So It's Not Online? And Champions of Norrath Comes Out Next Week?
Graphics
Honestly there's nothing we haven't seen before here. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. The lighting and spell effects are done well, as you can see in the screenshots to the right, and although the characters are quite small, you can use zoom in up close to the action if you wish.
Control
The Xbox controller works perfectly for this game. Although I thought it'd be simply mashing A as much as possible, I am pleased that the gameplay wasn't that monotonous. Your character will be constantly switching weapon styles, picking up loot, drinking potions, and parrying attacks. Every button is used, but rather than being a mess, it just feels right. The L-Trigger works as a shift button and allows you to set hotkeys for the four main buttons (A,B,X,Y), which is great for special attacks that you gain as you level up. The controls blend complex in-depth design with the intuitive ease of pick-up-and-play style.
Sound
Not a whole lot to note here. The voice acting is pretty good and there seems to be a huge variety of hacks, battlecries, and thuds for the combat. As you crawl through some dungeons it gets fairly quiet, which may be 'realistic,' but it also makes the slow parts quite boring. A more expanded soundtrack would have been nice...Custom Soundtracks would've been even better.
Replay Value
The game will take 10 to 12 hours to complete, but with five very different characters to play and tons of skills and special attacks to learn for each one, you'll get a lot replay value out of DA2. Bring a friend into the battle and you'll have this disc in your Xbox for even more replayability...is that a real word?
Conclusion
The game is action packed in most parts and if you like world's full of elves, dwarves, etc, then you'll certainly enjoy this game. I had a great time customizing my character with the junk I found on corpses and treasure chests. You also get to choose what kind of skills you want to gain every time you level up, which is nice. The Workshop mode is fun for anyone who likes to tinker with weapons to create your own mods. The only drawback that I see is that this game is obviously built to be played by more than one person, but it's not Live Enabled.
*** This review was written for Flamevault.com shortly after the release of the game. ***