My only gripe with the game is the recycled environments for the different quests. The enemy spawning takes a little getting used to, but I don't mind. People really over-exaggerated the problems with the game. It's actually really decent and the combat is a lot more enjoyable than in Origins. And, as Yahtzee mentioned, the party banter is really top-notch.

poiumty:
Also, Yahtzee: play stuff like this on a PC. It's 10 times easier to not get your mages killed.

Exactly. I never had any of the control problems he mentioned while playing on PC. I miss the big top-down view from Origins, but the need for precise positioning isn't as important in this one.

Dragon Age: Gobbing off? Nah......that's too British. This game isn't based in Ferelden, AKA NOT England.

OT: The one word to describe Dragon Age 2, it seems, is "unnecessary". Bioware have their hands full now with ME3 and Old Republic, and they shouldn't have BOTHERED.

It's not like we would've committed mass suicide without Dragon Age for another year. Why not just release a fucking DLC to bridge gaps, like ME2 is doing?

So true. This has to be the worst Bioware game I played to date, it's pretty sad :(
I thought, well it's only a half decent RPG but I'm sure Bioware will make an awesome story like they always do.
Ohh the disappointed. Half way through Act1 I just stopped playing. It's ok not to do a fight against evil whatever, the idea here is fine as people said, but I simply had zero motivation in the game. Felt like there was no plot at all, and the combat was so stupid and repetitive.
And when you get the will for your estate and noble status, why the fuck would you want to go on a dangerous deep roads trip anyway? or why not go rebuild Lothering? There's no sense in this plot.

This. Despite some flaws (another six months of dev. would've helped)I think the game is pretty awesome - not better or worse than origins, just different.

The Ethan Hawke thing and then the mention of Norwich?

Evidently, Yahtzee is trying to send me a sexual invitation message.

I'd have to agree with people on the controls on the PC. I haven't played the console versions, but the controls on the PC are actually reasonably designed, and I didn't seem to have much problems with the way the camera works as you describe.

Of course, I'm rightfully pissed off at Bioware for competely removing the tactical overview layer wich was present in DA:O. On nightmare, it feels like all you do is switch between characters to get a feeling of how the battlefield should look like, instead of an unified overview. The AI looks slightly improved, however, for what good it does.

Also, the design of the game reminded me of Day of the Tentacle.

Disregarding the technical flaws (of which there are many, I'll concede that) I think DA2 was a very good thing to happen to the medium. Especially BioWare's catalogue.
In direct contrast with Mass Effect 2 which, in as good as everything but its technical achievements (save the characters, which is the one thing you can trust BioWare with getting right most of the time), was a complacent and uninspired affair, Dragon Age 2 took risks and dabbled with the formula, delivering a diametrically different experience from what could've been a really cheap cash-in.
Origins 2.
Personally, that would've felt like a short-handed approach.

Furthermore, it's probably the most socio-politically charged game I've played since Far Cry 2.
Origins, regardless of how finely written it was, never really went further in its thematic contents than the proverbial "beat evil over the head with a big stick". Like I said, an interesting and finely crafted big stick, but a big stick all the same. The most challenging narrative devices and ideas were found outside of the main storyline, and more often than not ended up reducing what dilemma there was to a simple binary choice.
Dragon Age 2 is heavy-handed at times, certainly. But there is a specific decision in the midst of act 3 which caused my mind to enter the morally relative equivalent of "Enter the Dragon".
That moment alone would cause me to dub Dragon Age 2 BioWare's greatest achievement in storytelling yet.
Good thing is, there is a plethora of multi-faceted characaters to boot. Isabela, for example, is easily the best written romance ever portrayed in a BioWare game.

This review in a nutshell:

"BAWWW IT'S NOT IN MY COMFORT ZONE OF THE HERO'S JOURNEY, A.K.A. EVERY VIDEO GAME PLOT EVER. I'M SO MAD BIOWARE DIDN'T GO WITH THE SAME PLOT AGAIN EVEN THOUGH I'D BE MAD IF THEY DID."

I'm glad I didn't waste any money on this game, the demo helped me with that decision.

Even after so long, I Still can't fucking stand that idiotic, grating intro music. Good ep though.

