The thing that really killed me on this game was the quest structure. It's basically doing WoW "Quest Marker" style questing, except a lot less structured and in a single-player game where you're expected to do every quest. The big problem: they don't tell you what the reward is before you do it, so you don't know if it's going to be worth your time or advance any of the goals you've set out for yourself. They just assume you're interested in doing everything in the game. And of course that's true--God knows I did everything there was to do in Mass Effect 2--but they assume you don't care about setting goals for yourself or that you might want to take certain elements of the game at your own pace, in an order of your choosing.
To give you an idea of what I mean, here's the specific scenario that killed me on this game: I wander mindlessly from one NPC to the next gathering up quests, trying to find the one I looked at in my journal that sounded interesting and profitable. It takes me like ten minutes of scouring bandit-infested streets to find an NPC, find out they're the wrong one, then another ten minutes to find the NPC I'm actually looking for.
It's a Dwarf, wanting me to retrieve some goods that he had some smugglers running, but they decided to "keep" them. I arrive at their hide-out, fight endless waves of bandits--the only thing the game seems to throw at me--and then I find out there wasn't really even any cargo, it was this Fenris guy, who deus ex machinas me out of another fight (as if I needed it) and tells me, "sorry, there isn't really any reward for this quest--but if you meet me elsewhere I'll give you a real quest, and that'll probably have a reward. Probably. Or it could just be me in your party."
Mind you this is after I've had the same thing happen three times in a row, literally about five hours of quests with no actual reward and an increasing cast of annoying, needy party members who I don't know (shit, I'm still not convinced Carver is actually my brother), promising more quests with no guaranteed rewards. That's about the point where I'd had it and did a rage-quit. Some people will call me impatient, but I don't think it's too much to ask that the game have a sense of structure and not jerk me around like this. Some people will say I want the game to hold me by the hand, but it's just the opposite: I want the freedom to reliably be able to pursue my own goals and to do shit on the side if I'm bored with main story quests. I want the game to be clear in communicating what's what.
I think it's fair to make a comparison with Mass Effect, since that's what DA2 is trying to imitate. In Mass Effect, story quests are well-differentiated from side-quests, and in fact there's clear structural differences between different sub-categories of side-quests. There's the random stuff you find exploring planets, there's the side-quests in major settlements, and then there's the clear mission goals that have been set out for the story, usually tied to major contacts in particularly important set pieces. When you go to do something you know exactly what it is you're getting into.
Shit. I can even draw comparisons with Final Fantasy 12--a game I despise to its core for poor systems design and an incredibly dull story and cast of characters, but even that has better quest structure. You have the main story, which has a clear progression and an environment structured around that progression; you have "Marks," which are special monsters you can hunt on the side; and you've got tons of optional segments to dungeons, which contain special, powerful summoned monsters you can acquire.
With DA2 and Kirkwall, though, it's just a crap-shoot. I don't know, maybe after you've passed the ten hour mark it's clearer what's going on and what quests are what, maybe you get to know the neighborhood a little better, but so far I've seen very little differentiation as to what's an hour-long slog through hordes of bandits for advancement in the story and what's a simple fifteen-minute quest that'll get me some quick gold.
The kiss of death on it, I think, is that the city's environment design itself does very little to support what structure there is. It's just one big environment with one mode of exploration of content, so all you do is wander around looking for odd jobs. It's like living in a Mass Effect city and never leaving that type of environment, which is monotonous aside from everything else. Meanwhile Mass Effect and FF12 both had different kinds of environments for different kinds of activities, and you always knew where to go for them.
Bottom line: SHITTY QUEST STRUCTURE. I could forgive the disjointed storyline, I could forgive the inconsistent art direction (God knows I gave Deadly Premonition that much credit), I could forgive the shallow combat system, but... this just pushed it too far, from "meh" game to "garbage."
