A great RPG that suffers some mechanical issues, but has an amazing story to overwhelm its problems.
This is a game divided along two lines, for which I'm going to coop some D&D terminology. DA:O excels at fluff, but it has some really serious problems when it comes to crunch. For those unfamiliar with these terms, fluff refers to story related elements (lore, characters, plot, etc.) and crunch is the mechanics by which the game operates. Before I get too far into my thoughts, let me say that I played the Xbox version of the game, so some of my concerns may not be as prevalent on other versions of the game.
In terms of story and player engrossment, Dragon Age has grabbed me the most of any video game I've played since the Baldur's Gate series. In most of the other Bioware games since BG II, the player's interaction with his party has been vastly more limited and simpler. True, BG II was an extremely long game and there was plenty of time to develop strong relationships with one's companion characters. Dragon Age's NPC interactions are still limited in comparison, but they are far more complex than KotOR or Mass Effect. It might pay to think of DA as being like a novel, where things can be explored in depth, and Mass Effect as being like a movie, where the most pertinent information is prioritized and pushed to the front. I see this as an active choice on Bioware's part, given what they were trying to accomplish with each game.
Mass Effect was meant to be cinematic, so the choice to make things flow faster like they would in a movie is understandable. Dragon Age is, like Baldur's Gate, trying to capture the feeling of a good tabletop RPG campaign or fantasy novel. It is a drawn out narrative where the characters get to know each other and develop an actual relationship between one another and to the world. So, while my companions are pre-programmed puzzles of conditional statements rather than human beings sitting around a table with me, they are well written puzzles that I enjoy figuring out.
A good video game character is like a character in any other good piece of fiction, you become attached through various psychological ties, such as relatability. Unlike the characters in a static piece of fiction (including video games with static stories), you interact with these characters. This creates a new level of dependency, beyond simply understanding and liking a character. You have had an effect on these characters, you can have a significant impact on their stories through your own character. It's still limited by my understanding of the game and the fact that what is going on is a set series of conditional statements, and so while I may never call Alistair my friend, as he's a fictional construct, he is the friend of my personal fictional construct through which I interact with the world.
Beyond the party interaction, the game's overall story is also quite good. Dragon Age is obviously inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, in that a small party of adventurers is made responsible for saving an entire kingdom. Generally, however, why these random people are the only ones who can save the world from utter doom is never really explained. Dragon Age offers a reason, and a good one at that. It also explains why, when the threat to be dealt with is so massive, the standard methods of response are not being used and the party is needed in the first place. Those touches to the story add a realism to what otherwise would have been a standard fantasy plot that is welcome. I mean, you can only randomly save the kingdom so many times before you start to wonder why the government never does anything about those bloody dragons in the country side.
This is not to say that the plot is without it's random devices. A lot to do with the key concept of the Grey Wardens (of which your PC is one) seem haphazardly thrown about with no real understanding of why. But then again, magic can explain a lot, and it'd probably have made complete and utter sense if I'd bothered to read all those hundreds of Codex entries. Oh, if you're a fan of lore, have no worries. There must be at least a full novel length worth of solely background material. I tried to keep up with it at first, I really did, but eventually the story starts to move at a pace that can't really support a five minute reading break for every two minutes of game play. Okay, that's exaggerated, but you get the idea.
The technical aspect is where Dragon Age bogs down a bit. The game tends to range from being exceptionally easy to exceptionally hard. There are many situations in the game that are drastically easier with the presence of a mage who can cast fireball, or some equivalent. The problem is, you often don't know where these places are, and they're usually at points where you can't switch out party members, so if you didn't bring a mage who has an area of effect type spell, get ready to reload a few times until you find a good strategy. I also made the painful mistake of letting the game auto level my NPC's, and I would discourage anyone from doing this unless they are playing a mage, as, while it is possible to use Wynne as your mage via her standard character build, it's really hard. This, though, is simply a matter of strategy, but at times it feels as if the game is punishing you for not using the strategy it venerates (i.e. blowing **** up).
Another annoyance is one that is actually inherited from Mass Effect. The game has a wonderful habit of telling you what abilities and skills do, but not what they do. Yes, that sounds like a contradiction, but let me explain. Let's take for example one of the warrior abilities, Bravery, which is explained in the game as: "The warrior's unwavering courage grants bonuses to damage, physical resistance, and mental resistance, as well as a bonus to critical chance that increases proportionally to the number of enemies above two that the warrior is engaging" (Dragon Age Wiki). So, I know what it does roughly, but I have no idea exactly what it does. I can't compare abilities based off how much of a bonus they give me, because I don't know how much of a bonus they give me. It turns the process of leveling into a very large guessing game where in you hope that the ability you chose gives a better bonus than the one you're ignoring for now.
This, I think, is a consequence of these RPGs moving from the table top to the computer. In a pen and paper RPG, the math to resolve things is done in the heads of all the players, so they have to know the exact values for things. When the computer does everything, you only need an idea of what you're getting. I can get by without the specific information, but damn, it'd be nice sometimes. Obviously, these inconveniences didn't overly affect my enjoyment of the game, but what was almost a blissful experience of artistic, interactive storytelling was marred slightly by the realities of its form.