I know people will be up in arms about this, the usual nay-sayers with their rebuttal of 'if you didn't like it, why did you play it?', will have a field day, so to initially nip this in the bud, I will say this: I am a huge Bioware fan, and I pre-ordered this game, buying it on day 1 because I believed in the developers I love. I also payed good money to get this game, so you can be damn sure I was going to play it. Also I don't give up easily, hell I've played through FFXIII. Anyway, back on point here.
 
Dragon Age 2 failed, as a sequel, to Origins, as it does not deliver the kind of epic, world changing storyline that its predecessor did. I believe that there are a few core reasons for this, so please, bare with me, and tell me what you think:
 
Storyline: In order to give us a more personal storyline, Bioware created Hawke, a rags-to-riches everyman/woman, who is the fabled Champion of Kirkwall. He/she is fully voiced, has a family, experiences tragedy throughout his/her life, you know, classic hero stuff. So why didn't this tug at my heartstrings? Well, it is actually quite simple: Hawke is the DA equivalent to Shepard of Mass Effect. The issue is that we have had two games to develop Shepard's character, and we actually care about him/her, and the people/places he/she has come into contact with. This grants us an experience, making the character an individual, fully voiced, yet still, personal to the player. Dragon Age had the Grey Warden, a classic, silent protagonist of varying race, gender and class, who we could personalise throughout the campaign, through character interactions, and many, many conversation options, involving friendships and romances, and larger, more important decisions. DA2 lacks these more personal touches. I felt at times that some of the plot twists did get to me, but more in a 'damn, that was so out of character, and might have happened regardless of my involvement anyway' kind of way. That is to say, that some of the more...personal moments, are forced by the storyline, further constraining the player and their individual choices, along with their character. We feel as if we are merely observers in the DA world, not really able to participate in the story, and not able to change the events that happen in any significant way.  The so-called '10 year storyline' is in fact, a blatant lie, as the player plays less than half of that time, with no significant changes. This gimmick only serves as a distraction to the very disjointed, and seemingly rushed story, as only minor aspects connect throughout the game. Even the party member missions seem forced and unnecessary.
 
Characters: Other than Varric and Meredith, very few characters in this game felt as important and impressive as the characters of Origins. They seemed to be a varying array of generic so-and-so, with a bland back story. They seem very black and white, with no personal investment in the goings on of the storyline. Some more prominent and well known characters, as followers of the series will note, seem to have had their personalities shifted from the previous titles, in order to feed into the storyline. It seems to be forced, and not a gradual development. At a stretch I could defend the choices made for them, but the evidence within the series contradicts the decisions of the characters in this game. They merely follow/oppose you based on the idea that 'I like you because you agree with me' or 'Screw you, I'm in a huff over a logical decision you made, regardless of how much sense you make'. This pulls me right out of the narrative, as I find more and more than these characters don't seem to want to join me, they are merely just doing what the storyline dictates. I also have an issue with giving the Dalish elves, the same Dalish elves from the previous games,  the generic, almost racist, 'auld Irish accents', that were completely out of place. Giving the Qunari horns is something I can get behind, but I do not support entirely.
 
Gameplay: This aspect was improved and made more fluid than that of Origins, yet I find that sometimes, it can become boring. The conversation options are Mass Effect in style, and don't give the player many options to follow. The combat is more involving, but I actually found myself hitting the 'A' button while not even looking at the screen, and still winning the fights I was in. The tactics are rendered useless by this combat system, so we lose yet another aspect of Origins that made it great. Whats more, the new Specialization options hinder more than help in combat situations. The ability to group heal only when you have activated the ability that allows that spec to activate, is overly complicated in the middle of a fight, especially when that spec stops you from casting offensive spells and abilities, and reserves too much mana to make it useful. These are seemingly minor, but they are, in fact, important to the core gameplay of the game. Streamlining these abilities have no made them easier to use, just more of a hassle to go through to do something that was so simple in Origins. The mission structure, as mentioned before, is disjointed, and mostly consists of doing side quests that are forced as well, and are really the only way to see any changes brought on by the file importing from Origins. This is purely lazy design and writing within the Bioware team. At one point, I found it impossible to expand on the story for a certain character because I did not bring him on a mission with me. This is single-minded, linear thought, that should have been caught by game-testers in early development. 
 
