The developers tried to combine hack and slash and role playing with predictable results. Predictable, evidently, to everyone but them. It's hard to convey how ironic it is, because we went through the exact same thing with Bioware in 2002 with Neverwinter Nights. Dragon Age was supposed to be a return to roots after the fan reaction to the weak first installment of Neverwinter Nights, which was essentially a shotgun marriage of the Baldur's Gate franchise and elements of Diablo II. Fast forward to 2011, and we get another mishmash that tries to be all things to all things to all people. No doubt the Bioware developers sold themselves and their "ideas" to their corporate overlords as faster, better and cheaper and would take the world by storm. Either that, or they knew it was a half-baked cash-in to fill in quarterly revenues in the lull before bigger and better releases later in the year. Don't believe the big name reviews. The 80+ average here and at Gamerankings is far too generous. Big titles like this seldom get the honest criticism they deserve. DA2 does have high production values, and maybe that is what they are actually reviewing. The voice acting is top notch, and it has many individual scenes and lines of dialog that show there was some talent at work. But while that may be a good start for an RPG, DA2 doesn't deliver a cohesive story overall. It's more like three short stories in one book. But if you are a diehard fan of the genre, then maybe DA2 is still worth the price of admission. Just be forewarned that you see many game elements that will leave you baffled and wincing.… Expand

This game is so amazing! i mean who could ask for a better game from bioware! the game centers around a character named Hawke, he has a pointed beard that points out on both sides! thats so badass! thats what more RPGs need, badass things like that! I love badassery in video games. I love the blood splatters on the cover, it shows that its a dark and mature game, for mature gamers such as myself. Gone are the diverse dungeons and cityscapes of Dragon Age: oregins. Now you will be spending the entire game in Kirkwood! i bet thats a reference to captain kirk! im glad bioware are such Nreds like i am *squee**Glomp* nreds are so cool!. The Dungeons are copied and pasted like they should be! people who want variety are just entitled! The graphics are a step backward from the original dragon age, which is a good thing! those shiny new graphics just hurt my eyes!. The game deals with many real world issues, like killing, violence, and homosex. It deals with the latter in a very mature manner, there are multiple option for homosex in Dragon Age II, some of them can be initiated after a few positive lines of Dialogue! this is exactly what homosexes are like in real life, i walked to the hardware store today and recieved at least 3 or 4 homosexual encounters after asking for directions, its a very accurate and non patronizing portrayal of homosexes. Drag Age II is game of the year, its the best game of the decade and is amazing and good and great in every way. If you dont like it you are a homophone and a nazi.… Expand

A game so totally devoid of all the depths and charm that made the first in the series interesting that it is a wonder to me how Bioware could shove this out the door. It is so dumbed down in quests, background and especially combat that its just a travesty. I feel combat is in such a state of disrepair with teleporting waves of enemies that all tactics and thought is effectively eliminated from the game, all there is left is a "press whatever cooldown is ready" retardations that its worthy of a bungled flashgame

Score (3.1)… Expand

...silent...still silent cover my mind. I buy this game before they come, and that is my mistake. But i believe, what bioware said...no more my "dear" bioware...I newer buy your game before they come, even if you give me half prize. I WANT MY MONEY BACK. This game is some joke.

Very angry, and unhappy player.

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. This game is very weak compared to the first game. The story was not as good and didnt flow well at all. The game seemed to want to push the player towards a gay romance was a real negative for me. (No I dont care about your politically correct ideas about it....I played the game and thats how I feel) This is the first bioware game I will not play a second time. I would tell my friends not to buy this game.… Expand

Pros:
+ The clear abilities points distribution system is a improvement
+ Voiced protagonist dialogs
+ "Sell All Junk" button (Only a requirement when you have junk)

Cons:
- Cheap dungeon design
- Excessive gore and unnatural moves in combat animations
- Spiders drop gold (What?)
- Shallow characters and dialogues

its a working game with 3d graphics, a story, and characters(not compelling, interesting, deep, or smart in any way, no sign of intelligence from the ones responsible for character design)
this can be said about almost any game, and thats why we look for what makes the games unique, and that is what DA:O was, this looks like DA:O got robed of its limbs and head, whats left is a bloody gory torso with no depth or the "true" rpg feel that, some people may argue that DA2 should not be compared to its predecessor, because its a different game, but it should, it realy should, they sat the standard with DA:O and if they expect the game to be received well, they need to make a game of equal or better quality, not a dumbed down thing meant for the larger demographic.… Expand

The same location over and over and over. Utterly uninteresting story and awful, cliched cringe-worthy characters. Nowhere interesting to go, nobody interesting to talk to. Dull, dull, dull...

In spite of my love for Bioware's games, I have to further confirm the disappointment of Dragon Age 2. A massive chain of uninteresting one-off quests requiring constant, oversimplistic, repetitive combat, playing out with formulaic results over which you have relatively little control. Generic conversation responses tend to lead to the same outcomes, and with the exception of your companions, none of the characters are interesting. Graphics look absolutely terrible, reuse of environments is questionable, retardedness of Templar who can't figure out that a mage MC is an apostate is inexcusable. Even despite being motivated to carry over event results to the next game, I ended up leaving this game abandoned, bloated and bleached in a field, uninterested in finishing, and swearing I would never Preorder a game again.… Expand

A really bad game. Plain and simple. The 'level design' - and you have to use that term loosely - just consists of a few a very narrow corridors. The areas are shamelessly reused. How a developer can get away with making about 6 tiny areas for a 40 hour long game and calling it a day is beyond me. The game mostly takes place in a city and its surroundings. Needless to say, they never even bothered to design a city, only 3 separate and small areas that you can fast travel to.

The combat is frantic. Gone are the strategic battles of Origins. A lot of enemies bumrush you in the small corridors and you have to press the awesome button. On top of that, it is very tedious, since each and every single encounter you have will have about 4-5 waves of the exact same enemies literally teleporting in out of nowhere to bore you to death. Ridiculous game design. Not to mention that most encounters are random i.e. you just walk around and explore and don't see your enemy until the fight begins. Quite ironic from the company that bashes jrpgs. The difficulty curve is pretty much nonexistent if you keep your equipment in check since level scaling is in effect. A hurlock won't be easier to kill at lvl20 than at lvl1.

Your character, Hawke, has 3 stock replies locked in their respective places: Good, funny or aggressive. Funny is especially bad. Like "wanting to punch whoever wrote that crap" kind of bad. Good or aggressive is most of the time what you'd expect. Emphasis on most of the time, since the few words they put in the dumb dialogue wheel so you don't bother your pretty litle brain with too much reading can be misleading. Sometimes extra options or questions show up but most of the times they're just stuff that isn't worth asking or has already been answered.

The party members feel like wasted potential. You have to visit them in their homes so they all explain their backstories in about 2-3 conversations over time and all have a chain of quests tied to it. At the core, they're not all that bad but everything feels very formulaic so you end up not caring much about them. But hey, they're mostly bisexual and you can romance them since that's obviously more important than the rest of the game, so it's all good. Their armor isn't customizable but weapons, stats and skills are up to you.

Finally, the story. If you last long enough (trust me, that's difficult) to make it to the final act, you'll have a somewhat interesting story on your hands that just ends up being predictable, but at least you get the 'epic' high fantasy feel for a while and a laughable final boss. The first act just feels like a needless prologue and you will feel a general lack urgency or motivation. Act 2 is more bearable but still nothing to write home about. The side quests are all derivative and boring.

Lazy game design, bad writing, and poor production values are what make this a title that isn't just hard to recommend, but should simply be avoided by anyone. The icing on the cake is that overall, the game feels like a slap to the face for the people who had hope in the Dragon Age franchise and took it the exact opposite direction from what they were hoping for.… Expand

A failed attempt at making Dragon Age a mix of action an RPG. What we get is a severely dumbed down RPG with unsatisfactory action element, that take up the majority of play time. Plus and uncompelling story that has nothing to do with Origins...

I do not get how this game has gotten so many positive reviews... This is not a BioWare grade product, this is something straight from the bowels of EA's rush'n'cash department.

So where do I start? First of all, as I stated before, the story has virtually nothing to do with Origins. If you were hoping to see big time consequences of your actions in the previous game, you are in for an unpleasant surprise. Nothing you did in Origins has any impact on DA2, apart for some minor and negligible side quests. Furthermore, the story itself feels incredibly forced at times. In Origins, I really wanted to defeat the Blight, even while playing an "evil" character. DA2's story didn't make me care about it's main plot, mainly because, for the most part, it was being shoved down my throat. There is a quest quite early on, which you are forced to do to advance the story, but there is no logical train of thought nor are there any circumstances in game that would make your character want to do this quest, unless they felt a certain way towards one of the main groups presented in the story. It feels more like an optional side quest than a main plot one . And the side quests themselves are a travesty. Mind you, there are some cool ones that clearly have been thought through, but they are drowned in the sea of identical, almost grind-like, minimum flavour text, quest you get in a shoddy MMO.

Let's have a look at the game mechanics then. The new stats system feels more transparent and logical, the talent trees are better designed than those in Origins, but that's where the good stuff ends. The Mass Effect style dialogue tree looks well and all, except for the fact than in most cases, all you choose is they way your character will say, "Yes I agree". Fortunately this doesn't happen too often, but it becomes very annoying if you want to play, what is after all an RPG game. And speaking of RPG elements, you cannot equip your party with armour, and by that I mean that you can't customize your companions helmet, torso and boots slots. You are stuck with what they have, until you find a special upgrade, and every companion only gets four. Not four upgrade slots which you can fill in from randomly dropped upgrades, because there are no random upgrades. Each companion will only ever get four armour upgrades, so you don't overheat that brain of yours choosing which one to give to who. The combat would be great if not for one thing: enemies that spawn mid fight, usually off camera. And again it wouldn't be so bad if the newly spawned guys were just minions helping the big boss you are currently fighting. But more often than not, they are pretty powerful, and can seriously mess up your party if you don't spot them the instant they are spawned. Also, the difficulty settings have been dumbed down, so now you get friendly fire only on the highest level. And the gap between the two top settings (Hard and Nightmare) is so big, it seems no one had any time to tweak them. On Hard the game is still laughably easy, and on Nightmare it becomes, at times, downright frustrating. Graphically it is an improvement over Origins, allthough I was never the one to dislike a game just because it had old graphics. What I cannot abide however is the endless and shameless recycling of locations. Most of the main ones are ok, but it quickly becomes apparent that there are only so many side quest ones. And it's not like some quest just take place in the same location. The cave you enter on a beach will be the exact same cave you have already visited in the mountains, but maybe with an entrance that is located elsewhere, and with some areas sealed away. You really get the feeling they either rushed the game out, or were just plain lazy about it.

