Dragon Age 2

BioWare’s one of those gaming firms that’s always done their own thing. Even when they were behind other properties like table-top RPGs and Star Wars, every one of their games has a solid story, characters and dialogue, nuanced gameplay (that you can still bullrush through) and a well-earned feeling of epicness when you’re all done. They don’t do FPSs, don’t do multiplayer, and definitely don’t do sports. They do BioWare, and that’s it.

With the Dragon Age series, they tried to stitch together a new fantasy RPG landscape, and more or less succeeded. With this sequel, instead of building a character entirely from scratch, you’re acting out the key details of the hero Hawke, a pivotal figure in the world. The gameplay has been given a much-needed bit of polish, making in-the-thick-of-it fighting fast and visceral, but still deeply affected by strategy and teamwork. The power-trees are more complex and force choices in your play style, and the side quests are as intricate or as superficial as you like. You could rush through the game headlong, but honestly, doing that is just cheating yourself out of a huge array of clever little challenges and story.

Plenty of the tropes from the first series are here: paid downloadable content, dialogue options that change the course of the story, earning character loyalty, and decent replayability with different choices. It’s by no means a revolutionary achievement, but it’s well worth the money for well over a week of great gaming.