Greatest disappointment in history of RPG's... Poor story where every action has only one prescripted outcome You are playing an emotionless doushebag Terrible graphics Untactical and repetitive combat Short Tiny amount of scenery and locations Boring WoWesque quests Poor animations Overhiped piece of **** Only thing it was good for was for showing how corrupted gaming magazines actually are.… Expand

Boring story that didn't pull me in, unlikable characters, reuse of dungeons, butchering of the rpg genre and the dragon age franchise. There are so many things I dislike one of the more important ones......the diolouge wheel. Your are not you, this is not a sequal this is a basterdized couzinof the origonal.

Okay, the combat in this game is really fun: you can simultaneously choose the moves of every member of your squad, can switch perspectives to complete the fight as a different squad member, and are asked to be highly strategic during some intense battles. Also, the story is fun, even if it pales in comparison to the more nuanced narrative of Mass Effect. Why the low score? Well, in some ways, this feels like a beta-test version of the game. The dungeons are all obviously using the same one or two maps. The shopkeepers simply run out of items if you buy their whole supply. Enemies don't regenerate when you return to areas later. All of this leads to a game that feels unfinished. It is entertaining enough, but I would never recommend this game without pointing out its serious weaknesses.… Expand

For those of you wondering whether or not Dragon Age 2's combat is different from Dragon Age Origins, it is. In Dragon age origins, the combat took timing, it took skill, thought and effort. You had to plan out everything you wanted to do, and it was great. Because if you didn't, you had a high chance of failure. you actually had to think, you had to work, and you had to comply with real terms of combat. In Dragon Age 2, it's completely different. If you want to win nearly ANY battle, including against dragons, all you have to do is spam the attack button and you will. I cannot tell you how many times I attempted to make it harder on myself just to make it feel like a real game. I attempted to limit my attacks per second, I changed the difficulties to harder, even so, I still won every single battle with ease because of the X button. I have an Xbox remote, during a few fights I just took it downstairs while spamming the X button, made myself a sandwich, came back up, stopped in the bathroom a few times, and came back to see not only me still alive, but everyone else dead because I had killed them. It was that simple. There is no justice in combat for this. However, I give it a 3, simply because of the fact that the campaign and story line do make some sense, they just barely follow Origins, but even so, I highly recommend you put it back on the shelf and run. This teaches kids that when they're in real world situations, all they have to do is spam the button. That's how I got my first girlfriend, ironically, but that's beside the point. Please don't buy this.… Expand

After playing dragon age 2 I can't help but feeling a bit cheated.Not many games including skyrim can beat dragon age origins but it's the matter in which da2 failed that upsets me. The emotional attachment to characters compared to da:O is non existent,the storyline in my view is boring and the setting of the game leaves further disappointment.Background after background is overused and predictable enemy spawning causes frustration.The first game in my view is bigger in size better in quality and nearly has more depth of story in the intros combined than all of da2Don't buy this game you'll regret it.… Expand

I felt that this game wasn't so much bad as it was a disappointment. While it takes place in the same world as Dragon Age: Origins and shares the same basic gameplay, it feels very different--and not in a good way. The item/inventory system has been vastly simplified but, unlike Mass Effect 2, this does not remove the need to manage loot: it just makes it far less rewarding for those who want to take the time, while still forcing everyone else to sort through a pile of generic rings, belts, and swords to see which are worth keeping. The combat system has also been changed to make it more action-oriented and fast-paced, and while it does make hacking or zapping enemies more fun, the changes remove much of tactical depth present in DA:O. Moreover, unlike its predecessor, most fights now feature waves of enemies which spawn all around your party (shades rising from the ground, thugs jumping down from buildings, etc.), making any useful strategy difficult. I did find that the characters and story in this game were pretty good--not quite as good as DA:O but still worthy--and I thoroughly enjoyed developing relationships with my party. One improvement is the friend/rival system, which means that unlike DA:O you don't have to suck up to party members to get their bonuses: each character has 2 unique bonuses, one for a friend and one for a rival. This game severely limits your main character by forcing you to be a human with the surname Hawke who must follow a single basic path throughout the game, and who has far fewer dialogue choices than in DA:O. The upside is that your character is fully voiced, so NPCs are no longer the only ones talking aloud. One significant fault of this game, however is that all the events after the intro take place in and around a single city, so you spend the whole game visiting the same locations over and over. This didn't have to be a major setback, but the developers failed to incorporate much variety into the locations: every cave, warehouse, backstreet, and tunnel look the same--they just reused the same blueprint for almost every location, with certain doors added to seal off unneeded areas. There is also a paucity of variety in enemies: you spend most of the game fighting the same spiders, bandits, and blood mages. Between these two problems, the game-play is far less fun than it could be. One final point is the graphics: overall they are improved from DA:O (except for the tiresome re-use), but for some reason the handful of characters from the first game just look AWFUL. Most look very weird and poorly done, like the artists did them over lunch one day. As someone who spent dozens of hours playing Origins, I was appalled to see my beloved friends looking so horrendous. Overall, I still think this game is worth playing--mostly for the story/character development--but unlike DA:O, this is not a game I can see myself playing again and again.… Expand

