Oh Trogdor, how I’ve missed thee. But you aren’t the dragon I was talking about. Just in time for finals a game I’d been keeping my eyes on went on sale for a price that I’m willing to pay for a game. Being that I am what the kids these days are calling a “casual gamer” I tend not to be on the bleeding edge of games. And I’m cheap. So when I got some spam that informed me that Dragon Age II was down to the price of twenty bucks, I pulled the trigger and bought it, just in time for finals. I played the first in the series over and over at the beginning of the year, and I’m pleased to say that the sequel was in every way an enhancement.
Why did it take so long for the price to come down? Because I’m a second class citizen in the gaming world as I play on my 13″ MacBook Pro. This isn’t a grumble mind you, I fully understand that I am at the far end of the marketable spectrum for gaming. The second issue that is frequently seen playing ports to the Mac are that they can be very, very rough. Often taking more system resources to run than they would have on a similarly equipped PC. I have been known to run games under VMWare, often it just isn’t worth the trouble for “twitch” games like first person shooters.
Having not played DA2 on the PC I cannot tell you how it performs on that platform. I can however report that I am completely blown away with the speed of the game on my laptop. So many games spend so much effort at “lookin’ purdy” that they miss a vital ingredient: it is a detriment to my enjoyment when I have to wait for bars to march across the screen so I can get back to smashing baddies in the face. I would say that a two minute load time is unreasonable and distracting (I’m looking at you original Dragon Age). DA2 however gets me from splash screen to actually playing in under 45 seconds. This amazes me in every way. Perhaps this is an effect of having been simultaneously for aging console gaming platforms. When you are limited to 10 gigs on a disc and a set amount of RAM and GPU you trim the fat.
As for the gameplay I had played the precursor as a rogue for most enjoyment. It was the role I felt did the most damage and kept the pace of the game fast. DA2 is closer to a more traditional “tank and spank” RPG so you spend more time rounding up the baddies and AoEing them down. The warrior in DA2 is enabled to hit more than one enemy at a time, all the time, in a pseudo-cleave constantly. This makes for delicious splatting when hitting things; the whole point of playing games. It tickles the violent lizard part of my brain. Having played this game before most of the talents you chose upon leveling were standard and/or identical to this series. Some of the more overpowered talent choice have been removed however forcing me to relearn some of my play. No worries there, this kept it fresh.
I am about three quarters of the way through the plot. It is a nice game that is rich in anthropological data, and light on moralistic inquiry. It is merely a story and not a deep work of philosophy. Which is good, I get enough of that shit in school and it would undoubtedly alienate their audience to have to engage their brain instead of mindless clicking. The Metacritic score it was listed at under my Steam page was 91/100. I would tend to agree with this number. The game was well worth the $20 I blew on it, as with most casual gamers I may end up with some buyers remorse for the time I spend playing it.
Enough writing, time to get back to seducing the slutty pirate chick and stabbing dragons in the face.