Dragon Age II: Ultimate Edition Reviews

Great story and characters. Frustrating game design with reused assets a lot of the time. Basing this on my play through on PS3 back in the day. Seem to have issues getting this to run on my PC unfortunately. Was hoping to play through again from the beginning. Another big issue is that there is NO GAMEPAD support. I know most people will say that KB and mouse are superior, but I am veteran with wrist issues and cannot use KB and mouse due to the pain it causes me. I imagine this will only be relevant to a small group of people, but if playing through the game with a gamepad is important to you, for whatever reason, there is no support. I even checked mods and looked for community templates and couldn't find anything that worked. For me, this is an issue and prevents me from playing or recommending. Great game, but I wish EA would release a remaster or something for the first two games so I could enjoy them before playing Veilguard. I expect due to the unrealistic expectations with Veilguard, and already dubbing it a commercial failure, that will likely never happen though.

An underrated gem. Despite the bad camera and mouse controls the first three games have, Dragon Age 2 is still a great game. I was expecting to not like it as much since general opinion says that it is the weakest of the first three, but I enjoyed it almost as much as Inquisition. The narrative flows pretty nicely and I loved the companions and their stories, as usual. Character development was also really good. Dialogue can be a little cheesy, as it often is in the franchise, but I think it adds character and sets it apart from other action RPGs.

My favorite of the series. Excellent story, the dungeons are fun and not so drawn out that they feel like work. The characters are all interesting and the choices you have to make, even small ones, do matter. All the fun of Dragon Age without the slogs of origins and inquisition, with the added bonus of a fantastically dreary and dark atmosphere. If you only ever play one Dragon Age game, play this one.

Literally the best game of all time. Like. I am not kidding. Best characters. Best story. Best game. Of. All. Time.

The game has a lot of apparent flaws derived from it's rushed development. This impacted mostly the design of levels and the game as a whole as well as the lack of impactful choices. Still, the overall plot for both Hawke (the main character) and for Kirkwall in each act is great. Perhaps even the best pacing and overall plot in any Dragon Age game, and definitely the most emotional and intimate Dragon Age game to date. The companions are great overall and the dlc's are too. The lack of side-content can be a downside, but it also does make the game less bloated. There's still many hours of content in the game. The roleplaying, even with the lack of choice, is made up for in how you can play Hawke and the rivalry/friendship mechanic with companions. Overall the game's biggest problem is the re-use of areas and designs. If you can move past that it's a great game for Dragon Age fans, especially after playing Origins.

The best Dragon Age game, absolutely no comparison. Is it rushed mechanically? Absolutely, when you have under a year to create a sequel to a well received fantasy game, inevitably, there are going to be imperfections. That being said, the NARRATIVE is what shines through, almost because of the clunkiness of the gameplay. Hawke is one of the best main characters I've ever played as. Unlike the other games in the series, this is the only game where you character is less open to be molded by the player and exists as something unique to themselves. Which only improves the game, the story, and the overall experience of playing. It's really such a special game. I've played it so many times and every time the themes and characters always hit like a bruise.

For fourteen years, I didn't know this game existed. I even thought Awakening was Dragon Age 2. Having finally played it for the first time, I realise how much I missed out on. I will always be upset that, unlike Varric, Merrill did not go on to appear in every future game because she is such a great character. The same goes for Aveline. I really cared about my little squad, even though I was stabbed in the back by Isabela. The war between mages and templars was unexpected. I ended up romancing Anders, who is essentially a mage Che Guevara. However, I now need to reconsider my rankings of my favorite Dragon Age games. I would definitely recommend it to fans of Origins, especially if, like me, you went years without knowing it existed or if you are new to the series.

Great story, fun characters, everything you'd expect from the Bioware experience. Technically speaking it's in a lot better shape than DAO, but it has its share of crashes. Some of the environments are extremely boring. Mostly because every "cave" or "tunnel" use the exact same map again and again and again... The combat gets quite tedious with it's endless spawning waves of enemies. Just far too much combat to fill the gaps.