Stunning game, superb story and characters, and combat is faster and flows better than Origins. Has a few issues with reuse of environments etc. but doesn't detract from the games brilliance. A must for roleplaying fans.

To put it simply this is a total let down after the fantastic first game. I was able to play it all the way through once but had no desire to play it again, It was helped greatly by the post launch day patch but it took them several days to bring that online.

It certainly is not the worst game I have played but it was by far the WORST that Bioware ever produced and it shows that the change to EA was NOT good at ALL for Bioware… Expand

What a piece of **** this game was. The story is written like a 10 year old's crossover fanfic, the characters are so cliche and poorly made, that I'm surprised that they aren't made of cardboard, and the graphics are just awful to look at. Not only that, but there are issues such as the dialogue options are too vague and don't show what your character is actually going to say. The worst issue though, by far, is the layout of dungeons and the setting. It's set in one **** city and the outlying countryside around it, but that's not the worst part, the worst part is the constant recycling of dungeons for every quest, meaning if you actually pay attention, you will notice you've been going through the same cave systems for the 30th **** time. The combat is the only thing good about this game, it's fast paced and keeps you on your toes, but everything else just sucks. Dragon age 2, suck my **** dick… 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.

A lot of people got their hate on for this game. If you payed $60 expecting a reasonable sequel to Dragon Age:Origins I don't blame you.
I read the reviews and eventually bought this game anyway when the price was much reduced.
This is a great example of a low end $20 bargin bin game. There is fun to be had. Interacting with the characters on your team is where most of the fun lies. And the plot is simple yet functional. Its a tad predictable but it doesn't really get in the way. They recycle maps like a son of a gun. I mean several years are supposed to pass between acts and your player is generally stuck in the same city. It would be cool if you could watch the city grow and evolve or maybe show off some of its devastation as the game progresses. I mean by the end of the first act I was sick of all the same old places that went basically unchanged as the game went on. Because every warehouse is exactly the same everywhere right? Just the way they designed the maps it feels very sandbox. But it is a solid play. And while it isn't "Epic" in any sense of the term I went into it with modest expectations and it didn't disappoint.
Don't get me wrong they killed the franchise here. DA:O was an epic and could have started an epic franchise and its a shame this is the sequel. But looking at it as a stand alone game its alright.… Expand

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

Although I do not think it's fair that this game is getting a score of 1, it really is disappointing. The graphics are decent but not much if any improvement from Origins, but the gameplay itself took a huge nose dive. The thing that bothers me the most is the way the maps and quests are setup, it's totally generic, rushed, and to be honest seems incomplete. Seriously, after a few hours of play all the dungeons and a lot of areas are repeated and used again, and makes the game feel lame. The story as well was overall pretty terrible, I have no idea how they went from such a well written story in Origins to a game that really doesn't add up. I would have to recommend not wasting your cash on this, stick with Origins and the DLC/Expansion/Character Texture improvement mods.… Expand

