I have changed my score for this game based on the fact that it has very little replay value for me since I bought and played it.
They removed most of the things I love about rpgs and especially from DAO and flashed up the combat a lot. Saying that I liked some aspects of the combat but not enough to justify the removal of all the crafting and personalising of characters and party members.
I missed terribly the immersion from being able to converse with my team members whenever I liked and of course the romances were for me totally lacking especially compared to other Bioware games.
The story was pretty dark and bleak, death of loved ones a constant theme throughout the game, not much fun to play of you are struggling with your own grief in rl. The mirror of transformation a nice idea but the awful ghastly shop with the droning and terrible shopkeeper...who likes that kind of place? Twelve year old boys?
It's an ok game but a HUGE let down after Dragon Age Origins. I've also missed the player made mods as there was no tool kit released for this game. Therefore our modding community have been extremeely limited in what they could do with the game. Such a shame.… Expand

Yes, the level design is utterly terrible and the visuals are sub-par, but everything else is pure gold. I acknowledge the game has its flaws, however I feel that those flaws are only minor blemishes when compared to the many redeeming aspects of Dragon Age 2.

I was thoroughly heart-broken after playing this game. Most of what I had loved from the original game was stripped. The approach of having a "framed narrative" was interesting but I feel that the story just did not deliver (I had to ask myself midway through Act 2 what was my purpose for continuing) and it was certainly not of Bioware calibare. The characters were almost one dimensional with a particular elf who would not look out of place in Stephanie Meyer book. The recycled areas quickly got boring and the gamed ceased being an adventure. But most of all I hated the combat: enemys that explode as if they were made of of balloons filled with cranberry juice; endless waves of trash mobs which seems as a vain attempt to make the game feel longer; bosses battled that bordered on ridiculous (*ahem* Meredith and Corpyheus).

In the end this game didn't not feel like Dragon Age I will admit in conclusion that there are worse games out there but certainly Bioware is better than this rushed mess. I hope for better in the third installment; having played The Witcher 2 and Tomb Raider the bar is set pretty high now.… Expand

More like Dragon Age Episodes.
If DA O was like a tasty soup, then consider DA 2 a watered down version of that same soup. Hence my rating doesn't go lower, because there is still some goodness left. enough to enjoy the game. Still, here comes the bad:
So what happened? It honestly appears as though EA has twisted Bioware's nuts and asked them to make a sequel in such a short time. The main problem in Da 2 is the content, or rather the lack of it. 3 different stories occur and then the third one leads to a cliffhanger ending. Choice system this time is annoying this time which leads to the mages screwing up no matter what you choice is. Half the character roster is annoying and we are limited to 1 city (which still manages to be repetitive in itself).

But i guess there is enough good that will still make DA O fans play this. For other ppl, pick up DA O instead its a better game… Expand

i'm giving it 2, because i had so high hopes for this thing, i didn't even want to find anything about it in advance at it turned to that crap. of-course there are several things i like but due to critics way too high reviews i can't give 6/7 as i first thought just above average. might have been worth 7/8 without DA Origins

If you liked Dragon Age 1 youre probably not gonna like Dragon Age 2.

Everything good about DA1 has been replaced:

Combat System: Replaced with a worthless action oriented -no brainer system
Skill System: Dumbed down to no choices at all
Maps: THERE IS ONLY 1 MAP! All theyve done is make you enter from different doors. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?

LOL! 82 score, cmon this game is so bad compared with first one! trolllolololololololololololololololololooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Dragon Age II marks the beginning of the downfall of BioWare and the ever-rising scourge which is EA. Make no mistake, DA2 would be a good game (decent) on its own. But when you're a sequel to what is probably one of the greatest medieval RPGs of all time, you have a lot to live up to. Sadly, DA2 doesn't. Not even a little bit. Repetitive dungeons, lousy gameplay, dull characters, plot holes and so many more. Its literally a blight on gaming. Origins was the first ever medieval style game I actually finished. I wanted to get off this game a few minutes into the actual gameplay. It WAS that bad. I could go on forever but I feel like I'm gonna waste my time doing so cause you all know the drill anyway. The worst part is IF DA3 turns out good, I would have to finish this sad, sad game in order to play through the whole series properly. But somehow, I fear EA has more nasty things up their sleeves.… Expand

