You talking about awakening or two... 

I'm only about 15 hours in, but I'm enjoying it so far

Not quite ready to call it game of the year, but it's coming on nicely. I've just got to Cresswood

I have somewhat got a tad overwhelmed by the amount of options I have about progression. I kind of have 6 different areas I can go to now, not really sure whether I should be progressing the story or doing sidequests and stuff

It could possibly have done with a bit more focus in some places, but it's a really fun game.

EDIT: As for technical issues, I'm playing on PC with settings on high to get a nice solid 60fps. I would like to be able to get Ultra, but I guess my PC is a whole 2 years old. There is one big problem. CLIPPING

I agree. I hate olden day rpgs but game really threw me.

The characters, game world and locations are nothing short of memorable. Fantastic game, much better than those elder scoll games.

Dragon Age is only like Mass Effect in that it's made by Bioware and has character dynamics (interactions of party members). Gameplay, world, story, even the design and graphics were very different.

He's talking about DA2 but things are covered in coversations in DA:I so people shouldn't fear about missing anything. I didn't buy any DLC for DA2 but don't feel I missed a thing.

Think of it this way.

If on your first playthrough, you decide to go to the western approach.

In your next playthrough, you can go to another zone you didn't get to visit.

This makes the game different every time you play it. Don't think of number of choices as a bad thing - choices are always good things.

I think it has some flaws in the gameplay department and some aspects of DA 2 are better IMO.

Some small things, like the final shot combo animations for mage basic attacks in DA 2 differed depending on the elemental damage for the staff you were using. IN DA:I all the final attack combo animations are the same. I don't like that your attributes are auto-levelled. What's the point in even having attribute scores in that case? I don't like the fact that you have to go into tactical view in order to do pause and play. I would have liked them to keep ability use as part of the menu wheel so that in action mode you can still operate in a fully pause and play way. I don't like that in action mode you have to hold down R2 to keep doing basic attacks, you should be able to chose between holding R2 and pressing once then the character attacking until the enemy is dead or you assign to a new enemy. I don't like that you don't have full access to all active abilities in combat. The battle system limits you to 8 in the quick slot menu, so you have to change the set up of the quick slots. Again if they'd kept access to all your abilities in the wheel menu access all abilities would not be an issue.

Compared to the voice acting of Hawke, the VA's used for the player character are bland and terrible. VA's for your party members are great. Cassandra and Varric are awesome VAs, I haven't got far enough in to collect the full compliment of companions, so I can;t totally pass judgement on VA. Not a big fan of the Orlesian ambassador lady's VA, The person might be a native french speaker, meaning their accent is legit, but it almost sounds like a fake french accent.

I'm still coming to terms with the lack of healing magic. I'm fine with healing not being a school of magic for the mage class, which harks back to classic D'n'D. But I feel like the equivalent of the cleric (or druidic) class could have been introduced, with lots of support and crowd control based abilities.

Graphics are not the best. First in class so far this generation on PS4 for open world is inFamous. Next in line among the open world games I've played, is Shadow of Mordor. Do DA:I comes in at 3rd from my perspective.

Not sure I'm fully on board with the central pivot of the plot thus far. The plot for DA2 was great, it was a very "human" plot, the struggle between freedom and safety. But I am not far enough into the game to know whether what initially seems like the central plot point is actually the central plot point, or if it's just the pivot of Act 1. So I must reserve judgement there too.

All that said, I am really loving the game over all and so far it is the best 2014 game I've played. So it does get my GOTY despite some of my complaints.

I am surely going to visit every area in 1 playthrough of the game? 

I would say at least one play through of Dragon Age 2 is essential. The whole of what Dragon Age: Inquisition is about is as a direct result of what happens in Dragon Age 2. As bad as a lot of people claim it is (I disagree, I liked it a lot and played it through entirely 4 taimes) the story and characters are very good, as long as you can overlook repetitive environments (not like DA2 is the only game to suffer form this) and enemy waves. If you're interested in the world of Dragon Age you can't miss DA2. But if you just want to play a decent WRPG then I guess you can skip it and go straight to DA:I. 

Dragon Age: Origins, by contrast is more or less an historical curiosity in terms of its direct impact on DA:I.

I really hope this game is sufficiently successful that a 4th game, involving time spent in Tevinter, is guaranteed. I have to say Dragon Age is the only fantasy WRPG that I rate as being any good from among those I've played since the beginning of the 7th gen. I haven't played The Witcher yet, but I found Elder Scrolls to be highly disappointing, and Diablo III was OK but quite a let down. Even though I played the whole of Diablo III in local co-op with my son, which was fun in that respect, in all other respects the game didn't connect with me as well as I'd hoped. I fell for the trap of both games having generally good word of mouth, and that they fit into the broad category of fantasy WRPG, which is one of my favoured genres. Technically Demon's Souls is considered a JRPG so while I would rate that above Drgaon Age, as they live in different sub-genres I get to name both of them as favourites.

I admit that I haven't played a lot(maybe 16h) but so far it had its fair share of drawbacks that keep it from being a GOTY for me.

The characters seem a bit lifeless and I have to disagree about the voiceacting which I think is the worst in the series, as are the animations. It looks a lot worse than it should be.

Gameplay is quite fun though. It's fluent and very varied. No single encounter is like the last. It's always a different strategic situation. It's a lot more vertical and you have to consider vantage points and obstructions. No complaints there...

... if it wasn't for the horrible controls. The keyboard and mouse controls are just plain bad. Add injury to insult, you can't even map keys to the mouse. I had to switch to controller which made it a lot more fun. Still you also can't rebind controller buttons either which made me get used to the flawed control scheme.

I'm not at the point yet where the game supposedly opens up. I really do hope that they expand the skill trees as well at that point because only 4 tiny trees when each character usually can only really profit from two of them is pretty lackluster for an RPG.

You still wandering around The Hinterlands? Get out of there. The amount of stuff you can do will draw you in, there is more to do and far more areas to open up. And on the latter, yes to a degree.