nijuu: Already have DAO : UE on disk a fair while back but never played it (backlog of games is too big....)..mulling over whether to get it the amazon one .....to go for the combo pack or not (is DA2 really that bad?)?.
I think people overreacted a bit, DA2 is far from the worst game ever made, it is not even bad.
But nor is it really worth playing either. For a story that is supposed to be as personal as the one in DA2, I just felt no real connection with the main character, I did not care about him or what happened to the people around him, and that really hurt the game.
Also, you have probably heard about the repetitive level design. While DA1 is not perfect in this regard, DA2 is far worse. They only made a handful of areas, and then change things up by adding doors to different places. Enemy placement varies a little, but you will still end up facing roughly the same amount of enemies at any given place, even though their type might vary a little.
And then we have the enemies spawning behind you. Don't try to set up your party in a tactical way, to protect your casters and so on, because things will attack you from behind. Every single time. Preparation=pointless waste of time.
From a gameplay point of view, the game is competent enough to not be boring. But it does get really repetitive after a while.
The main thing about DA2 is that it feels rushed, it feels like they should have spent a lot more time on it, but instead they just tried to cram a relatively ambitious game into a very short production time, and the end result suffered, for obvious reasons.