• 360

by Marron Marvel on 08.08.11

Anyone who knows me can likely guess that one of the first things I did when I got home last Tuesday was download and play the new dowloadable content for Dragon Age II. Titled Legacy, the game brings new maps, new challenges, new darkspawn, and a new, customizable class-specific weapon.

The story is told much in the same way as the rest of the game — with Varric sharing the details to set up the story while he is being interrogated. It seems that a group of dwarves from the Carta, a vicious criminal cartel, are hunting down the Hawke family (AKA you) for their blood.

At the beginning of the quest, Hawke finds him or herself and their chosen companions wandering through some mountains in a map that — thankfully — has not been seen before. Eventually there is some face-off with the Carta dwarves that have been searching for you, and it turns out that they want your blood to awaken some kind of ancient god. Great. Just what I needed with everything else going on. Continuing on leads to a long-forgotten fortress and then even more mysteries as you uncover a secret Grey Warden prison.

You’ll have to ask my boyfriend to be 100% sure, as I was too engrossed while playing the game, but I think that I blew through the new content in about two and a half hours. This seems to be about on par with the Dragon Age: Origins DLC I purchased, as well as the DLC for similar games such as Fable II and Fable III. Of course, to be fair, I decided to play through the new content with my maxed level 50 Rogue, whom was already finished destroying the Circle and became Viscount, so this may not be a fair judgment of how much content there really is.

That said, I really enjoyed the new download content. There were a few things that were really good about it, despite the questionable length (or lack thereof):

• New maps. I am on my fourth play-through of Dragon Age II right now, and I cannot tell you how tired I am of seeing the same maps over and over and over again. The new maps in Legacy were a breath of fresh air.
• New darkspawn. There were some new baddies to fight in this DLC, and they were pretty awesome. One of them is a giant hurlock-esque thinggie (technical term) that looked like it had ‘roid rage and carried a giant shield wall that, according to Fenris, the Tevinter soldiers used to use; but it took ten Tevinters to carry one shield. It only took one ‘roided out darkspawn to carry this mofo.
• New banter. I love the background banter between the characters. Something different from the banter in the main part of the game is that Hawke joins in on the banter. This made me incredibly happy as there were only a few times in the actual game that she responded to the things that her comrades were saying as we wandered around Kirkwall and the Free Marches.
• Side quests. Even though this new DLC is one big quest, there were still a few side-quests that you could undertake, and I found that to be a nice addition.
• New class-specific weapon. Now, I’ve only played the new DLC quest once, but I already like it. Why? Because you get to upgrade the weapon three times, and you get a choice of four different options for each upgrade. That’s 24 possible combinations for different effects.

If you’re a fan of Dragon Age II proper, you’re sure to enjoy the new download content. My only real suggestion is that you do the quest while playing the actual game, not after you have finished. I say this because the biggest reward from the DLC is the customizable weapon — a weapon that levels up as you do, which makes it pretty useless if you are playing through the new content after beating the main game. You can play the new content at any point in the game; Hawke in my latest play-through is about to head into the Deep Roads for Bartrand’s expedition, so I may very well go and get the weapon now.

So, once again, Varric is awesome. Dragon Age II is awesome, and this download content is awesome. It gets an overall rating of awesome. Go download it now.

NuyoRiquena thinks it was a quickie that left her satisfied...  Read here.

‘Dragon Age II: Legacy’ is available to download now from Xbox Live (800 MS Points), PSN ($9.99/£6.10) and PC (800 BioWare Points).

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