I haven't played anything made by Bioware, let alone the Dragon Age series.

Dragon Age came to my attention through this forum and coming across a couple of articles about devs from Bioware getting caught writing reviews on metacritic.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dragon-age-ii/user-reviews

Are the reviews fan--boy rage? Genuine disgust of the game itself or trolls from a certain unnamed site?

Not interested in playing it really, just interested in the politics.

I say this as someone who himself thinks Dragon Age 2 is a poorly-designed piece of [censored] with little redeemable about it...but a lot of those reviews are just really devoted fan rage, considering many of them were made before the game proper was even out. Fans reviews for anything are seldom objective. Everything is either the worst or best game ever.

I'm tempted to play through the DA series just to see what has upset people so much with DA2.

Oblivion didn't even receive this type of treament, and that game had some serious "Streamlining" isssues.

Going across the spectrum, "reader" reviews of a game at any site are generally made up of equal parts employees giving it an inflated grade, fan-boys giving it an inflated grade, people overestimating game elements that appeal to them personally and give an inflated grade over actual quality, people who just want things to have their name on it and cobble together a review, people who overestimate game elements that don't appeal to them and give a low grade, fan-boys who hate it and give it a low grade, and employees from a different company giving it a low grade.

Also the occasional couple reviews that know what they're talking about I guess.

Oblivion did receive scathing criticism, especially over level-scaling. However, it seems criticism leveled against DA2 has been both more persistent and pervasive, even on Bioware's own forums.