Narratively interesting and much more action-focused sequel impaired by a few glaring issues that resulted from its obviously rushed development.
+ less tactical but polished and fun combat with excellent animations
+ unique story premise involving the player character moving to a troubled city with his family and making a name for himself over the years
+ memorable selection of new companions (who seem to hate each other for the most part)
+ solid skill trees that offer many choices without being overwhelming
+ viable rivalry mechanic improving upon the friendship system
+ frequently remarkable soundtrack
+/- arguably oversimplified equipment system
- lackluster conclusions to romance and companion quests
- tedious first chapter about gathering funds
- questionably written albeit exciting finale that makes waste of a compelling conflict
- huge disservice to the best character from DAO: Awakening
- significantly more side content than main story
- insultingly slow movement speed considering the amount of walking required (mod to fix this highly suggested)
- small selection of identical environments recycled over and over again even for different locations

You can definitely draw a lot of parallels between the evolutions of the Mass Effect series from 1 to 2 and the Dragon Age series from Origins to 2. Both sequels significantly toned down the RPG aspects of their respective series' introductory entries and turn focus onto a much more heavily action oriented experience. Both sequels shift gears from a large scale conquest to a more personal journey. Both sequels introduce a new cast of characters while paying homage to their precursor's prominent personalities (though admittedly, there's a rather large dichotomy between the two in terms of returning faces).

The biggest difference is that it's obvious that Mass Effect 2 was just handled by a much more talented team within BioWare. Dragon Age 2 isn't bad though, and in some ways I think it's bit more fun than its predecessor. The faster paced combat, for one, is appreciated in my eyes at least, though just as sloggy at points. But a lot of this just feels rushed, cobbled together in order to meet a deadline and in turn sacrificing pretty much all the nuance of Origins. Still quite enjoyable and I'd easily recommend it to any fantasy nut, but unavoidably a deeply flawed game.

This is definitely the least of the the Dragon Age series, and Bioware's work as a whole (Anthem isn't real). It's still impressive, considering how quickly EA forced it to be rushed.

However you choose to approach this game, do not play the Mark of the Assassin DLC. Genuinely just ignore it, there's nothing in there that's worth it. It has a shit story, shittier stealth, a shit self insert companion voiced by a damn youtuber, a weird little transphobic scene as a cherry on top. Not sure how Bioware went from that to having Krem in Dragon Age Inquisition right afterward.

Dragon Age: Origins was a bit of a dumpster fire to me. The CRPG elements the game had were inferior to its contemporaries. Its worldbuilding was bland and Tolkienesque. The characters were still good enough to warrant a play through, but suffered from inconsistent tone and direction. Having seen Dragon Age II's reception compared to the first game has left me confused as to what people get out of Bioware games, because this game is excellent and surpasses the original in most aspects.

A lot of criticism towards Dragon Age II comes from the smaller scope of the game. I think this criticism would have been more valid if it was executed competently in the first game. Kirkwall, even accounting for its limited presentation given 7th gen console limitations is a better location than anything Origins presented. Origins did a poor job at obscuring its room to room system, the overworld "exploration" (a map shaped menu) being missing from 2 doesn't feel like anything's being lost. The city has a design that makes it stand out from other fantasy settings, which the first game didn't really have, and while they reuse parts of the city, it doesn't become repetitive in the same way revisiting locations in a Grand Theft Auto game doesn't become stale. This is your city, and learning its curves and twists leaves an impression that Origins only made when it was actively annoying you with locations like The Fade.

The main plot was scaled back from "saving the high fantasy countryside" to, again, a very GTA feeling "setting up shop in an unfamiliar city and stacking bills until a big threat comes along". The smaller scope allows for the main cast to be implemented more cohesively into the main plot than the cast of DA:O. I don't think the main plot's anything to write home about, and I've always had an issue with slavery allegories in video games and the connection of mages to slavery is handled with as much grace as I expected (written by honkeys), but overall this is still one of the strongest main plots I've seen in a Bioware game.

The combat doesn't try to hide the fact that it was made for consoles. They're not trying to half-ass Baldur's Gate onto a Blu-Ray player, and makes the combat and your progression feel bland. Damage feels very homogenized, it's not an easy game to break, but by that extensions there aren't many "wrong" choices either. More customization, or even just the ability to break the game over your knee would help with the repetitive feeling of combat, but it doesn't get in the way of the main appeal of the game.

That main appeal being the cast. Bioware games are dating sims. They're excuses to hang out with your fantasy friends with combat systems tacked on. Utawarerumono for the Modern Warfare 2 generation. Dragon Age II's cast is not just a huge leap in quality from the first game, but even if the other aspects in the game were as lacking as the first game, the character writing would warrant a playthrough. Outside of the DLC party member, they're all fantastic and bounce off the main character in their own unique ways. The writing and game design went out of its way to display how these characters would not only fit into the main character's party, but the city as a whole. It's one of those casts where you can regularly hang out at their apartment. They have a history and supporting cast that you might be temporarily involved in, but are distinctly separate from the main protagonist's story. They can be funny or petty, but in a way that's grounded to the setting and fits with their previous characterization.

