I didn't much enjoy Dragon Age 1, but I did think it was overall a very solid RPG, at least worth a playthrough. Dragon Age 2, however, is a serious step back for Bioware and in general for RPGs. Bioware used to be the studio that brought us classics like KOTOR and BGII, all were very solid games with strong core RPG elements. The opposite can be said of Dragon Age 2. DA2 is merely a hack and slash adventure game for players with ADD. If you want a game where you can hold x, or randomly mash 1-9 on the keyboard and see cool effects while your character jumps around the screen spastically, DA2 is for you. This game is an attempt to stream line the RPG into something a 10 year old can sit through. Congratulations Bioware, you have successfully killed the PC RPG. I will say the graphics are improved from DA1, but considering you spend 99% of the game in the same city, this improvement does little. Kirkwall, the main city, is barren and empty, not to mention pristinely clean. The entire area seems like a tile set with very little to see or do.
The worst part is the sheer linear style of gameplay. Remember NWN2 where you are free to roam and discover? Yea, that's gone. Dragon Age 2 is more like Fable, where you walk from point A to B along a predetermined route. It's essentially Mass Effect in Medieval times. The conversations feel forced and anti-dramatic. Everything feels cheesy, and the main character, Hawke, has an annoying British accent and in general sounds like a wimp. This is a game that you will playthrough maybe once, considering it's short, and then never play it again. Honestly, the amount of DLC whoring that Bioware and EA has come up with is sickening. I'm all for developers making money, but now it looks like Bioware is just using their name to hype their games and sell max amount of DLC possible. As you can see, even critics are saying this a massive step backward from DA1. If this game were made by any other studio other than Bioware, the scores would be even lower.