Although DA:O had my personal favorite character yet with Morrigan, I thought that DA2 had an overall better cast.  Varric and Isabela were witty and clever, and Merrill was interesting and unique.  Really, though, it comes down to preference.  I just felt that most of the companions in DA:O other than Morrigan and Leliana were somewhat flat.

Actually, the flatness of DA:O was probably my biggest annoyance with the game (aside from bugs).  The main story was completely generic fantasy.  I've read many, many fantasy novels over the years, and honestly, had DA:O been a book, I probably wouldn't have finished it.  The hero slays the dragon and stops the orc invasion, rah.  Not that it was awful, but rather that it was bland.  In contrast, I thought DA2 had a much more advanced and engaging narrative, being a "cronicles" type story.  I really didn't know where it was going.  Granted, from what BioWare has said, DA:O was supposed to be generic, as it was simply a table-setter scenario.

I just know that I'm excited for DA3 based on the ending of DA2.  It looks like all kinds of stuff is going to hit the fan, and I LOVE the Templars vs. Magic Users storyline.  SO much more room for originality than simply fighting orcs.

Yep Morrigan was awesome, and so where Leliana and Zevran. Zevran was my favourite character actually. The other Origins characters felt too generic. And Alistair was just annoying.

But the 2nd one had Merryll who became one of my favourite game characters of all time. And there where Varric, Fenris, Anders and Bethany who I liked very much. The only bad cahracter from the 2nd part was Aveline.

And yes I agree the Templar vs. Mages story is awesome and altough I hate mages I stood with them because of Merryl and Bethany.

I agree that Dragon Age 2 still is a very good game but clearly it's not as good as Origins.

DA2 is much smaller than Origins.

The Dwarf being interrogated and telling a story I think sucked. Not the story itself but how it was presented was lame. Also I think the background with those Qunari warriors being stranded and them being so Eastern style philosophical, it was a bit overdone.

DA2 choices in dialogues sucked because they told you beforehand which choice was good-neutral-bad rather than you figuring it out yourself.

The characters of DA2 were much less interesting than in Origins. Off the top pf my head I hated Aveline, Fenris, the dwarf, the female elf and the big breasted girl. I liked Anders but from what I remember he was better in DA Awakening.

Combat, skills and spells got simplified.

Items didn't matter ast much in DA2 as they did in Origins since they changed it so that only Hawke had customizeable armor instead of your whole party.

Still despite all of this DA2 is a great game that I loved and I can't wait for DA3.

I thought DAII was fun, but for such a polished game, it was disappointing to be going in the three same dungeons over and over again, without even a color swap.

Pretty much my thoughts. I remember loving and beating the first game,but I just could'nt get into the second one and only played half of the game,before I sold it.

Andrew, you even changed your avatar to Hawke because you liked DA2 so much?

Did you play the PC or PS3 version btw?

Dragon Age w is still a decent game, but why I don't like it?

1. It's basically Mass Effect with swords, first game has an interesting team based strategical combat and exploration, the second one felt like a hack & slash with RPG elements.

2. Backtracking to the same areas multiple times, wtf.

3. Story wasn't all that appealing to me, I don't care about Mages and Templars, I want to be a warden and fight some more Dark Spawns.

4. New look for the Qunari made me laugh, they looked like children of Kratos and Hellboy, which conjured a disturbing image, I have a dirty mind I know.

5. I for one did not like any of the new characters except for Bethany, Anders was the worst of all, in Awakening he was a charming happy go lucky dude who just wanted to be left alone, now he is a terrorist, and he annoyed the fuck outta me with his constant bitter reminders of their 'plight', *sighs*

anyways that's just my opinion, I'm sure there are plenty of reasons to like it, but it just didn't work for me.

It was my first ever Dragon Age game and I played it for 10 minutes and then wanted to hang myself. After playing skyrim, all other RPGs seem shit to me.

Lets see...

The combat was poor: Waves of enemies with no strategy involved whatsoever. Origins utilised the old school top down strategy style of play whilst Dragon Age 2 threw most of that strategy out of the window and opted for just throwing slews of enemies at you to increase the difficulty. The animation was great, but it was just style over substance.

No top down view: Linked to the above, no top down view made trying to play strategically and planning moves near impossible.

Repeated assets: The whole game is the same 4-5 dungeons over and over again; it was lazy.

Boring artwork/graphics: Admittedly based on opinion, but the architecture and level design was very dull and repetitive. The character work looked interesting as did the combat animation, but it just screamed style over substance. This is especially true when you take into consideration...

Limited customisation: In Origins you could choose to be a human, elf or dwarf with 6 different introduction/origin stories and each character had fully customisable equipment. In DAII you could only be human and you could only "upgrade" companion's equipment. It removed numerous layers of control which again limits your combat options.

Slow introduction: Nearly the whole of the first Chapter is spent doing side quests with very little else.

What it did well:

Storyline: Ignoring the Origin stories which varied in quality, DA: Origins had a generic fantasy story which is forgiveable considering it's the first in a new IP. DAII was actually fairly brave in choosing to tell a personal story of a single character involved in extraordinary events.

Characters: Origins had a fairly entertaining cast, but DAII upped it with some brilliant characters with interesting and involving motivations.

I enjoyed both Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2. I think the most accepted flaws of DA2 were the recycling of environments and the over-usage of waves during combat (thankfully these issues were addressed in the DLC content). Beyond that, I don't think you'll find very much agreement over the changes (e.g., some prefer voiced protagonists, some do not, some miss the different origins, others never really played through more than one origin since they had little impact on the main plot, etc.).

Despite those flaws, however, I enjoyed the characters (I actually prefer the cast of DA2 over DA:O, particularly Isabela, Varric, Merrill, Carver, and Anders (I enjoyed him more in DA2 than Awakening)), voice acting (I think the actors for Hawke did an amazing job), and story.

In addition, I thought that the combat was a major improvement over DA:O, but mostly only on Nightmare (because of friendly fire, elemental resistances/weaknesses, and high-damaging enemies). I thought the abilities and gameplay were much better balanced than DA:O (e.g., Mana Clash, Blood Wound, Arcane Warrior, Crushing Prison, etc., were all tremendously unbalanced in DA:O, resulting in very easy gameplay, even on Nightmare), and I enjoyed the responsiveness of the combat, especially regarding melee attacks and abilities.