It seems there is a war going on, small battles are taking place across the internet between those who love Dragon Age II and those hate it. A small statement easily could blast into a full argument that could span fifty pages of the same things said over and over, much like an everyday youtube video about evolution or God generates an average of eighty-three comments a minute. After perusing Dragon Age II hating forums for reasons people hated and loved it, I thought of reasons why many of their arguments failed, and why many are right. I was a huge fan of Dragon Age: Origins, and didn't really like Dragon Age II at first, but, I've slowly grown to like the new game. What I see people having the biggest problems with is the new game is the look of the menu, and the combat system; and those two definitely stand out to me as the most drastic movements from the first game.
The menu, like I've read many times, feels weird in a fantasy game, and it belongs in Mass Effect; this is true. I feel when playing an RPG, for me at least, role-playing is one of the most important things about a game. Immersing yourself in the story, the characters, and the world makes the whole experience so much more exciting, and this is what Dragon Age: Origins did amazingly. Simplifying the menu, eliminating the pages, and eliminating the fun item descriptions was not fun for me, although you can find the important ones in the codex. Dragon Age II did have other things to suck you into the game in other ways. The cinematics of the second and the music as well are both done much better, and the variation between the races makes encountering them so much more exciting. One of my favourite things they brought into the second game from Origins was Sandal, "Enchantment?" giving his burst of excitement a whole new level of emotion. Still considering role-playing as an important element, it doesn't seem odd to me that you would only get to choose your own clothes every morning while living in the big city among your other party members living their lives and dressing themselves. Despite this great idea, I did lose just a droplet of respect for the Dragon Age franchise once I entered my third cave wondering, "haven't I been here twice before?" then realizing those other two times were two other places that looked completely identical to this one. In terms of role playing, the rest of those two games are about the same, not much has changed, but overall I think Dragon Age: Origins has more role-playing invested into it.
People, more than anything else, complain about the combat system; some say it changed too much, others say is a copycat of the first. I feel that they didn't make it better or worse, but rather they changed it. They made mages actually cool, believable in combat, and made the differences between rogues and warriors a significant. With these changes of the classes to both stand alone better and work as a team better comes a new battlefield. Enemies showing up out of nowhere in the middle of battle is retarded sometimes, but the harder the battle the more welcome the challenge; always playing on nightmare mode from the first day of the first Dragon Age, the new Dragon Age is giving me challenges just as hard and just as tactical as the first, especially forming new teams of people instead of the same old tank-healer-other guys. Any RPG would get dull if you never stepped from that strategy. With the way the new battle system "feels" I'd say it feels a little more like an action game, but once you get the hang of it, it is really cool.
I haven't decided which game I like better, only things with each I prefer. hopefully both game will be a learning experience for Bioware, and they'll produce something impossible to dislike by anyone except those who are already loyal only to Origins and already plan to refuse liking Dragon Age III. Perhaps they're right though, and Origins is better, you can't argue with the fact that Dragon Age II is a ton of fun, regardless.
"Enchantment!!!"
