Man, Dragon Age 2. So many flaws, but with just enough of BioWare's satisfying Adventure/RPG mechanics to be worth playing. I guess I like it. Clearly it could have used another 6 months to a year's worth of development time, the problems bug me to the point that I feel the need to dissect them in list form.

• Excessive dungeon and location reusage. The amount of times this game reuses a handful of specific locations is absurd. The small dungeon maps in particular, be it of warehouse, cave or outdoors motif, are well designed but constantly revisited with no regard to context or timing - you're likely to go to the same place two, maybe three times in a row, entering from different parts of the map and with a different "setting" each time.

• Button mashing. Taking away the overhead camera (and the auto-attack for consoles) turns what is essentially an improved and faster moving version of the first game's combat into an unresponsive button masher. There's no way to tell if you're getting maximum DPS, so you just end up wailing on A until cooldown timers stop or a potion can be used.

• Kirkwall kind of sucks. I don't expect Assassin's Creed level of detail from every developer, but Kirkwall, home to most of the game, fails at being the convincing city that the fiction requires it to be. It rarely feels alive outside of cutscenes thanks to segmented zones and a lack of character animation, weather, physics, and a host of other details common in high quality games today. Location visuals jump between impressive and inconsistent, with few bursts of creativity. As a whole Kirkwall just reinforces the feeling that this game was rushed out the door before it could be fully realized.

• The dialogue wheel feels inadequate. I'm enjoying playing a voiced main character well enough, but after a few times around now the signature BioWare conversation wheel feels like it requires less thought and nuance than ever before. Do you want your Hawke to be a boy scout, an asshole or snarky? Probably snarky, right? And you want to ask for more information, maybe a special colored option every once in a while? Then you'll be good to go on autopilot when it comes to character interaction.

• Bad loot. A good RPG developer knows that everyone loves loot. Not only can you not fully equip or customize your party members in DA2, but everyone is so specialized that you won't use most of what you find anyways. Almost all armor is automatic vendor trash. What you do keep is rarely worth using and design variety is limited. Also, why is the world littered with 'junk' loot that's worth nothing and only serves to take up bag space? Tattered robes in locked chests? Who designed this system?

There's plenty else to nitpick, moreso if you swore by the PC original, and when you factor in a pandering ad campaign and poor response to criticism I'm disappointed in BioWare on a few levels. It's not without positives - fast paced gameplay, very little downtime, some good side quests, a few memorable characters and a personal, politically charged storyline (that unfortunately falters before the end). The game has the spark that BioWare is known for, even if it isn't the brightest, along with plenty of rich fiction that builds on themes from the first game.

There seems to be a lot of faith in Dragon Age as a franchise and certainly there is potential - DA2 suggests the series will follow in Elder Scroll's footsteps, with each game taking place in specific kingdoms or provinces. I just hope they consider putting future emphasis on the quality of the experience instead of worrying so much about marketing, focus testing and setting aggressive production milestones.