Dragon Age 2 - Mark of the Assassin Reviews

Time for a small roundup of Mark of the Assassin reviews.

First, GameSpot goes for a moderate 7/10:

The newest Dragon Age II downloadable add-on bears more than a passing resemblance to another slice of content from developer BioWare: the Kasumi - Stolen Memory add-on for Mass Effect 2. In both, a stealthy assassin joins your party. In both, you mingle among socialites at a fancy party. Both are also heist missions in which you steal a valuable object from your host's vault. BioWare seems to be drawing its ideas from a progressively shallower well, but the good news for Dragon Age II fans is that Mark of the Assassin is more satisfying than the game's previous premium download. It introduces a new and personable party member named Tallis, whose charming attitude gives the adventure a pleasant, buoyant vibe. A buggy stealth sequence lands with a thud, but the game recovers, presenting you with a tantalizing choice and concluding with an easy but entertaining boss battle.

Ripten also goes for 7/10:

MotA is a more light-hearted romp compared to Legacy, though you will learn considerably more about the Qunari and their beliefs, which adds some weight to the proceedings. The new loot is fairly decent, although I didn’t find any real use for it considering my party was already kitted out in similar and sometimes better gear. There’s also an extended sequence wherein you can sneak around the chateau, distracting and clobbering guards, if you enjoy a little variation in your gameplay. Alternatively, you can just wander around the old fashioned way, killing everyone you come across. Finally, MotA adds a few more puzzles for players to set their wits against, although they’re not particularly difficult.

Over at GamesRadar, the score is 8/10 despite some complaints:

Even with the strong story and varied gameplay, Mark of the Assassin is not without some sigh-worthy weaknesses. There are just two new enemies (only one of which is remarkable enough to provide any sort of challenge), and the rest are the same token baddies fought in wide open (read: boring) spaces. There’s also a bit too much wandering along invisible borders of familiar wilderness sections picking up meaningless, invisible side quest materials. That kind of gameplay is pure filler, and BioWare does little to mask it.

While the stealth sections are a welcome respite from the repetitive combat, BioWare’s not exactly encroaching on Splinter Cell territory. Guards are ridiculously stupid: they can’t see in anything less than direct torchlight, have small cones of awareness, and will attribute your beating them unconscious to simply passing out from the heat of their armor. Still, even if these sections should have been better, we can’t emphasize enough how relieved we were to have something different.

7/10 from fansite Greywardens:

I feel like Mark of the Assassin had some good pieces in place, but they didn’t really just come together in the right way. The new features like Tallis’ fighting style and the stealth mode seemed good on paper but didn’t really work out well in the game. The story has it’s moments but it felt like BioWare was really trying to carry this DLC on Day’s star power as opposed to its own merits.

TheControllerOnline - 8/10

GamingAddiction - 4/5