In an effort to appeal to a broader audience (namely the drunken frat boy demographic) BioWare has dumbed down their game to the point you can barely call it an RPG and added a ton of sub par action and clumsy gore. If this was a game by any other developer, and not a sequel to Origins, this would be an average game with a few memorable moments. Being as it is, it is a poor game with lots of memorable failures...… Expand

The shamelessly hyped and massively inflated "professional" reviews of this guy are absolutely pathetic. The combat is terrible, it feels like diablo except it isn't the mid 1990s anymore. The combat system becomes tedious and boring very early on. I do not consider this to be a true rpg. It is action or hack and slash style "adventure" with very little in the way of environmental and item variety. A massive dissappointment to anyone who played Dragon Age: Origins, or anyone actually expecting a full fledged Bioware RPG.… Expand

Bottom line: mostly disappointed.

My main complaint about DA2 is extremely weak story line. For entire game you are completely in the dark waiting for something epic to happen only to have your hopes dashed in the end. Store is nowhere near what is was in DA:O or even DA:A

Secondly, did Bioware try to cut development costs? Graphics wise the game was pretty much unchanged compared to DA:O. You would assume that they would put a lot of effort in level design. Not so - the game brutally reuses same locations over and over again. There are less unique locations than in DA:A which is an expansion.

Thirdly, while it is nice that they have voiced the main character, overall dialog system has taken a turn for the worse. You pretty much have no control over your own character. Hawke's replies are completely unpredictable (so why even give player a choice). The same system works fine in ME and ME2 but is completely screwed up in DA2. And in the end dialog choices have very little effect on the direction of the game.

There isn't that much equipment available for main character to chose from and even less so for companions.

To be fair there is one improvement I can name - like simplified rune system (that got unwieldy in DA:A

Conclusion: If you liked DA:O and aren't desperate to play this game - don't. Wait for DA3 if it ever comes around (and not in the form of MMORPG as it very well may) and see if Bioware would do better then.… Expand

A deeply flawed game with empty world and recycled graphic assets. Limited to a single city where nothing changes over a decade and artificially prolonged with pointless quests and waves of mobs who totally destroy combat tactics. I can't remember a RPG where i wanted to single handedly slaughter most of my companions because they were so annoying. s.

A huge disappointment overall. Completely fails to live up to its predecessor. A consolized, streamlined and dumbed down game target for the Call of Duty market. Gameplay is okay; the rest is pure garbage: lack of different environments, stupid story, crappy ending, fails to deliver true choice-and-consequence mechanics, cardboard character textures, lack of an interesting roster... pick one. Not to mention the protagonist, a failed attempt to create a medieval Shepard. You might even have some fun while playing it, but if you actually enjoyed the first game, some tears of grief are along for the ride.… Expand

This game, in almost every way is poor. Lets forget for a moment that it is the sequel of what was heralded as the spiritual succesor to one of the greatest roleplayng games of all time and try to judge the game on its own merits. The problem being, that the game has very few merits. It is Biowares obvious step into stripping out the crpg aspects and going for the more action orientated market. The game however totally fails in both areas. As an action game it is boring. Compared to a game like God of War (the game i think it is most akin to) it lacks finesse, momentum and ends up playing like a chore instead of an immersive entertainment medium. The combat is laughable. You press attack and your character does a silly anime styled move. The skills are over the top and too quick and the tactics are almost non existant. The enemies just appear from the sky and the battles are so numerous that once your half way through this very shoprt game you will be dying for it to end. The characters (Normally one of Biowares strong points) are actually pretty boring and 2d i this game. Some are fun and make you want to learn more about them but for he most part they are straight out of a kids cartoon, trying to be cool to the point of cliche. Im afraid this isnt just a poor game for Bioware (who have been steadily getting worse for a number of years now). This is just a poor game and i wouldnt reccomend it even it is in the bargain bucket. Leave well alone.… Expand

What can I say that others haven't? DA2 is a commercial failure. See what short dev time, and an idiotic Lead Dev who does a 180 to fix things that weren't broken, and break other things. Why if you have such a short time, you go and tr to re-invent the wheel? Why not fix, tweak, and build upon origins instead of doing this silly drivel? I did love the concept of the story, but it was horribly executed, so many plot holes that you could drive an aircraft carrier through. Not to mention all the immersion breaking stuff as well. Don't get me started on BW's attempt at Final Fantasy characters(Fenris is cloud) and flashy lame combat that takes no thought at all.
Story: 7 (good idea, bad execution. Drop the frame narrative bioware, you suck at it)
Graphics: 5 (overly not an improvement over DA:O. Some better character models, but I prefer the grittiness of DAO over it)
Audio: 6 (Even the music was rushed. Inon did an excellent job regardless and upped my score for it.)
Combat: 2 (While some balance issues were addressed, the whole balloon body exploding meth induced speed combat, idiotic animations, waves, armored ninjas falling from the sky..)

When I originally played it, I was generous and gave it a 6-7 /10 on the "official" forum. As you spend more time with it, the lower the score keeps going. Way too many faults. The piles of crap in DA2 out weigh all the good thats in it.
4 / 10. Must be nice having EA pay off a bunch of professional reviewers, eh?… Expand

I liked this game, seriously. Finally they voiced the main character, some original approach to story, but if I can only give a Witcher 2 a 10/10, then 3/10 is the most I'm giving this game. Don't get me wrong, it's not all that bad, It's just like rating an Suzuki Swift after driving a Ferrari. The first one is not bad, just the other is so much better it spoils all the fun

How can i say it. This game is bad.
Compared to Dragon Age 1 you don't have too big choice on the character selection.
Hordes of the enemies spawning from everywhere, you cannot keep mages in the back, they are nearly always surrounded . Rouge skills - he is disappearing and reappearing at the enemies back... mercy - teleportation in fantasy game? Without magic?
I'm very happy that i could see the demo and play at my friends PC before buying. It would be big waste of money.… Expand

I have only one thing to say - don't fix things that are not broken-this will never work. Instead of fixing working ideas when you have clearly not enough time given to you by investors than just focus at content. Coz if you have not enough time and still trying to change not only scenario and environment but also game-play, mechanics and graphics and doing it for few platforms at the same time you just can't win. If this game would have unchanged gameplay and only little more polshed graphics it would be also bashed for not being creative but wouldn't get REAL avarage rating less than 7-8, but with focusing at scenario and as a sequel of good game i would expect at least 8,5-9,5. now it has 4 and in my opinion still too much… Expand

I found this to be a very difficult game ot review. I was extremely excited about getting this game as I am a long-time fan of bioware's products: Knights of the Old Republic, KOTOR II, DA:O, Mass Effect, and Mass Effect II were all games that I greatly enjoyed, and as such I had rather high expectations from Dragon Age II. I guess I should say that my first hint at my concerns showed up with the initial watching of the trailer where the main character summons something to rip the arms off of his enemy. The trailer itself didn't make any sense, and I was wondering to myself why he just didn't do that in the first place.

I guess you could say that this about sums up the game.... It doesn't make any sense. I played the game for hours, continually expecting some sort of solidified story to show up, and after what seemed like an eternity, I realized that I was no longer interested in the game whatsoever. The story line never materialized, the combat, while initially was intriguing, rapidly became frustrating as I realized my NPC healer, Anders, couldn't heal anything, my tank couldn't hold aggro, and generally, as a rogue all I did was mash buttons. My biggest letdown though was something many people have already brought up: Bioware apparently ran out of ideas in creating their areas as they decided to create one area and make it work for multiple areas by opening and closing doors. The first time I saw it I didn't think much of it, but later I realized that it was the norm rather than the exception, I quickly started losing interest in the game.

So.... breakdown:
Pros:
-Improved combat in that you no longer just point and click, but this does get old when you realize all you ever do is button mash.
-Characters: this has historically been bioware's strong suit, and Dragon age II doesn't disappoint. I was generally intrigued with the characters, with the exception of Anders who simply came across as a big crybaby.

Cons:
-No longer can choose multiple races, like in DA:O. This offered a slightly different option for multiple playthroughs.
-Lame, boring storyline. I have to be honest and say that I gave up on the game before Act III, so maybe a storyline does eventually appear, but I don't think a game should take 6 hours of gameplay to create the rudiments of a storyline that is intriguing.
-Lame, boring side-quests.
-Poor combat balancing. Initially I enjoyed the multiple waves of enemies that appear which makes combat sequences last longer, but later in the game I came to realize that this was a huge pain because your tank's taunt ability doesn't keep up with these waves, your healer can't heal anything because his heal skill takes what seems like 10 minutes to recharge, and everybody ends up dying unless you continually use healing items, which cost money. Frustrating.
-DLC content abuse? Don't know how else to put it. I was rather shocked when I checked the DLC content and found about 100 things to download on the first day I played the game. This tells me that I paid 60 bucks for an incomplete game. I don't mind buying DLCs down the road, but it makes me wonder when such a huge amount of DLC content is not included with the game on day one. It screams of Bioware attempting (and succeeding) in extorting more money from their fan base.

