A couple of points to give you an idea of where I am coming from. I loved Dragon's Age: Origins. I was disappointed with DA2. I have spent well over 100+ hours playing this game. Have completed a full round of the game and I am now well into my second time through. I will break this game down into the good and bad parts.
Good:
The environments are gorgeous. I enjoy walking around and inspecting every little detail in the environment. The attention to even minor details, such as paintings on the wall or sculptures hidden away in little side rooms is enjoyable. The sound effects are good as well in bringing the world to life. I also admire the little effects for example how you slide down the side of a steep grade kicking up dirt as you go. Or the fact that if you run in one direction and then change course abruptly your feet slide a little bit before you come to a complete stop and reverse direction. This is much more realistic than games where the character changes direction at the drop of a hat.
There is plenty of dialogue in the game and the voice acting is solid. Its almost overwhelming the number of different conversations you can have with your team.
This brings me to the next point which is the lore and back story. I enjoy reading all the codex entries, and listening to all the conversation about the history of the lands. Each character has their own back story and come from a different perspective. Some of the characters are much more interesting than others. While I do not really care for Sera I was glad to see Lelianna make a return as she is one of my favorite characters from the series. I also spent a lot of time using Varric when questing as I felt he gave decent advice. If you have not played the prior two games in the series I strongly would urge you to do so. Its one thing for a character to make an offhand reference to something traumatic that happened to them in a prior game, while its something completely different to have played through that prior experience and understanding just how much a particular character went through. It is true that you can pick up the story as you go along, but the little cameos of secondary characters take on soo much more meaning when you come across them in the game (indeed if you have not played the prior games you may very well not even realize that these characters were part of them!). I may go back and replay the old games now to refresh my memory on what exactly happened.
There is plenty of content. My first time through in the game I spent about 95+ hours and I didn't even come close to finishing all the side quests. What is nice about the game world is that each location feels unique. Its not a rehashing of the same environment every time. At the current sale price the game will give you plenty of content.
I'm not sure of the replay value yet. My first time through I was a male human noble warrior who was humble and always put the needs of others first. My second play through I am a female elf mage from the wilds who is pretending to be doing the Maker's will but she wants all the power for herself. So far there have been some different conversations, but I feel like the story is playing out in a very similar fashion. Some of the initial main story quests are completely different, but I am growing concerned that the second two thirds of the game will be extremely similar to my first play through. Only time will tell and I will update the review when I reach the end to see just how different the story can become. I remember when I played origins I played a human first and then an elf later. The different perspective between the two was shocking. To experience the discrimination as an elf was a real kick in the gut where as a human I didn't even think the racism was that severe. In this game there is some dialogue that is different for my elf, but I feel like I ended up being treated the same way by everyone even though I am a mage on top of it all!
Multiplayer: I clicked on it once but there was nobody in the lobby and it seemed uninteresting. This is a game you would buy for the single player component not multiplayer anyway. They say the multi is based on the mass effect multiplayer. I enjoyed it in Mass effect because that was basically a shooter and a lot of fun. Here because of the setting its more of a dungeon crawler and I don't really enjoy it. A positive is that its not linked in to the single player game, so you are not compelled to take part if you do not wish to do so.
The bad:
Bugs, crashes, graphical glitches, etc. The game crashes to desktop on me once every 2-3 hours. Its incredibly annoying and should not have been released until they fixed the bugs. My system exceeds the minimum required specs. At the start the crashes were soo frequent it was really ruining my enjoyment of the game by constantly breaking immersion. I soon learned that if I have my web browser open in the background that alone can trigger a crash. I really wish they made the game more stable before releasing it. Also there are a number of graphic glitches. Especially when there is a close up of a character talking you will get weird camera views where you can not even see who is speaking, or the two characters are speaking while facing away from each other, or a third character will walk right in between you and the character you are talking to. It really breaks immersion and should have been addressed prior to release.
The main story line is alright, but its not nearly as epic as DA:origins. Its like a B-grade movie with the exception of a couple of missions. I still remember the dragon's age: origins missions after all this time (the ending on one play through is one of my most epic game memories of all time). Here it was interesting to kill time, but I wasn't moved in the same way. My connection to the characters in this game was not as strong. Sure Leilianna was one of my favorite characters, but a lot of that comes from my connection to the character from prior games. The same could be said for Cullen. I liked Cassandra as well, but its not the same level of connection. Compare this two something like Mass Effect. I had a really strong connection to those characters. I had such a strong connection to the game that at points I felt as hopeless as the rest of the crew. The characters were reflecting exactly how I felt. In this game with few exceptions I could take or leave the characters. A whole village got destroyed? Oh well. I just didn't care.
The combat in this game is one of the worst aspects. It feels clunky and at times its difficult to lock on your target. It is likely easier with a controller, but combat with the PC keyboard and mouse is extremely annoying to the point I actively try to avoid combat if I can.
As I mentioned the combat control is lousy, but so is the lack of instruction. It took me quite awhile to figure out the game. Some basic things I did not learn until after 85+ hours of play time. There are other things related to crafting that I still am not sure how to do and I can't seem to find any sort of detailed explanation. I enjoy systems with real depth, but there should be full explanations somewhere. A lot of what I learned was by experimentation, but it got to the point where I just skipped over entire game systems because it was too much of a bother to spend the time learning them for minimal gain. The crafting system while interesting seems more suited for an MMORPG than a single player game.
You spend a lot of time in your base in this game. Or at least you do if you want to get to know all your team members in detail and learn about the lore. I was disappointed to see that it is always sunny in your base. Given the sheer amount of time I spent running around there between questing areas it would be nice if they put in a day & night cycle. Maybe have the characters move to a different location at night time than daytime. A shift in the weather would be nice as well, but you get that with the different places you visit, so I would have been happy with just the day/night cycle. It would have gone a long way to increasing the immersion factor.
Also, it took me awhile to figure out how to check to see if a creature is too strong for you before starting combat. I still get tripped up sometimes when I am going around killing every thing in the area and then I run into a group which is like 6-7 levels higher than everything in the surrounding area. This is annoying and creates confusion for the player, especially if you are a completionist and want to do all the quests in an area before moving on.
Summary:
This game without the bugs is probably worth a 9.0. The technical problems are really unacceptable and shows that the developer pushed the product out before it should have gone. The combat is not well designed and the story while it shines at certain points is not as strong as some past installments. The game is a step in the right direction though. Do you get a real value for this game? Yes. With the current sale price of around $40 I would jump on it. There is plenty of content and its a beautiful world they designed. If your into the lore and are willing to read and go through all the character conversation options you will be impressed with how deeply the lore is developed. Play the prior two games first and you will get even a more rewarding experience in the final game. I'm not sure how much longer I will play the game but I figure I would probably top out around 200 hours before moving on. So for that type of value I feel like this is one of the better games I have played over the last two years. If they continue to patch the game and make it more stable then that will go a long way towards increasing the play experience.