After Dragon Age: Origins I was so hyped and wanted to get my hand in this game. And what a waste of time that waiting was. It's not a good game. Almost everything that was good in Origins are thrown out of the window and what we get is a generic, action rpg for consoles. The story is horrible, they use the same caves and areas over and over again. And we cant even leave the god damn city! It's horrible, dont touch this piece of garbage!… Expand

Dragon Age 1 was one of those games you buy because it looked cool. I had no idea what I was about to live. So since the 1st one was amazing I thought DA2 would be similar.... don't be fooled... Gameplay 0 everything that made DA1 is dropped on DA2... you better get a controller for your PC version because you simply get a bad port from console to PC....

DA1 had 2 differents type of gameplay, console and PC. in DA2 they just said F*** PC lets go easy way.
Story as nothing near DA1...

Everything seem wrong with this version.... Wonder what Bioware had in mind...… Expand

I'm very disappointed in the massive amounts of negative reviews for DA:2. It is not origins 2, it is not skyrim, it is dragon age 2 so stop trying to make it what you want it to be and enjoy the game for what it is! I understand to an extent where they are coming from, but for the most part it is a good game, and the number one complaint is it's not Dragon Age Origins 2 but a totally different game. Why can't each game stand on its own? I think DA:2 does. First to address the poor points of 2 in my opinion, one the world has very few locations. It is not open, but neither was origins. Origins just had more instanced places to go. DA2 focuses on a central location and unlocking small instances there for storyline and quests. It plays very similarly to mass effect 2 in that way. Which personally is fine by me, but many people criticize that feature.

The other flaw to me is the combat animations can get a little over the top. It's a little bit borderline anime when you're playing a rogue. But to me it's a huge improvement over origin's animations (try playing a two handed dwarf in origins, you look ridiculous when you swing).

The last flaw is you can't create your own hero or play races other than human. Boohoo. Playing a dwarf would've been fun but I can live with this.

The good points, I like the fully voiced dialogue more. Instead of picking a fully written response you select a flavor of response or question and your hero speaks it, like you pick a humorous response or an angry one so you don't know exactly what he'll say. The game keeps track of what you pick and you start to sort of develop a personality. And it's much better than mass effect's series where you're always trying to be all bad or good because it doesn't work that way here so you can respond to each situation however you like and reactions are done individually and don't need to be unlocked that way.

Another thing I like is the talent tree. It's an actual tree now so it feels like you're making more of a build instead of just picking a selection of skills. You can also combine effects with other classes for combos so there's some depth there. Battle is not as tactical as origins but in general I like the combat and talents.

The story is compelling and good to me. It's not on such a grand scale as origins but you're following a family as they rise in importance and it's cool to watch it play out. There's still plenty of lore involved and it's immersive enough.

In general it's not as deep as origins but still a very enjoyable game.… Expand

Dragon Age Origins was the best RPG to come out in a long while. Though DA2 was good over all by the standards of the first game it was a let down.

First the good parts.

It was better than most any game that came out around the time it was released and many that were made before it. The graphics were acceptable but not a home run. There are side quests to do and the character leveling and UI were acceptable. Interaction in the story line was good and though there was only a little room to customize the story through your decisions. Some of the old DAO flavor was there. Over all a good but not great game.
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The bad parts, mostly comparing to Dragon Age Origins

Too Linear
DA2 felt much more linear than DA. There was less content over all than DAO and less options of things to do.

Graphics were rushed
It is easy to see for any serious gamer that the game was rushed. The textures could have been better. The map areas were limited and more recycled that DAO. I would have liked to have more area on the maps provided. It reminded me of some of the older games because things were recycled as much as they were.

A Console game
This game was console based with PC as an after thought. Big mistake on Bioware's pare because the made most of the DAO fans mad. It was a more of a console button masher than a true PC game.