Overall... Very disapointed. Was very excited about this game, which is why I think I put up with the game for as long as I did. This game reeks of mass-produced money raking. Shame on bioware. I traded it back in to Amazon today with a tear in my eye. Here's hoping they don't mess up Mass Effect 3.… Expand

This is a prime example of don't trust the critics to be objective. This game tried to reinvent the wheel and instead completely alienated those who enjoyed the first Dragon Age. Problem is that they designed this game to be a cheap action thrill. After awhile you completely lose interest in the story and might as well skip every scene. Seriously, how can anybody be interested in a story so thin as you are now the badass so keep on questing because that's what badasses do. The combat is good and that's basically it because cheap action games only focuses on game play. The graphics are so good that the developers decided that you must run through the same areas over and over again until you want to poke your eyes out. I'm sorry but if DA origins was anything like this game, it would have flopped and nobody would have purchased this sequel. I think they purposely made this game horrible so that DA3 would be like a legend among the Dragon Age series. This game tried to be an RPG but the story sucked and there is absolutely no real feel in the world as monster just randomly spawn when you're running through the same area for the 12th time. This game tried to also be an action game but it's not really fun since it only has pretty good combat. Basically it tried to be good at multiple things but failed at being good with anything.… Expand

In a word, this game is atrocious. The NPCs are shallow. The graphics are cartoonish. The storyline is, well, boring. This is not its predecessor. Indeed, I am not sure what it is, or what it tries to be. It attempts action, hack n slash and RPG and succeeds at NONE of those. In my life, I've never rated a game below a 5...until now. Being an optimist, I start at 10 and deduct points (normally decimals) for those areas where I believe a game is lacking. If it lacks enough, I will subtract a whole point.

Immersiveness = -2

Repeated Areas = -2

Wow, we're already down to 5. There is no immersiveness here. Kirkwall is a blank slate. The people within it stay the same and have no life cycle during the game's timeline (10 years). They do not react to you nor what happens around them. Fun, huh?

The repeated areas? No game prior to this has offended by repetition quite so badly. It is AWFUL.

Storyline = -1
Graphics = -1
Gameplay = -1

And voilla, we're well below a 5, which is average.

Do not waste your time or money with this rushed hack job.… Expand

I started Dragon Age II with eager expectation, but after an hour I found myself having to motivate myself just to keep playing... "It MUST get better soon"... but it didn't. Bioware has stripped out everything good about Origins and made what was bad even worse. The combat is even easier and more simplified; the plot is confusing and hollow at best; the environments are repetetive (c'mon Bioware, like we wouldn't notice...); the characters are lame and undeveloped. In fact, everything about the game just feels poor. Worth a play for Bioware fans, but by no means get your hopes up.… Expand

The combat felt more engaging and exciting, but the interaction with companions was sacrificed, which made the game far less enjoyable. I wouldn't purchase another game in this series if this is the way things keep going.

I consider myself to be a hardcore RPG gamer, and I am a huge fan of BioWare Games. I was raised on Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and I also love their modern titles such as Mass Effect, and also Dragon Age:Origins. But dragon Age 2 is just a big misunderstanding. This rushed, inconsistent and monotonous piece of crap is just a sad, sad attempt to cash in on a promising franchise. How can such good IP deteriorate so quickly, is just beyond me. Remember how in Origins we could travel through Ferelden, have an epic adventure fighting Darkspawn, and save the whole land? You can forget that here. Action takes place in one city - Kirkwall. ONE GOD DAMN CITY! Yeah, sure, we have few locations in the outskirts, but they are recycled so often, that you will constantly return to the same places, and just fight different mobs depending on the quest that you will be doing. That is just a lazy design. And what about the plot? In Origins we were trying to stop a monster invasion, so we traveled from city to city, trying to unite the land and build an army. You can forget such epic storytelling here. To tell you the truth there is no backbone for a plot here, it just feels like one overlonged prolouge. You want to know what the plot is? Warning spoilers: How we became a champion. Thats it. We have three chapters, that seem totally unrelated with each other. And so first we will be preparing for a trasure hunt (best one), and then we will just be dealing with political machinations. It is all just boring, and uninspired. Whats more, this game is laughably easy even on hard difficulty, and has a dumbed down dialog system. Combat? Please. Characters animation during the fights reminds me a free to play korean MMO. Furthermore forget about any tactics. You will be fighting waves after waves of weak enemies, that will literally fall from the sky or even from ceilings. You will just maw through them without any strategy. it looks like a damn cartoon, and not a hardcore dark fantasy RPG. What to say more... How abou the fact, that your decisions in Origins have almost no impact on the plot of Dragon Age 2. Yeah, sure you'll meet some references here and there, and once I think you'll meet a character from the first game. But it does not change anything overall. Summarising Dragon Age 2 is a worst BioWare Game I have ever played. I hope they will takes their fans opinions to heart and improve upon in the next installment. I really, REALLY hope so.… Expand

I really enjoyed the first game a good deal and ultimately found the sequel to be a big letdown. The combat is more enjoyable and I the companion AI seems more flexible and responsive. The main character feels like it has a bit more personality having a voice. That is about as good as it gets. The narrative does not feel as cohesive as the original game nor does it feel like it has the same epic sense. The lighter roleplaying elements and the more limited character creation choices detract from the freedom of the roleplaying experience. I did not feel like I was forging my own destiny/story in DA 2 like I did in DA:O. The game world design sucks; the city hub setup that lasts for the whole game is uninspiring both in layout and in visualizations. The repeated use of the same scant amount of maps/areas throughout the entirety of the game is repetitive and speaks of cheap, lackluster game design. Overall DA2 is mostly a letdown as a sequel and part of the Dragon Age world. The overall experience feels a bit more streamlined but at the cost of being much more on rails than the sequel, as well as having a narrower and less epic storyline and being entirely too repetitive and un-immersive. Honestly, I am in the third act of the game, almost near the end, and I just can't find the interest to finish it. Poorly done Bioware, poorly done… Expand

I am not a long-term Bioware fan (I have to admit never played BG or Neverwinter back in the day) but I am a lover of RPGs and Dragon Age: Origins was my introduction to Bioware's games. Needless to say I was very impressed. It was a fantastic, well-written and beautifully executed game that I fell in love with. Despite being warned that Dragon Age 2 will not live up my expectations, I had to give it a go. How can another Dragon Age be so bad? So I went into this game with a fairly positive yet cautious attitude. And... well... it's disappointing. Not just as a sequel to Origins, but as a roleplay game in general. Especially from a company like Bioware who I'm led to believe is a bit of an authority on the genre.

The combat is tedious. It's altogether less tactical and more hack-and-slash. There's no tactical camera, and wave combat with enemies appearing from all angles and even dropping from the sky that makes it pretty impossible to place companions, manage potions and generally devise a battle plan. I may be hyperbolising here, but this sort of combat is fit for games like Serious Sam, not Dragon Age. I have no idea why they dumb-downed the combat in this way. It's obvious that a lot of fights were added in as filler combat. There's various encounters that are just waves and waves of uninteresting unimportant enemies that last far too long and then just as you finish up and turn the corner... another one. And another. It gets boring.
To add to that, it looks ridiculous. Perhaps Origins' combat needed to be speeded up a bit, but not like this. It feels like a JRPG, and instead of looking cool it looks stupid. Also, far too much blood. And exploding bodies.

The companions are okay. I wouldn't say they are as well-written as Origin's characters, but they're okay. Interaction is quite horrible though. You only ever get to speak to your companions in their house, and that's only when they have something to say to you, usually involving a quest, or when you give them a gift, of which there about 2 for each. You get a very limited amount of these brief scenes with them, and that's it. For a romance, you get a sex scene and a couple extra conversations - well, I say /sex/ scenes - Origins' sex scenes may have been a little comical, but at least their was some nudity. For an M rated game, I expected a little more than a bit of making out.
I don't know about others, but I felt a lot more distant to my companions than I did in Origins. And I think that being able to speak to your companions when you want, for as little or as long as you want, is important. It's something that felt missed in Awakenings, and it's worse in DA2.
Party banter, however, is just as golden as it ever was! Hawke was an awkward invention. It seems Bioware couldn't decide on creating a blank-canvas character that can be almost fully imagined and created as your own (like the Warden was) or a pre-defined personality (say like, Geralt from The Witcher). And so they went with... both. Hawke felt half like your own creation, and half like a pre-defined character. This was difficult to contend with. It was hard to imagine Hawke as you wanted as you never knew what he was going to say or how he was going to behave. Sure you could choose 'good/funny/bad' but that isn't enough freedom. You also couldn't assume Hawke's personality and roleplay him, because you weren't given enough definition for him. Because there was hardly any of it. As a result, a lot of the time it almost felt like watching a film. You can dictate what Hawke does, but you can't really invent him and you can't really roleplay him. It just didn't work. The story was very messy. I liked the idea of the game being retold by a character, but the time skips were awkward to deal with. There was some interesting writing, but instead of being pushed along with a sense of urgency to an important goal like in Origins, it felt very much like you were just dawdling around a city and falling into trouble. Companions felt more like hirelings going along for the ride or using you now and again, then people devoted or forced into aiding your cause. There's no real drive to do anything except at the end of act 2 and the end of act 3. Not to say the story wasn't enjoyable, it was, but it wasn't great.

