Dragon Age II is to Dragon Age: Origins as...

[Breakdaddy]

Baldur's Gate 2 (PC) is to the "Baldur's Gate" games for consoles. It's a pretty good game that is following a spectacular game. If I had to do it over again, I would not have dropped the cash on it, I'm sad to say. It is a lot more like Mass Effect 2 than Dragon Age: Origins. Now, ME2 was another spectacular game, but I expected and wanted an action game out of ME2. I did not want the same style of game from DA2 (at least not to the detriment of the CRPG elements); I wanted a CRPG. Character selection is down to 1 race (Human), male or female, and the three basic classes. Warriors can no longer dual-wield. The game starts off during the blight and rapidly progresses past that timeframe. Some key cameos are cool and the story seems good, but very confined. The entire game seems to take place in and directly around a large city outside of Ferelden. I don't want to pop off any spoilers and I've only been playing the game for about 5 hours, but my initial impression is that it's a pretty good game but has been dumbed down considerably to appeal to the action-junkie consolers. Characters (except for your chosen PC) are far less customizable as well. Sadly, I suspect EA (the distributor) had a large say in how this game was shaped. As much as I loved ME2, I definitely didn't want my excellent Dragon Age to use the "conversation wheel" and combat style of that game. There is also an option to pause the game at intervals of your choice to direct the combat, but it feels like an afterthought. Anyhow, I give the game a very mild thumbs-up but consider its predecessor to be far superior.

[dutch206]

That seems to be the general consensus. G4 says the game feels like they just phoned it in.

[finerion]

I was very disappointed as well when I first learned about how they were going to tell the story on this one. It really does not make any sense to me to follow up a more free-reign rpg with one where you are one character. Period. That being said I still plan on playing it though I do need to wrap up Origins and Awakening first.

[AGNKim]

Sounds like it isn't even worth illegally downloading it.

[Breakdaddy]

I gave the game a few more hours of my time since I first posted and am officially dissapointed. There is almost no character development whatsoever. You can't have full conversations with your NPCs except at specific pre-scripted times. It's actually kind of boring. It's pretty much a button masher now and without the replay value of the Diablo-style random droppage. Magic items "feel" lifeless in this game too. There are just a few select power ups that get attached to items and it gets redundant fast. Man, I was hoping the story would save this game. It started out with a good story but there isn't enough character development to keep me engaged. I kind of really don't care about what happens to any of the characters at this point. A shame.

[Joe]

Kill your puter...kill your tv...its the only way to stop the force feeding of reconstituted, regurgitated pablum.

[Breakdaddy]