Well I played an 1hr 40min so far (40 min faffing around making my character... I know, but I like that stuff). I won't be refunding it. I think I'll get my monies worth out of it.
If I could set aside all the noise that I've seen leading up to release, and just assess it (as best as I can) based on what I have played so far, I'd say I would have liked it and wanted to play more. Even with all the negativity rolling around in my mind, I still liked it so far and I DO want to play more! And again this is a very initial assessment with no expectations from previous DA experience.
All I've played so far is the tutorial that was all over YouTube, taking you to the part just past where you stop Solas' ritual. I will say it was more epic feeling playing it than watching it on YouTube.
Performance wise running great on my setup on High settings at 4K with HYPR-RX enabled in Adrenaline. Adrenaline is telling me avg of 155.9 FPS over that 100 min session. I will likely try it with HYPR-RX off at some point, maybe, just to see, but I have no complaints with the visuals and gameplay in that configuration.
And the game has a FOV slider!!!
Ultra graphics preset in game killed my performance though, so not sure what the difference is between that and High, but something significant. Even caused the cutscenes to chug badly. Could be it turned ray tracing on and my 7900 XT wouldn't have been happy about that.
I'm okay with the characters so far. They aren't as stressed as I think they should be for the situation they are in, but it isn't too happy-go-lucky yet. I know the visual style is polarizing too, but I'm in the camp that likes it. I quite like my Rook I was able to make in the Character creator. Sure, looks like a Disney movie, but I like animation!
And the graphic effects are pretty immersive and impressive when you are actually playing yourself. Dialog is acceptable so far and the voice acting is good enough as far as I can tell. I don't think that was a big complaint though.
I do see that annoyance with the dialog options wheel, how the text you are given doesn't match the tone or even the words your character actually ends up saying. That's an odd choice and kind of keeps you off balance in dialog.
I dunno -- even playing only this much I'm not sure why it got quite as much hate as it did. I really think as we've said if you were wanting the next step in the DA games, a game similar to the best in those but just updated graphics, then perhaps this just isn't it.
But I'll comment again once I get farther in.