A very good game, but with many small flaws that Gamespot seems to have "forgotten" about.
The first thing, and probably the easiest to fix, are the broken quests. For example (very minor spoiler warnings for this paragraph), when you are freeing your companions from their Fade nightmares by killing their demons, you need to talk to them to progress the quest once the demon is slain. However, they just cycle back to what they were saying when you first came in to free them. This gets very annoying, especially with the characters that take a longer conversation to free. Also, when picking sides in Orzammar, if you decide to tell each side that you will spy on the other for them, quests for both groups (and, more importantly, the MAIN quest) will be uncompleteable. Yet another is during the siege of Redcliffe, where enemies can get caught on the docks or up on the hill leading from the castle, meaning that you cant finish the quest until you scour the map for the last one. Also, you will often come across quest-related NPCs whose quest icons dont match what they should. Some "hand in" icons may linger above the NPC's head even after you finish the quest, or may appear before the quest is done. I could forgive one broken quest here and there, but when there's at least one broken quest in almost every area of the game, I start to worry a little. While it's true that, with hundreds of quests, it is very difficult for Bioware to make sure that each of them works 100% of the time, they have proven up to the challenge in KOTOR and Mass Effect. Why should Dragon Age be any different?
Another issue with a relatively easy fix is the problem with certain attribute points. Dexterity is not calculated correctly, and therefore doesnt benefit daggers and ranged weapons as much as it is supposed to, meaning that most people waste many points on dexterity that would be better spent elsewhere. It's ironic that another bug with attribute points can actually "rectify" this error. If you fiddle around with the level up screen by adding and resetting points multiple times, you can actually subtract points that you have already spent and rearrange them. For example, if you are playing a mage, you can take points out of useless attributes like strength and put them into magic or willpower. Or, if you are a rogue and end up with more dexterity than you need for SOME REASON, you can reassign points into strength or cunning. While useful, this is a bug nonetheless, and can make your character more powerful than he or she was intended to be.
Other concerns are with the gameplay itself. I would have preferred to have a light/dark meter, and the game plays like it should have one. Bioware says that excluding the meter makes the game more enriching because you dont have the meter to reinforce how "good" or "evil" an action you take in the game is. However, most decisions in game are obviously good or evil, and only a few give any sort of moral pause. I'm not sure why they decided to change the formula that has brought them great success with KOTOR and Mass Effect and has, indeed, defined them as a company.
One aspect of the game that I think could have been done better is the gift system. It's an interesting concept: as you go about your adventures, you can find various items classified as "gifts" that, when given to your companions, boost your approval rating with them. While I like the idea, the system is not without its flaws. For example, the first few gifts you give a companion are automatic hits with them, no matter the gift. For example, I gave one character, the witch Morrigan, three bones of meat, which are intended to be given to your dog, and got a total of 12 approval points. It almost makes it "too easy" to gain influence with your companions, though this may only be my opinion.
Other issues include a problem with the arcane warrior specialization for the mage. The problem is that some spells require you to sheathe your weapon before the cast sequence of the spell begins. While not much of an issue for a regular mage, this is a much larger concern for an arcane warrior, who wields a standard weapon like a sword or axe in lieu of a mage's staff. Spells like cone of cold and mind blast, which are essential for party survivability, take an extra turn longer to cast since the mage has to put away his weapon first. This could be seen as a fair drawback to the arcane warrior specialization if it was intended, but which spells require no weapon in hand and which spells can be cast either way is seemingly random; it is not, say, all of the holy spells or all of the AOE spells in one category. Also, if a mage is casting a heal or buff on a party member and the party member is slain before the spell goes off, the spell will still be cast on the party member even though he is dead, complete with the loss of mana and the ability going on cooldown as if the spell had successfully been cast. While not always game-breaking, having a heal be on cooldown for no good reason can be very frustrating.
One last thing, which is more of a preference than an actual flaw in the game, is that you never get to ambush anyone. You are always ambushed by enemies, and the potential in the mechanics is there - it is just never written into the game. I would have loved to do ambush quests like intercepting messangers (with bodyguards, of course) and cutting off darkspawn reinforcements, but it never happens. It is always your party that walks unknowingly into an enemy trap, never the other way around.
Again, I do like the game and enjoy playing it, and there are many aspects of the game that I think are great. However, I just wanted to point out the reasons why I dont think it's as good as people say. Overall, it feels like Dragon Age: Origins lacks that one last layer of polish that other Bioware games have that make them spectacular.