I read a german review earlier today that said it's generally a good RPG, better than most, but a huge disappointment for the author, who also liked DA:O.
They gave DA:O 90% and DA2 got 82%.

Among the major complaints were enemies spawning in waves, that the strengths of DA:O hadn't been strengthened further (like love affairs etc. having almost no effect). Controls, especially on consoles, being too complicated and that levels had been re-used too often, one instance of that annoyed the author especially since two important fights take place in almost the same area, which has been recycled for the second one. Also the scale he said, had been reduced, at least in feeling, from world-changing events to local community politics and that it isn't all that clear in the beginning why you have to do all that you do.

My impression is that instead of building on the strengths of the previous game, they decided to make it more "cool", with the faster animations, more blood, the mage doing some kind of raindance etc.
In a way that's fine buit it appears they forgot that the rest is also important.

Also Qunaris got horns now.