Overall, I enjoyed the game. But I wouldn't pay for it. Perhaps in a year or so for a knocked down price, or bundled in with an expansion or some DLC, but not now - it's not worth it. And although I feel I shouldn't compare it to Origins, surely I am allowed to, as it's supposed to be a sequel. It not only failed to improve on Origins, it failed to even reach it's level. In fact, it was considerably worse than the original Dragon Age and that is not a success. Oh, and I think the graphics got worse. The eyebrows in the game are frightening. And Zevran - poor Zevran.… Expand

Dragon Age 2 is an action-RPG developed by Bioware . The story which spans a decade is told through a framed narrative. The time skips break the immersion and the outcome of your tale is already known and fixed. The poorly written main plot line revolves around political intrigues and features boring and tedious quests. The game gives you choices, but they don't effect the outcome at the end. Party members are shallow and forgettable. The game world is small. Most of the game takes place inside a city called Kirkwall. The city is lifeless, dull and lacks atmosphere. Inhabitants stand around in the same spot for years and the city doesn't change over a decade. There are many identical environments like back alleys, interiors and a few caves outside Kirkwall which are being reused and recycled throughout the game. Combat in Dragon Age 2 is action orientated. Waves of enemies pop out of nowhere. There is not much strategy involved. The dialogue system is simple, you choose a good, bad, or funny response. The paraphrases often don't match the actual answers. There are no dialogue related skills in Dragon Age 2. Party equipment management is very limited. You can't change the armor of your party members. The graphics in Dragon Age 2 are sub-par. The art style is bad. Hurlocks look like Skeletor from the Masters of the Universe franchise and the elves look like non-blue Na'vi from the Avatar motion picture.
My final verdict: Dragon Age II is an obviously rushed game plagued with bad design decisions. 3/10… Expand

The cons glaringly outweigh the good, which is unfortunate. The levels/areas are reused and recycled despite being purportedly different places. The flexibility of the game is extremely limited. Combat is fun to look at for awhile but becomes boring and repetitive after fighting the same bandits in the same 3 places with the same 2 weapon types.

It looks like visual designs of weapons were handled by different parties and thrown in the game without communicating with one another. it leaves a sense of disconnect to see cartoony, over-colored plastic swords next to weapons whose designers were trying way to hard to make them look edgy and cool.

Alot of the character writing is excellent, which is one of the few redeeming qualities of the game. And while the areas are absurdly recycled, they tend to be visually appealing.

I really wanted to like this game but there is simply too much wrong with it to be content.… Expand

Looking at the trailers, advertisements, and all the marketing beforehand, DA2 looks spectacular and comes by as a must have for every avid fantasy rpg fan. In reality, the game was sloppily put together, designed with no room for creativity or imagination, it's presentation and storyline poorly executed, and many of the role-playing elements that capture the imagination and bring RPGs to life were "dumbed down" or completely removed in order to attract an audience that doesn't care for such things. Looking back at the short development cycle and it's primary goal of "reaching out to a wider audience", it's obvious the game was designed with the concept of quantity over quality in mind.… Expand

The first game was awesome: nearly perfect graphics, involving (and evolving) story-line, decent story-telling, very likable characters with good nuances on their relationships, good game dynamics and so on. NONE of that is found at this second instance.

Graphics are on the same level (actually, the design is cartoonist instead of realistic like the first), but system requirements are bigger (try to understand that), characters are simple and plain, there is actually no story and you have NO CLUE why you are playing - you just play, you know you are supposed to do something but have no idea why, and all of the sudden, the game ends. If you try and pursue relationships with your companions, you will be disappointed - and don't expect anything spicy for the more intimate moments, for there are none!

Add the fact that strategy was ruined with friendly-fire not existing, and the dumbing-down of most game mechanics, and what you have here is weak and pointless, and the hard fan will only play it just to see it though and pretend he/she got a minimal worth from the money ill spent.

In short: a perfect example of how to ruin a good game because of consoles, money and dumbing it for "the masses". Result: 4.2 user score, hope E.A. and Bioware get the message.… Expand

Nice graphics, but I never felt I was in control of anything except slashing things. Apalling game play, but no doubt delicious for the console crowd who don't demand too much depth to their gameplay.

I was completely disappointed by this game. I kept playing only because I thought it could get better, but it actually got worse.

The things I didn't like: The new combat system. It's extremely consolish - I play on a PC for a reason (and any tactics completely wasted by enemies springing from mid-air in the middle of a fight!)
The reused graphics (over and over)
Quests that finished without me even knowing they were a problem
A end-story line that completely blew featuring "choices" between two directions I wouldn't go when the most obvious choice wasn't listed, NPC's making completely illogical choices, etc.

I was very disappointed with this because I loved DA - Origins and played through it multiple times, have the DLC, etc. I won't be purchasing any DLC for DA2, nor do I intend to jump into another bioware game without waiting first (sorry MA3 and SWTOR).… Expand

People will look back at this game and see it as the beginning of the end for Bioware, and the sad part is it's not even their fault, it's EA Game's fault. They're doing to Bioware what they did to Westwood, forcing harsh timelines and production schedules on artists which leads to releases of unfinished **** games, doing this to drive the company and its franchises into the ground before absorbing them and milking what little is left from the shriveled remnants of a once great product.

That aside, I didn't really like the first game so I was not expecting to like this one. I played it through out of boredom while watching a friend's house. But all of the issues that plagued DA:O go double for this one. Intensely dumbed down and consolized to draw in call of duty players. Difficulty is a joke, even on the hardest difficulty I died six or seven times total. The story is a joke, skips around as if they scratched every CD coming off of the production lines by hand to cut out all of the linking things that made the brief episodes of story make sense.

The game is intensely limited in its scope, but not only is it short, it is also shallow. Zones are reused so much even the characters joke about it. Guess what bioware? We don't think it's funny. I certainly wouldn't be amused if I had spent $60 on this game only to have Bioware designers make fun of me for being such a damned sucker through the game's characters. According to sales statistics I've seen DA2 has less than half of the sales DA:O had at this point. I didn't consider DA:O a gem, but it was certainly better than this, the market agrees. Trying to lure Call of Duty players into a fantasy RPG at the price of pissing off the rest of us nerds probably isn't a good idea.… Expand

Wow! This game is just sad. After DA:O, I expected a game at the same (or similar) level. My expectations were huge. Luckily for me, at the time of game release I had my exams so I waited with the purchase. So, when I was almost on my way to the store, I decided to try the game. And thanks to that I have saved 60$. Not to mention cost of DLC. The game is weak. Control is weird. I played it only for 4 hours, but it was enough to now, I don't want it. Grapics is poor. Gameplay is way too easy. It doesn't seem like RPG to ma at all. Hack'nSlash maybe. The main storyline seems interesting, but on the other hand dialogs are naive. And the fact it is DragoN Age??? It hurts. Because it has nothing common with DA:O… Expand

The game isn't bad, but as the estimable Gertrude Stein noted: "There's no there there". I would probably give it a 5 on its own merits, but I have to deduct 2 points for ruining the luster on the incredibly awesome DA:O. Everything that was right in the original has been toned down and dumbed down. The story is meh, the characters are meh, the loot is meh, the locations are meh, and the outcome is meh. I realize it would have been hard to top the first game, but this pales in comparison to even the Awakening DLC.… Expand

If I want to be generous 3/10 is the maximum I could give this game. Ignoring its predecessor entirely, the game still fails to do what it says on the tin - the game is not immersive; you feel massively disconnected from the main character you create and, as such, from every event that takes place during the game. The graphics are unforgivable even with the PC patch from Bioware. The controls remove strategy altogether and leave PC gamers with a repeatative and boring experience for the sake of Xbox player experience. The few events that wound have tied you to the character are not seen and are often referenced in past tense, happening off-camera, removed to get you right back into running around the same dungeons and cityscape over and over and over again with little to no feeling of accomplishment! Bioware has sacrificed a good idea, probably at the behest of EA and a developer who needs some sense beaten into him with a tree trunk, to create something that seems to only give the Xbox gamers any sense of a worthwhile experience - such a massive shame considering that PC gamers got Bioware off the ground and made them what they are. My biggest concern is that they listen to only the Xbox reviews and assume they've done well. They are steadily alienating their patrons and will soon find their figures dwindling as though someone dropped them off a sheer cliff if they dont get their act together. Funnily enough, CD Projeckt did what Bioware tried to do in the first 30mins of Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings, except they did it right, completely immersing the player. If you have to know what happens in Dragon Age 2 then wait until it drops heavily in price! If you want an immersive RPG played the way gamers have come to expect RPGs to play, buy Witcher 2 - even at full price.… Expand

This is the most disappointing sequel I've played in the last few years... Poor interaction, ugly interface, stupid AIs, feeble script... You get bored during the first two game play hours. I don't know what were the people of Bioware thinking when they planned this, but I can tell you they didn't dedicate much time into it. Boring, awful, hideous!!!

This game probably would have been better if they would have named it Hack and Slash 2. Because if you were expecting any of the greatness of Origins in this game, then dissapointment is all you'll find.
It really is a comletely different game that happens to have a dragon age theme. This is not an rpg, but an action game. one of the worst aspects is the dialogue which is as unrealistic and incoherent as it can be. That's tragic given that what made Origins a masterpiece is the fact the conversations/dialogue brought the characters to life. You could actually connnect to the characters as if they were real people. you could role play. I found myself hating my own character is dragon age 2. not to mention that what you pick on the screen and what your character actually says are two different things. also the fact that your main character speaks for himself doesn't allow you to role play. If you really want a role playing experience get Dragon Age Origins instead. The ultimate edition is 29 dollars on Steam and the game is far better than Dragon Age 2. Orgins is 100 times better for half the price.… Expand

Pathetically Simplified to what is basically a hack n' Slash fest.
The only reason i have not given it a 0/10 is for the second act plot. the first act was dull and the third act seemed as if it had been cobbled together by a drunken 13 year old. the second act however was very interesting and presented intriguing questions of morality, and a growing tension between the qunari and the citizens of kirkwall.
User choice plays little role, repetitive non varied environments, no need for thought about combat, and a cast of forgettable characters + a darkspawn redesign that changed them from creatures that i was at times genuinely scared of to waddling clowns… Expand

A true disappointment. I loved the original, but this couldn't be less engaging. I don't care about any of the characters and running back and forth through this stupid town has become a chore. I'd love to know how the Critic score is so high.

