't say I felt very high looking at the barely improved graphics. A lot of it is still broken. We don't need attempts to give us more level of detail, we need an attempt to fix the things that looking fucking awful. I'll give you an example, I had the misfortune of importing a savegame where Zevran and Alistair survived and in act 3, you meet them. In short, their armor is a low texture mess. Alistair's is particularly funny because one part of the chest piece is crisp and detailed and hi-res and then there's the rest, a muddy absolutely shitty-looking thing. And for the ones with the Exiled Prince DLC, be sure to compare Sebastian's armor with another companion's. Even outside the optional parts there are plenty of things that should not belong in a high-profile, professional computer game. Especially not in 2011.
The devil isn't the only thing that rears his ugly goat head in the details. If you look carefully you're going to see townsfolk with faces that looks like someone threw acid on them and smudged them beyond recognition. Sometimes their hats or caps or hoods or whatever don't even match up with the rest of what is supposed to be the face and it clips through everything. It looks like the worst asshole I've ever seen enlarged a hundred times in Ms Paint. BioWare obviously thought we were just going to run past these unfortunate townsfolk but sometimes you have a conversation in the street and there they are in perfect view a low-res mess doing their best animation dance stolen from Sonic 2006. There's far too much low-res even on the high-res setting. Did you forget to include the required textures, Bio? You silly fucking dork...
It is a fact that this game was shipped with broken graphics and that just doesn't hold up. Origins had the same problem, albeit in much smaller scale so it wasn't as noticable. What else is more noticable in DAII? Why, the--
BUGS, OF COURSE! (AND THE MUSIC BY THE GREAT INON ZUR!)
There are bugs. Triggers are broken, the import feature (of course) doesn't work quite as intended and apparently even the great Inon Zur managed to program the orchestra wrong or some shit I dunno. That's apparently what he said. Bugs in the soundtrack, I swear. Rumor has it it makes your balls explode. I haven't gotten it yet, but in the meantime allow me to say to Mr Zur that his rush job is probably the least noticable rush job. To be honest it's impossible to play Dragon Age II with the sound turned on because of all the annoying constant battle sounds so I haven't heard much of the music. I'm sure I'm not missing anything. But there are bugs and those I most certainly get.
While we're talking sound, here's something that bothers me. There is some townsfolk banter, as in citizens in the game talk to each other. Or pretend to talk to each other. A guard says "stop kicking that wall" to a person on the other side of the place, downstairs, who in fact isn't kicking a wall at all but that's beside the point. This would've been easily forgiven if it was a one-time incident but no, ALL OF THESE townsfolk banters repeat over and over again! It's broken, amateurish garbage. Every time I go into the viscount's keep, stop kicking that wall, stop kicking that wall! And they're not even anywhere near each other!! FUCK!!
Now, here's a cannon drum; how on earth shall I make a transition to--
RPG MECHANICS?! (LET'S FUCK ON THE FLOOR.)
It goes without saying that I am Andyman Messiah, master of transitions. Anyway, there are no RPG mechanics in DAII. Yeah, none, but thanks for not asking. Jerkoff. The stats are a joke and you're not going to have to bother with any more than two attributes depending on your class. The rest will just go into different types of defense, which is useless. A warrior who puts a point into magic get a 1% magic resistance, for example, but a mage gets a bonus to attack. This is one example where BioWare almost threw away something completely but instead left in its place something broken, bare bones-y and tragic. I don't have anything to say about the talent trees. They work well enough considering I didn't find use for 95% of the stuff.
Hey, let's fuck, people! You can fuck almost all your companions in this game since they're all either bisexual or simply changes their sexuality after your sex. If you're male, Anders will be gay. If you're female, he will be straight. Now that's catering to every penis and vagina! You're going to have to romance him either way! He is one of them gays that you are forced to shut down hard. Peecee Hawke can't actually say something like "I'm not uncomfortable around homosexual people" but explain that he is into vagina (hahaha into vagina) and not cock to keep the relationship as just friends. The dialogue wheel is locked down to a choice between two romance options and one aggressive break heart option. No other way out. If you're a good guy you're going to have to act the jerk. Fantastic. I also appreciate how even though your romance can move into your house (to stand around doing nothing), you still have to talk to them at their old place. Excellent.
