The game is... problematic to say the least.
There were several things that I felt were off with this game as I was playing it, but couldn't pin it down from the start. Now I'm pretty certain I know what's wrong with it.
I did a search on DA:I news to see what I've missed since its release last month, as I haven't read anything about the game because I didn't want anything spoiled. One of the articles was that the game was really prototyped as an MMO of sorts, or a scaled down version of an MMO, which pinpointed what I felt was core of my dislike of the systems. Indeed, the game looks and plays like an MMO.
The large maps are imposing and quite breathtaking, and all the credit for their creation, but eventually as I went on through the game I realized they're really MMO areas with repeatable sidequests that don't really have much to offer. The "main quest" in those areas is basically a re-hash of the old idea where you go to 4 planets to pick up 4 pieces of the map for the location of the Star Forge. However, these entrants are a step back actually, because at least in KOTOR the shit you did on those planets amounted to something that had bearing on the main quest. Logically, you need the 4 pieces to progress to the main bad guys place.
In DA:I however, you're just vaguely "weakening" the force of the main bad guy, however this destruction of his henchmen has nothing to with the main plot. You can just as easily ignore it and proceed to fight the main bad guy. The pinnacle of the 4 planets > Star Forge concept was really Mass Effect 2. There, at the end of the game, they cut in the shit you did sidequest wise on all the planets you visited, and made it part of the cutscenes and generally the things that were going on. The team mattered, their emotional state mattered towards the grand conclusion, as dumb as that conclusion was. Since then, there's been a regression, and DA:I is part of that regression.
The main negative thing however is how the game handles the plot. It handles the plot in a straightfoward dumb action adventure manner, in what I can only assume was an attempt to cater to children who love two dimensional characters and action scenes. It's the game's way of subverting and using the story in order to tell special effects, instead of using special effects to tell a story. The main plot is absolutely irrelevant to the three good parts of the game, and the main bad guy is reduced to an object that functions as a McGuffin.
So what are the three good parts of the game?
The first is the only remaining thing that is good about Bioware games, and that is the characters. The characters, most of them anyway, are well fleshed out, well voiced, and have strong arcs when it comes to the main character's interaction with them. This felt like the only good thing that was grafted into this aborted MMO game, a game that in essence has a completely different purpose from being what Bioware games used to be, namely character driven adventures.
The second one is the lore that the game hinges on, which I feel should've been moved to the foreground. The only reason I can think of that they kept the lore in the background was the aforementioned attempt to cater to teenagers with a two dimensional "I AM EVIL" bad guy, because that is easy to understand for everyone. This lore however is what the post credits scene hinges on, and is a blatant admission by the developers that they focused the game on the wrong things.. Without this lore, that is well hidden inside the main - largely garbage narrative, the game is atrociously bad. Hence why it was elevated to the foreground in the post credits scene, because that is really the only part of the story worth exploring after the mind numbing "save the world" plot concludes.
The third one is the engine. As much as I dislike the botched scaling and lack of granularity as far as gameplay is concerned (this is why Mass Effect was a step forward as a third person shooter, while Dragon Age games have continued down the path of the KOTOR interface, even further distancing it from the player's perspective and moving it into MMO territory) it has to be said that the engine produces very appealing visual results. I hope they use it for the next installment, and re-focus on the narrative of the well developed lore, rather than shitty bad guys who are threatening to destroy the world.
If you decide to play the game, and wish to get the most out of it:
a) Take Solas with you everywhere,
b) Make sure the other person with you drinks from the fountain, don't drink from it yourself
This will maximize the very few good parts that are in the game.
P.S. - Just an addendum that goes to my point:
The name of the game is literally "Dragon Age".
It made sense in the first game. The first game revolved around the Blight, the Darkspawn and the mythical Old Gods in the Fade, and the fact that in the lore they come back as Dragons that have to be slain or the world is doomed, blah blah. All backed up by the lore, as the dragons are representations of the Old Gods, and everything that's related to the Fade, etc. intricate stuff. Naming makes sense, right?
In this game, they give you ten sideshow dragons to fight, completely irrelevant to anything. They're just there for leveling and loot purposes. Go kill 'em.
Game could've been called "Giant Green Rift in the Sky: Inquisition" and it would've made more sense.
That's basically the main TL;DR problem I have with the game.