Dragon Age 2 is an epic fantasy role playing game. Developer Bioware is promising fantastic storytelling for this sequel, amongst all the swordplay and blood!
You'll play Hawke, who can be one of three traditional classes: Warrior, Wizard or Rogue. You can also choose to be male or female. Conversation now is more like the effective system used in Sci-Fi adventure Mass Effect 2, with its inclusion of a dialog wheel.
The demo gives you a good introduction the to story and the gameplay: You are on the run from the Darkspawn, after the destruction of your village. Using the your abilities and those of your group, you have to survive wave after wave of Darkspawn, including a fight with an enormous Ogre. The action is quite hectic, and you need to quickly grasp battle tactics, as despite appearances simple hacking and slashing won't work!
Graphically Dragon Age 2 looks improved, although not dramatically different to the original. If you got tired of lots of brown spattered with red, there's little to excite you here. The storytelling seems to be the biggest attraction - your character's fate is sealed from the start. Like a movie where you see the end first, and are then taken on a journey towards that, Dragon Age 2 moves away from traditional storytelling. Your choices and actions do affect the game though, so it's not totally linear. Th introduction and opening part of the gameplay give you a great sense of danger and of facing an almost impossible task, which gives Dragon Age 2 a lot of drama.
If you enjoyed the original, Dragon Age 2 promises to be a great continuation of that fantasy masterpiece.
