Too many shortcuts taken and not enough time spent on development.
There was a few times when I thought things were done nice, such as when fighting a dragon or watching the final scenes of the game. But for the most part you seem less involved in the world around you, stuck to wander Kirkwall for the entire game. There is one very short journey into the Deep Roads but then you are back in Kirkwall again for 95% of the story. In "Origins" I felt involved in a lot of various happenings in various quests, but in Dragon Age 2 I felt involved only in this independent city-state which made me question how the city exists with such a small area of land compared to other powers in the world, such as Orlais and Tevinter. Tevinter seemed more like hired thugs and were improperly represented compared to their proper representation of immorality in the first game of the series, which led me to fear them as the Chantry had represented. But in DA2 they seemed to be no different than any rogue or merc group I fought in the game.
The game distinctively lacks diversity. I felt like the hero was traveled and experienced in the first game of the series, but the "champion" of DA2 rarely left the city, and the interesting unrelated side quests were few and far between. I simply felt that the main character could have interacted with the world more. When the monarchy of Ferelden comes to Kirkwall, he brings one servant only and no armed escort? Absurd, that would never happen. They should have met on neutral ground, and if the world around Kirkwall is so concerned with it's happenings, then it should have been more involved and everything should have been less of a copy of other things in the game. The dwarven architecture was incomplete and uninspiring, the elven camp was more like a bunch of elves standing around in an empty clearing of the woods, which looked nothing at all like a true forest.
The voice actors did well, and as usual the female voice actor for the hero did a very good job--a great deal better than the male, as is charactaristic in most games like this. But the hair was ... very asian style which left me with only 2 or 3 new hair styles to use except for the "Origins" hair styles repackaged for the game. The skin textures were okay but only the youngest female skin looked usable and the rest could have been done better. The color selection for the hair and eyes was mostly colored natural but the selection seemed smaller than it should have been for a game in a fantasy setting.
The story itself, aside from what I've said about it already, seemed to end too abruptly and left plot holes in their bias to being as vague as possible throughout the entire game. Characters that showed up from "Origins" did not even recognize each other and I was left wondering for a couple if they even belonged in the position that bioware had put them in. But perhaps I should try grabbing a save from DAO to see how that changed character interaction before I pass judgment on it.
Overall it has it's good sides and bad sides, but it is more disappointing than I thought it would have been. This would have been better sold as a DLC or Expansion Pack for Origins than it did as a separate game. But as always, I'm sure EA is quite pleased with themselves. I just hope the next game in the series is more like the first because this game is most definitely a flop, or at least not as good as it should have been.
I know EA is a strong company but I just hope Bioware's relationship with them doesn't come back to bite them in the butt later on. If they are planning to cut this story up and sell it in parts, I hope they don't let EA turn DA2 into Sims3 because a lot of the fanbase will very likely walk away just as they did with Sims3.
This game should have also been packaged with a toolset. But I am hoping that they will release a toolset in the future when they have patched the game to an acceptable point.
6/10