They've made a good start, and I'm excited to see the finished game. I think some of the negative reviewers are forgetting this is very early access and bugs and some roughness is to expected at this stage, they seem to be expecting a full game. This is limited to level 4 and one chapter, and I expect things will change a lot between now and full release. If you like the studio, helping to shape early access like I did in BG3 and want to support the Devs get it now, if your'e wanting the polished product wishlist it and wait.

Story: At first I was a little taken aback by the characters being a family of sorts and having a backstory, but it ended up being one of my favourite parts of DA2 so I went with it, and I got more intrigued as I went and learned more. Lots of mysteries to solve. Rich worldbuilding, interesting characters, voice acting is good.

Graphics: Much improved on the first, and a lot of it looks really nice. They definitely still need some work with clipping (hair, weapons, a guys beard through his lips when he talks etc) and sometimes it looks really fuzzy. The mouth movements don't always match the dialogue the best. I'm enjoying the cutscenes and dialogues. The camera randomly switches to some random position where I can't see anything sometimes hopefully they iron out that bug.

Character Creation: Needs some work as they already know, but I do really like some neat things they added like being able to position and rotate freckle and tattoo patterns, not something I've seen in another game. I like how detailed and customizable it is, it just needs some fine tuning, which I know they're already working on from reading their Dev notes, and I have faith it will come together.

Gameplay: QoL like them automatically jumping, swimming, crawling etc is nice, as is the best person for the job automatically doing it. Being able to switch between WASD movement and mouse was nice I switched back and forth a lot. A LOT of random encounters pop up on the hex grid map that will disappear after 1 long rest but theres rarely a way to get to them in time. Lots of permanent locations pop up too though so there was lots to do. Gameplay was smooth for the most part.

Combat: It's D&D. Not much more needs to be said, it plays like a campaign and I like it. In big battles where there are enemy vs ally fights spread around the map nowhere near me, it would be nice if we could speed up their turns so we're not waiting so long for ours. You can use the environment around you and cover matters.

All in all, I had a lot of fun so far and I'm definitely excited for the full release, I'm going to leave it for now until the next big update and play some more. Thanks Devs, good job and keep going :)

Trying to make a masculine character is nearly impossible. The faces are all feminine and the body times are not very heroic to say the least. Basically made a party of the most unimpressive batch of adventurers you'd ever seen. I don't know a single person built like that. Seems like they're all clinching cherries between their cheeks. Couldn't get into the game at all because I was distracted the entire time by how unappealing my character and the rest of my party looked.

... it says it's early access, which I wish I'd noted when I bought it in a combo with Esoteric Ebb.

Should have checked.

Anyway, graphics are a huge upgrade from the last game.
Writing and dialogue is the same quality, which is to say... uh, not great, but it'll get you from fight to fight. VO much improved, but they can only do so much with this material.
The reputation of the last game was that it was very close to the tabletop rules. A cool tactical experience from the previous game isn't here, yet, as bugs pop up like having access to abilities or spells you didn't select of level up; sorcerer character gets access to quicken spell even without the choice, sometimes.
Crafting system is presently aspirational, but doesn't stop you from picking up and endless amount of crafting related items; even if they implement the system the encumbrance tracking is going to make that an endless pain to play with without some base of operations to drop the stuff off at.

Anyway, it's clear that this is still baking, and still needs time to bake. Good for a couple hours if your curious as to what they've been working on, but the price of admission is too high for where it is at present. I'd definitely wait a bit, given the option to go back in time.