Bioware games have this element to their party approval system where you'll try to game out your dialogue choices in order to gain approval from specific party members, again, kinda like choosing routes you want in a VN. I feel like this hurts the roleplaying element of the game, because instead of choosing what you would say in a situation, you're trying to game the system so you're not locked out of the best parts of the game (party interaction). Dragon Age II's approval system makes it so you can have characters that fundamentally disagree with your character's worldview, but still accompany the party and reward the player for completing their story lines. Fenris, in any other game, would be insufferable, and Dragon Age II takes such care of their cast that even when he doesn't like you, he still meaningfully contributes to the party. That doesn't mean there aren't actions that would piss them off to the point where they do leave the party, but those are much more dependent on major plot decisions rather than a number on a character sheet. Even the returning characters from Dragon Age Origins are fleshed out and overshadow their previous game's iterations, despite being limited to cameos. I don't even want to go into specific highlights of these characters because they should be experienced firsthand.

This game was clearly rushed, this game's development was a scaled back mess, and yet it gets why I like Bioware games more than any other entry in the Dragon Age series. The limitations this game was forced to adopt imposed a restraint and focus on narrative that made this game special. I had a good time with DA:O, but mostly because I was laughing at it. Dragon Age II is a unfairly maligned game I sincerely enjoy and is an easy recommendation to RPG fans, even if you're not interested in the other Dragon Age games.

I actually ended up really liking this game! The main criticisms of it seem to be the lack of time and resources in development making itself very known in terms of variety. A lot of your questing happens in the same rooms over and over. This is a fair point. The ending is also just... kind of awful.

With that said, I really like the vibe of the game being centered around just one character, their adventures, their friends, their rivals and their impact on the one town that they choose to live in. It's a really compelling story to have all of these loose ends to keep track of across the several decades you seem to spend in the town.

Minor characters turn into major ones, certain characters manage to overcome their struggles, other characters resign themselves to their depressing lives... Plot points are basically always introduced much earlier than their payoffs and I think it leads to a really neat tone for the game. You don't really know what the overarching plot is leading up to until you finally get there.

Unfortunately the plot just fumbles completely on the finish line to give a truly disappointing "pick a side" resolution that satisfies no one. Oh well.

Dragon Age 2 takes us back to the dark fantasy world of Thedas, where elves and dwarves face new challenges. This time, unlike the first game, we take on the role of Hawke'n, a penniless refugee who, fully voiced and with an identity, will play a key role in the future of the game world and become a legend, later known as the champion of Kirkwall. Throughout the main story, we follow Hawke and his family through a decade of love and war as they make deadly allies and enemies and amass both fame and fortune.

This was such a disappointment. I enjoyed Dragon Age Origins a lot but this game is just subpar in almost every way.

I'll talk about what I liked first. The very core combat itself is good. Its more flashier and faster than Origins combat which was appreciated. The soundtrack is also pretty good. I liked the 2D art used for the cutscenes. Varric is very entertaining. I do like the idea of having a fantasy game which is mostly set in one town

My praise will have to end here tho. The game is exceptionally and blatantly repetitive in area design. There are so many main quests where the area is just a copy paste that I was actually impressed that someone okayed this.

While the core combat itself is good its brought down by some very stupid design choices. The game just throws loads of enemies at the player with no attempts at making it feel realistic at all. Enemies will just teleport in out of nowhere rendering positioning just useless.

Controlling the party during combat feels much worse. The gameplay is still very similar to the real time with pause system of Origins but it seems that the devs wanted to make it look different. While you can pause and control other characters the game just does not let the player pick an isometric perspective which is just baffling.

In terms of story and choices its pretty much a fake RPG. I despise RPGs where the game gives some dialogue choices themed around some rigid morality categories and then the character says something else entirely. I hated it in Mass Effect and I hate it here.
There are also no real choices at all. Events will happen regardless of what you choose. There is no real branching of events.

God, I love this game. I LOVE THIS GAME.

Okay, so the 5 star rating is biased of me. It does have flaws, which everyone else has already covered extensively - the repeating environments and the waves of enemies jumping out of the sky are the two that stuck out to me. We're not going to talk about how terrible everyone's hands look.

But that can't even nudge this out of its place as a firm favourite game of all time. I love the characters. I love the fact that rather than a generic Chosen One world-saving plot, it's centered around this small-scale storyline of one scrappy refugee and their friend group in one shitty little city. I love that the companions feel like an actual tight-knit group rather than co-workers forced together - they feel like they're there because they care about Hawke, even when it's inconvenient for them, not because they have some goal that aligns with yours and so they need to be.

