The tighter focus of Dragon Age II makes it much better than the sprawling and somewhat boring Dragon Age: Origins. By making it a smaller-scale story about a city and a family it improves upon everything introduced in Origins and is so much more interesting for it.

The Bad - Mechanics/Design

• Multiple locations are lazy reskins of other locations
  • I don't mind that locations are revisited multiple times over the years. That's actually good (more later). The problem is that every cave is the one cave area they modeled with the invisible walls shuffled around. The fact that the map doesn't even reflect the invisible walls doesn't help either...
• Monster closet-type combat encounters
  • By which I mean enemies just spawn from the ceiling or appear out of the ground, which means that no matter how well I plan for an encounter, I sometimes end up losing because I didn't know that five more guys were gonna appear when I killed a certain number of the enemies already on-screen. I wouldn't mind if it made more sense, but sometimes they just drop from the ceiling apropos of nothing!
• I didn't really care for the inventory system, but I will say that, in general, I don't really care for the whole "pick up cruft to sell to vendors" as a main method of increasing your gold. Either make enemies drop gold or increase quest rewards. I dunno. There's nothing fun about clicking a "sell junk" button. No item you pick up should be labeled as "junk".

The Good - Story, Pacing

• Big story, small scale
  • The things that happen to Kirkwall are explored over a long span of time. It's way more interesting to see how your actions and events are shaped when you have the ability to put large chunks of time between them. Not every action has an instantaneous reaction.
  • Focusing on one family and one city also allows you to make everything personal. Your party also gets to just kind of do their own thing in their own parts of town. It feels more real/lived in.
• The multiple conflicts of the DA universe
  • This isn't really a DA2 invention since these relationships were first presented in DA:O, but the interplay between the Templars and Mages and the various races are all so interesting in the Dragon Age Universe. Because it's a sequel, DA2 is allowed to be more personal about all of these stories. It doesn't have to introduce the player to stuff, it just dives right in. That's inherently more interesting because they can explore the depths of the story rather than the surface-level stuff.
• All Killer, No Filler
  • That's not strictly true, but DA:O is capital 'B' boring. The dwarf area has some great bits in it, but it's too long and too same-y and too BORING until you get to the creepy/gross/interesting parts. I've had many a friend quit DA:O at that point, missing out on the fun bits of the DA:O ending. DA2 has some slower parts, I suppose, but in general it has a fantastic gameplay loop. Time advances, explore the way the city has changed, deal with sidequests/main quest.
• Pre-defined character
  • DA:O's character was a cipher with a history that was only somewhat predetermined. It allows for more roleplaying and more character insertion, but freedom is also the enemy to good plotting. Think of how many times you've played a game and thought, "But this doesn't make sense with the way I'm RP-ing my character!" By making Hawke have a mostly set personality with a mostly set backstory and place within the current story, the game is sharper and more focused at the expense of freedom. DA:O, on the other hand, had to make its story make sense no matter how you were playing your character. It's looser and less interesting that way.

So I guess I like DA2 more because it's got a vastly superior story even though the accelerated development schedule made for a less polished game. For what it's worth, I also think ME2 is the weakest Mass Effect game for inverted reasons. They botched the excellent story and tone of ME2 in favor of wildly improving upon the way the game played. More fun to play, less fun to experience for me and in this style of game, I put more emphasis on the story than the game.

using the same dungeons again and again was great too.

on a serious note, I enjoyed the games story and characters, but the game is not great overall and thats just fact. You might enjoy it and thats fine, you might even find it great, but the overall opinion is that its not.

