I was wrong about
BioWare's
Dragon Age II. When I first saw the gameplay footage for the game, I thought that the developer had dumbed down the game and turned it into a mindless button masher that would suit perfectly for both the PlayStation 3 and the X-Box 360 consoles. After playing the Personal Computer version of
the demo that was released today, I do not even have any interest now to test out the consoles versions because PC gamers, you should be pleased to know that just like the first game,
DAII is meant to be played on the PC because the character abilities are best accessed using the action bar at the bottom of the screen.
In that curious, mystical way, Flemeth is so freaking hot...
Just like what BioWare did to the sequel of Mass Effect, DAII is just a faster, more action-packed version of the original game. You still auto attack the enemy after selecting them, though now, the attack animation has that fast combo look to them thus fooling me into thinking that the game was a button masher as I mentioned in the previous paragraph. Your character has access to different abilities that must be activated by clicking them on the action bar. You can still switch to anyone in your party at any time and you can program their behaviors to your liking using the tactic slots available to them. Unlike the first game however, you don't get to select from a variety of background stories for your character but thankfully, the writing is still as powerful and engrossing as before.
...Yes, even hotter than the fireball spell!
Speaking of the game's storyline, it looks like this tale runs concurrent with the first game and I really like that approach. There's even a really fancy framing device with the tale being told by one of your companions who is being interrogated by a mysterious Chantry figure. The voice acting and the character interactions are very solid. You can still influence your companions to like or dislike you through the branching dialogue options. There is now an indicator that marks the behavioral alignments of your choices of dialogues but the effectst of the accumulative impact of that can only be seen in the full game.
Notice the really nasty textures on the clothing and armor.
The only bad thing I can say about the demo experience is that the highest graphical setting is stuck at the "medium" option. I ran the game at native 1920x1080 and even at this mediocre graphics setting, it looks pretty darn good. The character models look a bit better and I hope that in its final form, the blurry textures will be replaced with higher resolution ones like those found in the first game. The game even has DirectX 11 support, so the game will be prettier when I finally make that move to upgrade my PC in the future. I should have known that BioWare will not let us down. If this demo is any indication, DAII will surely be another killer role playing game. The game will be released on March 8th - just a few weeks from now.
FIRST IMPRESSION: 5 out of 5