As a person who absolutely loved games like neverwinter nights and all of its expansions, I naturally fell in love with Dragon Age: Origins. Playing Dragon Age 2 was a massive change of tone from the original to such an extent it doesn't seem similar at all. Massive amounts of functionality and customization were torn from this game when compared to its predecessor. I've tried numerous times with each class to finish this game, but i inevitably get bored and stop playing after only a few hours. Maybe i had too high of hopes to begin with since Dragon Age: Origins was just so awesome, but I feel now that my money and my time could have been better spent.… Expand

Such a poor, poor game...not nearly as good as dragon age I.
This is just a laim game, poor text, poor design, i even encounterd repeatable maps, different quest same map different location. Poor design of charchter, voice acting, dialogue is annoying.
Hawke feels like retard, I can honestly say that this game has one of the worst dialogue in rpg.
I think this game has been made by some other studio not bioware, cause its so dissapointing.
I am trully sorry that i have paid for this game… Expand

It's hard to think of anything that probably hasn't been said already about this game, short of just how badly Bioware has handled it. Before this i was convinced they could not make a bad game but DA2 will dissapoint you especially if you enjoyed Bioware's earlier work. Suggest getting Baldur's Gate instead.

There were high expectations after the retail success of DA:O. I've decided to rate DAII a '3'. Here's my reason's for a 7 point deduction:
Objective reasons: Recycled places. Every area in the game is copy and pasted several times throughout the game. A lot of RPG's do this but DAII takes this to the extreme. Enemies are spawned in 'waves' and often times magically appear above your head in mid-air and drop onto the play field. Characters; because of the dialogue wheel any characters that are the same sex as your PC will appear to be gay. You'll feel that you are 'hit' on by every same sex character. This was a major negative for me. For example, as you play though the game as a male, both anders and fenris will 'make a pass' at you. You can either hit the 'heart' or 'break-heart' icons in the dialogue wheel. The end result is that you will feel like all romancable characters of the same sex are gay regardless of what you do.
Subjective reasons: The art style, while I could have liked it had of this been the first game in the series, it was so drastically different from the first that it ended up changing the very lore and make up of the game. Darkspawn were now goofy looking stooges and such. I did not care much for the combat. It was much better paced but I found it to be considerably easier than DAO as far as tactics go. I played the PC version and on "hard" setting. The combat was quite easy and only challenged me on a handful of encounters.
To date I can easily say this has been Biowares worst game. For the year 2011 there were a lot of noteable RPG's released. Bioware who in the past has always had the top RPG of the year will probably not be winning any awards. They were quite honestly beat at the own game by several other studios who released RPG's that were in a different league when it comes to excellence. Even the non-user metacritic scores will bear this out. Take a look at how many other RPG's scored much higher than DAII for the year 2011.
I gave DAII a '3' for the reasons above. It would have been '0' had I of written this in March. It earned a '3' because I did manage to end up finishing the game, though with much perseverance and hope that at some point the game would actually redeem itself. DAII is now sitting on my shelf and I can quite confidently say that I will never touch it again after just one playthough. A sad first with all the Bioware games I have played since 1998.… Expand

Avoid like a plague if you played and enjoyed Origins. If not then you sure can get some fun from it, but as a sequel it fails terribly. Graphics are so-so but overall the game is lacking in every aspect. Characters are not entertaining at all, you just can't feel anything when you interact with them... Hell I don't even remember half of them. Fights are also terrible, just button mashing and killing NPC-s who simply appear from nowhere. Oh, and your choices means nothing like in most recent RPG-s. You just kill everyone and only big decision is who will be killed first...… Expand

This game is bad, initially it can seem that it goes for good way but then it becomes monotonous, boring and short. And yes, it is possible that the system of battle is better than DAO but for everything else it's a pity that shares name with a great game, his predecessor.

It's a game that tries to cater to everyone, but in the end is satisfying to no one.
Yes combat fluidity is improved, but making it an action game with wild swings of greatsword, and that one where you can't even use the top down camera? That takes too much away from the tactical, group based combat experience.
In fact, there are mods to DAO like Nightmare+ and Combat Tweaks on dragon age nexus that resolves the drawbacks of DAO's combat system, without taking away the core experience.
Also, while it ventured into the area of action based combat, there is hardly anything it can offer to compete with real action games, there's no rolling or even jumping. You do it right, or you don't do it at all.

The characters are also rather bland characters. Many are minor characters of Origins with one dimensional personalities. Which is fine, but when they become major characters of DA2, you have to add more dimensions, and by that I don't mean Isabela's boob size.

This is the game that marks the beginning of Bioware's downfall. It is no longer a game; it is a formulated product. Bioware thinks writing + combat = game, which is definitely not true.… Expand

Of late game designers seem to have gone the route of making sequels less intricate instead of more intricate. Dragon age II suffers from this exact same problem and ruins the experience. Dragon age 1 was a game for the ages, an old school CRPG in the baldur's gate tradition which met with much enthousiasm from gamers everywhere. I remember thinking to myself "this is going to be AWESOME if they get an expansion going, with a follow up story and more classes!" Imagine my dissapointment when I ordered DA2 and found out that DA2 really has nothing in common with DA1. The story is completely unrelated to the DA1 story, the combat system is incredibly dumbed down to the point of just relentlessly button bashing and seeing pretty colours and the origins system, which was very promising, was axed alltogether. Can't give this one more then a 3, and I'll be holding off on any bioware purchases untill they prove they can get it right again.… Expand

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

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.....

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

Oh.. My.. God... EA ruined this game. Battles were way too easy. The story was boring and I felt almost claustrophobic inside the city of Kirkwall. Every cave looked exactly the same..

Unlike some who appear outraged over Dragon Age 2, all this game has really managed to do to me is make me somewhat sad. Sad that I have to see such an amazing developer fall so far in releasing an obviously rushed, horribly over-simplified game in order to target what appears to be their new demographic, the "console crowd". Where to start.. The game has been "streamlined" and simplified in areas where it just wasn't necessary.. The combat is laughable, simply wave after wave of enemies that not only die in a single hit, they somehow explode. Tactics are nonexistent.. Sure, on Nightmare you'll micromanage through waves of enemies that somehow follows the same formula regardless of what you're fighting.. Sorry, but I don't really consider that "tactical" play.

The UI is absolutely hideous, clearly having been designed with a console in mind. Yet another change that was absolutely unnecessary, all to appeal to the crowd that hasn't given a damn about BioWare while those of us that have supported them for years are casually tossed to the side.

The graphics are about the only reason this game is receiving a 2 from me.. While I noticed others are complaining about them as well, I have to give credit where credit is due and say that on DX11 with the high resolution textures the game is quite beautiful (if you can ignore the fact that every area you're in is nothing but a simple corridor). It's sad, but this game has brought me to a point where I can say that I will never, ever again pre-order a BioWare title, despite having supported almost every major release of theirs since KotOR. If you're thinking of purchasing this game, I can assure you that you really aren't missing out on much, especially if you're expecting anything even remotely resembling what made the original Dragon Age popular.

Thanks for all the great times, BioWare.. You've just really messed up on this one.… Expand

First, you should know that this review comes from a fan of Dragon Age Origins. As far as I am concerned DAO was the best single player RPG of the past 10 years. With that said, DA2 is quite simply an epic fail. Kirkwall One of the well known 'features' of Dragon Age 2 is that the whole "story" takes place in Kirkwall. When I read this in a game preview, I didn't mind. I assumed (wrongly) that Kirkwall must be HUGE. The first thing you will notice after stepping into Kirkwall is how tiny it is. It takes all of 10 minutes to explore the whole entire city. You think you are going up some stairs to explore a new area when a dialog box pops up, "Would you like to gather your party and continue?". Uh, Ok. A screen pops up where you have to click a new area. Boom. You are transported to the new area that looks exactly like the first and is tiny, tiny, tiny. There are a few crates and sacks to open, but that is it.

Oh well, you say. "I don't care how tiny it is, my attention span is so short every area will seem new to me anyways". Well you will also notice Kirkwall is filled with tons of people going about their business! What a sprawling city just filled with life! Unfortunately, you can't talk to any of these people. None. Zero. Clicking them does nothing. Area recycling

OK, so now the dreaded area recycling that fangirls everywhere try to justify. I'd like to remind everyone that I play games for fun. I realize many of you now play games as a form of repetitive work (like WoW), in that case, you still won't like this game. It is truly ridiculous. Accept a quest, go through a mine, return back and get a reward. Good, it was fun. Accept another quest, go back to the exact same mine, but now somehow there are doors closed off with rocks, and new doors magically have opened. WTF? Ok whatever, I'll let it slide. Oh wait, please don't make me go back to Kirkwall to accept another quest. I know we have moved past this but Kirkwall is so small that I memorized every area, where everything was in just one pass through of the city. I can see how people can convince themselves that this area recycling is fine, as I did myself for a little while. But finally I cracked. I hate it. I hate this game. If you haven't cracked yet, just keep playing. It will happen. I promise.

Exploration is a desired component for me in RPG's and there is no exploration here.

Battles

Not much to say about this one. Every battle is the exact same, with the a lot of the same enemies. This is just a real let down. Here is how it works: Approach an area, kill off about 7 - 10 enemies, a second wave of 7-10 enemies appears. Kill them. Move on. Every. Single. Battle. Is. The. Same. Two waves. Then done. All of them. So when you enter a battle, you know exactly what will happen, this absolutely kills immersion. It is obvious they tried to take a middle road in combat design to please console and PC players alike. They failed in both.
Combat is boring, boring, boring and boring, no strategy, and did I mention boring.

Story / Characters

Ah what else. How about the story? Weak, beyond weak. I didn't have a single moment in the game that I found the story to be enaging, in fact most of the time it was flat out confusing and vague.
In addition to the weak story that you don't care about the companion's histories are very undeveloped and interactions with them are dismal compared to its predcesor. The new dialog options of simply 'Peaceful' 'Funny' and 'Angry' is partially to blame. The old dialog system was much better.
Unlike DA-O I felt no attachment to any of them because I was barely given any information about them or opportunity to learn about them.
By the way, the main character being voiced was actually a huge detraction from the game, not a benefit.

Conclusion

I was expecting an epic sequel to DA:O. This is such an embarrassment of an RPG that I actually feel used, and conned. There is no possible way that BioWare was putting the finishing touches on this baby and thought, "Wow, good job guys. This game is really fun". The game is small, repetitive and just plain boring. Why are there 2 waves to every fight? Why are all the areas the same? Why is Kirkwall so damn small?! Why is there no life in it? I am surprised that it took them this long to release the game.