I have many issues with this game, and hopefully, this will channel all of the aimless anger/ blind defense at this game into something that we can debate in an orderly fashion. I still enjoyed parts of the game, but after 36 hours, some glitched achievements that refuse to unlock, calling into question if I had even completed the missions, and some characters missions I couldn't complete, I found that I hadn't enjoyed it as much as Origins. If it was a stand alone title, I wouldn't have as many issues with it, but this kind of disappointment really shook my faith in Bioware, and I have a feeling EA won't be too pleased with them.
 
So please, debate, respond, keep it intelligent, these are just a few ideas knocking around in my head. Review is pending.

I don't think it went wrong. I enjoyed it more than Origins, and I loved Origins. Played it at least five times over to try all the class combinations and choices. I wonder how many times I've posted this on these forums, there are so many negative threads around!
 
I hope they stick to the direction they've taken with Dragon Age 2 for the third installment. 
 
EDIT: To clarify, I've played Origins five times over, not DA2. I was on my second playthrough of DA2 when my PS3 broke down. I'm waiting for the new one to ship.

There's already a lengthy thread up concerning this.

I think the main story is the only problem with it so far.  I have been loving everything else about it.  I think it does everything better than origins other wise except environments.  I'm so happy they fixed the frame rate issues which made combat needlessly hard since the fights would usually start by dropping the framerate to 5 disallowing any defense particularly against mages.  I didn't play on PC though so DA 2 seemed better to me combat wise.

Most of the characters were boring, and the story was weak, but it was fun. I think that Origins was better. 
  

"The combat is more involving, but I actually found myself hitting the 'A' button while not even looking at the screen, and still winning the fights I was in."     
 
You could have increased the difficulty to Nightmare.

Lack of a proper over-aching plot and lack of variety in terrain are the two big ones.  Some characters are generic, and almost all have a brightline in terms of their morality, but I'd like to hear you defend your choice for Varric and Meredith as "strong" characters.  Both of them felt very shallow to me.

EA is trying their best to make the game look good now. The video game industry is so corrupt that it makes me sad. But I am at least glad that users voice up to the effortss from EA and Bioware-employees to rate the game as a perfect game when it's clearly not.
There are stories regarding employees reviewing the game, but frankly you can google it yourselves if you are interested AND it is actually not a weird thing (or uncommon). There are hundreds of people working on these games, of course they are gonna review the game in a positive manner.
 
I speak of this as an employee of another company that did stuff like this with about 20 employees. So of course it is happening within larger companies as well.

" For me? Nothing. I Loved it.  "

I'm not going to argue about the story, It's simply inferior.  
 
However the characters a lot better. You can get to know them on a lot more personal level than the ones in Origins and overall they are better developed and more complex.  
 
As far as the Spirit Healer thing goes, it's done to balance out the game. As a maxed out Spirit Healer, you're pretty much invincible since you automatically gain 100 health every couple of seconds, so it makes sense that you can't use any offensive spells (though you can still use basic attacks and often that's more than enough). Group Heal was put into that specialization because it's also an incredibly powerful spell - healing 80% of everyone's health instantaneously. Switching to Spirit Healer and then using Group Heal takes less than 2 seconds, so I would hardly call it overly complex. After all you're complaining about everything becoming boring because you only press A, so if SH was the same it would only make your complains bigger...

" Most of the characters were boring, and the story was weak, but it was fun. I think that Origins was better. 
  

"The combat is more involving, but I actually found myself hitting the 'A' button while not even looking at the screen, and still winning the fights I was in."      You could have increased the difficulty to Nightmare. "

" Lack of a proper over-aching plot and lack of variety in terrain are the two big ones.  Some characters are generic, and almost all have a brightline in terms of their morality, but I'd like to hear you defend your choice for Varric and Meredith as "strong" characters.  Both of them felt very shallow to me. "

" I'm not going to argue about the story, It's simply inferior.   However the characters a lot better. You can get to know them on a lot more personal level than the ones in Origins and overall they are better developed and more complex.   As far as the Spirit Healer thing goes, it's done to balance out the game. As a maxed out Spirit Healer, you're pretty much invincible since you automatically gain 100 health every couple of seconds, so it makes sense that you can't use any offensive spells (though you can still use basic attacks and often that's more than enough). Group Heal was put into that specialization because it's also an incredibly powerful spell - healing 80% of everyone's health instantaneously. Switching to Spirit Healer and then using Group Heal takes less than 2 seconds, so I would hardly call it overly complex. After all you're complaining about everything becoming boring because you only press A, so if SH was the same it would only make your complains bigger... "