It's a dating simulator where you keep up with your friendship and rivalry points with certain characters and not just your companions, mind you. For example the templar cunt Meredith and other characters will magically know if you've been acting sympathetic to those magician sluts. The game also keeps track on how many times you've acted nice, funny and mean and makes the first place the dominant Peecee Hawke personality for those times when you don't have any control over the dialogue. You even receive different benefits for fully maxing out a companion's friendship or rivalry. Your dialogue wheel reflects from top to bottom professional, suave and aggressive responses. Everything in this paragraph: sure is Alpha Protocol mechanics around here. I'm not going to mention the stuff you can look at in your house that your companions leave lying around.
Regardless of the borrowed interactive movie mechanics, I think it's interesting to compare Dragon Age II to Alpha Protocol. See, DAII was praised by the people who get paid to play and panned by those who have to pay to play. With Alpha Protocol it was the other way around. This says a lot, I think. Corruption brewing in the video game reviewing industry? Oh noes, how many cheese sandwiches could I have received from EA in a nice gift basket if I had only worked for Gamespot or IGN? Unfortunately I'm just a freelance potty mouth and that is why Dragon Age II should--
ABSOLUTELY NOT RECEIVE AN AWARD!
This is a broken, unfinished product. Regardless of how much under pressure from EA they were to get this shit out in time, the entire Dragon Age II team should take some time to think about how much they fucked up. Mass Effect team, don't let these fuckers anywhere near Mass Effect 3. Don't even let them get you coffee. In fact, throw coffee at them. Make them squirm on the floor in agony as you pour hot coffee all over their faces! THEN URINATE ON THEM! URINATE, URINATE, URINATE, URI alright, fuck this shit, I'm going home.
Rated 10/10.
WRITTEN BY ME, ANDYMAN MESSIAH!
BUT FIRST HERE IS A SHORT STORY WITH A HAPPY ENDING!
Please wait, connecting you to the Dragon Age server.
Please wait.
Server connection found. Welcome to your game.
"Fuck this shit. Next time I'll play offline!"
*Next time*
SERVER NOT FOUND. YOU MUST BE CONNECTED TO THE INTERWEBZ TO ACCESS PARTS OF THIS GAME!! CLICK OK IF YOU UNDERSTAND THIS!!
"Ok."
Control panel -> uninstall shit -> Dragon Age II -> are you sure you want to -> OK uninstalled!
The end.
This short story should not be a work of fiction. It is what really should have happened but it didn't because I'm as strong as a brickhouse built in Siberia by hot lesbian pop group Tatu so I can endure stupid shit. I wipe my ass with stupid shit. Welcome to my review of the most awful game of all time. My ass is bleeding but I wear pants. You're fucking welcome.
But first! Let's--
SET THE TONE!
Reviewing some games is like taking retards to the zoo; you wouldn't do it if you didn't get paid for it or if the zoo didn't have a new wicked awesome giraffe or something in stock. I mean, like, come on, retards, let's go deepthroat the new giraffe! Don't forget your apples! Pray to your retard god it doesn't suddenly get hiccups. That would be nasty. Well, unfortunately there are no giraffes in Dragon Age II so I had to stick with my paycheck. I am a whore. Andyman Messiah – whoring is my life. Serves everyone and everything. Except bees. Fuck bees. Not literally fuck bees, I mean. Fuck bees as in to hell with bees. Fans of my other reviews will remember that I once got into a fight with a bee. I thought it was going to be a clean fight but he brought his friends and they all gang-raped me. I walked home that night covered in bruises, honey and a million dead bees. I guess that what's victory looks like but I was eventually rushed to the hospital and when I left the doctors told me that I could never again have relations with a bee again or I would probably die. And that is why I am not bee sexual. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! No but seriously--
WHAT THE HELL IS THIS SHIT?
Dragon Age II is the much anticipated quickly-rushed-out-the-door sequel to Dragon Age: Origins, and rather than continuing on the path of a well-designed, although technically disastrous and pretentious as fuck roleplaying game, it comes with a brand new bag of tricks borrowed from games that were a lot better. It remains to be seen how many of these tricks translate as improvements. How long, you ask? Well, keep reading, fuckdumb. We're going to go through this game systematically, starting with--
THE STORY!
