As many fans of the original feared, this game doesn't have that many things common with the first game, apart from some characters appearing in it. To me that is not necessarily a negative thing, since I've had my reservations and fare share of resentment towards the gameplay of Origins.

The game became much faster, and more action packed, all to the dismay of hardcore RPG fans. The interface was simplified until there is almost nothing left to call as such. Which means in some places it is oversimplified sacrificing usability and intuitiveness. For example when you try to loot an enemy or chest. The list is so minimalist that it only shows three items at any given time. Even if there are 5 items in the chest, you only can see the first three. The only way to be able to see the rest is by picking up the ones you can see, even if those are completely useless things to you. But in the end I just looted everything and visited a merchant from time to time to get rid of the junk, so this is not that big of a problem really.

And you can't even choose your squad's equipment in the game. Hell you can't even choose the outfit of your own character. Ok I'm not telling the complete truth there, because you can equip new armor, but most of them look exactly the same. The only way I could make my character look somewhat unique is by editing my savegame and switching out my character's outfit with one of the NPC's that I thought looked cool.

I thought Awakening bore the marks of the developers of Mass Effect 2, well this one has trademark things from both ME1, and ME2, and not necessarily good ones at that. The main questline actually consists of re-establishing your family name and wealth for the most part of the game. And of course you do this by doing completely stand alone missions one after another, without barely any connection between them. Hence the similarity to Mass Effect 2. But the trademark it wears from ME1 is the re-re-re-re-recycling of maps. There were caves, and building complexes in the game, that I had to clear dozens of times, and each time the exact same map represented a completely different venue. I'm OK with reusing textures or other assets, or even a complete room, but the whole freaking map? And dozens of times? That's madness. "Well it happened like this Mr. prosecutor I'm telling you, he fell into the knife, and then he fell again twenty times."

The game is easier than the first one, which is a relief to me. But the fact remains that the outcome of battles still hinges 90% on pure luck. I say this because it happened, that for some reason I had to reload an earlier save, and the battle that I won easily just five minutes before turned into a bloodbath with my comrades falling. And I'm pretty sure I didn't lost my ability to play in the five minutes between the two attempts.

One more thing that I had more of, than what I would've liked is bossfights. And many times these bossfights seem neverending. I kill the bastard, but he always gets revived with full energy two or three times. Just make the damn health bar three times longer, but don't frack with me, if it's HP drops to zero it should die once and for all.

Another annoying thing is when the boss flies into a "safe zone" or I don't know what to call it, where I can't hurt it. But of course the boss can still attack me all he wants while the henchmen just keep coming at me. And another curious thing about bossfights is that their difficulty seem completely random. I would've expected the last bossfight in the game to be the hardest, but that can't be farther from reality. By far the hardest boss to defeat in the game is at about the middle. I had to try dozens of times before I went completely mad, and lowered the difficulty to casual. Which made it a walk in the park. So I don't know how they balance tested this game, if Normal = Impossible while Casual = Do nothing tactics wise and still win. OK the problem was only with some of the major bossfights, as difficulty during the game seem fairly constant, except for some spikes.

I enjoyed the story, and some of the characters are good, but I can't say the same about the others. Most has some kind of idiocy that makes me want to slap them in the face at some point(s) in the game. And I also didn't like the fact, that if you turn the romance option down just once for someone, you never ever get the opportunity again, even if it happened in the first third of the game.

And there were some inconsistencies in the handling of my imported save from Awakening It seems to me that the save import system doesn't work very well, or they didn't account for every possibility.

And I have to say that if you choose to play as a mage, then the whole story becomes pretty comical. They didn't adjust the story well enough to account for that. You're running around with a staff casting all kinds of spells, and no-one ever notices that you're actually a mage, while your sister just goes around worrying about getting caught. They either should've changed the story to account for the discrepancies or simply disallow you to play as a mage. They already restrict you to be a human, why not go all the way. Don't get me wrong I liked the story, but it just doesn't work if you play as a mage. So if you ever decide to play the game, do yourself a favour and play as a rouge or a warrior so it doesn't become comical.

Another thing I disliked is that the whole game takes place in and around one city. By the end of the game I was so tired of travelling the wounded coast for the thousandth time. And Kirkwall itself got boring very fast as well. That's why towards the end my playtrough almost turned into a speedrun I was so tired of the scenery. Just running towards the next quest marker without thinking.

The game didn't age too well. I remembered that the graphics was pretty good when it was released. But now nearly 5 years later, it looks almost pathetic.

+

  • Story  
  • Fast paced combat  
  • It has the potential for a second playtrough, to try different story choices  


-

  • Oversimplified interface  
  • Inconsistencies in the story (especially playing as a mage)  
  • Too many and too long bossfights  
  • Too few areas to explore  
  • Re-used maps  
  • The above two reinforce each other  


Scoring card:

graphics/realization: 6/10 (for re-using the same maps, and ageing badly)
story/atmosphere: 8/10 (minus one for the mage problem)
gameplay/controls: 8/10

overall impression: 8/10

I didn't mention gameplay time. It was about 30 hours on normal, doing all sidequests, and companion quests. But not including the story DLCs. I don't think I'll ever play those since EA never bothered to lower their prices, they still cost the same as when they were released over 4 years ago. It seems to me that after the bad reception EA simply abandoned the game for good, not even bothering to put it on a sale from time to time.

When in fact it's not a bad game actually. I might not be popular by saying this but I enjoyed it much more than Origins. Both the gameplay and the story, but especially the squad banter