Sure, why not?
1) The War Room, the world state, the Keep actually working (more or less) etc.
I know a lot of people don't like it for the real time aspect, and lots of people dislike the fact that choices from previous games are reduced to operations here. But honestly, those people need to get real - the games are getting old now. Origins is what? 5-6 years old at least, and even DA2 is over 3 years. The fact is that new gamers are getting into this hobby every day, who haven't played and have no desire to play such old games. Increasingly, that amount of old content will become too much hassle to keep addressing, especialy when there are lots of different permutations on what choices you made surrounding each item in question.
So with that in mind, I was satisfied with the War Room giving accounts and missions that made it feel like the world I was playing in, actually was the world state that I had worked towards throughout the previous 2 games. By and large, the world felt 'right', There were no real howlers in terms of completely abandoned or retconned choices (those were all in the main game...) But for the cosmetic stuff, the world state looking as I imagined it would be based on my choices... I think they did a damn fine job. It allowed me to feel like whatever other reservations I had about this game, this was nevertheless the world state that I had inhabited during my previous Dragon Age games, and considering all the worries I had about the keep beforehand, that was pretty huge for me.
As to the operations... I like this kind of thing. I may not agree with the justifications given for you having all this authority with no oversight, but if you just treat it as a KIng Simulator, its really fun. Honestly, I could just do the operations and lose mostly everything else in the game, and still feel reasonably content. Its probably more a sign of how much I disliked the game's story and characters that I'm happy to lose them, but I really did have fun with the War Room stuff.
2) Relaxingly undemanding grinding.
Hold on, I hear you cry - how is *that* a good thing? Well, I'm not sure if this really counts as a good thing in most people's eyes, but as someone who has enjoyed a JRPG or 2000 in their time, I can appreciate the old fashioned comfort of lazing away an afternoon, running around picking up stuff, killing trash mobs, and just wandering about not really *doing* anything, and not even being mentally switched on at all., It sounds terrible and maybe it is, seeing as how the game is full of meaningless 'content' like this, but in its own serenely boring but adequately distracting way, it manages to somehow be acceptable.
The downside (in case it wasn't obvious) is that the game is not really connecting with me or engaging me on any higher level. This is easily the Dragon Age game (hell the Bioware game in general), that I am least likely to ever replay, simply because none of what I was doing meant anything to me, But whilst I was playing it, I could exist in a state of soporific content and not be dismayed by that. Its similar to the gameplay dungeon crawling sections of the Persona games, in that they are not the main reasons to play those games, but if you surrender to it, you can happily while away some hours doing this kind of stuff with only minimal need to actually consciously think about what you're doing.
Modern gamers will (and have) balked at such things, wanting stimulus all the time, every second. I'm happy enough for the gameplay to be unobtrusively bland. I don't play Bioware games for the gameplay, and the combat and 'questing' (if you can even call it that) never angered me like it has others. To clarify, I'm also perfectly happy playing something like Origins. Again, the gameplay *really* doesn't matter to me in RPGs and Bioware games. If it actually happens to be good, then that's great. If it isn't, then meh - that's not why I was here anyway (the fact that I thought this game handled the core reasons I have for playing really terribly are a matter for debate on other threads - the point is, the gameplay might have bored me into submission, but it didn't annoy me).
3) Haven rules, Skyhold blows.
I did kind of like Haven. I actually much preferred it to Skyhold. The earthy grass roots feel, the camaradie of your burgeoning endeavour, all felt more real and more exciting to me than the slightly cold and somewhat self important 'Check out our cool castle - its got its own Throne, man!' Skyhold. It seems like might be cool at first, like a personal version of Hogwarts or something. But it quickly becomes apparent that the castle is utterly lacking in charm or mystique, and is just a pretty boring and pointlessly large base camp without enough things to actually do.
But good things, right? Like I said, I do like Haven's more down to earth, hand to mouth, communal feel. I would have been perfectly happy spending the whole game there, slowly building up to and reconstructing the Temple of Sacred Ashes, had Calpernia and Samson as joint big bads, and only had the destruction and evactuation to Skyhold happen at the end of the game. The open mountain air feel, the tents, the camp-fires, the IMO better cast of supporting NPCs like the elf girl who looks after the Tranquil and abrasive quartermaster and apothecary etc made it feel like a real 'Salt of the Earth' operation.
It basically had more 'heart' than Skyhold, which always felt too Rule of Cool, 'this is our club house where all us cool kids hang out'.
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