alright game (origins is better) but you have to go through EA's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ launcher which may sometimes decide you actually DON'T own the game you paid for. ♥♥♥♥ you EA

➕Less technical issues than DA1
➕Impressive combat fluidity
➕Innate storage option
➕Easy modability

🔹Your main character speaks now, which limits many conversation options that DAO had
🔹EA Launcher + sign in to EA account required (to use Dragon’s Keep for DA:Inquisition)

➖Crash to desktop count = 8
➖Many aspects of DAO are streamlined, which leads to shallower and simplistic gameplay
➖Equipping party members from storage is annoying - multiple additional clicks + 2x loading screens
➖Game world feels more fractured, simplified, and repetitive due to streamlining
➖No campsite - have to go to multiple zones to converse with party members
➖Somewhat weak narrative


I’ll be referencing this a lot, so you can find my review of Dragon Age Origins (DA1) here: https://steamcommunity.com/id/Synikx/recommended/47810?snr=1_5_9__402

The game world feels like a step down from DA1. Since the entirety of the game takes place inside a single city (Kirkwall), your time is spent traversing from one zone to another in a very inorganic way. Basically, you pick a daytime, nighttime, or outside the city location, warp to the zone, complete the quest, and then warp back to the city area to turn it in. That’s a very simplistic version, but with gameplay loop I feel did a huge disservice to the excellent world building that DA1 had.

Similar to the world, the narrative is also a letdown. I just can’t help but feel that the plot never really picks up. You’re just doing what feels like what should be side quests in DA1 as the main quests here in DA2. As if that wasn’t bad enough, companion interactions have also taken a huge dive. Alistar and Morrigan’s banter from DA1 was just so peak. You get nothing close to that in DA2, though Varric has some pretty good lines.

The best part about the game world is the lore, which is still strong from DA1. Dragon Age has a strong backdrop about the mages and templars conflict, and the history between them. You are forced to pick a side, but each decision ends in ruin, proving there are not many perfect choices.

I was impressed by the fluidity of the combat when coming from DA1. I chose to play as a rogue and thought it was great fun jumping from enemy to enemy with somewhat visceral blood-exploding combat. I also tried a warrior and a mage, the latter of which I played for about ~10 hours in a new playthrough before I got bored and went back to my rogue to finish the game.

There is a huge issue with the streamlining of mechanics. Things like equipment and abilities are worse off than DA1, while there is some good quality of life, the simplification of mechanics suffers for it.

The difficulty I found was generally easy, especially because I chose to use the DLC equipment at the start, which I would not recommend doing if you want a harder game. The DLC gear may make it too easy. One aspect I really didn’t like is the complete nerfing of healing. As a mage, one of the only heals is on a 40(!) second cooldown. Otherwise, you will have to have everyone chug potions. The damage output is not high in this game, but I did feel like they removed an entire aspect of gameplay.

The only area that I would consider a big improvement over DA1. The graphics are slightly better, but the true positive here is the performance. Yes, I crashed a lot, as my counter above dictates, but still felt overall that performance was better and more smooth.

I didn’t notice too many bugs or issues aside from occasional crashing. And even then, the crashing could be related to me using mods or Lossless Scaling, so your mileage may vary.
i9-13900KF | RTX 4090 | 64GB RAM | 1440p @ 240hz | Windows 11 installed on SSD

A small step down from DA1. I didn’t find the music to be as good and the voice acting, while fine, is much less memorable than the excellent Alistar and Morrigan. Though Fennris, Varric, and Anders had some good quips.

I would also say a decrease from DA1. Since the game is heavily focused on mage vs templar, and being a rogue I was a bit removed from the conflict. So after starting a mage and being a complete opposite of my rogue, I barely noticed any significant changes from act 1. So while there could be some decent replay value, the story doesn’t seem vastly different.

Also, there are no achievements on Steam, it's integrated into EA’s online thing.

Dragon Age 2 is the sequel to Dragon Age: Origins. DA2 continues immediately after the first events of DAO, but you follow a group of refugees as they escape to another continent, far removed from the world-ending blight in DAO. What follows is various conspiracies, mages versus templars interactions, and multiple time skips as you live out years of your life in the city of Kirkwall.

For my negatives, the biggest detractor to me is the rushed narrative and the repetitive and uninspired game world.
The narrative felt like a major step back from DA1. There were hardly any quests where I felt an impossible choice had to be made, whereas in DA1, almost every quest had amazing choices that felt impactful and important. In DA2, I felt my first difficult choice happen about 20 hours into the game in Act 2. Even aside from the main narrative, all of your companions are just weakly written. Aveline is as interesting as a wet noodle, Merrill is like an elf from Wisconsin, Fennris is unwilling to compromise on anything mages (which would have been great character development), Anders is a stick in the mud because of Justice, and Isabella is hot without much else going on for her. Varric is by far the best written character and embodies the excellent party-wide banter from DA1.
It’s true that you could maybe say the narrative is off because the entire game is told as a story from Varric, but I feel like this is a cop-out that promotes lazy writing.
As for the game world, I felt it to be subpar. Firstly, the locales you visit are just simply unfun as you click to travel between lifeless stoney areas of Kirkwall over and over, it just feels so dead. Even outside the city where you encounter the SAME DUNGEONS over and over. There is so much repetition in locales that it just screams laziness. I felt nothing like I did in DA1 where each area was an adventure and had a history that was lived in. The lore aspect of the game world is still good in DA2 with the mages vs. templar conflict, but it's overall still worse than DA1.

As for my positives, I would say it's combat. Coming from the aging DA1, DA2’s opening sequence felt so much more alive, smooth, and brutal. I fell in love with the rogue, but the mage and warrior also felt pleasing to play. While there were some parts of every class that suffered from the streamlining, I felt that they were all balanced fairly well, opposite of DA1 where mages were OP as heck and archers were in the DLCs.

Overall, I was disappointed in DA2. Perhaps I was hyped up too much because it’s one of my wife’s favorite games, but I did feel that it was worse in almost all aspects from DA1. Despite this, I still think it's worth experiencing if you are a fan of the DA universe. Add in the fact that you can get it as low as $3 on Steam, and it's a ton of content for the price. So yes, I would recommend, but barely. DA1 is the clearly superior game between the two.

You can find my curator page here: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Synik_GR

It is very different from the first one. A lot easier in a matter of difficulty and the combat system is a drastic improvement: fast-paced, simpler and more fluid.
Overall writing is great (companions chatter is top-notch), however the finalle itself is lacking and leaves lame aftertaste.
The amount of side content is just enough and it's quality is decent, however side locations are done in extremely lazy way (reminds me of ME1).
Still, it was definitely fun experience.