Dragon Age 2... A game for SOME reason took me a long time to properly write a review for. I will first start with the good. I like this game. I think this game is a good game for what it is considering Bioware had to develop this game under a very tight schedule (14 to 16 months). For what they manage to do within that time frame, the game is good. Hawke, his story, and the game's story are very interesting and kept me hooked till the very end. This is also one of those games where I did not customize Hawke's character. His default, canon appearance just looks too badass to change. I played as a Mage Hawke, and I have to say, the new animations and flourishes you do make playing as a mage a lot more fun plus most of the spells are downright overpowered. Blood magic is still pretty overpowered in this game but it did get a very slight nerf. Either way, it felt super nice to not have to turn on my blood magic ability every time I get into a fight like in the first game. That got super annoying even though blood magic in Origins made playing as a Mage easy mode. For a game made in 2011, it still looks and runs great. Granted, I am playing on a PC with specs that are beyond the requirement but the game should run great on most PCs nowadays. I don't think I ran into any issues with crashes or any performance-related issues. Now, compared to the first game where all your companions are so likable, and I love them all, I only like a few. I love Merrill because she reminds me so much of Tali from Mass Effect so I romanced her as well. She is adorable. Varric is gigachad and becomes your best of friends should you choose to become with him which I did, and you should too because well... It is Varric. Anders is cool too but he is like a dollar general version of Alistair who is also gay but I still love him. Since I played as a Mage Hawke, I did not have the luxury of having Bethany as my companion. I wish you could have her as a companion regardless of what class you chose because well... I hate Carter. He is annoying. I understand the whole sibling rivalry thing but I did not want to go that route in my playthrough yet HE TRIES TO ONE UP HAWKE EVERY CHANCE HE GETS!!! Like come on, Carter, stop being a baby!!! Aveline is okay. Pretty underwhelming but I like her companion quest where you help her get a date. Fenris is cool but his hatred against mages got annoying despite the fact as a mage Hawke, I did everything I could to help. I will always love Gideon Emery's voice-acting work though. As for Isabela... Besides the fact she is hot (NICE BOOBIES), I hate her. I don't get why people like her. The whole event of Act 2 would've never happened if she restrained her sticky fingers!!! She left in my playthrough. I didn't care that she did. And Sebastian... Um... He is just there... I guess. I have Varric. Why would I need Sebastian? I will talk about Tallis when I get to the DLCs because she is a special case which things I want to point out. I like Kirkwall as a location but you can really start to see the tight dev cycle come in as a lot of locations get reused. There are not a whole of places to go, really, and Kirkwall is the most interesting place besides the areas you have in the DLCs. Speaking of DLCs, you NEED to play the Legacy DLC if you are looking to play Inquisition because the whole plot of Inquisition revolves around the Legacy DLC. I won't say much more other than you NEED to play it. You get some great goodies as loot too. The Mark of the Assassin DLC... Honestly, you can skip this DLC and won't miss anything because this DLC is like a Dragon Age Fanfic turned into a DLC which makes sense because Tallis is a self-insert character of Felicia Day, and you can REALLY tell! I am very sure Tallis is the only character in Dragon Age 2 that has hair physics. She stands out a TON compared to everyone else in the game. I know her character has her own show but I didn't watch it, and I wouldn't know where to watch it. The DLC itself is okay. I like the location but why the stealth section? It was not bad but it was not needed. Tallis's character is well... It is hard to say. I mean I like Tallis but also her philosophy with the Qun is uh skewed for lack of a better word. It's like she agrees with the Qun but then she says another thing that totally contradicts that. Like DO YOU AGREE WITH THE QUN OR NOT!?!? I personally think the Qun sucks. The Qunaris are a cool race by design but their philosophy is trash. I still love you, Sten. Dragon Age 2 is also the shortest game! Even when I took my time, and did everything I could, it only clocked in at 37 hours. It was enjoyable 37 hours though. Also, probably due to the dev cycle, the skills you get are somewhat limited. Unlike in the first game where you have a lot of skills to play around with and even more with the DLCs, the ones you get in DA2 are good and as mentioned, downright overpowered but limited. Dragon Age 2 did a lot of things right but also a lot of things wrong. Despite that, Bioware did what they could under such a tight schedule. If only they were given more time, this game would've COOKED!!! Overall, I recommend it to any fans of the Dragon Age games. This was also my first playthrough of the game as well because a dear friend of mine, BobbyBurst, gifted me Veilguards so it gave me a really good excuse to playthrough the series again. This game gets a 7.5/10!!! When Anders blew up the chantry, I WAS LIKE "DAMN!!! ANDERS!!!!"

praise andraste

For fourteen years, I didn't know this game existed. I even thought Awakening was Dragon Age 2. Having finally played it for the first time, I realise how much I missed out on. I will always be upset that, unlike Varric, Merrill did not go on to appear in every future game because she is such a great character. The same goes for Aveline. I really cared about my little squad, even though I was stabbed in the back by Isabela. The war between mages and templars was unexpected. I ended up romancing Anders, who is essentially a mage Che Guevara. However, I now need to reconsider my rankings of my favorite Dragon Age games. I would definitely recommend it to fans of Origins, especially if, like me, you went years without knowing it existed or if you are new to the series.