For a game that really only had to improve on the fluidity of combat, they changed pretty much everything from the first game, for the worse I might add. Combat seems to be the only thing they got right, for the most part. ----- The story was linear not allowing for multiple outcomes to situations. Bringing a hero through tragedy is okay, but absolutely dropping the story after the downfall is not. The point of a hero is the journey back from disaster and the choices that they make shortly after tragedy. Dragon Age 2 after every major event skips ahead in time missing all those pivotal choices. Immense tragedy with no option for justice is a good way to piss people off, not get them emotionally invested. because there was no proper response to events it made me realize that this is a game, and I don't want to play it anymore because my reaction was not expressed. Not even close. That's the opposite of immersion. ----- Speaking of immersion, the use of a main voice actor could have been an amazing addition, IF... the tone of the voice were more versatile. RPG's requires that you feel like you are the role you are playing and when you cannot be aggressiveness sharp-tongued or be righteously stern then voice acting obliterates immersion. Forcing voice acting into pansy good guy, cheery joker, and jack-off bad guy, means you do not get real characters but cliche stereotypes. And when you are choosing multiple reactions during a scene you get unrealistic multiple personality mood swings. ----- Party Character options got an axe to the face. No ability to equip characters with armor and no ability to choose any skill tree, killed this game for ever RPGer that played, and loved Dragon Age: Origins. One of the great things about DAO was that if you didn't like someone in the party, you could give that role to someone more interesting. The fact that I had to run 90% of the game with the soulless, emotionless, thought and humor inept Aveline because she was the only tank, was... well the dumbest character choice I've ever come across in a game. Lastly, I'll quickly touch on the combat. Really the only problem I had with the combat was the cooldown system. In DOA there was a dedicated tank and a dedicated healer, for the most part. This system works, use it. Healers were made extinct because of the over-powering cooldown system. I downloaded a mod to lower all cooldowns making this game faster paced and much more fun since the healer was viable again. ----- Needed mods to enjoy: http://dragonage.nexusmods.com/mods/3194#content (Armor for Party Members) http://dragonage.nexusmods.com/mods/2407#content (All Skill Trees for Party Members) http://dragonage.nexusmods.com/mods/2186 (Reduce All Cooldowns)… Expand

This is not Dragon Age. This is some Mas Effect poseur! BioWare need to slow down and think about what they are doing. Critics? I have no doubt that critics are BOUGHT by EA. They are sold-out hypocrites and they are LYING straight to your face! Another example of EA being douchebags and more bad words.
And don;t listen critics that review EA game - they are bought by EA (I have no doubt)