I love the soundtrack, I love the combat (and if you know me you'll know how rare it is for me to say that about games), I love the atmosphere. I love the political machinations of it all, the way your companions have their own stories and motivations that may conflict with and throw off yours, the fact that the game spans ten years so you watch things change and improve and deteriorate and fall apart and be put back together again over time.

I love Hawke! I love that the game actually works the personality-type you lean towards more often into their characterisation, so that the deeper into the game you get, the more your typical approach to situations - diplomacy, humour, aggression - will show in their idle lines and what they do even without your input.

I love the friendship-rivalry system; it's so incredibly interesting, it adds replay value, and it shows you such different sides of each character, both in terms of a platonic connection with them and a romantic relationship.

I love that the story is framed through a narrative of Varric telling the story to Cassandra in the present-day, with her pulling him back at the beginning and end of arcs (and sometimes in the middle of them) to call him out on lies or evasions or comment on your actions, and how utterly Varric slots into the trope of unreliable narrator - not just because he wants to, or because it services the story, but because he's doing all he can to protect the friend he loves.

I love the quests, especially the companion quests. I even happily do the side quests every replay! And that's saying something, because I can't even count how many times I've replayed Dragon Age 2.

I've played it over and over, and I will continue to play it over and over. This game has such a special place in my heart. I don't care about the fact that every cave looks like different angles of the same location - DA2 is almost my perfect experience.

Favourite Male Character: Anders (I know!)
Favourite Female Character: Merrill (I know!!)
First Character I Liked: Fenris
Favourite Character Design: Isabela
Favourite Moment: The Chantry incident
Favourite OST: Love Scene, Fenris Theme, Rogue Heart
Least Favourite Character: Aveline

While I think Dragon Age II has some interesting ideas, I also think it kind of reeks of low budget. Sometimes a low budget can help a creative work, make it so the mechanics need to be distilled down, the ideas focused, and just can help make the game more charming. DA2 feels like a different beast though, like a game that wasn't just designed within a small budget but designed to wear that budget as a business success. So, it all takes place in a handful of maps in one location, the city of Kirkwall. There's a new art style too, one with a bit of a comic book feel to it, which just happens to come along with (at least what appear to be) simpler looking models. Maybe that's all that necessarily feels cheap here, but the implementation of Kirkwall, the Only Setting of the Game, leaves some to be desired I think.

Now the whole one city thing was something I was actually pretty excited for. I LOVE a good, large RPG hub, and Kirkwall oft gets compared to Sigil in Planescape Torment (most of the setting of that game) which is one of the greatest RPG hubs. Kirkwall even has a lot of the hallmarks of a good hub, like quests that have you crossing knottily through the city, different districts, characters that change with the city as the game goes along.

My thing is it feels like the city was built off a checklist. It's got different class divided districts, just like Taris, but there's no progression through them. There's recurring characters that grow with the city, but they never make much of an impression, as if they're all from the same mold just tinkered with a tiny bit so they fit their quest. But those quests are my main issue. I think they were going for a kind of "the city is the main character" thing, because there doesn't really seem to be a main plot, or at least there wasn't one when I stopped playing at the end of Act 2. Instead, there's a main plotline for each act, which runs simultaneously with a bunch of sidequests. Each of these quests feels about equally complex, and by and large these are the only type of quests in the game. There's one fetch quest, and it's pretty involved for a fetch quest, but the rest of the game is just going back and forth between characters, talking and progressing quests with that mass effect dialogue system, and writing that's middling, if well delivered. It's a fine way to do quests, it just feels so... static. There's no variety. I don't think the fact that this is a quest-marker driven game helps thing either.

Moving on to the one part of the game that doesn't feel low budget, the combat is... well it's not great. It's kind of a combination of a Jade Empire-like action system with a RTWP system. Or at least that's what it seems like it wanted to be? In reality it's just RTWP but the default settings make it so you need to press a button to attack every time and hold a button to pause. Thank god you can change that! The bigger issues are 1. Because the game thinks it's an action game, every move has a cooldown and a resource drain. It seems to be influenced by MMO design I think? But without interesting ways to replenish your resource, it's not so much a resource management thing as two very long cooldown timers on every ability. It takes what's supposed to feel fast, fluid, and interesting and just needlessly slows it down. You can easily just end up without anything to do after a couple seconds besides autoattack until your abilities ready up. Even health potions have cooldowns on them. I get it's supposed to get you to focus on the tactics, but I was playing on easy because I know I'm not tactically minded, yet the game still felt always either slightly too easy or way too hard.

It doesn't feel properly balanced, and the game just feels willingly constricted under it's budget. I didn't really love DAO, and I was hoping the black sheep of the series would win me over (as often happens), but even I've gotta say this just feels rushed out the door.