Dragon Age is a niche game.
Its a game that attempts to create a "classical fantasy" setting with a few twists for originality and the more bleak, dark modern style that is prevelant today. With the elves being an overly oppressed race that lost their lore, dwarves being the last dregs of an empire and the humans being locked in a dark age and feudal politics.
In terms of the amount of dialog, I'm fairly impressed with how it goes. There is as little dialog as you can have if you choose to just blaze throught, without destorying the artistic intention of the writers. Or, huge buckets full of dialog.
As for the combat, if you're not enjoying it I'd suggest ttrying a different class. If that fails then clearly RPGs aren't your type of game, fair enough - doesn't effect if a game is good. Which goes both ways. One shouldn't stamp out "This is horrible" because the gameplay style isn't for them, nor should people scream "This is beter then sliced bread" because they enjoy that style of gameplay. A key thing to keep in mind is that the combat is designed to be challenging in a more tatical way, so if you play it on a lower level you wont get challenged. If you go through the whole game without pausing (if you can and enjoy it, then enjoy) then you're not really getting the challenge as intended.
Clearly OP, you sound like you want a game to pick up with pretty visuals, swords, fantasy and quick-intense action. Dragon Age is more a game with an intended feel/story and it fits it. The graphics fit the idea feel - artistic direction, I haven't played on 360 only PC and I liked the graphics quiet a lot. I think the problems you came across would've been that: visually they keep to a run down feudal world, so there aren't a lot of "WOAH" moments, the realm - Feraldon (?) isn't a huge nor overtly wealthy kindgom, its a border kingdom. Also, for game play reasons I would imagine the turn over on weapons and armour is low, so you're not switching them out a lot. That probably lowers you opinion of the graphics as if you get/see a new thing all the time then it tends to blow your mind. I like the approach for the most part, it doesn't stick a massive LOOK AT ME IM PRETTY in your face, yet the graphics never negatively impact on the game. They are there and there are a lot of pretty things to look at if you look for them. The dwarven areas are amazing I think, and I really liked snowy areas up north.
Its part of a genre, Baulder's Gate 2 and so on. And for what kinda of game that is, Dragon Age ranks very high I believe.
