Dragon Age 2

"Do you ever feel like the world's getting... simpler? Like everything from eating to fighting is a lot less complex than it used to be?". The drunk in The Hanged Man tavern can be heard saying quite often. I think this is a great dig from the developers at themselves for the transformations they've made to Dragon Age, and also marks my major reaction to the game in general.

Not that this is a bad thing, mind you, as combat flows much more smoothly than it ever did in Dragon Age: Origins (DA:O), and it tends to be more visually spectacular (in an actioney way, apart from simply being a graphical update). On the other hand, it is much simpler than it was in DA:O, and I found myself using less strategy to conquer my opponents, and more overpower tactics than anything.

The game follows the plight of Hawke - a human escapee from the small town of Lothering. The town gets destroyed by the Blight (a massive invasion of Darkspawn - the DA equivalent of orcs) in DA:O. Hawke narrowly escapes the destruction with his/her (you get to select gender, class and first name - I named him Bob. I regret that choice) family mostly intact (in this prologue sequence you lose a family member dependant upon the class you select, to allow for a balanced party in the early sequences as well as  differing stories down the track).

In short order you find yourself having escaped the Blight, and living in the city of Kirkwall - once a slaver city, now a "free" city, although there are a lot of underlying problems in the city.

You spend the game playing through the course of ten years in the life of Hawke in Kirkwall. Well, I say that, but in reality you play a section of the game, then the story skips a few years. Typically you do a bunch of quests (side quests and storyline ones), then finish a chapter by dealing with whatever situation has arisen during the storyline quests of that chapter, then time skips ahead to the next chapter. While this is an interesting way of presenting a story, this also leads to some disconnect, since there is a lack of an overall bad guy, which makes the entire game feel like "I moved to Kirkwall, did some things, some stuff happened, and then it ended". While large portions of the story are quite dramatic, and it drew me in immensely, the ending (or lack thereof) rubbed me the wrong way due to the lack of conclusion, closure, or even... anything. There was no epilogue (unlike DA:O, which provides an extensive epilogue explaining the long term effects of many of the decisions you made), there was... nothing. I felt cheated.

On the other hand, the journey there is quite enjoyable, the combat is fun, and I was immersed. Some of the events which occurred I wasn't entirely sure if they were avoidable, but they did feel like I could have changed what happened simply by making other decisions. Admittedly, this would take a second playthrough to learn about (which I don't feel up to at the moment).

All in all, the game is worth playing, just don't expect the most amazing thing ever.

Also, Varric is awesome.