Mike as character name, unusual heroes' journey is all i got from all the comments. Good points though.

in my opinion:
dragon age 2 is well worth playing though overpriced. if you loved the first game you'll enjoy the second unless you're very pretentious. Its not a shining beacon of bioware excellence but it does the job allright.

yahtzee's best point was also his first: DA2 is a cash stream that could've been another river.

owel.. fun review as always! =)

I actually think it's refreshing to look at a storyline that DOESN'T involve the end of the world, it's become far too cliché. At the end of the day we're trying to portray real people that deal with real problems, and some of them simply don't involve trying to stop megalomaniacal maniac XVI from trying to take over the world or destroy it. It's an effort to make the storytelling more personal. I loathed the overarching plot in Dragon Age Origins, simply because i couldn't bring myself to care about the Darkspawn or the Dragon-Demon-Thing. All i'd been told is that they like to troll about the place and kill stuff for the lulz. Then i'm taken to a battle i've only just heard about and start killing shit because i was told by an even more arbitrary character than the one that recruited me in the first place, and here's the kicker, they both get killed off within the first hour or less. The darkspawn don't even move out of Lothering, so the whole time i'm stomping around Ferelden trying to gather an army for some sort of last stand, the Darkspawn sit contently in their little Lothering without even bothering to move out or attack anyone. I greatly failed to see any sense of urgency and why i should even care about a blight that barely moved. The mooks and the big bad itself were so horribly generic that it made saving the world a really pointless cliché. I wanted to learn more about this noble house i am apparantly the only surviving member of, i want to learn about my character's life in the mage tower for however many years, about what life is like as a noble dwarf, or how an underground commoner dwarf feels in his first experience outside. I want to know how someone who's been brought up in alienages deals with his first experience outside in a multicultural world and likewise for the reclusive Dalish. Instead, i was another cardboard cutout hero going after another cardboard cutout villain.

Now I really don't know if I should waste money on dragon age or not :/

You're limited to a human? Anders is GAY?

wtf. Now I don't want this game. I'll just replay Origins.

poiumty:
Not as full of bile as i thought it'd be. I'm actually happy there was none of the "BIOWARE HAS BETRAYED ME" rant but then again Yahtzee doesn't do those.

Also, Yahtzee: play stuff like this on a PC. It's 10 times easier to not get your mages killed.

He also hasn't really been a fan in awhile./

Still the king of gay jokes and masturbation jokes I see. Honestly it seems almost like you're an artist with a dick in your hand and a videogame as your canvas. Bravo.

I'm still getting it just because i was a huge fan of origins.

Okay, I'm honestly confused about something. I've seen a ton of complaints about DA2, some I agree with, many I found to be stupid hyperbole, but Yahtzee's loading complaint is a new one to me. Do people actually have bad load times, is this just a console thing? My computer is good, but by the standards of "it was top of the line 3 years ago." My load times on the PC version for nearly everything are sub 3 seconds. I've yet to find a single scene, dungeon, or event that actually let me READ THE TIPS on the loading screens, as they go by that fast. Seeing as in my replay of DAO, near the end my load times were 1m+ because of the memory leak. So this is one area I really liked about DA2.

Thespian:
Everything he said here was true, but it was also what I liked about the game. I prefer a story that's just about some Refugee guy who's life is fucked up and gets a few lucky breaks and then makes a name for himself. Why does it have to be more? Why must the fate of EVERYTHING EVER constantly rest on THE ONE LAST HOPE OF EVERYTHING EVER? Okay, so if every story was about some random guy trying to make it in the world we'd get bored, but I thought DAII was a nice refreshing perspective. There was no good or evil, just several displaced political groups and a desperate need for some coin.

I just don't have anything to add. I completely agree with Thespian ^

A Curious Fellow:
You're limited to a human?

How could you not know that?

A Curious Fellow:
Anders is GAY?

He's not gay, he's bi. All the LIs are. Again, I find it odd that you do not know this already.

A Curious Fellow:
wtf. Now I don't want this game. I'll just replay Origins.

If these two reasons alone dissuade you from playing the game, then I guess it just wasn't for you, and neither are most games out there.