I'm only an hour or two in though, so I can't really give much more judgement than that. The first couple hours of Dragon Age 1 were quite different from all the hours afterwards.

I will say that I like the dialog wheel. Just like Mass Effect's dialog wheel, it actually makes me feel like I'm having a conversation with the person - something the old-style text system always failed to do.

I will also say that, unlike Mass Effect and like Dragon Age 1, the choices in this game have already been hard. Mass Effect's are easy: you make one choice at the beginning: paragon or Renegade. You just follow through. Dragon Age 1 didn't have that problem: I actually agonized over many of the choices in that game. So far Draogn Age 2 looks to follow in those footsteps.

Art-wise, the game is a hundred times better. DA1 had the worst art style I've seen in a Bioware game, easily. This is a huge improvement.

The combat felt different at first, but within a few battles I was pausing the game, issuing orders, and tweaking the ai just like the last.