It's ironic that only recently Bioware admitted they had stripped too many of the RPG aspects out of Mass Effect 2 and to expect a better hybrid system in ME3.

Lowest review so far is Game Informer at 7.75/10. This is quite harsh:

Dragon Age II caters to an audience that didn’t connect with Origins, while alienating those who did. This may result in a better console experience, but considering that Dragon Age: Origins was a love letter to old-school PC RPGs, BioWare’s neglect of the sequel’s PC release is tragic.

I do agree without BG and IWD point and I know where you are coming but the bolded part ticked me off slightly.

According to you. In your humble opinion ME2 is not the greatest game ever. For you it can be BG for example which i will disagree as it is Fallout 2...
but it makes me not wrong nor it makes you wrong.

Whether something is great or not is completely subjective thing and nobody can be right or wrong. With time it can become more objective.

200 years from now, historians analyzing Early Digital Age might be able to judge what game was better

For us tough. It is just an opinion

Okay, got back from work and actually managed to watch this video review. Can't say much about it since I haven't played the game, just the demo, but there is one claim that the reviewer makes that is absolute bullshit: They claim that the game is the 'best-looking game of this generation' and that 'DAO looks like a game from 2002'. I'm sorry, what? Where the fuck do they get that from when you can see quite clearly in their own video review that it quite clearly is not? And there is no way in fucking hell you can claim that DAO looked like a 2002 game, no matter what platform you played it on, there were problems with it sure and it needed serious work but claiming it looked like a 2002 game is just bullcrap.

The whole review stank of marketing spiel from that point on to me, and I'm not a graphics whore, I just like to have the truth told to me whem listening to a review, not a fanboy squeeling. It sounded more like that creepy guy at the buffet table who is orgasming over the latest game he's playing rather than a professional review. The game may be good, it may be bad, but I would not recommend any one of my friends who may want to consider the game to take this 'review' into account when deciding...

Gosh, I hope the mini review I post before bedtime will still hold some credibility... :P It's a pretty long wait til I go home (well not really, 3 and 1/2 more hours). I'm not expecting the world from DA2 but as long as the story intrigues me I will be satisfied. I've avoided most reviews as I do not want a review to color how I view the game. I love BioWare but I don't expect everything they put out to be perfect (I consider NWN1's OC to be... okay at best and of the KotORs I prefer Obsidian's outting much more but Chris Avellone is one of the best storytellers as far as I'm concerned).

I'm a little concerned with most of the story taking place in Kirkwall, but then again a good portion of PST takes place in Sigil and I love that game plenty. A confined setting can work well in the right hands and the team behind DA made a fantastic story with DAO and it's DLCs (well the ones I played and very much enjoyed), so I'm giving them a vote of faith that it will turn out well. I'm most interested in the story and the companions since those are what I enjoyed the most out of DAO.

I've stopped caring about professional reviews a long time ago. I do pick up gaming magazines but hold their opinions with a fine grain of salt.

From what I've read of user comments the game on PC is pretty broken right now. It's definitely looking like a sizeable step down from the first game. Which is a shame, but not too surprising given what we've been shown along the way.
Apart from the fact that I'm really bloody glad they removed as much as they did from Mass Effect 2. It's so much better for it. Stripping out all that clunky pointless crap in that terrible UI was the best thing they could have done.

Certainly worth avoiding if you use an Nvidia card. Not sure if it's Bioware or Nvidia's fault but there are serious issues with Nvidia's drivers at the moment. GTX460 and above cards are strugging to get over 15fps using DX11 which is laughable. Nvidia have put up a beta driver for download but some users have found it screws up 3D vision.

JeuxVideo gave it a 12/20 .They gave DAO 18/20, both reviews for PC version.

The Escapist review, highlighting a feature on the 360 that didn't even make it into the consoles was a very nice touch.

Not as harsh as this ;)

Well that is indeed unsettling news. :| I have a Geforce 8800GTS in my system right now (I have a 9800 waiting for me to buy the rest of the pieces for the computer I plan on building). I *really* hope I don't spend time fighting with the game. I don't have enough free time on the weekdays to fight with the game as well as enjoy it when I get it working. I'll be using DX9 so hopefully it'll work. I'll know when I get home though.

Yeah I noticed that, journalistic integrity eh? Nobody should pay any attention to what The Escapist say anyway, they employ a bunch of chimps who can barely write with crayons. Same could be said for Game Informer, I simply posted their review for balance. GI were the ones who gave AvP a 5/10 and kept comparing it to Rebellion's previous game Aliens Vs Predator 2... which of course was made by Monolith not Rebellion.

Never heard of JeuxVideo so can't really comment on them.
You are safe I believe. The problem only affects DX11 Nvidia cards trying to use the Very High settings.

Of all the changes they made I'm so glad - so very fucking glad they ditched the inventory system. I could actually have done without the improved combat and actually useful cover system as long as they done away with that bloody thing.

Don't get me wrong, I normally like inventory systems. I even prefer FPS with them. But that one was unspeakably awful, as was what was kept in there. I don't want all that shit when there's only ever two things that are ever useful.

Luckily they realised this and simply incorporated those two things into the combat interface. Problem solved.

More accurate to say they realised that and scrapped the inventory completely and with it loot. Some people like collecting loot and using it to equip characters. Yes ME1's was horrible but other RPG's manage to get it right, it's just they never bothered to get it right and scrapped it in ME2.

That's much better news. :P I know my computer is aging a bit so I don't plan to go overboard with the graphical settings. As long as the game runs and is stable, I don't need it to look super flashy. Perhaps once I do build that new computer I will, but for now I'm just looking to potentially enjoy the story, not exactly the graphics. :)

Actually, Mass Effect 2 is the greatest game I've ever played.

Well yeah. But two things: 1. Better that than keep it. 2. The whole thing could have been replaced by automatically upgrading to the best kit - at which point you just realise that all you're doing in ME1 is a pointless waste of time micromanaging because they couldn't be bothered to implement a far more intelligent and streamlined system (kind of like that which they had in ME2).

Now if the game had actual loot then fair enough. But that would have completely undermined the sense of being a soldier as opposed to some mercenary. All ME1 offered in the way of loot were stat upgrades on kit you start the game with. So really you're best off just rebalancing the game so that enemies don't increase in hit points as you pick up more powerful weapons. So it even makes more sense in that regard too.

Bottom line: ME2 does it better. It's just thinking several moves ahead so it's not easy to see that when you're used to every other RPG doing things differently. It rewrote the rules to suit the characters and the world it wanted to create and did it well.

I just wish they put out some DLC to make ME1 play the same way. I'd actually buy that.