Just finished playing the demo. For a guy who tanks it 98% of the time I am looking forward to playing the mage. It seems much more stream lined than the first game, I don't know how I feel about that yet, most of the time when that happens its not a good thing. The women, again, are scantily- clad-miss-proportioned pieces of eye candy. I am really tired of that in games. Other than that I am still sorely disappointed in the fact that I cannot be a dwarf. I do however like the weapon designs in this one. Its a rental for sure, but not worth buying.

I'd suggest to try the demo.

If you don't enjoy the demo, the game is probably not for you.

Well, i hope the final game has less linear levels and better voice acting. The only thing that demo really shows is combat.

According to the X-Box magazine review:

What I got out of the demo

- great improvements to graphics from DAO (I played at 1920x1080 with all settings high + SSAO + DX11 - the "very high" setting was locked and it still looked great)
- cool perk trees
- interesting to play other classes beside mage this time
- excellent voice acting all around, especially Flemeth
- well written and cool dialogue choices and cutscenes (compare the dialogue in a game like Arcania Gothic 4, for example)
- nightmare mode is fun and challenging
- character face generator is huge improvement
- still allows the player to pause and micromanage every action by every party member just like DAO
- rogues are lots of fun

I will just say this, I hated the demo enough to cancel my pre-order of the "signature" "ultimate" or whatever edition, and be hesitant to buy anything with Bioware and EA on the cover. Thanks for screwing up one of my favorite series Bioware.

- No customizable armor for team mates.
- Day one DLCs out the butt.
- Poorly made main character.
- Darkspawn look like trash.
- Bland, boring environments that looked rushed.
- Only good, neutral, or bad choice (Ripping off Mass Effect obviously) which only gives the illusion that you actually made a unique choice.
- Dumbed down leveling system.
- Characters fight like something from a anime game.
- Make everything as spikey as possible.
- Re-imagined characters look dumb.
- Enemies explode when... backstabbed?
- Now when you kill a Ogre or something of Boss Tier, it will just switch over to a cut scene instead of staying ingame.
-Mash A button to win

I could keep going. But this is a completely different game with the semi-same Combat system. Bioware said it themselves, "We want to appeal to the Call of Duty crowd."

Whew sorry, glad i got that out of my system.. I seem to be raging a little.

I see nothing wrong with the game, maybe you should wait for the game to come out before jumping to conclusions. The Combat was flawed in Origins they had to fix it. Playing as a Duelwielding Rogue was almost impossible because of the stupid shuffling into position not to mention that your allies and other enemies would get in the way. The changes are for the better but I'll wait until the game comes out before I declare Dragon Age 2 a failure which judging by the reviews it's getting, (around 89 average) it's not a failure.

"Epic feel of exploration" :lmao: Maybe it's just my time with Bethesda games, but Origins didn't have much "epic exploration". Still, i hope that doesn't mean FF XIII linearity.

What are reviews though... hype for big budget games. I can see it now IGN - "Bioware's Masterpiece", Gamespot- "RPG of the Year". You know i am all for rethinking games and making them better, but everything is different in this game when honestly there wasn't that much wrong with the first one. My biggest gripe is the change in art style. But do you honestly think http://gamernode.com/upload/manager///News%20Images/Industry%202/dragon_age_2_gi_2screen1278985892.jpg looks better than http://www.nextgn.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Dragon-Age-Origins.jpg? I mean what the hell is wrong with that ogre in the first shot. He is derping all over the place. Ugggh...

I do agree that the Ogre was probably developed by a 12 year old. The ogre should look evil, menacing, something that'll crap your pants but nope Bioware goes with the Purple Ogre for Origins and then for Dragon Age 2 they go with A Bra Ogre. The Darkspawn art I'm not a big fan of but I won't worry about their look when I'm done killing them.

Yea, I consider that statement about DA2 not matching DA:O's "epic feel" of exploration as a bad sign, there.

