Acttually, for me combat and graphics are amongst the least interesting things in RPGs. As long as the combat isn't actually stopping me from progressing, I really don't care. And I liked DA II combat. For most mobs it was fast and easy, but for the heavy hitters you needed some serious tactics.

Story and atmosphere reign supreme for me, and that is where DA II delivers.

I wish, I'd kept the link to a video where a mage in heavy armor on hard spam-casts massive AOE death, while being hit in melee and not giving a fuck about it. It was such a glorious demonstration of class balance.

Yeah, it worked flawlessly. Thank you for gifting it to me.

I respect your opinion (and I'm glad that you seem to have got your money's worth), personally it's the worst game I've played in over 10 years.

The list of doom:
Blood mages are found around every corner, companion customization is almost removed, enemies spawn out of thin air (tactics are for suckers), most fights are a form of wave combat (mash dem buttons), NO choice matters, hilarious storyline death scenes and overall story leaving you with the "what the fuck just happend" look when the credits start rolling, bland city with nothing interesting to explore, there are few dungeon set pieces and all of them are huge (making every dungeon look the same), no origin stories and human only, romance feels like a fanfic, the storyline can be compared to the mage tower in Dragon Age 1.

I did like the feel of the talent/skill trees though. I'd probably have enjoyed it more if it didn't have the name Dragon Age (not saying the first one is the "best game ever"). Jade empire atleast had an interesting story.

EDIT. I liked that too (and would have liked to see it continue), but it only lasts a few hours.

Completed it on the hardest difficulty, Nightmare I think. Don't find it tactical at all, for most fights you just do the same thing over and over since it's waves and waves of enemies over and over. Tank the mobs, heal the tank or any party member, then use your party members to create combos which do the most dmg and repeat.
The only tactical fights in DA2 are the 3 big bosses.

I disagree, oldschool RPGs can't have ninja mobs. They typically lack the uniform scale and having the camera constantly glued to a party that a proper ninja'ing requires. Those 99 berskers were only able to engage your overly well-mannered party because they politely stood still and pretended not to notice while the horde clumsily got into formation.

To be similar to DA2, oldschool RPGs would have to have had new enemies spawning in battlemode during EVERY encounter.

I can't even remeber how many sacks of flesh Hawke dragged around Kirkwall as the custodians of his/hers other abilities, never you mind their names. I do remember Merril because dipping into lolicon turf revelaed an off the charts level of disconnect even for Bioware, but that's pretty much it.

Same here actually but I thought DAO delivered that well including great combat. Graphics doesn't matter for me that much but personally DAO had the better touch.

Hmm..maybe I should try the real game, couldn't hurt.

I'm in the same boat as Fenixp. I didn't play DA2 until just a month ago, I read all the reviews and thought that it was shit encrusted in more shit and prematurely decided it wasn't worth my time. The only reason I played it at all was because there was a sale on the Dragon Age package at my video games store (yes, they still have those).

It's not a game without it's flaws, in fact it does have some very big problems, but it is very well put together notwithstanding. I think expectation has clouded the collective judgement from what is good and DA2 is good, not epic like Origins but good. I found the companion quests paticularly interesting, specifically Merrill and Fenris so if you haven't gotten to CH3 yet make sure you beef up your friend or rivalry points in those two. Anders was a disappointment but he makes up for it in the end.

Mostly it was the combat.

Every encounter is a horde of enemies popping out of nowhere or falling from the sky, half a dozen at the time. Throws the tactical element right out the window when you have no way of knowing if there's 5 of them left or 55, you can't protect the spellcasters with the enemies popping up behind you, on the sides and everywhere.

Secondly, it was the combat. Just about everything you do will result in another huge fight against a mob. What, I didn't want to kill some dude and now I'm butchering 50 templars? And there were 3 of you two seconds ago! What, another 50 blood mages? How many of them blood mages are there in this damn cult?!? I've killed about 200 already!

The story was kind of ok, good ish. The same kind of goodish as the Awaken DLC. Pretty good, too much of too repetitive (and more repetitive in DA2) combat, ok story but too much combat. And didn't really add anything, sort of wallowed there without furthering the storyline in any meaningful way.

There were good, great bits in there. Helping the romance along being a personal favourite.

Avelline's romance? Oh please, I HATED that part. Every stupid cliché in the book done to death. That part was positively nauseating. And that's saying something, considering how dreadful the rest of the game was.

The animation speed was only part of the problem, the real problem is that yes you can "pause and plan"... exactly like you can pause and plan in Modern Warfare 2 or Street Fighter 4, you can... but it's a pretty silly thing to do as it's pretty obvious the game wasn't at all made for that.

You can try to plan and position your characters precisely for hours... but all that will be wasted the moment you remove the pause and every body starts jumping everywhere, attacking the wrong enemy because the crappy camera made it very hard to target the correct one, or just generally do something totally stupid you never wanted them to do. Trying to be tactical in DAII is an incredibly frustrating experience, not because of the "difficulty" but because the only "tactic" is not try to find the best way to defeat the enemies but more to try to find a way to defeat the game clunky mechanics. And it's even worse if you have the masochist idea of trying to play in Nightmare mode.

In the end if you want the game to be somewhat playable you are better forgeting any tactics and just spam the same spells and the same combo over and over again and apart from that let the game play itself.

Comparing Kirkwall to Sigil? Blasphemy!

Why? Sigil's had a lot more to discover, and so was much more fun to explore. But other than that, I can see really strong inspiration.