My first playthrough was with a female mage, and of course there are positives and negatives. The voiceacting at least on the female lead's behalf was superb. It was so damned good that sorry to say, but my previous best Jennifer Hale just got beaten. Jo Wyatt did not have ONE weak line. Not a one. It fit my female mage perfectly, and her tone of voice, the subtle hesitations and nuances went perfectly in line with the expressions of the protagonist in the game.
A HUGE number of the issues in DAO had been addressed. Abilities came with very accurrate descriptions (though there were exceptions, such as 'Taunt' which was misleading), females and males had different animations. Mages had been toned down and 2h warriors up (many would agree that even too much so). Inventory management was improved and the meaningless junk really had its own category completely. The combat mechanics were *far* more tactical than in DAO, and personally I believe the whole personal connection with the story was much better emphasized with your family and friends and new home being at the center of the events.
The downside though is that there's a *lot* of repetition. The game completely lacks the adventure feel necessary in a superb RPG, considering all the events take place in the same city. Not just that, but throughout the years there, the cityscape with its alleys and the various off-city sites like mines, caves and cliffsides are all literally the same. They never change. You wind up doing the same 5 off-city areas over and over for all the different quests where nothing has changed but a closed door here or there. The exploration aspect is lower than it has ever been in a Bioware game before to a point I feel it's impossible for anyone to play the game even halfway through and not feel bothered by it.
In addition to that, the combat spawns seem deliberately designed to be frustratingly annoying to deal with. The immense possibility for deep tactics and strategy are constantly undermined by four out of five random encounters consisting or several waves of enemies respawning all around you out of thin air. Warriors front and mages back? Not gonna work. Only after playing the game through once and respeccing with the toons to try out other warrior and rogue builds in addition to my mage did I learn that there are ways to deal with it tactically, other than just doing the Benny Hill run and exploiting the enemy AI. But it still feels cheap that the enemy always has 10 to 1 advantage and you are effectively treated as if you were completely ambushed by surprise in *every* fight. To give an idea, I played through DAO with Nightmare on my first run, and found it challenging yet not exactly overly difficult. In DA2, I had to lower the difficulty to Normal. And even then while most of the fights got too easy, some were still insanely hard, as many of the bosses seem borderline cheaters with the moves and ridiculous number of adds they get.
Also the family aspect was not used as effectively as it should have, for reasons I cannot spoil. I would have wished for a stronger connection to your family, much like with Imoen or Sarevok in BG. Where the game does succeed very well in my opinion, is truly putting you in to the centerstage of important events in a fashion that makes you *care*. Not because it's the world at stake, but because it's your home, your friends, and your core princibles that will be on line. Personally. I really loved the main plot especially at its culmination, though I feel a little more effort and more story / quests and dialogue could have been put into it to make it feel even more important on a personal level.
It took me 37.5 hours doing almost all of the quests and listening to practically all of the dialogues, pretty much skipping the codex entries entirely for later reading. Considering most of the game was at Normal / Hard difficulty, you can easily add another 10+ hours on top if you're gonna fight manually on harder difficulties, and especially if you're going to read the huge number of lore and codex entries available.
TL;DR;
As a review, I consider DAO and ME2 in the 9:ish on a scale from 0 to 10. DA2 has a lot of elements that would certainly put it there with them, but due to the high repetition of the same areas, the uneven and borderline unfinished combat system (especially because it had SO much potential, the trinity aspect works better here than it ever has, I think) among a few other much more minor faults, I'd give DA2 an 7.5 - 8. It's a good game, no doubt about that. A very good game, and well worth buying in my opinion. But it does have that slightly rushed feel to it, uneven and inconsistent elements.
Sufficed to say, while I do not at all agree with the huge overblown trolling and flaming going on here about what is clearly a quality AAA game... there are some parts where these complainers have a point or two. As an experiment I think DA2 was well worth it, and it was a fun idea to see what happens to the city and to our hero within several years' time. But next time, I do want more adventure. Or at least I want more visible consequences and changes to the environment and setting as the years go by, to emphasize the message that "no, we are not just recycling the same content starting year 1 to save money and resources at the cost of quality".
BioWare: I do not know if these faults are just honest faults - stuff just happens-, or a direct consequence of EA's infamous "quantity over quality" policy, or whatever else. Doesn't really matter. You still did a great game, a top-class RPG in the world's standards. My only problem is, I know YOU guys can do even *better*.
Thanks for reading everyone!
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