Lacking in content
Though there was a lot of content as a sequel it was too short compared to DAO. The content was not as decision based as DAO. There was no real main map like in DA. At the end I found my self saying "That's it?"

I say, over all it is a good game but don't get your hopes up too much if you already played the first one.… Expand

For the original Dragon Age i wrote: Very immersing story, believable world, interesting NPCs, fun and demanding combat. Well, Dragon Age 2 has nothing of those.

There is mixed feelings on this game, as it not a "true" rpg, but after a while the game grew on me. I must also say, that this game now only cost just under 20USD which makes it good value for money. However had I paid full retail for this game I would most likely give it 5.5 or 6/10. But for 20USD this is a good game and the storyline is good, not mass effect good, but good.

Unfinished content, copy pasted areas all over the place, crass poorly written characters and story with huge gaps in the main story arc, bizarre half-done animations (not just bad ones which is admittedly a BioWare weakness even in their best games), a horrendous and game-breakingly stupid combat mode which suffers from randomness, long boring stretches of auto-winning, occasional spates of enemies becoming invincible which appears to have been done to shore up the glaring difficulty problems and horrendous camera angles that force you to change your position and sometimes strategy to get around the actual camera angles the game LETS you have. Combat, character builds, skill trees, you name it, it has been ripped out and replaced with something worse.

This is a dumb OTS minigame set in and around a single city vaunted in the marketing hype as alive and vibrant but which is actually sparsely populated with dead-faced zombie NPCs who stand in weird semi-circles and stuff a city in the midst of a copypasta wilderness where the normal lifestyle for all creatures great and small is apparently to teleport around bizarrely, perform some abysmally animated "moves" and then insta-die at the hands of the boring stock player character BioWare allows you to be the passenger of. Art style is lack-lustre compared to previous games and the feeling of a well-integrated beautiful fantasy realm from DA:O is gone in favour of a shabby mixture of cartoonish style and unfinished artwork where not even the size and scale of creatures described in BioWare's OWN CODEX ENTRIES have been faithfully observed.

This game plays on the name of its "heritage" to get you to part with your money, according to that heritage you are buying the sequel to Dragon Age: Origins, and a "spiritual successor" to the Baldur's Gate games. This game not only bears none of the fun of these games, it is a completely different type of game to them every element you might have liked from these games has been ripped out, changed beyond recognition or half-baked and I can't imagine any but a small lunatic fringe thinking them similar.

These things betray a lack of development resources which is one thing and forgivable, but it also represents a wilful disaggregation of everything about the franchise, everything fans have been expecting without telling the fans.

If this were a game on XBox live or a free flash game, I would say don't bother, find a tetris clone or angry birds or something. I really wouldn't pay money for it if I had the chance again.

Somewhere in Guantanamo Bay they may find a use for this game, but I suspect making people play this would be too inhuman and cruel when you have the much nicer option of waterboarding.… Expand

mauvais...très mauvais même. Après avoir joué un chef d'oeuvre comme dao ça fait un peu l'effet de se prendre une bonne baffe dans la figure (incredibly bad)

I didn't think very much of Dragon Age II at release, though I found it engaging enough to play through twice (and purchase some *ahem* DLC Legacy). My overall view was it wasn't as bad as I'd been led to believe (though not as amazing as "professional" reviews made out either). A post Mass Effect 3 perspective does this game many favours; by comparison Dragon Age II is succinct, nicely made and high quality. It is missing a number of cRPG elements present in its predecessor, but for the most part it seems this was a successful attempt at streamlining things, the (free) hi-res texture pack makes a lot of difference, as does the DirectX 11 support. So for the most part; nicely written (though not devoid of contrivance or sloppiness minimal), excellent voice acting with some engaging and likeable characters with neat arcs. DA2's positives far outweigh its negatives.… Expand

