It's probably worth noting that my tastes tend to differ from that of the general public. Tons of people seem to agree with Eddie. On the other hand we always hear the complaining voice louder than the voices that praise. Especially on the internet. I have to say that so far, I'm still (18% trophies, ~10 hours in) enjoying the game.

Here's my source

http://gamrfeed.vgchartz.com/story/84352/gdc-2011-…..cinematic/

Copy and pasted from the above link.

"During a presentation on localization, BioWare localization
representative Ian Mitchell showed some stats involving the amount of
content in Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II. The
information gave some surprising insight into the scope of the sequel
versus its predecessor. This information is undoubtedly rounded, but
some key stats are:

Dragon Age: Origins 
1,000,000 Words
1,000 Cinematics
1,000 Characters
56,000 Spoken Lines 
60 Hours of Gameplay

Dragon Age II
400,000 Words
2,500 Cinematics
500 Characters
38,000 Spoken Lines
40 Hours of Gameplay

This is a pretty shocking change, as it shows some pretty significant
changes in developmental priority. The fewer spoken lines is especially
odd, especially with the now fully voice-acted main character, which
under normal circumstances would have signifficantly increased the
amount of spoken dialog. Are you happy with the new focus of Dragon Age II, or would you have preferred something closer to the original game?"

In case anyone cares at all about my impressions thus far (I'm certainly not through with the game!), I reproduce an email that I sent to friends the other day. Warning: Minor spoilers follow.

I must say that I'm enjoying the game quite a bit. I shouldn't really
complain — it's a lot of fun. Graphics are improved, combat is really
fast and fluid with cool cross-class bonuses to unlock and to plan
strategy around. Improved tactics handling, with new triggers that work
well with the cross-class stuff (like if enemy is staggered, then do
some special ability that does extra damage to staggered enemy). And
it's great to be back in the world of DA. I also quite like the redesign
of the elves and qunari. Elves really look like "blade ears" now (you
may recall the human racial slur for the elves), and the Qunari thank
god have moved away from the stoic Indian brave crap — redesign helps
this quite a bit.

Some complaints, though:

1. Story just isn't nearly as engaging
as the first — and this results at least in part from the lack of
origin myths. You're just sort of thrown into the action, then you have
to go to some city for no particular reason, then you have to go on an
expedition with no rationale, and you need to collect a lot of money in
order to go (who cares why), so then you wander around doing odd jobs to
gather the necessary cash. There's just no sense of direction, like in
the first, which was pretty clearly mapped out and rather engaging: I
need to escape from Ostagar, then I need to recruit all these various
factions, then I need to deal with that damn traitor Loghain, and
finally I'll be able to tackle the archdemon and end this damn Blight.

2. I'm actually kind of pissed about the Mass Effect dialogue wheel
now. In the first game, it's not always totally clear which dialogue
options are "good" or how people will react to what you're saying. Or
the player has to do more work and really consider what one knows about
Wynne, let's say, and how she'll fell about what you're saying. In this
game, it's totally self-evident as the little icons essentially tell you
what the effects are of everything you say. It takes quite a bit of the
role-playing out of the game when, if you want to be "good," you know
that you always need to select the text that has either the angelic halo
icon or the nature icon by it — doesn't matter what the text actually
says. And another thing: The little text blurb isn't always an
especially good synopsis of what your character will say when you select
the blurb. ME2 was much better at this paraphrasing.

3. INVENTORY! Oh my god, this is the major thing that was dumbed
down, and it makes me sad. You can't change the armor (or gloves, boots,
etc.) for your companions. It's stupid. So I'm a mage, which means that
any armor at all that I find is totally useless. No point in even
reading about it, as I'm just going to sell it. You can equip companions
with weapons and trinkets: amulet, belt, rings. You can "upgrade"
friends' armor through loyalty quests and by buying stuff at shops.
That's a bit of a pain, too, as there are a ton of shops in different
parts of Kirkwall, and I can't be bothered to keep them straight. (And
the Wiki hasn't been updated with much of any DA2 stuff yet.)

4. Crafting/Herbalism/Poisonmaking: There're no longer skill
trees for these things, and instead of collecting herbs and so on in
your travels, you find "sources" of deathweed and whatever. The more
sources you find, the more complicated potions and so on you can have
someone in town craft for you. I feel rather indifferent about this
change — I see that it frees up the inventory more, and it kills skill
trees that I never much cared about anyway, but it also makes me less
invested in the crafting aspect of the game.

