So far it's been pretty good, the combat is that actiony style from DA2 with a tactical camera inserted so you can pause time and issue orders, the camera gets wonky, and the controls on PC feel like an obvious console port, but I haven't had any major issues so far, and with some proper speccing and abilities the combat system can be fairly deep and flashy at the same time, even if it does feel like they keep trying to drag the series kicking and screaming into the realms of actiony button masher type gameplay.
The zones are sprawling, and often have a lot of content, they are very much in the vein of the Elder Scrolls style games that set you loose and expect you to find stuff on your own, whilst some quests are your basic "go to quest marker A, kill/collect specific number of B, then return to location C for reward", I have run into a few so far that give you almost no hint on how to complete them, such as finding a treasure map with a picture of a waterfall, then having to find out where the waterfall is and what's there, or enemies dropping key's to doors without quest markers to tell you where said key goes to. The first zone is full of very basic MMO style quests like killing a certain number of rams, or escorting a druffalo back to its pen, but the zones after that seem to pretty much give way to doing stuff that much more directly benefits the inquisition like rescuing soldiers and hunting for artifacts.
The zones are also not level scaled or meant to be totally cleared out the first time through, you aren't going to kill the dragon or close some of the rifts in the first zone until later in the game, and the storm coast has an entire area locked away until a later story mission. The best advice I can give is don't stay too long in the Hinterlands, it's the largest zone I've run into so far, and gets really grindy if you try to clear out as much as possible before advancing the story which can make it seem like a slog, especially since a lot of the quests there are very basic and boring compared to the zones that come afterwards, so just get up to level 4 or 5 and then start the story missions up, once you get your proper base, most of the zones will be open for you to hop in and out of and explore to your hearts content, not to mention it opens up resource gathering missions, which makes stockpiling lots of the basic herbs and ores so much easier than going out and farming them yourself.
The story missions so far have been fun, and the mission right before you get your proper stronghold is probably one of the better quests so far in any of the dragon age games.
The companions have been pretty good so far too, and there's nobody I really hate, Sera being the only one I never bring with me because her skills are similar to verric's but verric is a much better character. The designs are nice too, much gruffer than the pretty boys and sexy pirates of DA2, the designs in this one seem more varied and interesting.
I'm having fun with it so far, definitely worth my $60, if only I didn't have to work this weekend, I would have really liked to get a whole day in with it before next week. If I was rating I would definitely give it a solid 85 out of a hundred, and rank it in the top 3 RPGs I've played this year.