For once it's not quite the usual bullshit. Dragon Age II begins with Varric, the new dwarf prankster guy for the evening getting interrogated by a mean lady. She is a seeker of the Chantry and need to know about the whereabouts of Varric's friend, the Champion of Kirkwall who apparently were involved in some very bad business. Varric offers, after Cassandra puts a dagger through her own book, to tell the story. But alas BioWare tries to set him up as an unreliable narrator! We're treated to a battle tutorial where really nothing is exaggerated except for the breast sizes and the frailty of the darkspawn. Then a dragon appears and breathes fire on the darkspawn. Here, Cassandra stops him for no reason and Varric has to start over even though as will soon be apparent not a lot is going to change.
So the real story begins with the destruction of Lothering, which some of you might remember as the boring, completely uninteresting tutorial town in Dragon Age: Origins where you learned how to craft potions, traps and poisons. As the oldest child of the troubled Hawke family (hereafter referred to as Peecee Hawke, as in "Pissy") it is your responsibility to take your mother and siblings as far away from the orcs as is possible. Eventually the darkspawn catches up to them, an ogre smashes your sibling of choice and the shit quickly hits the fan. How will they deal with ten grunt darkspawn when they've only killed through a whole bunch already? Things look dark indeed, but our heroes are quickly saved from being overwhelmed by Flemeth (sure is recycling DA:O around here) and her cool dragon transforming trick (and also her fantastic cleavage). Flemeth flies them to safety as a premature reward for Peecee Hawke undertaking a fetch quest and the troubled family get to experience the immigrant experience in Kirkwall, one of the three major cities in the Free Marches. Through three acts that span ten whole years (ha!) you're going to rise from a lowly peasant to nobility and become a major player in city-threatening conflicts. The story is refreshingly low-key, there's no big bad demon coming to take over the world, rather it's a tragedy about a family caught in the middle of a power struggle.
Fun! Well, maybe. Let's count--
THE PROBLEM WITH THE STORY!
Oh yes, there's a problem. It might not be your problem but it was certainly my problem and since you're reading my review that makes them my opinion that I simply MUST force on you. Preferably down your throat until it comes out of your ass and sodomize yourself from within in a glorious moment of passion. Because this review is love. Alright, story problem, let's go!
In short, ten years? Uh huh? Yeah, too damn long to use as padding. I mean, obviously you're not going to follow Peecee Hawke's adventures for ten whole years. 90% of the shit is shit that is happening off-screen and that you have no control over. Say you side with the smugglers to get into the city. You're treated to a little cutscene where Varric says how worked for them for a year and how you made a name for yourself in the underworld. And then when you're in control again you can run around town and meet people you *apparently* worked with. Never once is it brought up again by the game that you're a big name in Kirkwall's underground. Considering the game is supposed to be a ten year chronicle of Peecee Hawke's rise to power, it's problematic to have several year-long gaps when we don't get to see what is happening and then it has no effect on anything. But okay, sure, the first year he's busy smuggling shit. But then? After the first year you get to play for a long, long while where you do quests until you eventually can go into the deep roads to advance the story. After the deep roads there's a 3 year long gap where Peecee apparently doesn't do anything except spend the adventuring money to buy a house. Then you play some more and then there's another 3 year old gap where Peecee seriously just sits around doing nothing until the cutscene is over and you're free to start questing again. These periods of time are like a horrible vacuum in time and space. There's no development in anything, story or character. It's too damn long. It makes no sense. They should have trimmed that down to five years, tops. And to be perfectly honest, they should have trimmed down the period of time spent playing the game too, because--
I FUCKING HATE PLAYING THIS SHIT!
It's true. If you manage to get through the entire game without at some point going "fuck this shit" and rushing everything, skipping dialogue and whatever or using cheats I dare you then you are a fucking mutant psychopath on MDMAs. There is something so fundamentally wrong with you that it cannot just be attributed to mere drug problem, mutation, mental illness or profanity. This is an unplayable game. Dragon Age II is at its best when it isn't played at all. The cutscenes can sometimes be exciting and sort of fun to watch, but actually getting to these fun, exciting cutscenes is another beast altogether and I'm going to tell you why.