DA2 diminished, invalidated and finally RUINED everything that Dragon Age Origins achieved. It is ridiculous to pretend that this game is a free- standing experience, that needs to be judged in isolation from its predeccessor. This game is a continuation of a franchise. It is so bad that it neally killed the franchise in mid development. DA3 may 'save the day' but that is far from clear the way things are going. Why? Perhaps it's because the are too busy making games to really play them. Perhaps it's because EA replaced the competent crew from Origins and Awakening with too many greenhorns with no idea what they are doing. For destroying the franchise alone, DA2 earns scores in the range of 0-2 . DA2 earns ZERO in my book, since it represents the WORST sequel in all game design. And it is also a pretty horrible experience in its own right. I have written dozens or reviews elaborating in more detail. I will do so again when I have the time and inclination. Occasionally look out for updates in here as I try to make sense of it, without going totally insane. Players can only wonder about the work environment inside EA-ware that gave us this disaster. We can only speculate about the sources of the the massive incompetence that gave us this TERRIBLE mess. Perhaps its all caused by EA central. Perhaps Bioware failed to recognise and reward the great work of the various design and programming leads in the earlier games. It's hard to believe that the great writing that was evident in Dragon Age Awakenings: the enthralling prospects of the plot could have all been dropped dead and replaced with a new scenario coming from NOTHING and leading to NOTHING, but that's what we got. Origin's and Awakenings were unfinished games with really big potential. This game heads off on a totally new tangent, totally ignoring every facet of lore and technical parameter of the games that preceded it. Bioware actively DESTROYED every RPG system and convention they had made, for classes and character progression and inventory and replaced ALL of them with DREADFUL inferior substitutes. What in the Makers's name were they facking thinking? David Gaider's brilliant writing from Awakening was flushed down the toilet. A brief catalogue of bad design features in this game: (1) Limited environment. (2) Fully voiced character who is also a total ANUS. (3) Terrible, clinging, selfish, childish, sex-obsessed NPC's (4) Dreary quest design (5) A world where 80% of the population are homosexual (6) Smart-Assery as the standard tone of ALL conversation (7) Diluted graphics (8) Teleporting enemies (9) Retarded camera (10) Infantile animations (11) Mindless re-conception of races (12) Limited and dreary inventory options (13) Abysmal Plotting (14) Abysmal Pacing etc etc etc. This game signals a design team that combine the worst elements of arrogance, laziness and cluelessness. Some of the writers certainly do not belong in game design and should be working in travel writing as they would be more comfortable on a cruise ship somewhere far away. The absolute obsession with which homosexuality becomes the DOMINANT theme of this game suggests that some people are in serious need of counselling. If this is supposed to represent a creative argument for 'tolerance' it fails badly and is instead an embarrassment of incredibly BAD writing. Without a shadow of a doubt Greg and Ray deserved to be axed for this disaster as much as SWTOR. EA could also probably retire Mike Laidlaw, JH and others. Get Ferret back on team. Given the budget, player expectations and 'game design wisdom' these people are supposed to have accumulated over the years they would probably all benefit from a few years in the wilderness learning not to drive buses over cliffs. The final irony is that the greatest single flaw in Bioware games is not to be found in the shoddy craftwork and sloppiness that ruined this design. Even the 'good games': Origins, Awakening and ME1-2-3 have a big weakness in their founding structure: All these games are limited to narrative railroads. Even when they build great environments, have great writing and NPC's the games are always limited to a narrow chronology. The players are NEVER given the reins and allowed to write the tale. The players are never given an enduring world and invited to 'make their mark'. With the presntBioware recipe, gamers will NEVER reach gaming Nirvana. You guys want to make a good game, you have to stop resisting your medicine. LISTEN ! and PAY ATTENTION! Orctowngrot. Tim Rawlins. timtimjp@yahoo.com… Expand

This game will get boring to re-play, it is because we can't customize our companions so we will see the very same thing. Each companions have their own designed and theme that we can't change it. There is no actual plot for the entire game, it is just about the survivor of the recent war make a living in a new city and then happen to be involve in numerous conflicts either by his/her companions or the city he/she live. Those conflicts are actually none of his/her problem, he/she doesn't even have to involve in anything either. The ending of the story is the same with a little different no matter what choices we make. Combat is anime-like, with no tactic, because of enemies can pop up from thin air, re-spawn randomly, so it will be hack and slash all the time. The maps are just copy and paste, recycled everywhere. The graphic is okay, but the rest is just dull. This game can be played just for fun and nothing serious about it. This game destroy it's predecessor Dragon Age : Origin.… Expand

If I wanted to play Dragon Age Origins I would play that. Instead I wanted a good sequel that elaborates on the in game world without making me replay it. Hear that? I do not want to play a sequel and spend the entire game **** about how it isn't the first game because well duh, it's the sequel. Do I have issues with certain parts of the game? Of course, combat is to simple and areas are re-used way to often. However I absolutely loved the plot, more then Origins, and found Varric is only a close second to Alistair and although I don't like Isabella she's at least more understandable then Morrigan.… Expand

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

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

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. A cheap ripoff of something that once was great. Fights degenerate to a button fest, complete with exploding enemies. You feel like a monkey on speed. This in itself is something that turned me off so completely that I hardly could muster the strength to get going. Enemy hordes dropping from the sky do additional damage when it comes to immersion. Add to this repeating environments that reek of cheapness and a story that's very ambitious but contradicts itself, and you quickly reach the bottom of what an RPG should offer in my opinion. Sprites and the unnecessary revamping of the races substract another bit of the atmosphere. Give that game a wide bearth unless you're simply into mashing one button. There's nothing else to it. Bearable only after consuming a sixpack of beer.… Expand

a failed rpg game
can't found anything great
dragon age origin was a epic game and this game unable to touch e...
hoping dao3 would be better.....

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?

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

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 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

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.

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)

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

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.

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

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 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

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

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

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.