I truly miss the days where developers put their heart and soul into their games. There is always some ?????? bag that realizes they can get people to pay 60 bucks for the game on its reputation alone, and can cut costs by simply making it a pile of trash. I doubt I will ever buy another BioWare title. I am disgusted. I just wish the gaming media websites would actually rate games truthfully. They could possibly save this game by making it a Facebook only web app.

Final words: What happened?… Expand

A step back in every respect from Origins, if you enjoyed Origins, don't expect to enjoy this, it caters for a low tier of gamers, one day DLC is another slap in the face from a money grabbing company.

This is for sure the disappointment of the year and the reason why BioWare should've never been sold to Electronic Arts. This "sequel" is worse than the original in almost everything, except textures and skill effects. The main plot is boring and has no sense, the combat is dumb and the Hawke has no charisma at all.

With DA: Origins BioWare captured a tiny bit of the magic they used to have in their heyday with the likes of Baldurs Gate 2 and KOTOR, and in my opinion that strategic, tactical "thinking" gameplay felt like a step in the right direction, particularly the PC version with its overhead distant perspective allowing us to get a good view of the battlefield. However this game just feels so watered down and casualised its just lost all of that past BioWare magic. I felt the same about Mass Effect 2 also, which seemed dumbed down and more about mindless action. So if anyone else out there reading this felt the same about that game, then trust me, DA2 will disappoint you too.… Expand

Dragon Age II is another sequel that would have been better as a new IP. Looking at it as a new IP, it has a flowing combat system, decent customization, good story, and interesting characters. This, however, is not a new IP. This is the sequel to one of the best RPGs i have ever played. Compared to DA:O the customization is laughable, the leveling is limited, combat animation is more interesting and flowing, but is very limited, and the characters are too stuck in their roles. Essentially the only thing that they improved was making the combat more flowing, especially for the mages. Everything else was cut by 1/3. you have only one race instead of 3, cutting your character options by 1/3, any non mage class is stuck in archery, 2handed swordsmanship, etc instead of being able to choose between 3, and you are stuck in one city and the mountain out back instead of being able to travel around a huge map. Will I buy it? Yes, once the price drops to 1/3 that of DA:O.… Expand

I would have given this game 7 or 8/10 if it wasn't called DA2. This is not the sequel the first game deserved and is a traversty to the RPG genre set forth from its predcessor. Having said that, if you ignore the title and assume this game isn't within the DA lineage then it is actually quite entertaining, even though it is a hack & slash 'RPG'.

I am extremely disappointed in Dragon Age II. I should have done the research, I should have waited a few days and read the reviews. Instead at 10 AM today I was at Gamestop picking up my copy not knowing just how disappointed I was about to be. I expected a lot of this game, what I did not expect to receive was a dumbed-down almost direct console port of a video game. The graphics look terrible even with the "high-res" pack installed and running. The vegetation is so sparse it is comical. The inventory system is deplorable. For every character other than your main character you can only change their weapon, rings, and amulet and belt. No boots, no gloves, no helmet, no grieves. The battles amount to nothing more than, "Here fight these 8 enemies you can one shot. You killed them? Here is another 8. You killed them!? Bet you didn't see this come, here is another wave. Good job, you won." There is no strategy involved, indeed, there CANT be strategy when just about every one of your abilities one-shots your enemies. There just isn't time. I am writing this review in the hopes of saving someone else the disappointment I am feeling. I just played 13 hours of Dragon Age 2. All 13 hours of the same thing was going through my head, "This game is nowhere near as epic as its predecessor because it is FIRST a console RPG, and then a pc RPG, not the other way around like DA:O was". Save your money if you own a pc, rent it if you on a ps3 or 360. Don't make the mistake I did.… Expand

A slap in the face for fans of DA:O, seriously where did they get the idea to main the masterpiece that DA:O was into this piece of filth. Everything's dumbed down and simplified, what on earth were they thinking. Don't buy this game, buy DA:O instead.

Here goes...reserved the game months ago because I loved DA:O and even Awakening. Bought a couple of DLC even. Thought the game was a bone to the old-ish veteran gamers who enjoyed Baldur's gate, NWN, etc. Here's my opinion on the game: Pros: -Characters are pretty interesting so far (played about 8 hours) -Voice acting is great. Cons: -Action oriented, which is a matter of opinion. But considering this is the sequel to the 2009 GotY that used a completely different combat system more based on strategy, this just sounds like Bioware left its old fans behind and tried to reach for a new market. On that note, ''Strategic pause'' isn't very strategic. Button mashing feast.
-Graphics are unpolished. Unexcusable, especially the NPC's look horrible up close.
-Dungeons rehashed only 5 hours in the game...really Bioware?
-No isometric view. Makes me believe the PC game was more an afterthought than anything else.
-Story is unfocused. Jumping from point to point in time and following the story through someone else's viewpoints isnt a bad idea (Diablo 2 everyone?) but it's poorly done this time, at least in my humble opinion.
-Dialogue wheel was fine for Mass Effect, but it breaks the mood for this game. Having a choice between being overboard angelic, a complete **** or a wisecracker doesnt sound like a lot of choice to me.
-So little choice on how to customize the main character...human male or female. Poor immersion, I never believed for a second I was Hawke the way I identified to my warden in DA2.… Expand

While I was somewhat optimistic even after playing the demo most of that optimism faded when I actually played the game.

Revamped combat does not work too well, stiff character animations are also very off putting. And is it me or did Dragon Age Origins have better character textures? Also what's with the Critic's score, my god. Those are NOT honest reviews, because metascore's user ratings clearly does not reflect that.… Expand

This is not Dragon Age, despite the game's title, the game itself has precious little to do with Dragon Age. It's almost an insult naming this game Dragon Age 2. Very saddening to see a once great rpg turned into something like that. Almost every aspect of a rpg is dumbed down beyond words to better appeal to the console users, seriously. What the hell is the Mass Effect conversation style doing in Dragon Age, it basically give u 3 words and a face beside you to hand hold you telling you that the choice is an evil/good/neutral one. Only one default race, seriously? Much of the appeal, and re-playability, of the previous Dragon Age is that one can choose a different race on each play through and the NPC will react accordingly to your race. Now you are better off deleting the game after your first run through, no re-playability whatsoever. There is so many things fundamentally wrong with this game I dun even know where to end.

Bioware better off naming it Mass Effect: Origins which tells the story of how Shepherd's ancestor save the world. If we wanted something like Mass Effect we would have waited for the next Mass Effect. In a nutshell, this is NOT Dragon Age, anyone looking forward to reliving the hundreds of hours spent on the original Dragon Age will be sorely disappointed. Better off grabbing Dragon Age: Ultimate Edition and play any dlcs that you missed out previously, even replaying Dragon Age: Origins for the 1000th gives you a better experience. Give us back our original Dragon Age!… Expand

I don't understand how IT was born?"OK, let's make some fighting system for kids, dialogs which can't change storyline, AND SEX with woman, than man, man, man, woman".So, is it a boylover simulator or it was made for a schoolboys? I can't understand why enemies are crashing into pieces from one knife slash?It's hilarious game from fathers of RPG. And some words about graphics - it sucks.

Never good when you make a game worse than it's prequel. So many problems with the game. So much hype over it by DA fans. The "professional" reviewers are giving it a high score for some reason I do not know.

This isn't a RPG! It's a hack'n'slash! There is nothing else to say: it's a game for casual gamers! At technical level there's only one interesting thing: the soundtrack! Everything else it's really really poor!

Dragon Age 2 is an abomination. The gameplay is boring and primitive, the story is linear and cliched, the writing is godawful fanfiction.net Naruto fanfics-level crap and the characters are ranging from mediocre to awful (especially Merrill, who is a disgusting moeblob without any personality). Oh, and it's ugly, and i'm not only talking about graphics - the artstyle is... bad. Very, very bad. DA2 looks like something that a 12 year old with ADHD could make.

Oh, and the Nightmare difficulty that was hyped as being super great stuff for truly hardcore gamers? It's crap too. Instead of giving new abilities to the opponents and making them smarter Bioware just gave them really high stats and called it a day.… Expand

I waited to buy the game because I was tentative and, after having played it at my friend's house (and seeing the reviews), I'm glad I didn't.

My short playthrough of the demo and my long play at my friend's house has shown me that Bioware has given us a throwaway in DA2.

-The locations are bland. Flat, color-less, empty (and I mean devoid of life... ME2 felt like a bustling galaxy, even in empty places. Here... everything just seems disjointed and static). The beginning area of the game, which would have been an amazing opportunity to kick off the game the right way by showing the full range of the Darkspawn destruction, was instead limited to a couple brown ditches, a small, crumbling structure, and a battle on a flat, brown field. The "bustling, and over-populated" city of Kirkwall, which is the ONLY CITY YOU WILL SEE ALL GAME, is full of bland, repeated textures, and claustrophobic, bite-sized map chunks.

-The story is almost non-existent (we're several hours in and have yet to encounter anything that resembles a coherent plotline, save "go here, do this."). I wish I was joking, but this game jams side quests down your throat like you wouldn't believe. And, unlike DA:O or ME2, every single one of these side quests is boring beyond belief.

-The combat is clunky. Between targeting issues and camera fowl-ups, I've easily MISSED enemies with attacks and had to repeat entire battles because my Defender is too stupid to defend my mage (who goes down in three seconds from EVERYTHING attacking her) when I tell her to. Babysitting the Defender through the pause menu makes no difference whatsoever, because fights are too fast, flurried, and often too spaced out for abilities like (AoE) Taunt or (cone) Shield Bash to prove effective.

-Shepherd in ME1 *and* ME2 felt special, because she was uncompromising, strong-willed, and experienced, which showed in every playthrough on either Renegade or Paragon. However,in DA2, everyone keeps saying Hawke is a "Champion"... but I can see no clear reason why Hawke is special, other than she's the PC and Bioware said so.