Wow, where to start. I played Dragon Age: Origins. I also played other Bioware RPG games dating back to the Star Wars Old Republic games... and I haft to say... this was by far... the worst game they ever made. Thought I liked a few changes they did, I also feel they took two steps forward and 6 steps back. This game is not and shouldn't have been be called a Dragon Age game and be named something else. Since DA2 and DA:O are completely different... First off... The combat. I loved the combat style and killing-blow animations in Dragon Age: Origins. It's Lord of the Rings style hack and slash, blood gore, ect... Thats what was expecting in DA2 from DA:O... I was so disappointed. Though I liked the now fast paced style action (Without pausing). The attack animations, the sounds... it was all terrible and unsatisfying. Plus, the selectable classes were all mashed into only 3 classes. Plus where is my option to play as a tank?! I played a Tank in DA:O... For the games setting, looking back to Star Wars and Mass Effect, I though that I would be able to play my character again from previous saves, or what I did in DA:O would be immensely relevant to the next sequel. Boy, was I wrong. Besides a few differences in dialog what you did in DA:O DOES NOT MATTER, and doesn't even effect the story in hardly anyway. In DA2 it all plays out 95% the same with, or without DA:O saves. But, the meat and bones of the game is the story and the characters... The story, the game takes place in a large city, thought i was surprised at first since I was expecting another cross country adventure as in DA:O, but no. Besides venturing out of the city walls every so often, 75% of all the activity take place in the city. In the same places, same districts, same streets, same buildings, same home, same room, same alley same cave... the only thing that changes is the name of the enemies. Its absolutely repetitive! All it is, is hacking through respawns all in hope the story will get better. But, it doesn't! The story lacked depth and it felt so vague! What happened to the epic battles against the dark spawn orcs? The Arch Demons? It is all gone. Though the Darkspawn is the ultimate evil in the Dragon Age universe you will only fight them on a HAND full of occasions. You will find yourself killing spiders... more spiders... some zombies... demons, and endless re-spawns of humanoids. All in the same places you cleared a hour or so ago. For the characters, besides Varren and Hawks sister... I hated them all... All of them. They all feel so hollow as I did not care for them. Plus, Hawks sister either dies(If you bring her to the Dark Roads) or she gets captured and jailed till the very last scene in the game! WTF? So you and Varren are stuck with a Sesame Street gang... I was not to big on Romances in RPGs, but DA2 has even less to offer. For females you have a STD ridden pirate whore, A frail and awkward elf that looks under-aged and a lesbian ginger woman. For males you have a Pretty boy elf that is always pissed off, Anders who is a whiny heterosexual wuss! Me myself, I found ever reason not to like any of them. Plus, they had to make the only normal some what attractive characters your brother and sister... So scratch them too... This game was a HUGE disappointment... This game didn't even give me any nostalgia what so ever... There was also, no crafting, no armor for your companions besides weapon and jewelry... But, to end on a positive note, the game was in a way fun to play. The UI was well dressed and organized, and the game was not as long as DA:O, but it was fairly full of content. I do think i got my monies worth of entertainment (As in time wasted). Plus, the game works and is well polished as I found NO bugs or glitches while playing. It was a very solid platform, no lag, no crashes. Which is rare in games these days. I am generously giving this game a 5/10. Simply because this game would have been INCREDIBLY good and popular if it was not related to Dragon Age; with it's title changed to something else. But, naming this game Dragon Age... Bioware simply shot themselves in the foot.… Expand

A very big letdown after the previous installments! The gaming world feels empty. The rpg elements are dumbed down, and the combat mechanism feels like playing with an arcade game. The story is weak, and the missions feel generic. Art direction is lazy. Japanese rpg like huge sword (I prefer when weapons look realistic). This franchise took a very bad direction.

