I haven't played either of the Dragon Age games yet. I have Dragon Age 2 now and was wondering if there is any harm in playing this one first before the original. Will it spoil the story of the original Dragon Age game for me if I play the second game first? Should they be played in order for the story of them? Thanks.

I haven't played number 2, but by all accounts I've heard, they are not related. I think you'd be fine to start there.

Lots of people on the web say this, but all my real life friends say it's fine. How is it worse than number one (keep it succint, so as not to hijack the thread)? Is it really a step back, or just not a step forward?

You will not spoil almost anything. The game takes place on a different region and the references to the first are very few (in fact If I recall correctly they are all just nods for people who played the first one) and I was left wondering what need was there for importing your DGO save games.

I would recommend playing the first one over the second simply because its incredibly better both gameplay and mechanics wise. DA2 is and feels rushed, consolified and simplified to the core. The story and characters are not particularly bad though, and has many good moments in those areas (I could rant about the misses in the story but that would need spoiling it.)

It's not as bad as people make it out to be but it's just not up to the standard that the series should be at. It feels as though they decided to put more of their resources on the Mass Effect series as that has been nothing but improvements from what I have heard. The main problem I have with DA 2 is that there is so much backtracking that it just ends up becoming boring because you have seen it all before. Maybe it's just like the star wars episode 1 thing where people's expectations were just set way too high

The two games are pretty much stand alone story wise but there are a mountain of cameos from the first game that you won't be able to appreciate.

* Battle system was dumbed down (press button make awesome happen)
* enemies now spawn in waves. Method used utterly destroys suspension of disbelief. There is no way to protect fragile characters.
* very limited number of maps that are recycled multiple times
* there is MUCH less ability to effect how events play out
* dialogue choices have been dumbed down to 3 options (saint, jackass, bloodlust)
* you have no way of knowing what your dialogue choice will make Hawke say in advance

FWIW, I still thought DA2 was a lot of fun, just nowhere near as good as the first.

You've probably heard they recycled locations. It's literally about a dozen maps that you go through many, many times each, even though they're supposed to be distinct areas. I found that it disrupted immersion and made the game feel a lot more repetitive.

Another thing is the enemy reinforcement feature. I did not like that at all, with some battles seeming to last forever because new enemies just kept spawning, sometimes they'd just appear out of thin air which again, ruins immersion. This happens every battle, and you might encounter many battles in any given area.

Many things in DA2 were simplified, from the quests to the inventory to the game world. The side-quests were kind of boring too, mostly random 'return item to owner' type stuff. There's less inventory management than before (not necessarily a bad thing depending on how you like it). The game world also feels smaller and less lively.

The writing in DA2 isn't bad and the game isn't completely boring, but it really is a few levels below DA:O.

Snickersnack pretty much hit the nail on the head. I'd like to stress, though, that despite the fact that it's supposedly an RPG, your actions have almost ZERO effect on what happens ingame. There are a few minor things you can change, but for the most part the events of the region will play out the same way regardless of what you do. That's the thing that irked me the most, even more than the endless "waves from behind" or the recycled locations. It's not a BAD game, but it's nowhere near as good as DA:O was.

Since you already have it, I'd say go ahead and play it. I think you might actually have a better experience by playing 2 first and Origins second, if you decide to get the first one.

Play the first one, ignore the fact that the 2nd one exists.

Don't let playing the 2nd, put you off playing the 1st.

Bah, don't listen to this, DA:O is only "good" in comparison to DA2 and then mostly because it's a playstyle they (the people saying that) prefer.

DA:O is not that great a game, it can be fun, but it is not good. It boils down to fetch quests and rather unimportant dialog decisions. You can leave your party on auto-pilot 3/4 of the time and they'll easily dispatch whatever attacks you.

If you just want to plow through something mindless DA2 is probably the game for that. I guess if you want to read 100s of pages of lore maybe try DA:O, that's probably the best thing it has going for it and even then a good novel would be better.

Neither are good games, sometimes they can be fun though. People complain a lot about the combat in DA2 and I get it, it's not very good, the part they often leave out is how totally ass the combat is in DA:O. I've now played it on console and PC and they both have horrible combat, I mean really, really bad. I literally soloed a certain dragon at the top of a certain peak, my party was too fucking stupid to stay alive without insane micro so I simply let them get knocked out. The dumb dragon just breathed fire, there's several viable ways to have really high fire resist by then, but even if you don't a high Con score would probably do just as well, I just sat there and staffed him to death while drinking endless pots and HoTing myself for stuns. Yes, the big, bad ass dragon was too lame to even pose a challenge to a single character.

This, in essence, is about how badly you need your party most of the time and about how badly they need you. You could probably miss the fact there's a tactics screen at all and get through most or all of it.

1. It has no top down "tactical view", which makes a bunch of the core game play mechanics very messy, and makes the whole thing harder to control. It also means people like me get motion sickness sometimes.

2. Race, story and setting are more linear, less inspired, and less immersive.

3. The setting is bland.

4. Lots of issues relating to character interactions (google for examples).

Overall, DAO was polished and awesome, DA2 was rushed and uninspired.

You can definitely play DA2 without playing DA:O. The plots are pretty much tangential to one another.

While the bandwagon (justified or not) is to dislike DA2, I enjoyed it. It definitely has its problems - combat gets repetitive, dungeons do not have much variety (usually the same 3-4 dungeons, just with a different path through them), I found the game worth playing and I thoroughly enjoyed the plot and found it to be more memorable than DA:O's.