-The poorly-written dialogue reinforces this, as Hawke is bland and uninteresting. Her compatriots are similar in this regard, as they sign on to her party without question, offer help for no reason, and become fast friends for no reason other than it's convenient to expedite the pace of the game. Much of the dialog (lore, expository, AND romantic) is downright abysmal and actually forced me on numerous occasions to stop playing so I could find someone to point out how stupid they were. No joke... there is actually a portion of the game where one character admits their love for Hawke... and an available response is "I'm hungry." *facepalm*

-The first two hours of the game emphasize combat only by making you play through the beginning... the play through it AGAIN, just in case you didn't enjoy the SAME EXACT BATTLE the FIRST time. It barely touches on specialization (which is confusing unless you spend 20 minutes reading all the different branches and even then, some of them are locked to your characters), and are filled with endless waves of cookie-cutter enemies. Hell... even the writers seemed to get bored with it, because I was allowed into the city with two short walks on the same, small map, before I was consigned to a ONE YEAR fast forward and then introduced to a bunch of NPCs (lacking any discernible personality besides being gruff and shrewd) that knew my character as a slave, but had yet to be introduced to me. This actually ends up being the tone of the game, where you complete numerous side quests before completing a few big ones and fast-forwarding the story a year into the future. This ended up making me frustrated to the point that I lost all interest in character progression, because I was missing large gaps of time. Oh, and my first big quest is "make mom happy." Fantastic.

-Inventory system is broken and clunky. Companions are almost stuck with the gear they've got.

-Game is unoptimized for beta drivers, comes without the HD textures pack (God knows why, but you have to download it from Bioware separately), and has some of the ugliest, blandest... and creepiest... character models, textures, and weapon models. Google "Dragon Age 2 looks" to see what I mean.

This game reeks of crappy console port and is a slap in the face to the PC community that has become Bioware's fanbase of the years. The game has been dumbed-down (repetition, repetition) significantly to appeal to the console gaming crowd and it's painfully obvious. No game should make you feel like you have to struggle to enjoy it and DA2 made me miserably bored and angry for hours before my friend and I uninstalled it.

This game is God-awful pitiful at the on-set and several hours through does not appear to be getting any better. Do NOT buy.… Expand

I have no way to relay my complete an utter disappointment in this game. All i can say is that the combat is ruined by making it look like a bad action movie. And the game is overly simplified.

Shame on you bioware for ruining what was to be the best series of games

This game is so disappointing to me. I can live with the unintuitive new UI, the new fast-paced (hack and slash) combat, and the uninspired art design. I really can. What I can't live with are the forgettable characters you encounter and the abysmal "story". There really is no "arc" to speak of; just a bunch of loose ends. Your companions have no personality. I can't even remember their names most of the time. If they had numbers instead of names it would not make one bit of difference. They are forgettable and so is this game. I do not have the feeling of becoming "attached" to anything or anyone, including the main character (Hawke). There is no reason for me to care. Terrible, terrible writing. There really are no redeeming qualities. If Dragon age 2 wasn't made by Bioware, the professional critic scores would be much, much lower. This game is a generic, uninspired, rushed piece of trash. I am incredibly disappointed. Please do not waste your money like I did.… Expand

Utter disappointment. They say Dragon Age II hasn't been dumbed down, it's just more welcoming. The truth is somewhere in-between. The new art direction doesn't really cut it (Dragon Age is a gritty fantasy epic, not some cartoon-ish gorefest), the combat is terrible, lacking any kind of tactical capabilities, it is just mindless button-mashing (even on Nightmare, there is simply not enough challenge), rendering the pause and play system completely useless. The environments are uninspired and the gameplay is restricted to a single corridor (most of the time). Mr. Gaider did his best to support the poor combat experience, by some mature storytelling and the framed narrative, but He fails to live up to the example of Alpha Protocol. The plotline is dramatic enough, but the undeveloped C&C, along with the cliched dialogues are well below the standards. The main protagonist is voiced, which would be good thing, had it not been for the removal of the Origin stories. The only redeeming factor of Dragon Age II is the immense work put into the soundtrack and acting. Inon Zur is brilliant as always, even though the score is not as memorable as Prince of Persia or Icewind Dale II. And whoever designed the new UI, should start again from scratch; it reminded me of Morrowind, and that masterpiece came out a decade ago.

All summarized in one sentence: Dragon Age II is an insult to the first game and the RPG genre.… Expand

When Dragon Age 2 was announced, I like many hardcore RPG gamers looked forward to it. While in the past several years Bioware hasn't been producing awe-inspiring games as they once did, they've remained a very solid developer who's RPG's are interesting, characters are varied and get you involved, and build worlds which have depth and are enjoyable. Dragon Age 2 is a complete betrayal of this standard. The combat feels jolty and unrealistic. The characters wield a 2 handed sword that would make Braveheart sweat like it was made from tissue paper. The weapons were equally large in Dragon Age: Origins, but at least they felt like they were actually that big. Instead, what we have here is a combat system that resembles crappy anime more than anything else. As if the combat wasn't bad enough, the dialogue has been dumbed down into the wheel-of-fail style that was implemented with Mass Effect. Not only that, but every single piece of dialogue feels like it was written by an 8 year old who just read his first fantasy novel. There is no character depth, I'd as soon stab my party members as look at them, and to glue all this together the voice acting feels more like a group of Live Action Roleplayers than paid voice actors. To top all this off, the game not only doesn't look and present itself better than Origins, it actually looks worse. I can't recall another time when a sequel to a game looked worse than its predecessor. It feels as though Bioware did everything in their power to make this a worse RPG in an effort to alienate their hard-earned fan base and sell to the mass media'd console market. The only thing that kept this game from getting a 0 from me is the fact that maybe Bioware didn't intend for this to be an RPG at all, and simply another generic, boring, railroaded action game. As a lifelong Bioware fan, I truly hope they don't stay on this road. They've proven time and again their ability to make a solid RPG, but this game was an utter betrayal of everything I as an RPG fan have come to love and expect from them.… Expand

What have they done to my beloved Dragon Age? Shoddy performance on Nvidia and the game feels very rushed and simplified. I won't be pre-ordering the next one!

I'll preface this mini-review with: I actually like the game. I do, it's mindless. After working long days at my terrible menial job that saps my mental capacities; it's nice to sit down with a mindless game that takes absolutely no thought what-so-ever to get through. But that's a problem. This is a Bioware game. It's set to a higher standard than other games, it's supposed to draw you in with it's story and setting; the characters are supposed to be memorable, witty, devious, intelligent. But none of that really applies here. What we got was a game so vapid, so unintelligent, so... test grouped, that it's now not much more than a mindless Facebook game. Re-used maps everywhere. Lack of personality in it's setting and characters. Plenty of loot, but only one character to equip it on. (Oh that's nice, a 'mage only' item that has stats that my rogue will never be able to equip. Maybe I'll equip it on to one of my mages on my team, oh wait..) Poorly written characters that are voice acted quite well. And what happened to the Qunari? I mean, what? I honestly thought they were Darkspawn. Who even thought that was a good idea? I'm starting to go off the rails, the game itself is not worthy of calling itself a sequel. The people who spent the passed year or two working on this game should not be proud of their work. They were forced to make a game that they I'm sure knew would be a big disappointment for the people who actually enjoyed the first game. Sorry fellas, people aren't trolling, they're genuinely disappointed that you (Bioware) made a subpar game. Borrow this from your friends if you really really want to play it, please do not spend your (or your parents') hard earned money on this.… Expand

This is just your average run of the mill hack n' slash game now. Also combat moves are just so over the top that they are very corny. Not so great...

Sadly, yet another developer has abandoned their PC core game base for the mass appeal of the console. Bioware games have historically been extremely deep, really customizable games, with a strong focus on tactics and strategy. The industry as a whole has been moving away from these kind of games because of the increased profitability games have on console, and the simplistic console controls limit what developers can do. Dragon Age seemed to be one of the last remaining franchises truly designed to be a hardcore RPG gamer's type of game. However, the console has struck again, and we are left with Dragon Age 2, a game that does nothing but let down Bioware's long standing fanbase and fans of the genre. Let me preface this by saying that if you aren't familiar with Bioware games (aside from Mass Effect), like hack and slash type games, and are a console gamer, chances are you will enjoy this game. However, to the rest of us, this game signifies everything that is wrong with the market and the way gaming is headed. The depth of PC games of old is dead, and Bioware is no longer doing anything to prevent it.… Expand

Having been a long time wrpg fan, Dragons Age: Origins established what looked to be a great new IP breaking away from frankly tired D&D conventions. I have just finished DA2 which took a little under 16 hours, and I fear for the future of this brand. Graphically DA2 looks almost identical to DA:O origins which isn't unexpected given the very quick development time. Main characters look great but scenery, NPCs and unfortunately some armor and weapons suffer from hideously low resolution textures and low polygon counts. DA2 has also developed some sort of gore fixation with every kill resulting in an exploding enemy flinging litres of blood around and staining the screen with modern warfare-esque decals over the hud. Performance with the PC version was schizophrenic - FPS changing drastically in areas containing little detail, I would guess some internal face culling was skipped in the development process.

The voice acting suffers compared to DA:O, unfortunately I would probably link this to the quick development time as well. The male Hawke delivers the majority of his lines with a lack of expression or enthusiasm which is often unintentionally hilarious when coupled with dramatic player animations. The mass-effect conversational wheel could have been a worthy addition if it was made clear what the player was going to actually say. I found the conversations similar to alpha protocol in this respect, the main character often saying things you did not intend for them to say.

Most disappointing to me is the lack of player choice and provisions for role playing. Many quests are initiated with the typical "Get this item/person from here and bring it back/kill them" line from an npc with your responses limited to 2 or 3 ways to say "yes" with limited occasions where you can refuse quests or hold out for more rewards etc etc...

Combat is more or less similar to DA:O with the need to flank targets strangely removed, with characters flipping in to backstab then flipping back out again. Quite unusual given the mechanics established in the original. I can't help but think the simplification of some elements of combat removes some of what made DA:O great in the first place.

