I actually appreciate the new style, it's necessary to make the game feel fresh I think. The departure helps, but the game is still a disappointment.

Edit: I downloaded the high-resolution texture package and I dare say it's a must have. No more shitty graphics, makes the numerous cutscenes (75% of the game) a lot more enjoyable.

P.S. For once, GameSpot's review is pretty honest. Still, they gave it a higher score than the game actually deserves. When it comes to "professional review sites" though, Luckmann is %100 right when he says:

Haven't played the game and have no bias either way, but Metacritic user reviews are essentially a joke.  Kids rate the game 0 or 10, with maybe a few ignored reviews that actually tried to rate it fairly and give it realistic score.  Gamefaqs user reviews still have bias, but at least they have to give more than one sentence reviews to actually back up the rating.  They should honestly just take the Metacritic user system down as it has become meaningless.

On the flipside, yes most professional reviewers have long since been blatantly rating up companies that spend more on advertising.  You will NEVER see a hyped AAA title from a big publisher score under 8.

I hate to say it, but the only trustworthy review anymore is to play the game yourself.  And since not all games have demos...well.  You know.  Purchase any games you enjoy to support the developer of course.

There isn't. This is abnormal. There is usually a gap on very highly rated games (particularly ones obviously highly rated because they're big name sequels from big publishers), but nothing like this. I mean, Elemental at launch had a user score nearly 2 full points above this. As I mentioned, it's got a lower score then FF 14.

Outside of games where they get rated into oblivion due to DRM, I'm not sure I've seen a storm of negative reviews this overwhelming before on the site with a divergence from the critics score so wide.

It's not being blasted quite so hard on other sites, but even the Amazon scores don't compare to the game review sites. It's also worth mentioning that the PC version ranks lowest of all of them basically everywhere, despite the high res texture pack for PC.

I have played a fair bit of Dragon Age 2 at this point and over the past few days I have bounced back and forth between the love camp and the hate camp. As I near the end of the first section, I find myself still torn. While I am find some of the streamlining to be questionable, my largest complaint is not about changes to the system or even being bound to the single city. For me, the biggest issue I have with DA2 is simply the reused maps. In general, I am not against assets being used multiple times and would be fine if these were in fact the same dungeons. However, after having 3 major battles in the same dungeon room, I find myself drawn out of the game world, and finding these battles a bit cheesy instead of being the climax of an otherwise interesting quest.

Dragon Age 2 judged on it's own merits is a very good game. I think that most criticism comes from the fact that it is not streamlined enough for the younger CoD crowd, while not challenging enough for us older hard core guys. I believe the majority of the people who play the game will be somewhere in between and will enjoy the game just fine.

On it's own, yes, it's a good game. I Do like the game. I'm right at the end of the first 1/3 of the game. The thing's that are annoying (which I'll cover in the review) are all the things that have been dumbed down with no good reason. Crafting, equipping things on party members, skills, conversations...the list of things that were just fine in DA:O that are dumbed down to almost beyond recognition are many. The battles are decent as long as you crank up the difficulty and I'm not against the changes there. Many of the tactical aspects are there, just not as deeply as in the first one. On it's own it is a very fun game though and I'm still glad I bought it.

Honestly though I'd rather not see the dev team get away with dumbing down all the things they did for no reason what-so-ever. Even half of the sub quests which supposedly have "multiple paths" play out the same regardless of what speech you use or how you treat the NPC...which is the devs showing the "allusion" of choice, where none really exists, and that irritates me the most I think.

They did a very poor job of keeping any of the real "depth" the first game had for something that's supposed to be a Grand RPG. That can be said without referring to any of the combat changes. The big combat change was what all the DA:O faithful we're worried about when they saw it, the thought of the rest of the game being dumbed down though probably didn't cross a lot of people's minds until they got their hands on the game and spent 3 or 4 hours with it.

I already thought of that and tried more than a few. I tried changing all the various options as well and even tried jumping over to the DX10 version. It's not that the graphics are bad or anything, it's just annoying when your eye is drawn to one pixelated spot. As I mention, check the hair line on the models heads using field blur. With the field blur effect on, on either DX11 or DX10, you get some pixelation there. DA:O had a funny line where the hair models met the character models heads as well and I suspect it's the same flaw carrying over.

Reviews vs. Reality.

*I mean, seriously, look at the competition and how much better they do. Dragon Age 2 went the way the Gothic series went, and is as poor an attempt to switch to another genre as Gothic 4 was.

Mine do just fine when given an attack command until the target is dead.

Luckman -

The graphics problems are on your end.  My game looks NOTHING like the screenshots you posted.  Its much much much better.  You might want to play with graphics settings because you have something messed up if that is what you are seeing.

I also dont agree with the "dumbed down for no good reason" nonsense.

Crafting?  I like the new crafting system better.  Most people dont play these games for crafting.  They dont play a fantasy game to spend a bunch of time picking up weeds and then going through some complex crafting system.  If they do any crafting, they want it simple.  Yes, I realize that there is a minority of people who like complex crafting in their single player RPGs, but I'd certainly say that its a minority.  There was CERTAINLY a reason for making the system simpler and a good one.

I dont get the complaint about the dumbing down of the skills.  The trees are a lot more complex now.  What was dumbed down here?  I find that I have to spend more time thinking about how I will use skill points, and the attribute system is actually a bit more complex now (you have to balance more stats usually since defense is now based off of cunning for example).  I also have to think about cross class combos now, which require more thought.

There was alse a VERY clear and explicit reason for the simplifying on the companion inventory.  They wanted to maintain certain looks for the companions, which you can't do if you let them wear whatever they want.  They said that they wanted to avoid situations like Morrigan wearing Chantry robes and that kind of stuff.  That seems pretty reasonable to me and its not a result of laziness or dumbing anything down, its for immersion purposes, which is a good reason.

There is some serious drama queening going on about this game IMO.  If people spent a little time thinking about it, they would realize that much of the simplification of the game is done for clear reasons.  It was certainly not done for no reason as people want to dramatically claim.  You may or may not agree with some of the decisions, but realize that that is your personal preference and not some affront to God.

Like I said, I dont think that the game is great (too many reused settings, main plot is weak as hell), but its not bad judged on its own.  And the game mechanics are actually quite good and not dumbed down if you actually give them a chance.

I don't find many things dumbed down either. Crafting I don't like as much, but although it feels different it's not actually that big of a change. In DA1 you found herbs, then spent money from a merchant to buy the things you needed to turn them into potions and poisons. That's what you do in DA2 as well. There are no craft skills but we always gave those to dummy characters we weren't using in our main group anyway. The only key difference is not having to worry about running out of raw craft materials once you find a source.

Skills I actually find more complicated and better designed. I do kind of miss conversation skills, but it was always wierd that your main character had to be weaker then everyone else because he had to buy all the interaction skills. The other skills I generally feel are more interesting and better balanced.

Companion inventory basically boils down to companions having 7 equipable inventory slots instead of 10. Not such a big deal either especially given that they have alternate means of getting upgrades. Again I'd have prefered to keep all 10, but I understand their reasoning for what they did and the actual effect it has on my gameplay is minimal.

So yeah there are a couple things I don't like quite as much, but there are other things I think are better then the original. In general game balance seems a bit better and more interesting with more interesting options. I also like that your success and failure in a battle is no longer purely determined by how many healing potions (or poultices) you have.

Ultimately the actual gameplay doesn't even feel all that different from DA1.