Yeah I haven't had a chance to play the DA2 demo yet due to issues with downloading it last night so can't comment either way yet (so I've still got some hope for it), I just decided to subject you and everyone else in the thread to my musings and thoughts on the matter. I'm definitely no tactics master, probably rather bad at it, I just worry sometimes that the parts I like about games are being phased out. :(
Same here, I personally feel that VOs are part of the reason that we don't get games like Baldur's Gate or especially Planescape Torment anymore. If removing VOs meant that we could dialogue options like in Planescape where many are based on your stats etc and the side questing like in Baldur's Gate I would dump all those celebrity VOs in a trash compactor at the earliest oppurtunity!

Well I suppose that makes some sort of sense. Good sense? Dunno, but I can see why they might have changed it.

It honestly took me a long time to start adjusting to the VO in RPGs. It's kind of a double edged sword for me since the proper VO can make a scene even better, but terrible delivery can make it feel awkward and not emotional at all. I will always prefer how BG and PST did it, very selective VO throughout the game, giving the right amount of emotion to certain scenes.

I of course have no idea how the higher levels of difficulty will play, since the demo is locked on normal.

You should keep in mind, though, that the demo shows us the very early game, which is supposed to be as easy as every tutorial always is (there was no hard fight in any origin story in DA O either).
It also shows us a small part of a quest slightly later in the game, which may be easy on purpose (the enemies are just a bunch of minor thugs, they certainly shouldn't be a big challenge).
Therefore the demo may not be very indicative of the difficulty of the game as a whole.

If they give us mod tools, we'll definitely have ways to make difficulty more to our liking anyway.

Honestly, I think Bioware's writing suffers from it too, but that's just my opinion.

Well, I've finally managed to play through the DA2 demo, so here's my thoughts on it:

Graphics: Not something I consider all that important, but will start with it since it's the appearance of the game that you first see. Having seen screenshots of it before I went in with the belief that I was going to hate it, that it was going to ruin it, and even had how I was going to describe it planned out, involving such comparisons like 'It's as if Bioware skullfucked me in the eyesocket with their dick' and other such colourful adjectives. It's not that bad. It's not that good either. It's just meh. I'll leave you all to decide whether that's better or worse. No, I won't actually, it is better, just not as good as DAO (which I considered bland as it was). It's not like it couldn't have looked good with the art style they went with either, but the settings themselves just looked bland. Considering there isn't any day/night schedule I'm really surprised they didn't start the game at sunset so that you could have a blood-red sky and scenic battles with the sun at your back... Oh, and Isabella looks like a transexual suffering from some skin condition, had to be said.

Characters: I don't know if it's because they are trying to be dark and edgy or because they personally hate me but Bioware seem intent on making me dislike the characters in this game. Coming away from it I don't think there was one character that I felt like I would want in my party based on their personality, they were just so unlikeable. They all seemed to just have a cock waving competition throughout the game, trying to out-sark, out-bitch or out-shout each other at every available opportunity. They were a bunch of pricks to be honest.

Hawke: Played female warrior, will try male mage in a mo, but no I don't like the PC VO for DA2. It doesn't feel like my character, and it doesn't feel like a character in it's own right, feels like a mannequin that's doing it's own thing. I don't know if it was because Shepard clearly had a role predefined for you (he's a soldier in the navy for whom you choose one of three backgrounds, and has the personality 'soldier') or if it's the VO work (probably both actually) but it works in Mass Effect but it doesn't work here. Just my opinion no need to go spreading it around as Joker would say.

Flemeth: I liked Flemeth in DAO, I liked her alot in fact, more than Morrigan (but then I despised Morrigan) and I liked how she was essentially an all powerful dragon in what looked like a crazy cat woman's body. It gave her a mystique. I'm not sure what I'm meant to make of MILF-dragon, except that it's further evidence that gamers don't seem to like authentic ugly old women in their games but instead everything has to look like it would be bangable.

Setting: Oh look, they're going for the 'underdog' approach again. Oh look, Chantry bad and picking on poor apostrates again. Not much more to say here really.

Gameplay: It's not bad. It's not good either. It's also not the same as it was for DAO on PC. The lack of the isometric view kills any attempt at using tactics for me. I'm sure I'm just supposed to get used to or something, but it's not as good. I want to look down on the field of battle, and I don't want to be tied to a character while I do it. I also just hacked and slashed my way through it, and didn't even bother switching characters. I liked controlling the characters in my group, but this doesn't encourage tactical playing with the whole party, which wouldn't be too bad if there was a lot to do with your character, but I found myself waiting around a lot of the time. I think I have worked out why they added the manual attack button: to give you something to do.

