This has become one of my favourite games
This is a rather late review but having now played the game extensively thought it time to review what has become one of my favourite games.
Without any doubt the big gripe about the game is being stuck in Kirkwall most of the time with many of the environments being recycled. This is supposed to be an adventure game right, which means adventuring across land and sea, forests, mountains, caves, villages and towns. Just the opening of the game 'Escape from Lothering' could have taken up half the game as the Hawk family made their way to Kirkwall, certainly a missed opportunity there.
The other big gripe is the story. What we have is a 3-way political power struggle between the Mages, Templars, and Qunari which gets rather messy and confused at times, not unlike real life, but in a game I think many of the players (especially the younger ones) prefer the simplicity and consistency of who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. In a sense DA2 is far more sophisticated than DA1, the characters are deeper, more complex, I can see where the devs were going with it, but many of the outcomes left you feeling ambivalent, like what the hell is going on? why did he do that? all that effort and I couldn't I save my family… were the devs trying to be poignant or what ? This is an adventure game, outcomes should be exhilarating, feelings of sadness and loss are a bad move, not clever.
And on to the good bits.
The protagonist Hawk talks! Fem Hawk is a bombshell, beautiful voice, smart, witty dialogue. Made a huge difference compared to the dumb hero in DA1.
The fighting is brilliant, fast , visceral, explosive, action packed. This is where 90% of the game shines and is far more fun than DA1. Unfortunately normal / hard mode doesn't do the fighting justice as real tactics and strategy only come into play on nightmare mode which introduces enemy immunities (i.e. resistance to fire, cold etc), friendly fire and the necessity of using CCC (cross class combo) which is basically the team acting in unison to take down difficult bosses quickly. IMO, the devs should have scaled it so that anything above casual required knowing these things.
The graphics are awesome on The PC. Some of the best I've seen anywhere, and nearly on par with Crysis. The devs really went to town designing the DLC Mark of the Assassin (MOTA), shimmering lakes, mist, fog, hazy sunbeams cutting through the forest canopy, utterly mesmerizing.
The addition of the DLCs Legacy and MOTA add some new places to visit. Legacy up to halfway is good fun (where you are given the option to return to Kirkwall) and MOTA (all of it!) shows us what DA2 could have been and that the devs have been listening to the feedback (see my review on this one).
So why am I still playing ? Well I've just added the Sebastian DLC, so some new quests there, and it's still great fun swapping around the team build, change of tactics and so on simply to see what happens. And its always different. Nightmare mode makes it so. Currently using 3 mages and Varric (archer), Merrill (mage) fine tuned 100% spirit damage dealer for the first time (utterly deadly), the team often blitzkriegs its way through the toughest fights. Makes me laugh. A job well done. And exhilarating as it should be.