The best Dragon Age game to date, possibly my favorite RPG ever. It's an extremely flawed game, due to, ostensibly, its short development time, which led to a plethora of annoyances and questionable decisions, most glaringly:
- Extreme reuse of assets and levels (every cave is the same, every underground hideout is the same, etc.)
- Enemy waves combat system (instead of properly tuned combats with finite enemies, you get waves of invisible enemies appearing on-screen.)
However, none of these flaws can overshadow its many achievements:
- A personal story of family, belonging, personal growth, friendship, and more; all tied up with the larger themes of the series and ongoing story threads.
- An engaging combat system that hits the soft spot between DA:O's tactical combat and DA:I's fluidity.
- A very well written cast of characters.
- A main character defined enough to have a personality and not look out of place in the middle of a cast of well-rounded characters, but malleable enough that you can make them feel and act like you want them to.
- A good length--not too short, not too long.
- An unmatched handling of the passage of time thanks to its 3 act structure. You can see how your choices shape the city and its inhabitants.
All in all, Dragon Age II is Bioware's best, and one can only dream of what could have been if they had been given enough time to polish its obvious flaws.

Take and XCOM and...
- Remove the emergent narrative capabilities.
- Remove permadeath.
- Remove the satisfyingly interlinked visual and mechanical progression.
And add:
- An incredibly cheesy and generic Marvel fixed narrative.
- An MC so uncharismatic it could serve as a template for how not to write custom mcs.
- Real money skins shop.
- A third-person base management and exploration system that is mildly entertaining at best, actively annoying at worst.
- TERRIBLE DIALOGUE
- Passable card-game mechanics.
- Collectathons.
- 2012 graphics.
- 2008 morality system.

Terrible game, very disappointing.