Dragon Age 2 brought us the combat system and armor / weapon system..but..nothing else?
Combat: The Combat in this game is just brilliant and vibrant. It may have a new hack and slash kind of feature, but the skills and attacks make up for it. Your in for an awesome array of combos and skill artwork. In Dragon Age: Origins, you were basically allowed to space off while in combat..AIs did everything for you except cast the spells / activate the skills which took so long to recharge it was worthless anyway. Each class brings different combat (Classes being Mage, Warrior and the usual Rogue) Rogue lashes out a fast barrage of dagger attacks, warrior release their epic attacks with their amazing strength, and Mages, who by far are most improved the best DA:O. Whip their stalves around like they're in a circus, which actually looks pretty damn cool when there's bolts of energy flying from them.
Armor / Weapons: The amount of the weapons and armor hasn't really increased, but that's not what was really needed. The look of armor and weapons in DA:O was boring and un-detailed. DA2 brought us new and improved armor and weapons where almost every one looks like your average end of the game best weapon and armor skin. Each had its own skin, and someone if you were lucky you could get a weapon with a cool feature on it, like a glowing element on the end of a staff, or something orbiting it, maybe an awesome Hilt to a sword, etc. Letting a bit of a spoiler out, you do get Champion armor near the end of the game, which look nothing like any other skin, gladly.
Characters: Characters were one of the mistakes of Dragon Age 2. Because of the short game, you get friendship and rivalry points from everyone for just saying Hi to someone it seems. For not killing an innocent when they asked if you were going to kill them you gain friendship points with someone and rivalry point with another. I understand the fact that everyone has their own opinions and that hows it's meant to be, but its almost sad how sensitive these characters seem to be. Helping someone will make someone else mad, as it should, but by so many points you have no chance of getting those back any time soon. It seemed as though if you wanted to be friends with someone, everyone else had to absolutely loathe you which very soon became very annoying. As I also said said before, the characters are sometimes so stupid and Ignorant that you can't do anything about it. Almost as if the only thing causing problems is your companions. There is a few characters here and there who naturally love you and don't give a rip what everyone else thinks..but there's also that set of characters that hate you no matter what you do.
Story: The story is what seems to be what hurt everyone the most. You walk around in this game as the Champion of the World..doing odd jobs. You would stall basically, do random assignments and quests until something finally happened and the story moved on. It was simple, poorly written and rushed. Bioware disappointed us all in this sense, sadly enough. There was nothing particularly wrong with the game, it's just that Dragon Age: Origins brought such an awesome and adventurous storyline, we all expected Dragon Age: Origins 2 with good graphics. It seems we were wrong
Graphics and Sound: Both prevailed into excellence in Dragon Age 2. The music was loud and set the mood always, the instant the battle was over, the music drained and all you could hear was Hawke's faint footsteps that sent chills down my spine. The graphics were beautiful, and with the High Res that came as a patch from Bioware it looked more beautiful still.
All in all Dragon Age 2 was a fun game, it gave us a few hours of fun, and disappointment later which isn't always such a bad thing. DA2 is worth a couple replays before the next game, no doubt, it just didn't bring everyone exactly what they wanted. The combat is amazing and lifelike, the graphics are beautiful, the sound amazing, and Hawke as badass as ever. Which is why I gave this game an 8 / 10 Cya guys