In my own personal ranking, I would place it last. It's not terrible, but it's far less innovative in the areas I care about, and in the one area that it claims to be most innovative I care least about.
Less character races leads to fewer options for the player to make main characters. This also leads to less potential for unique experiences in a playthrough due to character race. Streamlining the classes means less fighting style options, less spell options, fewer class specialization options for gameplay. Taking away the tactical camera is inconvenient.
Limiting weapons and armor to character classes limits player options once again and is just annoying since there is absolutely no logical reason for it. In a stat based game, if your character is strong enough to use a sword, why not let them use it even if they might not be the best at using it? Not allowing players to trade out NPC companion character armor also is a bit obnoxious. It's lazy design veiled in the excuse of roleplay realism. When in a life or death situation, most people would wear significantly better armor to survive even it it's not exactly what they prefer, even if it is pink and covered in sparkles.
The new visual style of combat doesn't seem to match the "dark and gritty" theme. Rogues doing unnecessary flips, kicks, teleporting about the battlefield while tossing smoke bombs with warriors swinging overly massive weapons often with one hand and mages spazzing out shooting bolts from their staves in an endlessly looped animation make me long for the slow and sometimes underplayed combat animations of the first game. The cutscenes also are very shoddy at times. Aveline killing her husband by stabbing a dagger THROUGH his steel breastplay from a static position, while Cassandra stabs a dagger straight through half a book in Varric's lap all in the first several cutscenes of the game. Find the strongest people you can and tell them to do either of these things, neither one is going to happen.
The story is by far the best part of DA 2 in my opinion. But the framed narrative doesn't seem to really add anything for the player other than making sure the player has to play as a human named Hawke. It seems more of a love note from the developers to the developers than a story with the interest of gamer's in mind.
Baldur's Gate 1 was a great game to me, and while I did not like every alteration made in Baldur's Gate 2, the universal feeling I got was one of "Give it more." More spells, fighting styles, items, abilities, dialogue and epic boss fights. Playing DA:O I saw alot of things that I hoped would be addressed, but these things were ignored and it felt to me as if DA 2's mantra was "Make it different!" Different isn't bad, but it isn't good either. I wish they would of worked more with the existing visual style, the existing playstyle and combat style instead of making it into such a bizarre hybrid. Instead of being so focused on capturing a new audience, they should of focused first on giving the fans "more" instead of being keyed in on "different" (or should I say "awesome?"). You run the risk in losing alot of fans if you change a successful product on many levels. They certainly lost me with DA 2. While not a bad game, DA 2 feels far inferior on multiple levels than the less-flawed previous game. I would feel like an idiot to buy it as it stands. Thank goodness for intuition, the demo, generous friends and YouTube Let's Players for confirming my suspicions.
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