" There's already a lengthy thread up concerning this. "

" In the middle of a heavy fight, the last thing you have time for is to switch from offense to healing, especially when you're fighting a particularly tough boss, who requires quite a lot of micro management. It can get quite irritating, especially when you have to change from your main character to do some quick healing with potions, only to find that you haven't enough mana to cast the group heal spell. The balance from Origins, that you could only use group heal at least once per fight, as the cooldown time was quite long, was a better system than: go to abilities, pick healer mode, wait 2 seconds too long to get group heal ready, see 2 characters die, have to use Regroup, then not being able to cast group heal, drink mana potion, micro manage, become annoyed and want to break game. I have to disagree on the character aspects, I don't think we learn anything about certain characters, like Anders, that we didn't already know, and his character shift is explained in a lazy fashion. They are mostly an array of bland, singularly motivated, generic cardboard cutouts, with weak characterization. I don't see what your last point is...in fact that makes little to no sense at all. You seem to be implying that I don't know how the game works...you would be wrong, and in fact that wasn't the point I was making at all, sorry, if you wish I'll elaborate that for you! "

" @PhatSeeJay said:

" There's already a lengthy thread up concerning this. "

Don't insult my writing by comparing it to that, I'm trying to get a logical argument started. "

" @Dookysharpgun said:

" @PhatSeeJay said:

" There's already a lengthy thread up concerning this. "

Don't insult my writing by comparing it to that, I'm trying to get a logical argument started. "

He wasn't insulting you. He was linking a thread so you could take your logical argument there. What's wrong with you, bro? "

" @Dookysharpgun said:

" @PhatSeeJay said:

" There's already a lengthy thread up concerning this. "

Don't insult my writing by comparing it to that, I'm trying to get a logical argument started. "

He wasn't insulting you. He was linking a thread so you could take your logical argument there. What's wrong with you, bro? "

" @Axxol said:

" @Dookysharpgun said:

" @PhatSeeJay said:

" There's already a lengthy thread up concerning this. "

Don't insult my writing by comparing it to that, I'm trying to get a logical argument started. "

He wasn't insulting you. He was linking a thread so you could take your logical argument there. What's wrong with you, bro? "

 Just because you write better than the people in the other threads doesn't change the fact that this is just a fancier version of already existing discussions. If you consider yourself to be above them well then I suggest you put it in a blog and that review you're writing. "

" @Dookysharpgun said:

" In the middle of a heavy fight, the last thing you have time for is to switch from offense to healing, especially when you're fighting a particularly tough boss, who requires quite a lot of micro management. It can get quite irritating, especially when you have to change from your main character to do some quick healing with potions, only to find that you haven't enough mana to cast the group heal spell. The balance from Origins, that you could only use group heal at least once per fight, as the cooldown time was quite long, was a better system than: go to abilities, pick healer mode, wait 2 seconds too long to get group heal ready, see 2 characters die, have to use Regroup, then not being able to cast group heal, drink mana potion, micro manage, become annoyed and want to break game. I have to disagree on the character aspects, I don't think we learn anything about certain characters, like Anders, that we didn't already know, and his character shift is explained in a lazy fashion. They are mostly an array of bland, singularly motivated, generic cardboard cutouts, with weak characterization. I don't see what your last point is...in fact that makes little to no sense at all. You seem to be implying that I don't know how the game works...you would be wrong, and in fact that wasn't the point I was making at all, sorry, if you wish I'll elaborate that for you! "

You do realize you can pause the game, right? And if can't spare LESS THAN 2 seconds to switch and use an ability, I'm afraid you're playing this game wrong.... "

" @Axxol said:

" Most of the characters were boring, and the story was weak, but it was fun. I think that Origins was better. 
  

"The combat is more involving, but I actually found myself hitting the 'A' button while not even looking at the screen, and still winning the fights I was in."      You could have increased the difficulty to Nightmare. "

I shouldn't have to change the difficulty of a game half way through just to make the combat more interesting, I didn't have to do that in Origins, and I actually regret not nipping that one in the bud earlier.  

