Jesus, Dragon's age 2 is to Dragon's age what Mass Effect 2 was to Mass Effect. Rubbish, yet good.
Stand alone games they are good but as sequels to MUCH better games, just awful.
I think the best way to put it is if Mass Effect 2 scores a 9/10 because its still one of the best games of the year, Mass Effect has to be rescored at 15/10.
Its just sooo much worse, inventory is cut down, junk stuff to sell thats literally worthless and doesn't have pictures, just names of items that mean nothing is unbelievably poor. Rehashed maps all over the place where the normal map is still there but the particular cave won't let you in to parts of the cave because they've close it off with a non openable door, really, they can't even put in a new map and a proper wall in to make it look less utterly cheap and lazy?
Other characters having set armours that level, collecting for stuff like crafting is, just laughable, its easy, the dialogue is woeful with words skipped, whole sentences appearing to be missing and lots of the interchanges simply being awful.
Then you've got graphics which seem, honestly, pretty terrible all told, but stupid people will be happy because AOE effects just blur out everything. If I ever set two mages to do an AOE attack at the same time as a rogue I find it hard to target anything because all I can see are streetfighter looking fireballs all over the place.
Yet, its still half fun, and half decent. Thing is Dragon's age was a full game, it was polished, everything was finished, they rehashed maps and had not enough locations but it was still way better, everything was designed properly, had a style, had time spent on making it.
Dragon age 2, generic, boring, dull, uncluttered, cheap and quick locations.
If there were no first game, this would be ok on its own, but pretty much a budget title and hopefully wouldn't be advertised as a "proper" RPG, but as a sequel it couldn't get much worse.
I think thats where things are most dissappointing when you know exactly how good it should have been from the first game. You WANT 1-2 improvements, not everything, and I do mean everything, worse.