1: Combat. There is a lot of things wrong with the combat. First of all, it's horribly drawn out, it really lasts forever. Not because it's difficult but because the game throws a lot of shit at you and enemies get reinforcements that spawn from out of nowhere. If you're planning to go through everything that the game has to offer, you're going to have to fight off a million fucking spiders, darkspawn, bandits, dogs and qunaris AND IT TAKES FOREVER! Especially considering there are spawn points for almost every room/area. It's not even fun combat. It takes way too fucking long for no real reward. It sucks. End of the line, lockdown, get the fuck out of here before I beat you to death with my Sailor Mars doll.
2: Boss battles. Yes, we covered regular combat. Now let's talk about the fucking boss battles. Imagine what I just wrote, but times 100. Bosses have ridiculous amounts of health, go into hibernation mode and force you to fight regular enemies, and takes forever to kill. There is a mission in Mass Effect 2 where Adam Baldwin (who made up a third of the only good voice talent, btw) explains that standard procedure when dealing with huge geth bosses is to chip it down slowly, kill it with bug bites. That's exactly what you do over and over again in DAII. You take down some health, you avoid the attacks (easily, I might add), you run around killing regular enemies while the boss excuses itself from the battle for a while and then it comes back for a little while and you can start taking down some health before it excuses itself again. And this takes forever and it's not fun.
3: Dungeon design leaves a lot to be desired. Like everything! There is only one warehouse level, only one cave level, only one temple level, only one deep roads level and only one forest area. And the way Bioware "tries" to make every single quest that takes place in the same level feel and look "unique" is to close paths, but sometimes they don't even bother doing that and the minimap always shows all of it anyway, including the routes that are mysteriously blocked off. I shouldn't have to explain why this is so fucked up. It's lazy on an entirely new level. There should be a new word for this kind of laziness and it should be the sound of a fat guy shitting his pants because he didn't want to spend the effort taking them off. BROMPH! Who knew there would one day come a game that would make me put the following down black on white: come back, Oblivion, everything is forgiven. Yeah, that's right. Say whatever the fuck you want, at least Bethesda were decent enough to make more than one fucking cave variation. They didn't just seal off parts of the same area over and over again in absurdum. Fuck this shit.
4: Quest design also leaves something to be desired, as is normal when BioWare is involved. It's less than everything however and there are some interesting quests in here. They tie into the interesting cutscenes. The work involved in getting to them however... well, we've already covered that with the shitty combat and dungeon design. Kirkwall is a busy place to say the least with a whole bunch of conflicts running around just waiting to be resolved. Most of them are about the templars vs magicians. Should people with magic power be free just like the next axe-swinging psychoelephant or should they be locked up and/or forced to wear a sun on their forehead? Peecee Hawke can choose to walk the neutral path or side with one of the factions. As is standard BioWare design it doesn't matter one assbleeding bit since it is all going to come crashing down in the end regardless. If you don't do X then X will happen anyway and if you have a choice between killing Y or Z then once you've killed Z, Y will most likely also die shortly thereafter or it won't have an effect at all because the dreaded V intervened. As is usual BioWare I always get the feeling that some things are destinied to happen regardless of my input. Some people will undoubtably think the templar/mage conflict is interesting. Good for them. I'm still waiting for some motivation.
The qunari quest line surprised me a little bit. These uncool douchebags start to act up and you're sent to calm them down. This is the one quest in the entire game that rewards you for not just going to point a to b immediately. It's entirely optional but keeping the qunari informed before you act on things and choosing your words when talking to them will eventually earn their respect and pay off in the end. It's a small thing of coolness unfortunately surrounded by too much mediocrity like oh hi, the templars/mages need your help, kill the mages/templars in this place please.