I thought the game was great until the fight with the Arishok.  Game broken.  Unable to complete.

Your core complaint is the same as everyone else's: This is isn't Origins 2.  
 
But guess what? Bioware never said it would be. In fact, all early information and screen shots indicated that this would be an entirely different experience. You could even play the demo and see for yourself just how damn different it was. The fact that you chose to ignore all that and still went into this game expecting Origins 2 is entirely your own fault. I went into it expecting something new and was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it.
 
I agree that they done fucked up with party heal, though that has already been remedied by modders for the PC version, at least. 
 
The only disappointment for me were the party members. They are more complex and initially more intriguing. However, none of that matters since they are a bunch of unlikeable, selfish assholes. Fenris, Isabela and Anders in particular are just insufferable jerks and deserve to die in very horrible ways. The lack of backstory was also incredibly disappointing, especially after deep characters like Alistair and Leliana. They tried to make the companions less like blind followers by making them very opinionated, but they took it way overboard. The result is a bunch of dogmatic broken records, who only seem to be tagging along with you to further their own goals. Many of them can and will betray you in some very extreme ways, even if you're their best friend. 
 
The companion quests did seem a lot more meaningful this time around though. I also really liked the shift from an epic quest to save to world to the political struggles of Kirkwall.  
 
As for the combat, it felt largely the same this time around, just with better animations.

" @Dookysharpgun said:

" @Axxol said:

" Most of the characters were boring, and the story was weak, but it was fun. I think that Origins was better. 
  

"The combat is more involving, but I actually found myself hitting the 'A' button while not even looking at the screen, and still winning the fights I was in."      You could have increased the difficulty to Nightmare. "

I shouldn't have to change the difficulty of a game half way through just to make the combat more interesting, I didn't have to do that in Origins, and I actually regret not nipping that one in the bud earlier.  

 Why not? If you aren't finding the combat satisfying I can't think of a reason not to bump the difficulty up a notch.  You may find that all of a sudden mashing A over and over will not win you fights and you'll start thinking more about tactics, positioning and group dynamics. Give it a shot; what have you got to lose? "

I loved the story, sure it lacks the single goal focus of the previous title in the series but as a fan of fantasy writing such as  Trudi Canavans black magician trilogy and Robert Jordans wheel of time series I felt that the game played out in a similar manner to this type of book where each chapter in the players rise plays out with its own ending with the overall story building throughout the various chapters before cumulating in a massive boss fight. 
 
the combat too I felt was better suited for the console than the combat system of origins, from a melee point of view it means less frustration in trying to close the distance on  enemies. The rebalancing of the classes; mages spells requiring an activated ability and then a lengthy cooldown, rogues and warriors getting their own roles with no crossover meant that you are forced to choose the right party for the encounter and leads to less reliance on spamming healing spells and mana/stamina/health pots. 
 
one thing you say " The combat is more involving, but I actually found myself hitting the 'A' button while not even looking at the screen, and still winning the fights I was in. The tactics are rendered useless by this combat system" i know for a fact that on the harder difficulties that this is not the case, a moments distraction is all it takes to lose your party one example is the fight at then end of the dark roads in the first act, i seen my 2 mages get killed in an instant because i didnt realise they had the focus of the smaller enemy, i seen my rogue 1 shotted by the boss after he draws aggro, if this is one of your main complaints regarding the game the higher difficulty will surely resolve that. 
 
i can agree with some of your points in my time with the game i had my share of lost achievements, all of the sebastion ones, gaining a rivalr and the great minds think alike achievement all bugged.sometimes even the friend/rival system is busted such as some sidequests where aveline will give rivalry no matter if you turn an offer fown or accept it and lastly the bug that makes you lose stat points when certain party members gain or lose friendship points.

