Just finished my first play through, took around 30 hours on hard difficulty for most of it, though I will admit I did knock it down to normal occasionally as some of the tougher fights were annoying and I just wanted to move on with the story really.
Anyway, enjoyed it a lot, some good characters (Varric, Isabela) some awful that I hardly used (Fenris) and some I did (Anders who needs to be killed tbh), party banter as you run around is pretty good. Combat is maybe faster, animations more exagerated than origins but I didn't feel it was 'dumbed down' to the extent people were moaning about before release and it certainly didn't effect my enjoyment of the game.
Armour and weapon designs are much more visually interesting than most of the rubbish ones from origins.
Reusing locations 2 or 3 times was a little annoying at times but not massively (for me anyway).
So... it doesn't have as much depth as origins in terms of the history of the world I feel and the number of choices open to you is less, but at the same time there are some tough ones that make you stop and think which is good, you get involved in the story.
It isn't origins 2, it has improvements over that game and some negative changes too, but I don't feel I've wasted my money. Wouldn't rate it as highly as origins but not drastically lower either.
