Decent game but not better then the original..

User Rating: 8 | Dragon Age II X360
Finally the sequel is here!!.. Unless you have been living under a rock you know that this game is finally coming out. With the sequel to dragon age (duh.. thats obvious) you expect more things. Well normally you would expect them to make changes (for the better). Like another bioware game (guess which one.. ) the changes for this game is not much. It kinda picks up where the original ends. You get to create a character and choose among three classes ( not much of a choice because only rogues can pick locks so you basically have to pick a rogue or give up on some good gear in locked chests). The basic premise is you walk around and follow the main story line. While you do that you also meet charactes and get side missions and character missions.
As in most games like this the side missions end up being basic get this item and bring it to this person. Also again a common problem with bioware games is the dungeons tend to look the same after awhile. The towns as well tend to have the same look to them. Its like ok bring this item to this person then go to this place that looks like the same place and kill these people. Do not get me wrong the graphics are very good but a little randomness never hurts. This game also suffers from scaling difficulty which most games like this have. Most missions are pretty easy with button crunching basically to kill everybody. Then you get into another mission and its way too hard. Funny thing is this game also does not have a lot of dragons in it.. just a little thing but you would think a game called DRAGON AGE would have a lot of dragons.
The story is pretty much similar to the original with a few twists. I really wish they would make this game more of a free roaming game so you could explore the towns at will. They obviously go with the more linear way of you being able to go to this amount of towns and thats it. No more no less and the side quests and such again not much there. There is a way to have a relationship with the characters but to me it really did not do much. They also do not allow you to really customize your allies. When you get them on your team they come with armor and thats the armor they have the whole game. You can customize some of their weapons but armor no good. Also you can enchant your weapons and such but to me it did not bring much to the game.
The sound in the game is good as are the graphics. I have to say that this is a pretty looking game but you could see that there was so much more they could have done. I felt a little cheated (same for mass effect 2) because the original was so good you expected so much more from this version. I kept waiting for something to happen and in the end I did not get it. Instead I got a very solid game that does not improve on the original much. It is definately worth a buy if you have played the original. If you are new to the dragon age series I would reccommend playing the first one then maybe moving on the to next.