Second games in a trilogy are problematic for every franchise. The question of how much to keep, what to get rid of, and how many new things to add is far more art than science. Dragon Age: Origins was such a triumph of an RPG that its sequel was unlikely to measure up no matter what it did. Compared to other console RPGs, Dragon Age II holds up well. It just doesn't hold a candle to the original. The only things really wrong with it are numerous nuisance-level bugs, which are already fixed on the PC version by a patch, coming soon to consoles.

When I gave the game its score, I based it not on a comparison to the first game, but what it attempts to do and how well it succeeds in doing it on its own. The game feels like a frustrated younger sibling, living in the shadow of an over-achieving older kid. The story even features many nods to the bitterness of being a younger brother. In trying to be different, a lot of things inevitably get screwed up. But in the end, what emerges is good in its own right. It may make a terrible first impression, but I grew to love it.

The reason it took so long to get this review completed is that I only began to really connect with Dragon Age II in its closing chapters. I decided to give it a second play-through, and I enjoyed it far more through the second spin, then found more new things on the third. By this point, I was judging it on its own merits, not in comparison to Origins, and discovered a great little companion RPG. Unfortunately, testing this "little" game was 200 hours of my life. The moral: there is nothing little about any traditional RPG.

The truly amazing thing about the title is how much it changes with the decisions you make. Your party evolves with you in subtle ways. Hawke's dialogue with random townspeople is affected by how you play. Your path to the finish line is radically different each time, and, I eventually got hooked to the point where I'm distracted while writing this review: I want to go back and play some more, despite all the disappointments.

The choice you have to make in purchasing Dragon Age II is one of how much time you're willing to give it, and how much you're willing to forgive in comparison to its predecessor. Instead of a massive collection of awesome like the first game was, Dragon Age II is a series of tiny, subtle triumphs. It plays like drinking an unfiltered wine: you tolerate the unpleasant bits because the overall experience is enjoyable once you've acquired the taste. The story doesn't travel as far, but it definitely goes deep. There are no easy moral choices here, very little simple good and evil.

Before we get into story and character points, the controls are still functional and the base gameplay is relatively unchanged. There is enough customization with the control scheme that you don't spend the whole game holding down the left bumper to navigate menus. I appreciated this.

There are some small improvements in playability from DA:O. The gift mechanic has been cleaned up so that the only ones you have to worry about are the character-specific items. There is no longer any guesswork in regards to which characters like which things. Also, the skills tab that held things like herbalism, lock-picking, poison use, etc, has been done away with. Skills are now tied to attribute stats, the way they always should have been.

But then there are the bugs...

We were all waiting for the point when the EA acquisition of Bioware would start to show symptoms of an emphasis of profit over quality. Dragon Age II shipped as a product clearly rushed through the quality assurance department. Nothing froze, hung, or crashed, but there are quests you can't complete, items you can't pick up, and dialogue options that don't make sense. Near the end of the game, a cut scene even completely repeats. There's nothing catastrophic, it's just... annoying. I spun through the title on PC to look into the future, and that patch corrects all these issues. Long term it isn't a big deal. It's just a symbol of big corporate eating an important part of a smaller company previously known for its quality standards.