Professional wet blanket coming in for a hard landing, gents.
I'll preface this post by saying the game isn't bad. That isn't the problem. The problem is that compared to its predecessor, it is clear that it is finished and doesn't even approach living up to its potential.
Let's break it down barney-style.
Combat. Spunky is out of his mind if he thinks combat is the same as DA:O. It isn't even close. It's a lot more action-oriented now. Definitely a lot faster, definitely a lot flashier and definitely a lot shallower than its predecessor. What was once a game of tactics has become "press a button until everything is dead." This is especially true on Nightmare, where the game suddenly becomes a grindfest without even a hint of higher thinking involved. Here's why.
First off, when you approach a mob, you're really not going to see them until its too late. You won't see them on your radar or anything until you're pretty much on top of them, or worse, until they appear out of goddamn nowhere. While in DA:O you fought an estabished mob/s, here you're fighting waves. You'll see 10 enemies, 95% of whom are just cannon fodder, and then you'll have the one officer-class enemy there who takes a few more hits to kill. Once they're dead, another wave teleports in and you do it again. There are times where this can go on for awhile. On nightmare, you're really not even thinking or having fun. The enemies don't get smarter, they don't use better tactics. Instead, they have a gajillion health and you have to weedle away at them until they're dead or you decide nightmare is ******* retarded now and switch to hard, which is essentially nightmare with less hp, or normal, at which point you're saying you're over combat and just want to see what happens next. The days of "holy ****, there are 15 dudes and they're strong as ****! What should I do? Hmm! There's a goddamn doorway! Let me bottleneck them Battle of the Hot Gates style!" are gone. And I miss it terribly.
None of that sounds too bad unless you've played DA:O and enjoyed having to think about how you're going to take out that next high level mob. There was a degree of planning involved. Its just not there anymore. It's a ****ty action game now.
Tech tree. I literally have only 3 actual moves for wielding greatsword. The rest are powerups to those moves. Things like 100% chance to stun and ****. That, and the fact that I can't dual wield unless I'm a rogue are my only real major complaints as far as the tech tree goes. Also, I liked how I had to earn my specializations in its predecessor. You had to poison andraste's ashes to become a reaver, you had to get trailed by dwarf to get berserk, and alistair could teach you how to be a templar. In DA2, you hit 7, pick a specialization, hit 14, pick another one. Its that small, attention to detail that made Origins enjoyable to me. It's also one of the things that makes this game feel unfinished.
Moving on.
Dialogue. Terrible. Just goddamn terrible. My favorite character in Awakening was Anders. He was sarcastic, funny and he had a cat. His banter with the other characters while you were roaming around was fantastic. While I'm on that topic, there's almost no banter whatsoever. I can probably count the number of times I've heard them converse amongst themselves on one hand, and I'm on chapter 3 now. As for the rest, it's either ridiculously cliched or just garbage dialogue. Every so often you'll catch a glimmer of what could have been in the form of an extremely clever one-liner, but it only makes you notice how terrible the rest of the dialogue is. Anyway, so I get Anders in DA2 and he will not stop ******* *****ing and crying. Always. About everything. Waaah. I'm possessed. Waah. The Templar hate mages. Waaah. Waaah. Waaah. Shut the **** up. Goddamnit. What happened to you? I could ramble about them destroying him forever, but I won't. I'm trying to get over it.
Companions. I have the ultimate bro team going on with my anime elf wielding a two-handed sword, anders (who is now an angsty ***** possessed by the spirit of Justice) and varric, who is the dwarf that tells your story. Out of the 3, I can't really say I like any of them. As unlikeable as my bro-force are, your other options are worse, unless you're really into walking cliches and anime. Whatever. Personal preference, I suppose. I ended up romancing the pirate chick from Origins, because your other options are a soulless ginger and a 12 year old elf. The rest are dudes. And this is where **** gets weird. I'm talking to Anders, trying to cheer him up because he's an unconsolable *****, and all of a sudden I find myself trying to get out of the "DO YOU WANT TO BANG ANDERS!?" trap Bioware layed for me. My choices were basically either to go down on him or punch him in the throat. I chose to get the hell out of the conversation without getting points towards rival or friend. Why can't I be nice to my friend without it turning overtly sexual? Just really weird.
Hmm. What else.
Story. If you played Origins, you started out as nothing, worked your way into the Wardens, killed everything, became a goddamn legend, earned your own town, fought dragons, saved the world and then got a cup of tea. It felt like the things you did mattered. Had I not been in this place, everything could have been different. Not so much in DA2. I kinda feel like if I had done nothing and chilled by a corner watching everyone, the game would have progressed in the same exact way, minus what happens at the very end of chapter 2. And really, if it weren't me, it would've been the 13 dudes who showed up 2 seconds after I did what I did. So even then, I wasn't really integral. The story feels sloppy and unfinished. I don't know how else to put it. The game really picks up at a certain point, but after that it mellows out a little. I'm pretty close to the end, but no final judgments on the story as of yet.
Maps. I'm sure everyone has already heard about this. There are like 6 maps in the game, and you will get to know all of them very, very well. I don't know what the deal with that is, but some people are trying to say its because everyone likes to occupy the same damn spaces in the city. Whatever. I think it's because they only had a year for this game.
Had the game had another year to tighten things up, I think it could've been pretty awesome. They needed to tie the story together better, make you feel like you actually matter, and not be so lazy with all of the systems. They're shells of their former selves. They took the Mass Effect 2 route which was okay in most aspects, but they didn't pull it off like ME2 was able to.
Also, the graphics aren't the great. I'm maxed out and using the high def textures, and it still doesn't look as good as it should. Although that may be because of the art direction, which I think is way too cartoony. But again, you like anime, probably not a big deal.