" Your core complaint is the same as everyone else's: This is isn't Origins 2.   But guess what? Bioware never said it would be. In fact, all early information and screen shots indicated that this would be an entirely different experience. You could even play the demo and see for yourself just how damn different it was. The fact that you chose to ignore all that and still went into this game expecting Origins 2 is entirely your own fault. I went into it expecting something new and was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it. I agree that they done fucked up with party heal, though that has already been remedied by modders for the PC version, at least.  The only disappointment for me were the party members. They are more complex and initially more intriguing. However, none of that matters since they are a bunch of unlikeable, selfish assholes. Fenris, Isabela and Anders in particular are just insufferable jerks and deserve to die in very horrible ways. The lack of backstory was also incredibly disappointing, especially after deep characters like Alistair and Leliana. They tried to make the companions less like blind followers by making them very opinionated, but they took it way overboard. The result is a bunch of dogmatic broken records, who only seem to be tagging along with you to further their own goals. Many of them can and will betray you in some very extreme ways, even if you're their best friend.  The companion quests did seem a lot more meaningful this time around though. I also really liked the shift from an epic quest to save to world to the political struggles of Kirkwall.   As for the combat, it felt largely the same this time around, just with better animations. "

I honestly think the only problem with it is the tiny game world/reused assets thing.  I'm liking the combat, there are some really good characters and the graphics are much improved.  Also I'm quite enjoying the story, it kind of makes a change from "oh noes, a huge monster is leading an army of little monsters this way! Collect allies/magic/weapons/levels for a bit then defeat him!"  They just needed another year to design more locations and it would be great.  As it is it's just a little disappointing, probably because I had such high hopes. 

" I thought the game was great until the fight with the Arishok.  Game broken.  Unable to complete. "

" I honestly think the only problem with it is the tiny game world/reused assets thing.  I'm liking the combat, there are some really good characters and the graphics are much improved.  Also I'm quite enjoying the story, it kind of makes a change from "oh noes, a huge monster is leading an army of little monsters this way! Collect allies/magic/weapons/levels for a bit then defeat him!"  They just needed another year to design more locations and it would be great.  As it is it's just a little disappointing, probably because I had such high hopes.  "

" And can you tell me why, oh why, Bioware created a new, faster combat system,  just to have use pause the game and do EXACTLY what we did in DA:O, but with more hassle, as in DA:O, we didn't need to activate every ability under the sun just to use ONE spell? I believe they said that the 'pausing' of the game wasn't going to have as much importance placed on it in the console versions as the PC version. Wasn't the whole point of making the fighting more fast and fluid that we didn't have to pause the game to activate abilities? Because the way I'm seeing it, that is having quite the double-standard, that contradicts the reasoning behind making the combat more engaging. "

All my arguments have been made already but i will chime in for the hell of it.
 
Origins was not a hard game. In the least. On normal the combat was not challenging. It was severely easy to cheese and even on the Xbox the games Hard was equivalent to the PC's normal. This was stated by an Bioware employee on their forums. Mainly meaning things like damage, enemy health pools, and friendly fire damage. 
The only time pausing was actually needed was on Nightmare and even then using a dual wield rogue build with poisons or a pre-nerfed Arcane Warrior you could literally solo the difficulty. There are enough videos on youtube to prove this. Rogues were able to cheese damn near every fight by stacking poisons. You could stack every poison and coating and get up to damn near 50+ dmg on top of your normal crits on a stunned enemy.
 
So what does that have to do with DA2? Well the combat is actually more involved. On normal they made it so people could essentially auto attack and find their way through battles. THIS IS THE SAME AS DA1. If you really had to pause on normal difficulty you must have went into each fight with no gear and no healing spells on your mages. On the harder difficulties it is required. As are using the cross class combos. Especially early on in the game on Hard or Nightmare. You will be demolished constantly if not. Normal is not supposed to be a challenge on every fight. Its normal. It isnt hard, and yes im aware that not every fight has to be overly simplistic too but it is what it is. Same as Dragon Age 1. 
 
Also please try not to complain how every fight was incredibly simple then later bring up how hard a boss fight was or how you had to use pausing or activate abilities mid fight because you were not prepared. The game is made much simpler if you stick to a role. Now you could argue that I SHOULD HAVE MORE OPTIONS AND BUILD HOW I WANT. Well this is a different combat system then DA1. You could damn near pick every spell on damage spell on a mage in the first then chug different levels of potions to keep yourself alive constantly without having to worry about much else. 
This game really doesn't allow that.  Anders can be a great healer and if you build him for pure support he is amazing. Leave him in Panacea and with the right tactics no one will ever die. Now if you want him to be a healer/damager thats when you have problems. Build to what the character has. 
 