It must sound like I hated it, and considering that I had expressed concerns before going in I'm sure many people may think that I had already made up my mind beforehand and am just nitpicking and what not, but I did try to approach it with an open mind, and I have gone into a game before expecting to hate everything about it and come out pleasantly surprised and thirsting for more. I don't hate DA2, I can see why others may like it, hell I may even recommend it to people I think will like it, and I can see the potential in it, but for me? I'm not getting it on release, and unless I see something after release that changes my mind I may not even get it when the GOTY edition comes out like I originally planned.

Again, this is just how I currently feel, and while I don't expect to get the full experience from a demo it hasn't piqued my interest any, so well there.

I guess they wanted it to be like ME (or FF12 for a more extreme example) where you choose party members because you "like" them and not because you need them to have a balanced party.

Increase difficulty will... well make the game more difficult, but it won't change everything either. Difficulty won't change design choice, I doubt that the available abilities, spells or the way the character are controlled will change with increase difficulty. Like I said before I am even afraid that increased difficulty might not really make thing more interesting like it did IMO in DAO but make things more frustrating instead.

Flintlock: are you playing on PC? If so, you can move the camera around by holding down the right mouse button. Certainly doesn't replace the functionality of the first game, but it makes it a little better. I hated the camera when I played through the demo the first time. But having started (not yet finished) several other times, I'm getting so I can at least not curse at it every 10 seconds.

Re no tactical playing: did you not even find the second ogre at least a bit challenging? I found none of the other battles were much of a bother, but that one actually required me to use some of the other character abilities as well as a heal pot and one casting of the heal spell. I'm hopeful that the main bulk of the game will have more challenging battles than what was in the demo (and I think that's likely the case, as I believe the demo was intended to give players a taste of what battles would play out like without giving them something overly tough and frustrating).

You can move around your character but you can't move the camera freely it's stuck on your character, it doesn't really help when you try to target a distant enemy who is in the middle of a group or when you try to position your characters on the battlefield at the beginning of a fight.

Challenging doesn't automatically means "tactical", I found several fights of ME2 to be pretty challenging, some even required you to use your companions abilities to survive, but personally I wouldn't call that "tactical playing", at least no the same kind of tactical than DAO or other CRPG are.

Yeah I'm playing on PC, I did find you can move the camera around but it still didn't fit with the way I like to play. I'm sure I could get used to it eventually had other aspects of the game hooked me in, but it would still have been less optimal for me than the old isometric view. It also discouraged me from bothering to set the actions of my teammates, as to do them individually meant the view would zoom over to them and I'd have to work out where the guy I wanted them to attack had gone.

The Ogre fight, I mainly focused on the lesser darkspawn while Aveline and Bethstop dealt with the ogre. Actually I lied, I just remembered I did switch characters at that point, I switched to Beth to cast a healing spell only to find it was on cooldown because she had already cast it. I also did have to work out how to use the healing potions in that fight. Maybe I just lucked out on that fight and AI tactics of the companions.

I'm sure the combat will be harder in the actual game, but I personally didn't find it fun with the way it was set up in the demo. The combat actually feels a bit too much like a JRPG such as FF7 for my liking, though DAO combat felt like a MMO so I guess it's a sideward move for me. :D

Yes, I know that. I was simply pointing out to Flintlock that you can move the camera a little more freely that it at first would appear. As I noted in my earlier post, it doesn't replace the original functionality, but it makes things slightly better. For what it's worth, I feel the same way Flintlock does with respect to wanting the old isometric view back.

Well, I certainly didn't mean to imply that challenge 'means' tactical, but there's certainly no need for tactics if there's no challenge, either. But I did find I was using some tactics in that particular fight in order to ensure none of my party took a dirt nap.

The XBox version never had an isometric view, so far as I know. Maybe they ditched it for that reason.

BioWare's protestations to the contrary, I think that's exactly why it was ditched.

Agreed.

Except that FF7 is probably harder than DAO and still FF7 is turn-based. You needed to plan like a nut, learn the fights and execute beforehand when fighting Ruby and Emerald Weapon.

Yeah, the DA2 combat animations felt very exaggerated and anime like and I found some irritating. If the mage wasn't swinging the staff so much, I probably would have accepted it.