Dragon Age 2... A game for SOME reason took me a long time to properly write a review for. I will first start with the good. I like this game. I think this game is a good game for what it is considering Bioware had to develop this game under a very tight schedule (14 to 16 months). For what they manage to do within that time frame, the game is good. Hawke, his story, and the game's story are very interesting and kept me hooked till the very end. This is also one of those games where I did not customize Hawke's character. His default, canon appearance just looks too badass to change. I played as a Mage Hawke, and I have to say, the new animations and flourishes you do make playing as a mage a lot more fun plus most of the spells are downright overpowered. Blood magic is still pretty overpowered in this game but it did get a very slight nerf. Either way, it felt super nice to not have to turn on my blood magic ability every time I get into a fight like in the first game. That got super annoying even though blood magic in Origins made playing as a Mage easy mode. For a game made in 2011, it still looks and runs great. Granted, I am playing on a PC with specs that are beyond the requirement but the game should run great on most PCs nowadays. I don't think I ran into any issues with crashes or any performance-related issues. Now, compared to the first game where all your companions are so likable, and I love them all, I only like a few. I love Merrill because she reminds me so much of Tali from Mass Effect so I romanced her as well. She is adorable. Varric is gigachad and becomes your best of friends should you choose to become with him which I did, and you should too because well... It is Varric. Anders is cool too but he is like a dollar general version of Alistair who is also gay but I still love him. Since I played as a Mage Hawke, I did not have the luxury of having Bethany as my companion. I wish you could have her as a companion regardless of what class you chose because well... I hate Carter. He is annoying. I understand the whole sibling rivalry thing but I did not want to go that route in my playthrough yet HE TRIES TO ONE UP HAWKE EVERY CHANCE HE GETS!!! Like come on, Carter, stop being a baby!!! Aveline is okay. Pretty underwhelming but I like her companion quest where you help her get a date. Fenris is cool but his hatred against mages got annoying despite the fact as a mage Hawke, I did everything I could to help. I will always love Gideon Emery's voice-acting work though. As for Isabela... Besides the fact she is hot (NICE BOOBIES), I hate her. I don't get why people like her. The whole event of Act 2 would've never happened if she restrained her sticky fingers!!! She left in my playthrough. I didn't care that she did. And Sebastian... Um... He is just there... I guess. I have Varric. Why would I need Sebastian? I will talk about Tallis when I get to the DLCs because she is a special case which things I want to point out. I like Kirkwall as a location but you can really start to see the tight dev cycle come in as a lot of locations get reused. There are not a whole of places to go, really, and Kirkwall is the most interesting place besides the areas you have in the DLCs. Speaking of DLCs, you NEED to play the Legacy DLC if you are looking to play Inquisition because the whole plot of Inquisition revolves around the Legacy DLC. I won't say much more other than you NEED to play it. You get some great goodies as loot too. The Mark of the Assassin DLC... Honestly, you can skip this DLC and won't miss anything because this DLC is like a Dragon Age Fanfic turned into a DLC which makes sense because Tallis is a self-insert character of Felicia Day, and you can REALLY tell! I am very sure Tallis is the only character in Dragon Age 2 that has hair physics. She stands out a TON compared to everyone else in the game. I know her character has her own show but I didn't watch it, and I wouldn't know where to watch it. The DLC itself is okay. I like the location but why the stealth section? It was not bad but it was not needed. Tallis's character is well... It is hard to say. I mean I like Tallis but also her philosophy with the Qun is uh skewed for lack of a better word. It's like she agrees with the Qun but then she says another thing that totally contradicts that. Like DO YOU AGREE WITH THE QUN OR NOT!?!? I personally think the Qun sucks. The Qunaris are a cool race by design but their philosophy is trash. I still love you, Sten. Dragon Age 2 is also the shortest game! Even when I took my time, and did everything I could, it only clocked in at 37 hours. It was enjoyable 37 hours though. Also, probably due to the dev cycle, the skills you get are somewhat limited. Unlike in the first game where you have a lot of skills to play around with and even more with the DLCs, the ones you get in DA2 are good and as mentioned, downright overpowered but limited. Dragon Age 2 did a lot of things right but also a lot of things wrong. Despite that, Bioware did what they could under such a tight schedule. If only they were given more time, this game would've COOKED!!! Overall, I recommend it to any fans of the Dragon Age games. This was also my first playthrough of the game as well because a dear friend of mine, BobbyBurst, gifted me Veilguards so it gave me a really good excuse to playthrough the series again. This game gets a 7.5/10!!! When Anders blew up the chantry, I WAS LIKE "DAMN!!! ANDERS!!!!"

I have this WEIRD bug where I can't romance Varric which is so weird becasue why wouldn't I be able to romance the coolest sexiest most charismatic character in the video game haha! (COWARDS).