Do not argue that it should be different. You cannot change what the game shipped with or is unless you intent to build mods. Try to figure out the game so that it works with you. There is nothing really wrong with the combat unless you really have no clue what you are doing. The trees are also fairly obvious and slimmed down so you don't have to waste points in 4 ranks of lock picking or stealth. If you want to complain about the oversimplification of the genre itself that is different. It is not this games fault and is an entirely different conversation.
 
As another poster said this is not Origins 2 .This is Dragon Age 2. It isn't about the character from the first. It just takes place in the world from the first. No where is it implied that it has to be like the first one. If it was exactly like the first one people would complain that it was stale and that they have played this game before. They changed the game, and look people are talking about it and playing it still.

" All my arguments have been made already but i will chime in for the hell of it.
 
Origins was not a hard game. In the least. On normal the combat was not challenging. It was severely easy to cheese and even on the Xbox the games Hard was equivalent to the PC's normal. This was stated by an Bioware employee on their forums. Mainly meaning things like damage, enemy health pools, and friendly fire damage. 
The only time pausing was actually needed was on Nightmare and even then using a dual wield rogue build with poisons or a pre-nerfed Arcane Warrior you could literally solo the difficulty. There are enough videos on youtube to prove this. Rogues were able to cheese damn near every fight by stacking poisons. You could stack every poison and coating and get up to damn near 50+ dmg on top of your normal crits on a stunned enemy.
 
So what does that have to do with DA2? Well the combat is actually more involved. On normal they made it so people could essentially auto attack and find their way through battles. THIS IS THE SAME AS DA1. If you really had to pause on normal difficulty you must have went into each fight with no gear and no healing spells on your mages. On the harder difficulties it is required. As are using the cross class combos. Especially early on in the game on Hard or Nightmare. You will be demolished constantly if not. Normal is not supposed to be a challenge on every fight. Its normal. It isnt hard, and yes im aware that not every fight has to be overly simplistic too but it is what it is. Same as Dragon Age 1. 
 
Also please try not to complain how every fight was incredibly simple then later bring up how hard a boss fight was or how you had to use pausing or activate abilities mid fight because you were not prepared. The game is made much simpler if you stick to a role. Now you could argue that I SHOULD HAVE MORE OPTIONS AND BUILD HOW I WANT. Well this is a different combat system then DA1. You could damn near pick every spell on damage spell on a mage in the first then chug different levels of potions to keep yourself alive constantly without having to worry about much else. 
This game really doesn't allow that.  Anders can be a great healer and if you build him for pure support he is amazing. Leave him in Panacea and with the right tactics no one will ever die. Now if you want him to be a healer/damager thats when you have problems. Build to what the character has. 
 
Do not argue that it should be different. You cannot change what the game shipped with or is unless you intent to build mods. Try to figure out the game so that it works with you. There is nothing really wrong with the combat unless you really have no clue what you are doing. The trees are also fairly obvious and slimmed down so you don't have to waste points in 4 ranks of lock picking or stealth. If you want to complain about the oversimplification of the genre itself that is different. It is not this games fault and is an entirely different conversation.
 
As another poster said this is not Origins 2 .This is Dragon Age 2. It isn't about the character from the first. It just takes place in the world from the first. No where is it implied that it has to be like the first one. If it was exactly like the first one people would complain that it was stale and that they have played this game before. They changed the game, and look people are talking about it and playing it still. "

"
Also please try not to complain how every fight was incredibly simple then later bring up how hard a boss fight was or how you had to use pausing or activate abilities mid fight because you were not prepared. "

The biggest problem was the lack of flamboyantly gay blacksmiths.

Bioware makes amazing games...God awful sequels though.

I dont think it failed whatsoever - all the marketing that Ive seen has been selling it as a reboot of the series. And for the record, I beat DA1 four times, and I still think that DA2 is a far superior game.

why is your profile pic of the Arishok?

It seems like I run hot and cold on this game.  I am compelled to keep playing and I generally want to like it a lot, however, when I do hit a sticking point no matter how minor it is, I instinctively turn away in disgust and do not come back to the game for a day or two. 
 
I don't feel like blathering about all the things that annoy me in DA2 because I still enjoy playing.  But it all boils down to the shorter development cycle.  I don't remember how many years Origins was in development for but it was around 5-6 years including pre-production time.  DA2 was pumped out in 2 years.  Even with the larger budgets and team sizes that is a really short development cycle for a AAA-grade RPG.  Given those constraints, I think BioWare still pushed out a pretty solid game. 
 
