With the world-threatening invasion of the Blight solved by the player in Dragon Age: Origins, we now unexpectedly turn our sights to the lives of those affected by the war.

A quick glance at the concept of Dragon Age II and you'll be in awe at how ambitious it is. This is the tale of Hawke, a war refugee who just arrived with his family at the dark city of Kirkwall, not a penny to his name. Over the next years, he will have to find a way to survive not an inhuman ancient evil, but the worst of humanity itself – greedy slavers, desperate thieves, religious zealots and a hateful mage-hunting inquisition. To crown it all, the story is told by an unreliable narrator: a sleazy companion of Hawke under interrogation by a mysterious woman.

Unfortunately, this bold premise was met with BioWare's demand for a streamlined, fast-paced RPG, to be released between Mass Effect 2 and 3. Thus, the team reportedly had little more than a year to make Dragon Age II; and it shows. While the art style is vastly improved, the limited development time led to cuts, reused assets and very few locations to explore.

This wouldn't be such a big problem, if not for the drastic simplification of the game's systems. Gone are elves and dwarfs as playable races, the prestige classes, crafting, non-combat skills and even your companion's armour. What's left is an action-heavy, console-friendly combat system that has some interesting ideas, such as cross-class combos and friendship/rivalry talents, but it still gets repetitive fast – in part because it's paired with poor level and encounter design that just throws wave after wave of respawning enemies at the player.

However, DA2's biggest disappointment is its story. It spans a decade, showing Hawke's life alongside his family and friends in Kirkwall but, rare intimate moments aside, it plays as a generic power fantasy.