I have had a great deal of difficulty getting into any given game recently, and it has often taken some pretty impressive games for me to put in more than a couple of hours. I started by getting the original Dragon Age: Origins preowned, and within a week, I knew that I would be purchasing this copy. It simply offers too much downloadable content and expansions at too great a value to pass up. I will rate the game as a whole, for those of you who don't know about Dragon Age.
Graphics: I have often heard people speak ill of the graphics of Dragon Age. I suppose the graphics are only slightly better than that of Xbox 360 games that came out on release day, but definitely not as poor as PS2 graphics that some people claim it sports.
Considering what they have done with the game, I can't say I would complain about the graphics. Every single piece of armor shows on every character on every cut scene. Cut scenes change based on what you have done and who is in your party, and every dialogue piece changes depending on who is in your party. It is remarkable to see little details such as what boots a character is wearing showing accurately in every scene. I consider this to be an impressive game. And it may not be FF 13 graphics, but it does some far more impressive things than FF13 ever attempted.
Glitches: Yes the game consists of glitches, are any of them game breaking? I haven't run into any as I had with Fallout 3. The glitches are sometimes audio fails to properly trigger, some characters outfits or beards tend to fall into each other, there was one scene where my character performed the killing blow on thin air because the monster had already fallen, so glitches exist, and they can be distracting. Once again, I point to the shear magnitude that this game accomplishes, and can forgive that some dialogue doesn't match up right, or a codex is inaccurate, given how much the game possesses. Compared to shorter games like Gears of War, Halo, and Darksiders, the game has considerably more glitches, and you will run across them. However, other than being minor inconveniences, I haven't experienced anything. Just follow the rule of save frequently, especially since the games autosave feature isn't quite as frequent as you would probably prefer.
Environment: This might be some of the reason people hit so badly on the graphics. The environments are pretty bland. You aren't going to see very much in the ways of surreal, artistic, landscape. Once in a while you might see something pretty cool, like in the deeproads, but for the most part, I have found the landscape to be relatively bland.
Appropriateness: Most people are curious about the content. A lot of games are labeled M for mature, but that can go in a lot of directions. In general, there is no swearing in the game, the characters rather using the softer words like "Sodding" when they swear. With regards to nudity, there are various enemies that will be fairly bare. Desire Demons typically where nothing but a loin cloth and some "nipple covers". A certain monster shows more boobs, but there was nothing sexual about a broodmother. You can have sex in the game, but it is done fairly tactfully, and every character wears underwear, the loose, unexposing kind. Homosexuality, threesomes, foursomes, and more stuff can occur in this game as well. With regard to violence, the game revels in how it shows blood. Your characters will become covered in blood after fights, and certain items have the unique ability to be "messy" and have more blood. Enemies will have pools of blood around them too, and will quickly decay into skeletons after a kill. So violence is a yes, although you can't just attack and kill anyone like in oblivion... in this game you would have to challenge and threaten to get into fights, and even then it doesn't always work. So yes, a violent, sexual game with surprisingly decent language. The environments are typically OK, I didn't see too many scary environments or inappropriateness like in Fallout 3. In one or two areas, you might see a few people hanged from hooks, but nothing like Fallout 3 does. There was one area that freaked me out and was scary, but that was the only area in the game I found to be that way.
Difficulty: I found the game to be pretty easy, but I suppose that depends on your experience with RPGs in general. I play on normal mode and might crank it up for my second playthrough. There were some challenges, but the more I play and get used to the controls, the easier it gets.
Variety: The game offers a fair variety of gameplay. Most of the time, it is simply clicking A to kill all your enemies, but there are plenty of ways to shake things up. If you are a mage, you will need to balance and run through your spells constantly. You can lure enemies into carefully constructed traps if you would like, causing them to fail miserably as they charge you. A boss or two require unique strategies to kill. So if you want to just hit A until it is dead, you can, or you can use your abilities strategically, the choice is yours.
Other characters:
You have the ability to fully control any member of your party, so don't think you are going to be helpless like in some other games. You can create fairly complex AI controls so that your ally acts exactly how you want him to. Learning to set these up properly is essential to the game. The redial menu is your friend, and while I originally tried to get away without it, I eventual realized it is a necessary part of the game. You will quickly learn that you can't learn everything, so you are going to have to give some of the slack to your allies. One of them will need to learn herbalism/trapmaking/lockpicking ect... you can't depend on the warden to master them all, making teamwork in your party essential, something I have not felt in any game for a while.
Improvements: My only two improvements that I think would have added greatly with the game is 1) allowing a second player to take control of one of the allies, which would have been remarkably easy to set up and 2) Perhaps a few less glitches would have been nice.
Overall: Other than that, I found this game to be the best game I have played in some time. It is fun, giving you an open game feel without the "I have no idea where to go, what to do" feel oblivion sometimes gave. Most of your paths are linear, and I can't say I felt like I missed too much without a strategy guide, but it still gives you options and multiple paths in any given dungeon/city. The additions were all great, and I enjoy awakening just as much. The addons are definitely fun and worth adding on, although I don't expect many of them are worth it to buy individually, they are a great deal within this edition.