Some quests tests the boundaries of how much stupid I can handle. As an example, a herbalist has you running around gathering miscellaneous items. One of the things is sacred dalish ink or whatever. Quest description says it might be difficult to get since it's fucking sacred and sure enough, you run over to the dalish and ask for it and they start screaming at you. How to get the ink, hmmm, there's nobody else I can talk to, hmm, oh hey look an unlocked chest right by the entrance. What's inside oh look it's the sacred ink! Lazy, uninspired, just put the fucking thing down in a container somewhere. A lot of the quests in Dragon Age II, both major and minor, work like this unfortunately.
5: The companions. Yeah, I'm going to diss the companions. Shocker, I know. I'm not going to do a roll call or compare them to previous Bio characters but I will say that I never thought for one second that I would miss Oghren or any of the old companions. Yes, the new guys are THAT shitty, and the old characters that do return from Origins and Awakening are little more than a shell of their former selves or they've been so overexaggerated that it's like they're playing themselves in a parody. The merchant and enchanter duo, Bodahn and Sandal makes a return and Sandal has evidently gone, as they say, "full retard". It's awful and hurtful to see how BioWare uses this for cheap laughs. "Look at the funny retard. He wants some pie. Look at him. Laugh as he says the word "enchantment" over and over again with the characteristically stupid "hurr durr" voice!" When do you laugh at Sandal instead of with him? I think we both know the answer, considering he is a fictional character created only for the purpose of cheap comic relief. Download the black emporium and he gets to interact with "funny dog!"
Regarding the companion homes, I do like the idea of them all having their own "base" where they hang when they're not doing stuff with you, but all it really boils down to is a loading screen. The bases only provide a backdrop for the conversations you have with your companions, which is neither exciting nor interesting. Furthermore, they're just standing. They don't actually do anything in their houses. Maybe they'll release a DLC or something, "Ass scratching animations" for 5 dollars. I'll bet you anything they're already working on useless DLC like alternative appearance packs. Write to Bio and tell them to cancel that. Have them animate Isabela's withered hand going under the flimsy ass cover. It'll sell, trust me. And speaking of withered hand, let's talk--
SHITTY GRAPHICS!
Yes, I know, graphics whore, etc. Unfortunately I don't care. There are parts in Dragon Age II that, simply put, look fucking awful and I'm not sure if EA is going to commission another graphics restoration patch seeing as the first one clocked in at, what, 1 gigabyte and still didn't manage fix less than shit even though it offered VERY HIGH graphics? I can't say I felt very high looking at the barely improved graphics. A lot of it is still broken. We don't need attempts to give us more level of detail, we need an attempt to fix the things that looking fucking awful. I'll give you an example, I had the misfortune of importing a savegame where Zevran and Alistair survived and in act 3, you meet them. In short, their armor is a low texture mess. Alistair's is particularly funny because one part of the chest piece is crisp and detailed and hi-res and then there's the rest, a muddy absolutely shitty-looking thing. And for the ones with the Exiled Prince DLC, be sure to compare Sebastian's armor with another companion's. Even outside the optional parts there are plenty of things that should not belong in a high-profile, professional computer game. Especially not in 2011.
The devil isn't the only thing that rears his ugly goat head in the details. If you look carefully you're going to see townsfolk with faces that looks like someone threw acid on them and smudged them beyond recognition. Sometimes their hats or caps or hoods or whatever don't even match up with the rest of what is supposed to be the face and it clips through everything. It looks like the worst asshole I've ever seen enlarged a hundred times in Ms Paint. BioWare obviously thought we were just going to run past these unfortunate townsfolk but sometimes you have a conversation in the street and there they are in perfect view a low-res mess doing their best animation dance stolen from Sonic 2006. There's far too much low-res even on the high-res setting. Did you forget to include the required textures, Bio? You silly fucking dork...
It is a fact that this game was shipped with broken graphics and that just doesn't hold up. Origins had the same problem, albeit in much smaller scale so it wasn't as noticable. What else is more noticable in DAII? Why, the--
BUGS, OF COURSE! (AND THE MUSIC BY THE GREAT INON ZUR!)