I always thought the game, the third act in particular, was a fantasy allegory for Israeli/Palestinian relations. I used to have this theory all worked out, but I am work right now and typing quickly, so apologies in advance for this being shoddy:

@hobozero:
This is really interesting. Well done =)

I'll agree with you on the characters and story, but I have to disagree on the combat. The combat was no masterpiece in the first one either, but it felt better to me. I also disliked how much they cut out of the other rpg elements, like the much smaller talent trees and that you couldn't even change your party member's equipment. It also felt like there was pretty much one armor set that you would use for each chapter. Its been a while but I remember thinking the way you got Hawke's armor it might as well have had the same system as your party members. I think there was some other stuff about inventory or equipment that I though was kinda lame, but I don't really remember what it was. I feel like I've kinda flipped on Mass Effect 2 for a lot of those reasons too, I played Mass Effect 1 recently and I think I might like that game more than ME2 now, not that 2 is bad or even mediocre its still great. The recycling of assets in DA2 is just plain bad though, I usually don't get bothered by it, but since I like to do all sidequests the like 10th time I went through the same dungeon got to me.

I am not watching a movie, so gameplay always comes first before story. And I just can't stand with that horrible combat, sword sponge enemies THE SAME GODDAMN lairs for every side mission. Even the plot and the story telling just reeks amateur. Qunari plot that reached nowhere. The family you don't give two shits about. Simple as shit BAD VERSUS GOOD plot. Retarted-ass dialogs and uninteresting characters. No Dragon Age II was not a good game.

I love the characters and the story. Outstanding work, and backslaps for all.

The recycling of locations and the waves of enemies you just want to get out of your way so you can continue the story was a bad/lazy decision.

But for me, the first far outweighs the latter, so I've loved every playthrough of DA2. It's no DA:O, though.

When I played it at/around launch, I didn't care for it much. I'm re-playing DA:O right now and I still love the game and I will play through DAII again, eventually, maybe coming back to it sometime later and viewing it in the context of DAII being more of a spin-off than a direct sequel to DA:O will change my perspective.

You played this game five or six times and didn't have a problem with the shitfest that is their enemy spawn system? It still has the vestiges of being a tactical game, but then they just drop enemies on you in every direction and you can't play tactically at all. They took out autoattacks not because it made things better to mash a button instead, but because there is nothing else to do except essentially autoattack, so they turned it into a button mash. Mages became a liability in a party because the enemy spawns were so awful that there frequently was no place to put your mage where he/she wouldn't have a dude drop straight onto them and destroy them.

I didn't make it past 1/3 of the way into the game because the writing was so boring/bad and the combat was so awful, and I've every other BioWare game I've played I've completed multiple times. DA 2 is just bad.

voted nay, never played it.

Most won't agree with the OP, but I love Dragon Age II, much more so then the first game. Dragon Age felt so damn clunky.

Dragon Age Origins is definitely a game from a different era. There is an allegory here that we lost games like DOA so that we could get a games more like Dragon Age 2. Did we gain or lose better quality games or is it just the same old stuff reshuffled?

This is what I was going to say. Listen, I think Dragon Age II has some great ideas, some likeable characters and sort of works as a deconstruction of the usual Bioware formula in a way I can appreciate. But don't think for a second that those excuse its multitude of really obvious problems.

''I've recently been playing through Dragon Age II for the fifth or sixth time. And I have to say, I love this game. I don't get why it's gotten such a bad reputation. My gut feeling says it's probably just because the internet was intent on hating the game from the start, and they would never admit to being wrong. Do they ever?''

Wow, what a perfectly reasonable and not at all inflammatory way to open a discussion!

I can't quite be bothered writing up my own thoughts in detail as it's a topic that has been discussed to death. That, and a lot of other users have primarily posted a lot of my own complaints anyway. I don't think it's a bad game, but it's far from something that I'd consider to be great. The first act is mostly filler and is made up of nothing but fetch quests and the like, and the third feels rushed (because it was of course) and has a ludicrous ending. Second act is pretty alright from what I remember, though. Even if the duel with the arishok is fucking broken as a mage character. A 3-star game if there ever was one.

I liked some elements of the gameplay, but the main story is chicken fried dog shit that came from the ass of a dog. Any story which concludes with 'an evil sword did it' can go fuck itself.

