I played through DAI - and indeed, played through the whole Dragon Age series properly - for the first time quite recently.
I've got incredibly complicated feelings about the game. There's lots of things I really love - if you think of Skyrim as a competitor & DAI as BioWare's answer, there's a lot to like! - and many things that were annoying and very nearly game-ruining. It's the bugs that got me down the most.
Hey, thanks for writing your thoughts on this.
Although my game is, er, not started, I've been asking myself similar questions. Your thoughts make a lot of sense. Hope it works out well for you.