Frustrations rear heads now and again.  In those cases, I sometimes just dial things down to Normal. I just don't have the patience to replay an epic battle or boss fight for the Nth time.  I've cheesed my way through a few boss encounters already thanks to strange glitches or shoddy AI so all fair's in love and gaming. 
 
Visually, DA2 is a lot tighter and polished but they really hamstrung themselves by creating such a bland, humourless city like Kirkwall.  The recycled dungeon/quest levels wouldn't so obnoxious if they were at least spaced apart better (i.e. repeating between Acts instead of within).

I just wanted to be an elf.

The biggest disappointment for me was the recycling of dungeon, 2 hours into the game and the same dungeon already pop up. The town in the game just look so bland, there's no sense of exploration since all the npc with quest was marked and the people on the street has like 2 lines of speech. 
Another disappointment is the dialogue wheel. You only have 3 choices of being a good guy, bad guy or a sarcastic asshole. Many times during the game I couldn't make a dialogue choice that I was happy with because what's there wasn't what I wanted to say.
The combat is also a letdown, the improved graphics and faster pace are fun but because enemies appear in wave and sometimes just appear randomly out of nowhere took away some of the strategic feel of the first game.
I also don't really like the characters, they just don't click with me. In DAO I play with shale and morrigan and their chatting was awesome, your companions don't talk as much in the second game.
Overall I still really enjoyed the game, but to me DA2 is inferior to DA 1. I'm about 20 hrs in and hasn't play in a week due to school, but I don't really feel compel to go back and finish the game unlike DAO where I played for 2 days straight to finish the game an immediately create a new character to restart.

1 - I disagree with you about the combat, but for a different reason. The combat is better in every way EXPECT the longass cooldowns on spells, which makes you rely on autoattacks more (for those buttonmashers on consoles). Also no FF on hard....
 
The combat's on Hard is about equivlent to Origins on normal.
 
 
I got to chapter 2 on my Rogue in DA2, but then went back to Origins to do all the DLC on another character. Is it just me, or is stacking fire resist on my melee then going BOOM with Morrigan is cheesy strategy?

For me its not stretch to say that Origins, was one of my favorite games of all time. Hell its the first game i even bothered to s-rank. I was so hyped up for dragon age 2... but I am a little disappointed. Even with the revisions to combat, I'm still upset they removed arcane warrior/battle mages. Story wise, I found the whole princess bride motif, to be a bit lacking. Since the story keeps jumping around it was hard for me to get invested into the game. I'm also a little upset I never knew to find Isabella. that could have been made for obvious. 
  
But my main problem with the game is how fucking buggy it is. When reviving characters in combat  they would stop fighting and just walk around. Sometimes my guys would constantly regain all their health and mana/stamina back. During one of the final boss fights the boss got stuck in the ground and i had to reload. and worst of all. It did not give me a lot of the achievements tied with Sebastian that I 100% deserved. 

I just beat the game last night as a force/blood mage. And I have to say the ending redeems itself. I am actually interested now in playing more.  

Being about 20 hours in to the game right now, I am enjoying it in the same "good, not great" way that I enjoyed Origins, and that's the problem. In any series, you want each game to get better and better. ME2 was better than ME1, Assassins Creed 2 was better than Assassins Creed 1. 
 
The issue I have with DA2 is that for every change they made to the game to make it better, they changed something else to make it worse, and the whole game ended up as kind of a wash. For example, I really wasn't fond of the combat in DA:O. It was too slow to really feel visceral, but I also felt like I had to either fight the AI or micromanage my party too much to make the combat fun strategically. I really like the switch to faster combat they made in DA2, even if the game arguably loses some strategic depth. However, I am not as fond of the story or the characters, which frankly, I find to be a complete bore. This is in contrast to Origins, where the story and characters were completely epic.  And although I like the new graphical style, I'm sick of the recycled environments. I like the new inventory system, but not the lack of customization options for my companions.
 
Basically, the game was "one-step forward, one-step back," and that isn't the direction you want to see a sequel go, even if you still enjoy the game overall.

" why is your profile pic of the Arishok? "

I prefer DA2. [/post]

The story was pretty lame and the companions were mostly forgettable.