The game seems to be pretty good, but the art direction and visuals are just so awful. That is like generic game 101.
I got almost 4 hours, so far yesterday.
I think on the technical side, the game just doesn't look that great and at times looks generic - that sounds just like the original DA:O, actually.
On the other hand - the game is always in the 57-60 frames department. No matter what, w/ everything maxed-out on 1920x1080 and things turned up on the Nvidia Panel - this game technically runs smooth & rock solid on this rig (i7 950 at 3.04 Ghz, 1 GB GF GTX 560 Ti, 8 GB RAM, Win 7).
Damn, the combat is bloody awesome. This is what I been waiting for on combat. It looks and feels like something out of an action game - like say The Darksiders. With the 360 controller - when you swing that mallet and slam enemies w/ it, you can hear and feel that vibration. It's awesome. And the fae-blade & those ringed-weapons that you toss - awesome, awesome, awesome.
I wish there was an extra key or button-press to allow to zoom the cam in and out. Sometimes, the cam feels like it zooms too far OUT when there's a bunch of enemies on-screen.
At least you can hit the alternate camera angle, which usually flips the cam a bit behind the player [over their shoulders] if the cam's far away.
Annoyance - put the character movement to Up, Down, Left, Right arrow cursors, for some reason, it ALSO puts the CAM controls there. So, that's one reason I'm using the 360 pad. I don't like WSAD for movement, since I'm a lefty.
Another thing on PC version - when I boot the game from either shortcut or EXE file, it always boots Origin up, too.
I really like the voice-acting [which is very good] and the lure in the [optional] dialogue trees.
Regardless - I really like the game quite a bit and still need to give it more time. Even at [almost] 4 hours, feel like I've barely scratched the surface here.