areuexperienced wrote...
-Character development, multiple companion quests and, overall, their likeability and distinctiveness. I didn't find myself honestly disliking any of them.
-Banter was very well done, in my opinion, making the party members feel not just like entities that are there solely to converse with you and follow you around at all times but as if genuinely living their own lives within the frame of the story. I especially liked how they are shown to be interacting with one another off-screen (i.e. Varric keeping an eye out for Merill or the "Drinks in the Hanged Man later?" line that Varric sometimes gives, that one always feels great).
-Iconic looks for companions, makes them feel more alive and distinct. I cringe every time a see an armour-clad Wynne or something along those lines.
-Friendship/Rivalry system I felt was better than the DA:O model where I missed out on quite a few conversations and opportunities with my companions solely because I didn't agree with them on every single point. I myself didn't have a hard time with moving the friendship/rivalry bar past the middle as long as your character shows consistency in his/her actions.
-Combat, the pace was quite refreshing as opposed to DA:O's slow-motion. The wave concept in itself is not bad, quite contrary, it adds an element of thinking on your feet, it just needs to be used in a way that makes it feel appropriate (i.e. no enemies appearing out of nowhere, which was addressed in Legacy and after).
-Story: it was refreshing to play something that wasn't the oh-so-typical of Bioware games "go to planet/location X,Y,Z, gather armies, starmaps or whatever and go defeat the big baddie". The storytelling itself may need some work, as some have pointed out in these forums oh-so-many-times but that is a hallmark of the shorter development time of the game, not a failing of the storytelling paradigm itself.
-Voiced protagonist. There, I said it. It makes the protagonist actually able to interact within the story and not just be a blank-staring response vending machine. The pros/cons of voiced/unvoiced have been beaten to death, I won't reiterate them further and I urge others not to as well, pretty please.
-A sense of time passing was great, it didn't feel very natural, at least for me, how the Fifth Blight ended in like an year or something, while the previous Blights lasted hundreds. Sure, Kirkwall itself didn't feel like it changed that much but this can be addressed in future games and is again not a failing of the concept itself.
These are the stuff that really stood out for me, at least.
All the above, with the exception of waves of enemies, although I did feel that this was mostly addressed, along with reused environments, in the DLC.
Also liked the simplified resource-discovery / crafting system. It was incredibly frustrating in DA:O to have to travel to the Deep Roads to stock up on deep mushrooms, or the Circle tower for lyrium, for example, before embarking on the later quests, when supplies had dwindled in the various shops. Fewer and more useful potions/runes was a great improvement as well.
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