There's a lot to like in this game. And there's some design decisions that I don't like, but I understand why they made them.
Firstly let me say that this is a great game in many ways. Truly I think people will be talking about DA:O for years to come. There's a lot they've done right in this game and the level of polish that comes across is fantastic. I think this game will have a huge fan base and tons of mods coming out.
However let me say something bad about the game.. It's definitely of the modern type of 'RPG on rails' type of game with lots of lengthy dialog sessions. It's an adventure RPG, as Risen was. But I like DA:O's combat far far more than Risen because Risen's was (as long as I played it) just frustrating and unfair and unfun. But know that DA:O uses a dynamic enemy generating system to keep every battle at the same difficulty so you can die in any battle. The pause system is great. I think the combat should be slowed down by 40% or so though, especially at lower levels.
Unlike the great RPG's of the 80's and early 90's, this game has a lot of obligatory dialog and story telling, even more than Risen, I think. In that sense, it isn't an RPG. But the rest of the game is RPG, yes.
Let me say one thing though, I LOVE the look and feel of the user interface. It's so clean, flashy, and has nice sounds. It's not hard to find what you want to find either. The UI doesn't suffer consolitis.
The voice acting and story writing are top notch, I like it. Know that I dislike almost all game acting and writing. I'm very picky about that. Some people gripe about the movement of the characters during dialog but I guess I didn't expect much. It's not a big deal IMO. Their mouths move pretty accurately and their eyeballs and heads turn to look to who they are speaking.
It's a great game. Just know that it is a very modern type RPG. IMO it's an RPG on rails with lots of dialog. I think that's very consistent with Bioware's track record. But the execution is absolutely top notch here.
The graphics are fine. I'm not a graphics whore for RPG's. The weakest part of the graphics is the landscape (not the trees or buildings, but just the landscape itself) as it looks very predictable and rather blocky when outdoors.
I would like to see a modern RPG like DA:O done with much less forced dialog and a much more open world to explore.
Perpetual debt is slavery.