5. Quests are so far pretty short and self-contained. Even when the
quest sends you to a new dungeon, it can be cleared in five or ten
minutes or whatever. Plus, most of the quests are silly things that
follow the same model every time: When in a dungeon, you find in a crate
some trinket that's marked as a quest item. Then when you return to
Kirkwall, the person who wants the trinket back is marked on your map,
so you go hand it to her, and you get your cash and xp. Also, concerning
the brevity of quests, I must say that Normal is really, really easy in
this game. I'd recommend jacking up the difficulty to Hard from the
outset. The problem is that in Hard AOE attacks damage allies, and I'm
already building a mage with serious AOE elemental attack spells, so
Hard is too annoying to play just because I'm in danger of killing my
own cats. Or the AI is in danger of killing me with Hail of Arrows or
whatever — and I'm not patient enough to micromanage every second of
battle. So if I'd known I'd want to play on a harder difficulty, I think
I would have built a totally different mage and gone more the Horror
route. Well, if I play through again, I'll be a warrior and jack up the
difficulty.

6. Companions aren't as compelling. Anders is back from Awakening,
which is cool, I guess, though he's kind of annoying. The elven mage
woman says things that are kind of cute. I dunno — haven't met the
pirate chick from the demo yet in-game — maybe she'll be an awesome
character. May well be others that I haven't met. The dwarf bard
certainly isn't a "character" like Oghren. Oghren annoyed me, but he was
certainly memorable. Anyway, no one seems as compelling as Leliana,
Morrigan, Wynne, Shale. Alistair, for that matter. Good characters, and
even if I didn't like some of them, they certainly have personality.

Anyway, that's a lot of rambling. I have a lot of complaints, but I
should emphasize that I'm enjoying playing the game. It's fun on the
whole, and I love the lore — chatting with a reverend mother about
Andraste and knowing what the hell is going on, learning more about the
Quanri code (Qun), and learning about this new city. My main complaint, I
suppose, is that whereas I'd expected the sequel to be a richer text
with more options, like more skills and so on, I feel like
everything's been simplified instead: skill tree, inventory, crafting.
And world just seems smaller — it looks like I'm more or less going to
be chilling in Kirkwall for the whole game, with frequent but brief
excursions to satellite dungeons for particular quests. But I'm still in
year 1, though I've put about seventeen hours into the game so far, so
I've got nine years left — maybe things will improve dramatically. IGN
said 30 hours to beat the game, while the above statistics claim 40. I'm
feeling more confident that I'll end up playing more like 40 hours,
given the amount of time I've put in so far. Better believe I'm doing
every damn side quest!

Finally wrapped it up. 43 hours. I feel that I got my money's worth. All of my above complaints still hold true. I also ran across another bug, whereby about four boss enemies didn't do aynthing at all — they'd just stand there and take it. I don't remember all of the bosses affected, but certainly the varterral, one of the horrors summoned through the scrolls in the act 3 sidequest, and also Hybris (the final demon from that quest). I tried reloading my games, but to no avail. For some of the bosses, when their health had been knocked down enough, that would trigger a transformation or new ability that the boss could use, and then the enemy would "wake up" — but he'd already be half dead, so it'd really only be half a fight. Anyway, thank god the high dragon as well as the series of end-game bosses all did their thing properly.

@Pedro — I'm not sure that there's all that much that can be done "the opposite way." You could pick up the trophy for siding with a different guild at the beginning of the game (smugglers/mercenaries), but that doesn't have much effect later. You could make the big choice of who to side with at the very end differently, but I would hazard that the outcome would be essentially similar. I'm with Markus back up in post #9: "it's hard to tell if the choices you make impact the game. It either
doesn't at all or I'm going to have to play it through a second time as
an evil mofo just to see the differences." I don't think it makes much difference, certainly not in the way the big decisions made a difference in DA:O. Do you side with the templars or the chantry? Do you side with the elves or the werewolves? No choice was ever unproblematically black and white, and each choice made a profound difference in the world of Thedas.

Fun game on the whole, though. And my mage felt like a friggin' badass by the end of the game, tossin' people around, slamming 'em down, calling down firestorms. But as we all seem to agree, DA2 just didn't reach the high bar set by DA:O.