Welcome to the crash party
It is nice that you can import your char from the original, like you did in Mass Effect 2, but til what use, really?! The new story has almost lost all connection to the events in DAO. Unlike ME 2 no choices and actions from the original game gives any impact on the expansions story. The import char thing really is quite useless if you ask me. You might as well start the game with an newly made character.
You get to know a new, fresh batch of henchmen (plus an "old favourite") and most of them get presented rather fast and without much finesse into the story. They are overall descent, but you don't get to know any of them like in the original. Ok this is an expansion after all and considerably shorter naturally. But maybe they could have put in some more chars from the original. At least I think so. And, oh yeah, there are no romances.
When I wrote "shorter" I meant it relatively. This expansion is, in fact, rather long. Pretty much to do, at times quests seems to rain down on you. And while some of the quest don't feel that inspired or/and are of really no interest to you the expansions length is a plus. The price tag can be discussed though.
You will of course also run into some monsters. Would not be a RPG without them. And they are of course angry, ugly and have never been to see an dentist. The "children" are some of the new foes you will encounter. And while I'd seen mostly all of the previews of this game I thought just the "children" to be rather freaky and disturbing. But I found them to be rather boring and generic in-game. Just more fodder for my sword. That end-boss really had some major issues though. That was some major lip service.
Dungeons! Yes, they will always be present too. Not as great as the other time around, put they serve their purpose - killing darkspawn and other vermin in.
My biggest issue with this game is the constant crashing. Did they really test the game before launch. Or is it just the old story with computer configurations that may not work for all games. I had none problems what so ever with ME 2. What could it be now? That my graphic card don't have the latest drivers. But they do. Or maybe I installed them the wrong way then, or maybe it is just because I have an NVIDIA card? Or the sound drivers? Or computer dust? Or is it that the people who had no technical issues at all with this game are just born lucky?
I had three crashes in the end battle. That is just not funny!
I went through DAO two times, with two different characters. But this expansion really does not appeal that much to me that I will go through it with my second one too. A rather poor verdict then for this game.
Now I will wait for Dragon Age 2 instead.