There are other issues regarding some cringe worthy pop culture references, the bland story, repeated dungeons and your two dimensional companions, but to be honest, I'd rather forget about this experience and hope that this misstep by bioware doesn't kill off the future of this franchise.… Expand

Dragon Age: Origins was awesome. I like hack and slash games like Diablo and Dungeon Siege. DAO really sucked me into the fantasy world and combat. There was something in it that really was fun, addicting, and truly unique when I played it. The game kept me wanting more. Awakening was just more of what I needed. When I heard DA2 was coming out I couldn't be more excited. Finally the demo was released. OMG what the hell is this crap! Ok so I know I should expect a new look and updated combat and so forth unlike Fallout 3 to Fallout: New Vegas (should have been an expansion because it was the same damn game). At first it was kinda cool but then it really started to feel very cheap very quick. It felt like a fast action paced console button masher rather than a tactical team based RPG as the original. I think they tried to appeal to the mass of xbox and ps3 console gamers and completely undermined the loyal PC gamer and/or RPG fan. Based off the demo I will definitely skip this title. You know when your favorite band sells out? Seems like DA sold out unfortunately… Expand

This game is outright terrible. The combat has no depth whatsoever. The dialogues are infantile. As far as the graphics go, DA2 looks as if it was made in 2005.

Let me just start this by saying that Bioware games are usually pure gold. USUALLY. Dragon Age Origins was a well crafted RPG with great elements that far outweighed its many flaws. I cannot say the same for Dragon Age 2. I started the game thinking that I would be able to play it entirely maxed out graphically, after all, I more than exceed the recommended secs. When ramping up the graphics to very high with anti aliasing on, the game slows to a meager 11 frams per second with artifacts being rendered during combat. I can run Bad Company 2 on full specs, why can I not run this game that looks like it came from the PS2 era? Poor optimization because the game is rushed.

AND IT SHOWS. Not only in the graphics but in the discontinuity within the story, the poor writing, and the shallow combat system. Sure, everyone TOTALLY jumps around and does SUPER COOL things now to appeal to all the edgy teenagers out there, but most of the combat is horribly overdone. This can vary from the main character doing leaping lunges that you had nothing to do with, to enemies EXPLODING when I stab them with a basic ability. All in all, this game has been a huge disappointment. Between the rushed look and style of the game, the poor combat, the sub par writing and story, the awful optimization for PC, and the constant nickel and diming of day one DLC, this is one title you NEED to stay away from.… Expand

Big disappointment BioWare...we get a console port far inferior than DAO...huge mistake. We have a DX9 based game with less cameras, options and so on. I though you love gaming BioWare, and gaming on PC is by far the best for real gamers.

So terribly dissapointed. Don't we have enough watered down mainstream games out there? That might even have been okay if this game was a good mainstream game. But its not. It tries to be a hybrid between an action game like God of war and a classical rpg, and it ends up failing at both. The story is also the worst I have seen from Bioware. The story never picks up a main goal and all you do ALL game is run around in one city and do quests that all feel like side missions. Suddenly the game ends with a bam and a cliffhanger... Not only that but they reuse every dungeon like 15 times, and there are only like 6-7 small dungeons. Any real rpg elements are taken out, you never even get the opportunity to talk your way out of a fight everyone just charge you. If I want an action rpg I will rather play diablo or titan quest.... this is a bad action rpg and it shames the dragon age franchise. I might be a little harsh, its an okay game, but nothing more... don't expect anything.… Expand

As a sequel to DA:O this is a total let down. It is sad that i pre-ordered it at all. I would have never expected this from BioWare.The game itself is a total console port and I couldn't say anything good about it. Everything is just dumbed down, except maybe dialogues. Totally linear story. You could compare it's graphics to Gothic II. I guess I was expecting just too much. It has no similarity to DA:O but if you like action rpg's you might like it and if you loved DA:O, just don't bother. RIP BioWare and old-school rpg's.… Expand

As a side note before I start this, NO, this game did not live up to my expectations, but I am trying to judge this game as a standalone, and not as a successor to DAO. We should look at "What is" instead of "What could have been" or "What's not".

Anyways, first and foremost, i'm not a fan of the gameplay change in the slightest. Too point-and-click-esque for me. Some people like that play style, but I certainly don't. The combat is fun but simple. Not complicated, not intricate, not detailed, just simple.

The graphics are fine. They could be a little bit better, but I'm not letdown or anything by them.

The dialogue is just morbidly terrible. It seems like they spent about 2 seconds writing each of the lines without even brainstorming or giving them any thought (AT ALL!). They are really shallow; you can tell almost no thought was put into it.

The CGI is cool I guess. A little much of it, but when i'm high it gives me something to look at.

All-in-all, not a game I connect with at all, but fun for a short amount of fun before I move into something more enthralling.… Expand

In short, waste of time and money. This game has no strong points whatsoever. Graphics is bland, environment is the same everywhere, at first interior of some houses looks nice but it becomes tedious cos you run through the same looking rooms over and over again (~20 or so times, not kidding). Dialogues are dumb and options you chose rarely change outcome. Quests are the worst I have ever seen in a RPG. Even free to play MMORPGs have better quests than DA2. Battles are nice till you notice that mobs spawn like in some arcade game... You won't have to control your companions so tactics is pretty much gone. They had to stick with Hawke and ditch other 3 party members from the game entirely. Action game fans would have loved that even more! So yeah very bad game, Sadly It has way more weak points than I've mentioned in this review...… Expand

It`s not RPG. Primitive 2004 graphics, primitive linear locations, primitive dialogues, primitive slasher, uninteresting gameworld, uninteresting story, primitive 2-button gameplay for idiots... BioWare is now very fond of money, but do not like their gamers. This game is a clear example on how a company maximizes profits and minimizes costs using a brand name. Money, money, money... The love of money has killed real RPG.… Expand

Dragon Age 2 just parody on Japanese-style slasher with elements RPG.
Roleplaying completely absent, the dialogues are boring, dull one type lokatsii.Eto just soulless piece of code on which I wasted attention and spent their hard-earned money.

With Bioware rigging the user reviews, you can't help but think they're rigging the critic reviews as well. Bioware was already caught rigging DA II's user scores on Metacritic by having employees give it good scores. Bioware's response was that it was the same thing as Barrack Obama voting for himself.

Anyways, about the game. It targets a larger audience by dumbing things down but loses its original audience it once had. You stay in the same area for most of the game, the dialogue wheel is incredibly limited, and the voice acting isn't very good. Dragon Age II went from being a strategic form of game to more of a Devil May Cry clone without the fun that DmC had.

You'll be better of with the Witcher 2.… Expand

This is ridiculous. The scores metacritic has listed for this game are nowhere near accurate, as evidenced by user reviews. The story is ridiculous... I don't even understand why people are traveling with me. The main quest is short, devoid of story and back-story, and to make matters worse I suddenly am having intercourse with two females at the same time. I don't even know them; I don't even remember hitting on them.
The combat is ridiculously easy, even on Nightmare difficulty. Bosses can be kited (as in, you can run around in circles over and over again and they will never catch you) as your friends continually shoot them, essentially making every boss nonexistent. For combat, all you have to do is rack up as much damage output as physically possible and nuke EVERYTHING. And by everything, I mean waves and waves of random people who are attacking me for reason unknown. I'll just be running a little errand for some guy in exchange for money, and SUDDENLY 50 people will charge out of nowhere to prevent me from delivering an old man his medicine (I made up that scenario as to prevent spoilers).
I am not usually one to care about graphics (especially considering I still play 8-bit games), but in all seriousness this game makes me feel like I am playing on a Nintendo 64. And that's not saying the N64 was bad, it's just very old. Every character seems to be colored in a poorly textured splash of blood at all times, and it's just not realistic. Speaking of realism, every character seems to have 100 pound swords that they swing around like baseball bats, which seems a little lame. I'm going to stop here; as I write I am continually lowering the score I am giving this game, and so I should stop before it gets down to 1 for the sake of Bioware.… Expand

I can't begin to explain my disappointment in this game. I thought DA:O was one of the best RPG en newer times, and i was hoping they would just fix the few problems the first game had and just continue with excellent story. This is what i think of the new "enhanced game-play"

- They made combat look like a bad hack and slash game, with no real need for tactics. And yes i did play on nightmare
- The graphics are even worse than the first game. And yes i did use the high res texture pack
- The characters mean nothing to me and has no real background story
- The menus and inventory look like crap (no graphics what so ever)
- You are unable to use half the gear you find be course you cant equip you team mates
- They removed skills from the game (not feats)

This is the worst that they could do to this game. I just don't know what to say. DISAPPOINTED!!!!!… Expand

It's ... difficult ... to express how utterly disappointed I am with this game. Since any reaction is just an opinion, and we must agree that our opinions are no more or less valid than any other, I will simply say this was a serious disappointment from the joy and love I felt for the first Dragon Age. It's ... wow ... it's just nothing like its predecessor in any of the good ways.

It's not a game. It's a disaster. The biggest disappointment of the year. Boring combat, boring dialogs, version 1.0 is completely raw (as example: impossibility to save a game - cool, ain't it?)...

This game to me was a waste of money, it lacked everything good from DA:O, the plot wanders to much and the way they tie it all together is terrible. It seemed like they took an almost unimportant thing that you can forget for a time and used it to tie the whole thing up. The game would have been better served starting in the last act and going into something epic from there.

DA2 is a disaster for all who loved DA:O , NWN (one of the bests ever) or other traditional RPG´s. Its a casual arcade game without any of the old BioWare strengths. If this is the new BioWare Style, the times were i bought BW Games blind on release Day, are over.
The most Magazine Reviews are bad Jokes.
Bioware...remember your roots!!

2.0

Just horrible. Arcade fighting system with japanese style animation, plain unlikeable characters, primitive dialog system and gray-tone obsolete graphics. While DAO was spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate, this is suckccessor to a crappy clone of Final Fantasy.