There are 43. The rankings from #42 to #2 are absolute bull[expletive deleted]. But #43 (the worst) is spot-on, and so is #1 (the best).
No, really. I tested this. With SCIENCE. Which is to say, I asked my wife, and she confirmed both the best and the worst Companions without breaking a sweat. So that’s three data points, right there.
Really? I thought 2 and 3 were spot on…
Wrex barely beats Garus for #2. I’ll unbend to the point to say that #2 is thus moderate bull[expletive deleted]; and, of course, Mordin is a very justifiable #4.
Inquisition was a pretty strong game, if for no other reason, because while I do not like Sera or Vivienne for their character traits, I do not actively hate them for their mere presence in the game (looking at you Ash from ME2 & 3. And that could be fixed by going back to the first game and running through again, this time someone else gets the save.)
Anders dead last is very fair.
Aveline so high? Fenris, so low? Not having Wrex in the top 5, at least, is close to criminal.
I have to admit Aveline was solid. Her and Varric were the only good NPCs in DA2. She had a good story arc. And ok, she was at least one character who called Hawke out on his behavior. Of course, she did it when she had no reason to, too. Ahem. And she was an absolutely glorious tank. Better at it than Alistar could be.
Fenris’ problems in DA2 stem from the writing issues in the game. Yeah, he’s in the house 6 years. Of course, the entire city goes into stasis during the jumps between “Acts.” It was simply a sloppy way to write the game. That’s not the problem of Fenris, and he’s hardly the only one who suffers from that poor writing decision.
I think the reason Aveline and Varric are looked at better than the other companions was simply that they are the most fleshed out.
I think the characters of Merril, Fenris, and Isabella are all good ideas and what is there is interesting, they are just not fully fleshed out.
I also like the idea of a game taking place over a longer period of time, but the way they went about it was half baked. If you have time passing, you have got to have things happening to the characters. You see they were able to do it with the characters in the Mass Effect trilogy- stuff happened to Garrus while he was gone. Wrex did stuff while away from the Normandy.
I think the concept for Dragon Age 2 in general was great and different, it just came down to being a rushed game.
Oh, I don’t have problem with time skips, in theory. But when 10 years passes and nothing changes. Yeah…oops. Including that crime Aveline SWORE she would get to the bottom of solving going down the memory hole until it became time to say, “Oh Hawke, can you look into this troublemaker for me?”
“You mean the same one we agreed was a problem?”
“Huh? Did I say that?” *facepalm*
Mordin should have been tied with Garrus at the very least or their positions should have been swapped.
.
Agreed on Anders. “Oh, lovely. Here I am trying to stop a brewing civil war by pointing out the injustices Mages deal with and you just made the Templars’ point for them. And NO, I’m not interested in you in that way either.”
That’s one of the most annoying things about DAII. You can find out in advance that Merrill and Anders are ticking time bombs. But there is absolutely no way to stop them from doing the crazy things they’re going to do.