Dragon Age 2 Review (PC)

Dragon Age 2 Equipment

The equipment in Dragon Age 2 is typical of your average RPG, defensively it included armor such as helmet, boots, and chest plates for the main character, but only slots to upgrade existing armor for the rest of your party. You can also give them trinkets such as rings, amulets or belts to bolster their abilities. For weapons there are also typical bows, daggers, long swords, maces, two handed swords, shields and staffs. Equipment can quickly be characterized by color to tell if it is magical, has slots to be upgraded, and also includes a star rating system to show how useful it is compared to your given rank. What I found interesting was that there are other items you can scavenge from enemies that immediately go into a junk filter that allows you to press one button when coming to a merchant to sell. My immediate thoughts were that it was a neat way to sort stuff, but as the game progressed I kept wishing they would just give me more coins and save me the hassle of making it to the merchant to empty my inventory. My least favorite thing about the equipment was the fact that a lot of equipment was given to me for characters I wasn’t using or were available for only the main character to use, but was made for other classes which I wasn’t using. Nothing worse than having your main melee fighting character find a bow he can’t use due to class and/or stat restrictions.

Exploring the World

The area explored in Dragon Age 2 revolves mostly in and around the area of Kirkwall, a fairly decent sized city but with only about 15 places to choose from, with some underlying caverns and connecting areas that become all too familiar as you journey through the game. The outlying areas include Sunderland Mountains,The Bone Pit, Wounded Coast and a couple other small areas that you will have to travel to in order to complete the tasks given in quests. There really wasn’t much exploring to do on your own, as doing so without having a quest icon over the area was usually a waste of type with no rewards or items given. What I felt really started to get tiring in the game was the fact that you got to see most of the area you explore in the first act of the game, while you are gathering up coin for your expedition in the second act. However, after that you find yourself revisiting the same areas over and over, even the dungeons were reused for several areas with the only change a stone door being locked so you can’t access a path, but all graphics and other paths being exactly the same. By the end of the game I was thoroughly tired of seeing the same areas over and over again. Of course, I took the time to go through every side quest they offered, only probably missing about 3 side quests in the entire game.