Dragon Age II focuses its adventure on the city of Kirkwall and Hawke's life across a decade. Repeated dungeon assets irritate, yet the companion writing and snappier staging make this entry far more affecting than its reputation suggests.
Your verdict
Category
Action RPG1 player18+
Description
RPG by BioWare and EA, March 2011. Ferelden refugee Hawke settles in Kirkwall and rises to city Champion status across ten years of adventures. Deep companion relationships through the favour and disadvantage system, moral decisions influencing Hawke's status and faster fluid combat. Sequel focused on a single protagonist rather than open world.
Dragon Age II review
4/5
Art direction
★★★★★
"Striking"
4/5
Music
★★★★★
"Excellent"
4/5
Story
★★★★★
"Captivating"
Kirkwall is built on its slaving past: bronze statues with screaming faces everywhere, chains sculpted into the gates, an architecture that crushes the passer-by. The style is stylized too, elves with elongated features, horned qunari drawn like idols, sword blows spraying exaggerated arcs of blood. The city becomes a character you watch age over ten years.
The score follows the three acts as three climates: a color of fortune-seeking and arrival in the early years, tenser strings as the city divides, then brass and heavy percussion once mages and templars stop speaking to each other. One theme, the one tied to the family, returns in each act with one instrument fewer, a measure of the price paid.
Everything is told by Varric, under interrogation, and the game shows from the outset that his account lies: the first battle plays out with an all-powerful hero, until the interrogator cuts in and demands the truth, after which the scene replays in a humbler key. This reported-narrative frame justifies the shortcuts and makes the player a witness to a legend in the making.
A sequel from BioWare, Dragon Age II tightens the story around the rise of a single protagonist, Hawke, over a decade in the city of Kirkwall, with snappier combat and personality wheel dialogue. The character writing, the political and religious tension and the weight of the choices win over narrative RPG fans. The reused environments and an uneven pace divide fans of the first entry. A divisive yet striking title for fans of role playing stories with lasting consequences.