There are bugs. Triggers are broken, the import feature (of course) doesn't work quite as intended and apparently even the great Inon Zur managed to program the orchestra wrong or some shit I dunno. That's apparently what he said. Bugs in the soundtrack, I swear. Rumor has it it makes your balls explode. I haven't gotten it yet, but in the meantime allow me to say to Mr Zur that his rush job is probably the least noticable rush job. To be honest it's impossible to play Dragon Age II with the sound turned on because of all the annoying constant battle sounds so I haven't heard much of the music. I'm sure I'm not missing anything. But there are bugs and those I most certainly get.
While we're talking sound, here's something that bothers me. There is some townsfolk banter, as in citizens in the game talk to each other. Or pretend to talk to each other. A guard says "stop kicking that wall" to a person on the other side of the place, downstairs, who in fact isn't kicking a wall at all but that's beside the point. This would've been easily forgiven if it was a one-time incident but no, ALL OF THESE townsfolk banters repeat over and over again! It's broken, amateurish garbage. Every time I go into the viscount's keep, stop kicking that wall, stop kicking that wall! And they're not even anywhere near each other!! FUCK!!
Now, here's a cannon drum; how on earth shall I make a transition to--
RPG MECHANICS?! (LET'S FUCK ON THE FLOOR.)
It goes without saying that I am Andyman Messiah, master of transitions. Anyway, there are no RPG mechanics in DAII. Yeah, none, but thanks for not asking. Jerkoff. The stats are a joke and you're not going to have to bother with any more than two attributes depending on your class. The rest will just go into different types of defense, which is useless. A warrior who puts a point into magic get a 1% magic resistance, for example, but a mage gets a bonus to attack. This is one example where BioWare almost threw away something completely but instead left in its place something broken, bare bones-y and tragic. I don't have anything to say about the talent trees. They work well enough considering I didn't find use for 95% of the stuff.
Hey, let's fuck, people! You can fuck almost all your companions in this game since they're all either bisexual or simply changes their sexuality after your sex. If you're male, Anders will be gay. If you're female, he will be straight. Now that's catering to every penis and vagina! You're going to have to romance him either way! He is one of them gays that you are forced to shut down hard. Peecee Hawke can't actually say something like "I'm not uncomfortable around homosexual people" but explain that he is into vagina (hahaha into vagina) and not cock to keep the relationship as just friends. The dialogue wheel is locked down to a choice between two romance options and one aggressive break heart option. No other way out. If you're a good guy you're going to have to act the jerk. Fantastic. I also appreciate how even though your romance can move into your house (to stand around doing nothing), you still have to talk to them at their old place. Excellent.
It's a dating simulator where you keep up with your friendship and rivalry points with certain characters and not just your companions, mind you. For example the templar cunt Meredith and other characters will magically know if you've been acting sympathetic to those magician sluts. The game also keeps track on how many times you've acted nice, funny and mean and makes the first place the dominant Peecee Hawke personality for those times when you don't have any control over the dialogue. You even receive different benefits for fully maxing out a companion's friendship or rivalry. Your dialogue wheel reflects from top to bottom professional, suave and aggressive responses. Everything in this paragraph: sure is Alpha Protocol mechanics around here. I'm not going to mention the stuff you can look at in your house that your companions leave lying around.
Regardless of the borrowed interactive movie mechanics, I think it's interesting to compare Dragon Age II to Alpha Protocol. See, DAII was praised by the people who get paid to play and panned by those who have to pay to play. With Alpha Protocol it was the other way around. This says a lot, I think. Corruption brewing in the video game reviewing industry? Oh noes, how many cheese sandwiches could I have received from EA in a nice gift basket if I had only worked for Gamespot or IGN? Unfortunately I'm just a freelance potty mouth and that is why Dragon Age II should--
ABSOLUTELY NOT RECEIVE AN AWARD!
This is a broken, unfinished product. Regardless of how much under pressure from EA they were to get this shit out in time, the entire Dragon Age II team should take some time to think about how much they fucked up. Mass Effect team, don't let these fuckers anywhere near Mass Effect 3. Don't even let them get you coffee. In fact, throw coffee at them. Make them squirm on the floor in agony as you pour hot coffee all over their faces! THEN URINATE ON THEM! URINATE, URINATE, URINATE, URI alright, fuck this shit, I'm going home.
Rated 10/10.
job.
