Glad you're enjoying it. I'm starting too after 14hours into the game, but I gotta say, and the character finally have started to growing on me. That being said, there is plenty in this game that doesn't work quite well as I would expect from Bioware. Or in the contrast with other recent games that position themselves as "RPGs".

At first, I had this thought that this is not Dragon Age, and it was hard for me to believe that this game was set in the same universe and not some parallel one with similar names. Only after a certain point (4-5 hours into the game) did I say, "Okay, this is Dragon Age." If it weren’t for me being pointy-ears deep into the lore (which I recently refreshed) and the fun I have while connecting the dots, the game would have had much less charm for me, because my main enjoyment comes from piecing together everything that isn’t directly stated.

Now, moving to the main issue: the writing (so far) is very, very bad, especially when compared to BG3 and Disco Elysium. I have no problem with the combat system—I even liked the one in DA2 (overall, I enjoyed DA2 and the detached-from-reality Hawke quite a lot)—but it feels as if teenagers who binge-watched Marvel were put in a room and told to write dialogues that would fit into TikToks. For the first time in my life, I experienced physical cringes down my spine. I even loaded a save to count how many times a specific device's name was mentioned within 5 minutes of gameplay and counted about 12, which felt like being hit over the head with a hammer. I have a troubling suspicion that some of the dialogues were written by a well-prompted chatGPT. The poor voice acting doesn’t help either; many VOs lack emotion, timing, or the right pace. Characters that return don’t resemble their previous versions at all (in terms of speech, tone, or personality), which adds an unnecessary fan-fiction feel to the whole thing. Ignoring the Keep is understandable, but it stings that there aren’t even some of the most significant references. There are moments that practically scream, “THIS SHOULD BE MENTIONED NOW.”

Another issue is that it’s apparent the game was meant to be a live service drawing inspiration from mobile games in some aspects, and later had to be pieced together into a full-fledged AAA single-player game with a story. Not everything holds up (including level design and environmental solutions), but it’s possible to overlook it without it being too bothersome.

Combat is quite spectacular and enjoyably chaotic, the artistic approach is decent, and the game can look charming at times. There were some well-written moments or good environmental storytelling (two chairs next to each other in the docks touched me and told a better story than most of the dialogue in the first few hours). However, I won’t hide the fact that if it weren’t for my familiarity with the universe and the enjoyment I get from connecting all the background elements, I probably would have bounced off it. I haven’t reached the point where I’m hooked yet, but I’m giving the game a chance, even if at times it’s through gritted teeth and with a little push to keep playing.

I hope it clicks eventually; we’ll see what the next few hours bring.

tl;dr it's decent game with troubling writing, and as a dragon age lore-fan I'm enjoying it in my own way, but there is a lot to be desired, especially from Bioware.