Hooray! An expansion to the best fucking game of 2009 adding new missions, new story, new characters, higher level caps and items. The problem is though, they kind of fucked up this expansion a little bit due to some problems. Instead of the same guys who developed the original game I believe it was developed by a separate team. It's still a great Dragon Age experience but they fucked up some things that they shouldn't have done in this expansion pack. Also, it needed to be a lot longer and more detailed! The story in this game was incredibly lackluster to something as large and detailed as the original game. So here is my review of something to tide us over until Dragon Age 2 arrives!
Graphics: Everyone who doesn't agree can suck my dick, but the graphics are fucking amazing. There are occasionally some low-resolution textures throughout the world but it doesn't fucking matter because the game looks absolutely fucking gorgeous. Everything from the design of the levels and environments, down to the small details like weapons. Everything in this game is incredibly detailed and actually has the size and scale to actually make it look fucking gigantic. Simply looking at the detail of the fortress at Vigil's Keep or the city of Amarathine, there is just huge amounts of detail in the game with everything looking completely unique and detailed. The same can of course be said of the original game and the expansion keeps this same awesome shit, with huge castle, large detailed cities and well-design very large scale environments from the Thaigs, all the way to the Blackmarsh. The spell effects and everything else look absolutely awesome and the animations are top notch again. It reminds me of having the detail of a pre-rendered background in something such as Baldurs Gate but actually being renders. So overall, the graphics are fucking ace.
Sound: The sound is mostly same as the first game considering it's the same weapon sounds and some of the same characters. However, Anders, the new mage, sounds just like fucking Alistar and has a similar personality to boot. They could have been a little more unique. Most of the voice acting for the non-player characters is pretty fucking good but the voice of The Mother is fucking annoying. I was getting irritated as shit whenever she was fucking speaking and it made me want to choke the shit out of her. The rest of the new characters have pretty average voice acting and pretty boring ass personalities to boot. Oghren is still himself, but no one gives a shit about Nathaniel or the new elf or dwarf. I mean shit I already forgot their fucking names so suck it. Anyways, there are some really well-done music tracks to go with the game that fit extremely well.
Gameplay: The gameplay is still the same Dragon Age gameplay but much more high level. They added in new spells, new talents for characters and new specializations which are fantastic. Some of these specializations for characters such as the warriors ones really help him to kick a lot of fucking ass. There are also new class skills to boot but they can make the game pretty easy. Massacre and Peon's Plight allow me to absolutely decimate almost anyone along with the new mage spells. However, they really throw some tough as fights at you, especially at the end with the battle with Mother. You end up having to kill a shit ton of stuff around you before you can even get near the boss. So there is still some great fucking battles where you have to stab someone in the face. There is also a shit ton of new items and new powerful runes that you craft into armor as well. Pretty much by the end of the game you are fucking godlike. The gameplay is still fun as hell and there are some excellent quests to go, problems to solve, and tons of new shit to do around the world. All the new gameplay perks help to make it a better high level experience as well.
Story: This is the biggest fucking problem with the game right here. The story is lacking almost completely. So you are still the same Warden you were, unless you sacrificed yourself like a faggot pussy, but only the biggest faggots would do that. You start off as Vigil's Keep is being attacked by some darkspawn and one of them talks. So here it is, a great set up for some fucking good story to figure out what the fuck is going on. Instead you get three main plot quests to go on to fight out that some Mother abomination was created by the Architect to stop the darkspawn from always wanting to kill people. So you can either kill him or save him, but then you kill Mother and that's fucking it. There could have been so much more story, and gameplay to build this thing up to make it more of an epic expansion. Instead, it hits a good start and then fizzles out like an old man trying to cum.
It's still a lot of fun but needed more story. Dragon Age 2 will be awesome though. 8.5/10
