Playing on Hard difficulty as a Qunari mage. About 60 hours in.
Story line is good, if not mostly predictable. A couple of surprises were great. The side stories in some of the outdoor areas were more memorable than the main one.
New characters--most are just not as interesting as Dragon Age 1. The carry-overs from DA1 and DA2 are better than the newcomers.
Of course I love the big open areas. It is NOT an open world, like skyrim. Its just that the areas are tons (TONS) bigger than previous versions.
My big problem is with combat. I much prefer the high-action fighting from DA2 over the plodding, strategic version of DA1. However, what is really disappointing is that there is almost nothing new in the DA3 combat over DA2. As a mage, being squishy, you need to keep your distance from most fights, and as such, you don't really feel like you are part of the fighting. There's very little strategy. Shoot staff, use abilities, shoot staff while waiting for abilities to recharge, and use abilities again. The same three abilities. Over and over and over again. Just like DA2. My friends, who played warriors or rogues, had alot more fun, because they were in the thick of things.
The AI for NPC's continues to be great... you don't need to babysit them, which is nice.
The cause of lame combat boils down to the Skill system. The skill trees are pathetic, just like DA2. Half your skill points will be spent in passives, which are awesome. But this reduces the number of new things you can do, and you don't get enough skill points to be able to do anything fun until you are near the end of the game, just like DA2.
Skyhold is ridiculously large. While cool, it makes getting around to talk to everyone a HUGE pain the ass. Cool concept, poor design decision.
The clothing/armor for mages remains ugly, but at least the vomit-inducing hats from DA1 are gone.
Load times on the Xbox One are really long.
Just cannot get into this game. Most of it feels like work (BORING work) rather than fun. I can't think of a single fight I've that was memorable enough to even mention here.