Dragon Age II – Demo, Dragon Age 2 Review

Dragon Age II is here, another entry in the popular and bountiful RPG genre. So how does Dragon Age II rate among them? Well, for those already familiar with the first in the series, Dragon Age: Origins, and it’s expansion pack Awakenings, this isn’t a difficult title to answer. Dragon Age is appears to be a quality sequel to the original 2009 hit Dragon Age: Origins and it’s expansion pack Awakenings.

The early presentation of Dragon Age II is fairly understated, choosing to build momentum slowly as snippets of storytelling are revealed by the furious demands of a female warrior from her dwarven counterpart. The dwarf relunctantly agrees to tell her what she wants to know, and the stage is set for the questing to begin.

For those unfamiliar with the Dragon Age franchise altogether, the gamer begins able to customize all aspects of his character, appearance, gender, and “class”, be it warrior, rogue, or mage. Once set, the player’s quest begins, having very detailed control of all attractively rendered party members. As the experienced RPG fan would expect, Dragon Age II is played in the third person perspective, capable of switching control to any of their party members, and designating the combat behavior of each individual.

All the RPG staple elements are here, the ability to level up your characters, warriors improving their weaponry and armor, mages learning new spells, and rogues becoming more adept at lockpicking, but there’s also elements to Dragon Age II that definitely are not common to all RPG’s. The standout distinction of Dragon Age II being the ability to choose your characters’ conversational responses, and in turn those responses and decisions directly affect the twists, turns, and overall outcome of Dragon Age II, as there are several possible destinies for the gamer’s party, depending on the choices they make to the many moral dilemmas in the game.

The graphics in Dragon Age II are well above average in detail and attractiveness, especially the rendering of the party members themselves. the surrounding detail and landscape graphic quality not quite the equalling that of the characters, but still pleasing to the eye. The cutscenes in Dragon Age II are of particularly high quality, if enough of them were spliced consecutively, there could be the makings of a Dragon’s Age animated film. Dragon Age II’s music has the appropriately mystical allure one would expect from a fantasy-type title, and the storytelling of Dragon Age II is particularly well written, rivalling in detail and complexity the lore of the some the best known, “sword & sorcery-type” fantasy franchises.

There isn’t much about Dragon’s Age II that can be considered all that innovative to the series, but it really isn’t necessary, because Dragon’s Age II simply gives gamers more of the quality RPG experience that made the original Dragon Age a credible title in the first place.