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So, Dragon Age 2. Sequel to Dragon Age: Origins, made by Bioware, blahblahblahblah. It's really not Dragon Age: Origins 2. Because you A) are not a Grey Warden and B) you rarely fight darkspawn. So, now that that's out of the way.

So I'll start with the story. It's a bit nonsensical at points, as in "why in gods name am I doing this? Shouldn't I be doing something more important or seeing a return on other things I did prior rather than having to prove myself again? Why can't I just make this choice? It makes so much more sense!". And it has very little to do with DA:O. And when you finally finish the game, it A) feels like the game should keep going and B) completely sets it up for a sequel in the disappointing way. It did have it's redeeming qualities in the relationship quests, which actually impact the game in ways I didn't expect in the least. The story was good, it just really was all over the place. And much too short. So...I'll give it a 7.25.

Now on to gameplay. On PC, it has the same standard RPG feel, you know, with all the icons on the bottom and you have a general attack and use what abilities you want. And they give you a greater variety this time around, which makes combat much more fun. In addition, the combat feels much more dynamic, and each class can actually be used in fun ways. Some may see this as a degeneration for console gamers (which it pretty much is. I would also not recommend playing this on a console. It's too simplified.), but it makes it easier to be strategic about things. You don't have to order your rogue to go around behind people, they can more or less warp behind the enemy, or go invisible and sneak around. Mages are more balanced, so they don't get the crap beaten out of them whenever an enemy gets through your warrior(s). The warrior class is still pretty much a tank. I mean, that's all it's really meant to be, but sometimes it'd be nice to be able to do cool stuff with a sword. It took me so much longer to kill stuff as a warrior than as a mage. With the rogue class, you can choose between dual-wielding daggers or using a bow. With the mage class, you can choose between the normal variety of spell schools. Warrior is between sword/shield and 2handed. What's nice though, is that to both Warrior and Rogue, extra talent schools were added to give your characters more variety in how you want to play. You can be a tank, or more damage oriented with a warrior (though the damage oriented doesn't really do much more damage, to be honest. but they tried.) The rogue has a bunch of sneaky trap stuff, which can buff your party or debuff the enemy and make your party invisible. It's really nice. I will say however, the targeting is not good. DA:O I never had to pause to select a target, only to choose what tactics I wanted to use. However, in DA2, I found myself pausing every 5 seconds to choose a new target. When there's 93485743985 waves of enemies being thrown at you (oh yeah, they throw waves of enemies at you. Not a fan of that, the prolonged battles get annoying. It's like, can't I Just walk down a street without 5000 enemies coming at me at once? Seriously. Annoying.) it makes battles take much longer, and the targeting system shouldn't be a problem. The target box areas shouldn't change depending on how they're moving, this isn't an FPS. Like in DA:O, I didn't so much use in changing the tactics, because I could either tell the characters what to do on my own or they were already doing what I wanted. It felt like they were pointless to me. I'm sure many other people would disagree, since they play with 92385y9385 forms of tactics. That's more opinion than anything else though, really. So, I'd give gameplay...an 8. In some ways, they improved DA:O a lot, but other ways they took a step back.

Graphics/Music. There's not much to say about either of these, because they're both really good. If you have a computer that can power maxed graphics in this game, then you are blessed. I could get to high with ambient occlusion off and my anti aliasing at around...8x, and I was fine then, but this game has the capacity to look amazing if your computer can manage. Well, even at High settings it looks really good. Medium probably looks okay, and low always looks bad. It's low for a reason. If anyone is playing this on a good computer, find the hi-res texture pack. It's 1GB, and is free, and it makes your game so much better. I feel like Bioware held it hostage so people would buy the game (more likely EA, but whatever) but you can't blame 'em for that, they poured work into the game, they don't want to see it stolen. The music was pretty good and I felt it was a solid soundtrack. 8.5.

The replay value is okay, as long as you make different choices and play with a different class. Otherwise, there's not much you can miss. It's not super huge, like DA:O was. In addition, after 10 hours or so of playing, Kirkwall seems pretty tiny and the surrounding area is very limited. There is no where near as much to do in DA2 as was in DA:O. They mass effect-ized it. Which wasn't a bad thing for ME2 (exploring got frustrating in ME after a while.), but DA2 isn't ME2. So. That's bad. It's a fantasy game, it should have expansive elements. Oh, and 95% of dungeons are the same. There's like 3 different dungeons and they just change the way you go through them. Not even in the same place, they just reused the same dungeon. Was not a fan of that. I give it a 6.75.

So, nonsensical, awkward, but good story, mostly better gameplay, graphics were pretty great, and the replay value was not so good. An overall 7.75. (I know that's not what it actually averages to, but I don't feel like I should round down to a less awkward number. The actual score was 7.625) It's good the first time through, then it's okay the second, then by the third its' like "okay whatever." So, if you can, try to borrow it from a friend.