diablo-b has a partial point worth elaborating on. The bigger you make the consumer base for a product, the more detractors there will be. In order to enlarge the consumer base you must change the product. The hope is that changes to the product will bring in enough new consumers to overcome dissatisfaction amongst the purists. You saw this classically played out in the Star Wars films series between eps. 4-6 vs 1-3 with regards to digital gfx/efx. So it was not that EA/Bioware did not put a ton of work into these products, it is that most of that work went into streamlining parts of the game to broaden it's appeal rather than making it deeper. The chief problem then is the corporate imposed timeline. It would take longer to release the games in order to improve both their depth and appeal. EA/Bioware must believe that there is more profit by churning out 2 medium quality games in the time it time it might take to churn out 1 high quality game. Perhaps asking them to look at the profit margin that Bethesda made on the elder scrolls series might be useful. Or perhaps not.

This a pretty good summary of events over the past few years. It seems to me that the gaming community is on target with their criticisms of EA/Bioware, but at the same time go too far overboard. DA2 and ME3 are pretty good games on their own merit, but seem to be singled out and harshly punished for the reasons stated. Nobody should be confused about what corporations care about the most, and that is profit. The corporate execs will find excuses to ignore any criticism of declining quality so long as they believe they achieved their bottom line. If they have not they will address quality issues. The best thing that could happen to force them to bump the quality of the product up is competition aimed at filling whatever void the consumers feel EA/bioware is creating, and make niche products like Witcher, Mount and Blade, and Elder Scrolls. I am not sure there are many new start-ups out there, so I would advise everyone to get used to this new corporate model as the new norm. As far as the homosexuality issue itself, all it entails is having to read those options, which doesn't bother me. I too would have thought that the gaming generation would be more mature. Perhaps a soultion would be to ask the player during the set-up if they are gay or straight? It would be comical if it came to that.

I think Creative Assembly/Sega has done a nice job with this game. It is certainly unique in it's own way which I find is a good thing. The unit balance is different and that forces you to use your wits and also face humiliation via a good old fashioned whipping if you plan to romp around with cavalry units like in Medieval Total War. Archers may be a little overpowered. AI is much improved although of course it has it's wtf moments.Underpowered units don't just sit still while your archers slaughter them from a distance unless of course they are in a fortress. I was amazed that an army actually bypassed my impregnable defensive position to wreak havoc on nearly defenseless cities behind my defensive lines. I enjoy the challenge of the improved AI, although others may not. The atmosphere of the game is really done well with many nice little artistic touches. User interface and battle mechanics are very polished, but CA/Sega has been doing this long enough that they should be. I seem to say this about every game these days, but the combat arenas could be better varied and after 50 battles has a redundant feel. Advanced units are a little too hard to come by as by the time I get to them the game is already decided with mere mopping up to do. Overall the complaints are minor and the game is very enjoyable. I intend to flesh out the game more before I write my user review and also of note I have not delved into multi-player mode yet. At this point I feel it is safe to say it is a pleasantly unique addition to the Total War series.

There have been an awful lot of flaming of this game on the various websites. I can see where they are coming from since they had expectations that were not met from DAO. But I would hope that people would judge the game on it's own merits and compare it to what else is out there. This is still a good game with uniquely compelling RPG features and tactical combat options that make it replayable. There are still many enjoyable things that you simply will not get from Witcher 2 or TES: Skyrim. I think some people are too quick to throw the baby out with the bathwater. If you turn the difficulty level up you can get the same level of difficulty requiring more tactical fighting that you had in the first game. Did Bioware scale down and dumb down this game and should the devs take a long hard look in the mirror for doing it? I'd say yes. But the purpose of these changes to me is obvious. By narrowing the scope they were hoping to broaden the game's appeal, especially in the console realm of the business world. Are the changes a bit of a seemingly unnecessary gamble? I'd say yes. Will this work? Only a final tally of the dollars and cents will tell. Bioware cleaned up from people buying add-ons to DAO, and if that doesn't happen this time then it will speak more loudly to them than any flaming post. If it comes up short of financial expectations then you will see a DA3 that will play much more like DAO. If they clean up on the console market then DA3 will be more of the same.

This game is a winner by my estimate. I judge that by how many times I am compelled to replay it to see what changes if I do something different. I strongly encourage following the advice in the comments to turn the game difficulty to hard if you are a hard core gamer or veteran of the original Dragon Age. The hard level very much resembles the old game and forces you to actually use tactics, whereas the normal level was too much of a cake walk. Once I did that I began to really like and appreciate the improvements to combat mechanics. By far the acting and character interactions are the strong suit. For me, Flemmeth, the Arashok, Anders and Varrick stood out, but all of the voice overs were at least good. I like what they have done with the Qunari. My only significant complaint was not making all of the dungeons unique and reusing the same templates over and over again. I wouldn't have minded going back to the same dungeon again (for example the repeat trips to the bone pit worked as the previous post stated,) but it seemed like all of them were the same.