Dragon Age 1 was never as good as many made it out to be, and DA2 wasn't quite the trainwreck many made it out to be, but DA1 was still comfortably better than DA2.

I really enjoyed Dragon Age II, although there are some legitimate problems that most everyone has already brought up. The lack of variety and reusing of environments bugged me at the time. I absolutely get why that happens from a budget/time perspective. Even though the Mass Effect series had similar issues (particularly in 1) it never bothered me like it did with DA2. That said, I really liked the stories. Focusing on one character instead of having to accommodate a wide range of possible choices was a good decision. I enjoyed watching a city change over time. It made me feel part of an environment. And the DLC was really good.

My wife has recently gone back to playing DA1, and it's clear through watching her play that DA2 improves a lot in between installments. There's a lot of padding in that game a few design choices in regards to inventory/UI that just plain bug me. To be fair, I'm not one for the tactical aspect of the series. I like to hit things and use my skills but not control my followers, so take my thoughts on combat with that in mind. DA2 played more to the type of game I wanted and enjoyed than DA1, and I'm looking forward to see what happens next with Inquisition.

But the city didn't change over time, that was the problem -- or one of many rather. It has a story that takes place over a decade yet the city & its denizens literally never change. All of the same nameless NPCs are still wandering the exact same locations with the exact same automated dialogue.

Besides Aveline's change in armour due to her promotion, none of the major characters ever age or even have a change of clothes. Unless you specifically max out either their friend or rival meter anyway -- which on that note is definitely one of the game's few legitimate innovations for the series. The addition of a 'rivalry' meter to contrast against friendship was a great way to allow you to not have to potentially pander to your party members just to make them like you, while still gaining new relationship dialogue and benefits.

@yummylee: Maybe we've got different definitions of change. Or maybe I'm misremembering the game. You've got me questioning now. :)What I remember is the tensions between the templar and the mages worsening with time. I remember going from a refugee to occupying a position of power within the city and watching some of my friends do the same. Portions of the population started to follow the Qun and there was an uprising against the governing body along with conspiracies that wanted it/didn't want it to happen.

Looking at that, maybe it's not change that really did it for me, but a sense of continuity. In open world games there's always that horrible moment where you've done all the quests in an area and the world feels empty. No one will speak to you or has anything but recycled quests for you to do. Again, DA2 doesn't do this perfectly, but it never felt dead to me. There were powers at work both in the main and side questlines that were progressing and changing the city that I was a part of.

Hope this clears it up.

The battle system was bad for an RPG, environment was terrible, your party was boring except for Varric and pretty much the only interesting thing about the game is the Qunari stuff. For a 20+ hour game, that's pretty poor. Nay.

The Friendship/Rivalry system was pretty cool, but I remember hating just about everything else about the game.

Needs more Morrigan/10

I can't really agree with you on this one. Sure Dragon age II has some shining moments that get overlooked because it was never going to live up to origins. But the problem is that Dragon age II was rushed out the door and many sections of the game shows how rushed it felt. The environments were reused to an embarrassing degree. Most caves or inner houses were the same layout or design but with one or more pathways closed off.

The choice to reduce the customization of your party members also felt like a step down. It made loot or treasure less useful when you only needed to worry about your set of armor. I also feel like the classes were not as balanced as it could have been. It seemed like the rouge class always outperforms the warrior class.

Finally i felt the story was a letdown because it did not keep up with the idea of a political battle and your choices shaping the town. The increased character moments and seeing them grow over the years was cool and i enjoyed that a lot. But the overall story fell flat at the end because characters started making crazy choices just to push the story along. There were too many out of character moments that did not make sense to me. By the end everyone is in crazy town because its the "only way" to solve the problem.

Dragon age II could have been great if they allowed it more time to develop and did not try to shape it into Mass Effect 2.

I enjoy the combat but the rest if it is the worst. I never did beat that game I can only take going to the same places so many times.