As far as I'm concerned, you're the only one who liked it. There are things I enjoyed about it, things I can accept as a necessary result of a very short production cycle, and things I absolutely did not like. Mind you, for a given game or RPG, I found it okay-ish. For being the sequel to Origins, which I loved, it was a massive disappointment.
I think the whole aesthetic style of the game is far too glossy; the game just looks and feels wrong to me. It looks more like God of War or that last Castlevania game, which makes everyone look kind of like pretty, polished Barbie dolls. The graphics aren't bad, not at all, they've just taken the visual design somewhere I didn't think fit the general tone that Origins set.
Combat, while more involving and interesting than Origins, also seems made for an entirely different genre of game. I hate to milk God of War comparisons too much, but again, it reminded me of a God of War games. Now GoW was a good game. It wasn't what I hoped for in DA2. Frankly, I'm not playing that kind of game for involving combat, and the fact that I had to suddenly start mashing buttons was more of a chore than fun to me. At least Origins was "Click. Done", not much work about it. It's not necessarily a bad thing (heck, I understand why some people insist it makes it a better game), but I did not like it.
The characters, with a few notable exceptions, are either dull as dishwater (Sebastian) or really annoying me (Isabella). I had to stretch to find any character I honestly liked (thankfully, there's Varric), and that's a fault in a story-driven RPG. The story itself is alright, but nothing BioWare should proudly show off; they've made games with far better stories. Dialogue was at times atrocious; that one reached the boiling point when I had Isabella paraphrase Sir-Mix-A-Lot to me. In a fantasy RPG. There's breaking the fourth wall, and there's this. You're not being clever, you're just irritating me.
The lack of variety in level design, side quests (find thing; find dude to give you gold for thing) and encounter design can easily be accredited to the team being seriously rushed. It doesn't help the game, though. While playing the game, I went "Haven't I been here before" about once every ten minutes. It got almost creepy.
I didn't much like the dialogue wheel imported from Mass Effect, either, but that's simply my personal taste. I kind of liked it in Mass Effect (although it suffers from the problem of not having any clue what you're actually going to say until they blurt it out, a problem rather nasty in fresh title L.A. Noire), but I don't think it suits a traditional fantasy RPG (and discussions of Deconstructive traits in Dragon Age aside, it's a rather traditional fantasy RPG).
I have a bunch of other grievances against the game, too (why change a workable user interface when they have limited time to make the game?), but I think that'll do for now. All things considered, I was deeply disappointed. Whereas I've been replaying Origins tons already, I doubt I will be revisiting the sequel. I plain just didn't have any fun. With all that said, though, most of what I'm griping about is pretty much up to your personal tastes.
I think the whole aesthetic style of the game is far too glossy; the game just looks and feels wrong to me. It looks more like God of War or that last Castlevania game, which makes everyone look kind of like pretty, polished Barbie dolls. The graphics aren't bad, not at all, they've just taken the visual design somewhere I didn't think fit the general tone that Origins set.
Combat, while more involving and interesting than Origins, also seems made for an entirely different genre of game. I hate to milk God of War comparisons too much, but again, it reminded me of a God of War games. Now GoW was a good game. It wasn't what I hoped for in DA2. Frankly, I'm not playing that kind of game for involving combat, and the fact that I had to suddenly start mashing buttons was more of a chore than fun to me. At least Origins was "Click. Done", not much work about it. It's not necessarily a bad thing (heck, I understand why some people insist it makes it a better game), but I did not like it.
The characters, with a few notable exceptions, are either dull as dishwater (Sebastian) or really annoying me (Isabella). I had to stretch to find any character I honestly liked (thankfully, there's Varric), and that's a fault in a story-driven RPG. The story itself is alright, but nothing BioWare should proudly show off; they've made games with far better stories. Dialogue was at times atrocious; that one reached the boiling point when I had Isabella paraphrase Sir-Mix-A-Lot to me. In a fantasy RPG. There's breaking the fourth wall, and there's this. You're not being clever, you're just irritating me.
The lack of variety in level design, side quests (find thing; find dude to give you gold for thing) and encounter design can easily be accredited to the team being seriously rushed. It doesn't help the game, though. While playing the game, I went "Haven't I been here before" about once every ten minutes. It got almost creepy.
I didn't much like the dialogue wheel imported from Mass Effect, either, but that's simply my personal taste. I kind of liked it in Mass Effect (although it suffers from the problem of not having any clue what you're actually going to say until they blurt it out, a problem rather nasty in fresh title L.A. Noire), but I don't think it suits a traditional fantasy RPG (and discussions of Deconstructive traits in Dragon Age aside, it's a rather traditional fantasy RPG).
I have a bunch of other grievances against the game, too (why change a workable user interface when they have limited time to make the game?), but I think that'll do for now. All things considered, I was deeply disappointed. Whereas I've been replaying Origins tons already, I doubt I will be revisiting the sequel. I plain just didn't have any fun. With all that said, though, most of what I'm griping about is pretty much up to your personal tastes.
