My advice would be to play Origins on PC and skip Dragon Age 2. If you like the combat design in Origins that requires tactics and planning, you'll find 2 to be frustratingly poorly balanced. You can cruise through Normal without hitting anything but the 1 key on your main character, Hard can be mopped up with only a little bit of coordinated planning and Nightmare (which finally turns on friendly fire...) jacks up the hit/damage/knockdown values so much that when the second wave of enemies inevitably spawns right on top of your well protected casters they will just stun-lock them to death.

If you must play on consoles then you will probably find DA 2 is a better game, so you might consider it despite the other flaws. Their console interface doesn't permit as easy character switching or ability selection so the balance focus on controlling a single character with automated companions (and limited friendly fire) makes sense here. In this context, Dragon Age 2 does play better--more like an action RPG.

@ChaosDent said:

My advice would be to play Origins on PC and skip Dragon Age 2.

People keep saying this. In my post I pointed out that I will be playing Dragon Age 2 because of that probably-regrettable endeavor of playing any 23 games that people on Giant Bomb told me to. Taking this into consideration (that I will play DA2, period) I was wondering if I should play the prequel first.

There have been all sorts of different opinions and the poll doesn't show any of the answers as victorious by a significant margin, but since someone pointed out that there is a feature to import save files I think I'll be playing Origins first to take advantage of that in the second one. That save file importing stuff is kinda neat, even when it is used in trivial ways.

@Crypt135 said:

@ajamafalous said:

You should play DA:O and then throw DA2 away.

Bingo

@Snail said:

There have been all sorts of different opinions and the poll doesn't show any of the answers as victorious by a significant margin, but since someone pointed out that there is a feature to import save files I think I'll be playing Origins first to take advantage of that in the second one. That save file importing stuff is kinda neat, even when it is used in trivial ways.

Don't forget about Awakening, by the way! Lots of content there.

As one of the people that don't agree with Origins being superior (I think DA2 is more of the same, really) I'll be interested in hearing your opinion once you're through them both.

Happy gaming!

Purchase the ultimate version of Origins while you're at it. It should be fairly inexpensive.

Origins is a much better game, and a very different game. Play them both. I think it helps to have played the first one for sure. You bump in to some old friends. The first one is so long though.

@Crypt135 said:

@ajamafalous said:

You should play DA:O and then throw DA2 away.

Dragon Age Origins is good from what I played and I hated DA2.

@Milkman said:

Play Origins and then throw Dragon Age 2 in the fucking trash.

Then douse the trash can in gasoline and throw a match in it.

@Snail: Did you ever finish playing the two Dragon Age games? For that matter, did you ever finish playing all 23 games? And while we're at the questioning, why 23 games in particular?

@mordukai said:

@Milkman said:

Play Origins and then throw Dragon Age 2 in the fucking trash.

Then douse the trash can in gasoline and throw a match in it.

Then bag the ashes and throw them into the biggest body of water you can find.

@Hailinel said:

@mordukai said:

@Milkman said:

Play Origins and then throw Dragon Age 2 in the fucking trash.

Then douse the trash can in gasoline and throw a match in it.

Then bag the ashes and throw them into the biggest body of water you can find.

Something like this?

@mordukai said:

@Hailinel said:

@mordukai said:

@Milkman said:

Play Origins and then throw Dragon Age 2 in the fucking trash.

Then douse the trash can in gasoline and throw a match in it.

Then bag the ashes and throw them into the biggest body of water you can find.

Something like this?

Perfect!