As a sequel to Dragon Age: Origins this game was a big disappointment. You can tell this game was rushed like crazy with the ridiculous number of recycled dungeons, enemies, and graphic tilesets. This should have been a great game but instead fell victim to EA's ongoing overhype-and-overrush-quality-be-damned business strategy at making new games. The fact that most critics gave this game a 90+ score just shows how lacking in integrity game journalists are.… Expand

I could write paragraph after paragraph here about why DA2 isn't even 25% as bad as the majority of critics here would want you to believe, but it would be to no avail I'm sad to say. In the first place, I'm suspect of any rating between 0-3, I'm also suspect of 10's. I could see some people finding this game enjoyable enough to give it a 9, or annoying/disappointing enough to give it a bland mediocre rating of 4-6. I can see where some people don't think the graphics are better than in DA: Origins, but the graphics are fine --- not exceptional. The storyline was interesting and some of the characters were downright hilarious, so I really don't understand any complaints on that end. Sure, some of the dialogue could be better ... and all games seem to suffer from repetitiveness, some more than others. I do agree that they overused the same areas/caves which almost gave the game a DLC quality, but I can't see how that merits a drastically diminished overall rating. It's true that combat is simplified and any difficulty encountered relies more on the excessive respawning of mobs than on the mobs' AI and innate abilities .... and it's true that they removed the complexity (or hassle to some) of having to outfit/equip your companions ... still though, the story is fun and intriguing despite its slightly bizarre ending. Yes, it falls short of DAO, then again how many sequels truly surpass their predecessors? I was hesitant to give it an 8, but giving it a flat 7 seemed a bit too low. I think this is one case where the Critic Reviews are closer to the truth than the User Reviews ---- note that they range from 58 to 95. Buy this game on sale and decide for yourself.… Expand

I find the 4.2 too low for this game. Yes, it's not DA: Origins, it's not as good. Yet as a standalone game it's not that bad. It looks as good as DA:O (though it's supposed to look better, even if it feels like there was no progress...), combat system is waaay better, but everything else is worse. Your companions are not as interesting, your voiced hero feels wrong, and the responses a la Mass Effect are too few comparing to how much freedom you felt on the first game. Also, the game keeps reusing the same places over and over again, making it boring.… Expand

This game, despite being somewhere between resoundingly mediocre and offal, was foisted onto the gaming community by a clueless industry and corrupt, bribe-accepting "journalists." If you like RPGS, don't play this. If you believe in journalistic integrity, don't play this. If you like video games and want the industry to improve, don't play this. I'll give this game a 3, because it's prequel was excellent and it held much (squandered) potential.… Expand

I honestly didn't even play through this game halfway. Dragon age 2 has none of the strategy, customization, or gameplay the original dragon age, or any bioware rpg has. They dumbed down everything . This game might as well have been a fps except with fireballs and swords.

This game is an abortion. EA was pregnant with a beautiful baby Dragon Age but they took the drug called "Console" and aborted the sweet baby all over the floor. Everything about this game is inferior to DA:O. There is like 1 dungeon graphic, 1 world graphic, the classes all suck, the magic system sucks. 2 armor graphics and 2 weapon graphics. This is EA and what you should expect from EA. Pure Abortions.… Expand

I expected MUCH more. Dragon Age: Origins had an excellent concept and was much more enjoyable overall. This game definitely does not deserve to be part of the main series. The fact that you're forced to be in one town for most of the game shows how lazy EA is getting.

Everything about this game is dumbed down from the original. The plot is terribly written with jumpy pacing, resulting in it feeling like multiple games mashed together but somehow still has significantly less content than the original. It felt like the devs couldn't decide when to finish the game so they just ruined everything they could in it. Your choices have very little if any impact on the game with key characters dying no matter what. Conversations have been dumbed down even by Bioware standards into a Good, Bad, or Silly response, with occasional inquiry options. Replacing the tactical gameplay from the original is a consolified "press X to awesome" anime-style system where by the end of the game you are literally making enemies explode with your sword. Crashes to desktop, worse graphics than the original, uneven voice acting with fake accents, an unlikable cast, the list could go on for a while. This game feels unfinished, unedited, and quickly thrown together unlike the polished original.… Expand

It's true. Dragon Age II did for Dragon Age, what Mass Effect 2 did for Mass Effect. This means the combat is more streamlined and there was more time left to put an effort into an epic storyline spanning several years of the protagonist's life. To me, this is a good thing. If you're an RPG conservative though, probably not.