Two handed weapon combat was flawed. It really did need to be faster. Of course, "faster" is relative. Running jumping spinning rolling leaping like a hyperactive squirrel that drank a gallon of caffeine and ate 10 pounds of cane sugar is a little extreme.

The majority of my more than a dozen characters were dual wielding rogues and warriors. It was, for me, far from impossible to maneuver into position for backstabs. Enemies getting in the way worked both ways; one might interfere with my attack, but getting the enemies to bunch up and interfere with each other helped my pc out as well. My party members didn't get in the way; amazing what pausing to manage your party can accomplish.

Granted, my rogue didn't warp from one side of the combat field to the other, and they didn't manage to bulldoze enemies and knock them sprawling, or take the time to do flashy spin-kicks instead of just throwing the fragile glass bottles. But then I never thought that was what a rogue should be able to do. My warriors also attacked one enemy at a time; something I always thought was a restriction of using a sword. I never realized that attacks from a single fighter, using a single bladed weapon directed at one enemy should damage several nearby enemies at the same time.

I strongly dislike the fact that friendly fire is disabled for any level other than Nightmare, due to the new "warriors have aoe effects now" thing. Fighting close to your tank could be bad for your health. As for mages, if you use firestorm or fireball your own party, it should be "A Bad Thing", not just kill the bad guys and not cause major issues for your party. Of course, the limits on the camera probably added to that, since it is now more difficult to target aoe spells accurately. Oh, and the "you can't target an enemy with an aoe spell, you have to target the ground" feature. Hope that not too many enemies will ambush you from ground higher than you can lift the camera. You can't target ground you can't see.

That demo actually cemented my decision to not buy the game. A demo is supposed to help you come to conclusions about a game. It certainly did that. Probably not the way Bioware hoped, however.

I personally call BS on that excuse. They could just as easily have disabled friendly fire for warriors' AoE attacks if they truly insisted on having them for whatever reason, in the same way that not every AoE spell had friendly fire in Origins.

I know that feeling. I was looking forward to this up until the demo even, had the signature edition reserved and all that. After playing it however, it was like a school bully just dropped my ice cream in the dirt.

I am with grrtt. I loved origins and the awakening expansion. I am very disappointed in what I am seeing in DA2. the artwork and combat especially.

my coworker likes fast twitchy games and JRPGs, he didn't like Dragon Age, but said after playing the DA2 demo, he can't wait to buy DA2.

I guess I'm the only person that likes the changes to the combat although it's not perfect (Stupid long Healing Cooldown) :brokencomputer:

Maybe the demo on the 5th will change some peoples minds but I doubt it. Still though Dragon Age 2 is going to be good, I can't wait for it to come out and also can't wait to try out the awesome Character Creator.

I am still going to give it a chance, I will rent it. If things go well, down the road i will buy. Hell it didn't even take Mass Effect 2 a year before it was in the 15 dollar bin. Just shows that the more hyped the game is the cheaper it will be in the long run because more people will already have it.

I like the changes to the combat and I like the long healing cooldown.

In DAO, even on the hardest difficulty setting, it was pretty easy to spam healing spells and potions to get through anything.

This might make a Nightmare playthrough really challenging and fun. Hopefully there won't be an exploit to cheaply make 100s of healing potions.

Taking that heal spell is a total waste. I can't believe Bioware even bothered to include it.

No there are two other of us in the internet too

Those long cooldowns are aimed to make you think when and where to use them, how well that works i'll know after i play it.

I don't mind the long healing cooldowns but it's annoying especially if you fight a tough enemy. I guess it'll work out in the end.

WHAT?! :banghead:

And when you least expected it:

I'm tempted to read those Spoilers but I won't. Four days to go until Dragon Age 2 comes out I can't wait.

You know what impresses me most, this isnt even linked to our warden, its set in another country, seperate peopl. And still they manage to [censored] up a seperate story. Bravo BW, bravo.