Straight Outta Kirkwall

With my trek through the darkspawn invasion in Dragon Age:  Origins and my semi-successful management of Vigil's Keep in the expansion Awakening completed, I scrambled around to download the mass of DLC for Dragon Age II and start a new game.  I have played Dragon Age II many fewer times than I have played Origins so I'm always forgetting small things that I love or hate.  I have always felt positively towards this game where many people do not like it.

In starting a new game I realized how people might feel unhappy with some of the choices made in the second game.  I sort of forgot the whole character creation system was essentially narrowed down to almost nothing.  There were no more cool origin stories...just a line-up of human characters to be your new Hawke.  Rather than go with the default Hawke appearance I decided to tool around with the few choices I actually had and managed to make my own unique Hawke.  After I solidified my choices I realized that I had inadvertently designed an almost doppleganger of the Bethany character.  They're supposed to be related, right?  I guess it works.

The beginning of the game really gives players a chance to experience the new combat animations.  My Hawke is a warrior of the two-handed variety who cuts a wide swathe through groups of bad guys.  The opening combat sequence where Varric colorfully describes Hawke's escape from Lothering gave me a fantastic feeling of invincibility as I commanded my character to painlessly slay through the onslaughts of darkspawn.  So satisfactory!  This led me to the stupid decision to crank the difficulty up to nightmare (it's really hard--there's a huge leap between hard and nightmare) and proceed to die a lot.  The trek through the backroads near Lothering was painful but I managed to survive long enough to turn the difficulty back down to hard.

Making it into Kirkwall, the primary setting of Dragon Age II, reminded me of the narrowness of the world in this game.  You spend most of your time in Kirkwall and it can get pretty boring.  The story of the city of Kirkwall is interesting though and the dismal setting perfectly echoes the horror that surrounds it's origins.  Darktown is filled with forlorn elves struggling to eke out a living in the dirty tunnels beneath the city.  Even Lowtown, your initial home area, has a very depressing industrial air that reminds you of how low your families fortunes have really sunk.  Maybe this droll setting was why so many people hated the game.  I have to admit that the choice to use the city as the core setting but to make the only real changes be toggling between day and night seems like a lazy design decision.

My Hawke preparing to smackdown some stupid archer.

It's as I wander the darkened streets of nighttime Kirkwall that I remember how much I enjoyed the combat in this second game.  The combat seems much more fluid and the animations for each class are a lot of fun to watch.  So much fun, that I often get sidetracked and forget to pause combat to set up combos.  Watching my warrior leap through the air to waylay a baddie is so satisfying.  I had to pause it and take a screenshot to savor the moment.

No matter how many negative things I read about Dragon Age II it will always have a special place in my BioWare library.  Sure, the environments are repetitive, but you can't tell me that you don't want to laugh out loud when you land a perfect combo and smash an enemy.