Dumbed down and linear with a good story at its core.
On my first play through I absolutely loved it and felt like I was really allowed to make choices that really impacted how the story unfolded.
On my second play through I realized that much of that had been an illusion and the times you actually got to make a choice were quite rare. I (like most) just played the game pretty much as they thought we would and was able to trick us quite a bit.
So Dragon Age: Origins got 9.5 from me on my first play through and 8.5 after getting through half the game a second time as the illusion had been shattered.
Now to Dragon Age 2, I felt that my background with DA was important to mention as it dictated with what attitude I went into its sequel.
I played DA2 with my second play through character from Dragon Age 1, Matracor the selfish, greedy somewhat evil mage. And let me tell you there was absolutely no way I could play anything remotely close to that character. All blood mages attack you on sight, you are still forced to work for the templars as well as the mage circle, you will have to foil plots that you wish you could support and your character will constantly say things that go completely against everything you have been working towards.
Disappointing.
The combat has both been improved and made far to simple, the absence of aoe friendly fire hurts the game more then you might think, it makes combat pretty much mindless and you will find yourself challenged maybe 5 times in the entire game. Want to play with only mages or only rogues? No problem you can't really fail.
It's quite clear that Bioware wanted to make Dragon Age 2 into something like The Witcher meets Mass Effect but ended up with just an incredibly shallow, easy and linear game that is mostly worth playing for the story.