Home » Reviews » Review: Dragon Age II “Legacy” DLC
Reviews

Review: Dragon Age II “Legacy” DLC

Dragon Age II‘s new Legacy DLC has been described as somewhat of an ‘apology’ from Bioware in response to the complaints of many gamers about the main game itself. Repetitive maps, tactics-poor battles and an abruptly ending story were all decried as major issues with the game when it hit our consoles and PCs last year. Legacy is doing its best to show us that Bioware is listening and adapting.

Personally I never felt that Dragon Age II was as much of a failure as so many others did; I enjoyed the game and although I did notice the recycled environments, I don’t feel it majorly detracted from the game overall. The improvements made since Dragon Age: Origins in diversifying the races, improving the overall combat interface and inclusion of a main character who actually had a personality were more than enough for me – and let’s not forget the ‘everyone is bi’ mentality that let me shack up with whoever the hell I wanted!

The DLC pack revolves around Hawke & Co. travelling to the as-yet-unseen Vimmark Mountains, on information obtained from assassins that have been hounding you just off-screen. You’ll find yourself exploring through a Deep Roads-esque new environment that presents some impressive new visuals – hidden away in the mountains is an ancient Grey Warden tower, built into a deep valley. The story is no epic tale, but offers some nice additions to the overall mythology of the game. You’ll hear more backstory on Hawke’s family and the Grey Wardens, more of the ever-present journal entries detailing the history of the world, and the always-welcome banter between your party members. It’s strongly recommended to bring Varric, Anders and Bethany/Carver along for this mission, as each of them adds additional dialogue and story to the mission overall.

As you make your way through caverns, buildings and tunnels to reach the tower you’ll encounter a crazed company of darkspawn-tainted dwarves, and a welcome variety of new and old darkspawn enemies. On top of the now familiar hurlocks, genlocks and emissaries, you will also encounter new enemy types: genlock alphas with giant shields that require you to flank them to do any damage, and hard-hitting brontos that run and slam into you to disrupt your attacks. Having to account for these knock-down attacks does force you to vary your attack patterns to survive, rather than the standard DAII strategy of ‘press attack until you win’. It also feels like enemy AI has improved a bit, with both these enemies and the other existing types taking better advantage of their abilities to mess with you.

The visuals of these new areas are also to be commended, with many areas displaying sweeping views of the tower you’re attempting to enter, and a greater variety in the decoration of the tunnels and rooms you move through. The well-built dappled lighting of Dragon Age II returns, and moving from structures to tunnels to daylit areas gives all the variety you’d expect. You’ll still be seeing a lot of browns and greys (and red, blood goes everywhere as usual), but this is fairly standard for the game overall.

All in all, Legacy offers a good reason to return to the Free Marches whether you were a fan of the base game or not. The adjustments made in the DLC should quell the anger of some haters, and the final battle with its increased strategy and team management requirements is definitely worth playing for. Finishing the DLC gives you a message that upcoming DLC missions will be launched from the Hawke estate in the same way, leaving us with hope of more bad guys to bleed out in future.


This article may contain affiliate links, meaning we could earn a small commission if you click-through and make a purchase. Stevivor is an independent outlet and our journalism is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.

About the author

Matt Gosper

aka Ponk – a Melburnian gay gamer who works with snail mail. Enthusiastically keeping a finger in every pie of the games industry. I'll beat you at Mario Kart, and lose to you in any shooter you can name.