Undeniably fun crpg but what are its faults?
1. Early on, there are some sudden difficulty spikes. Not a big deal but I suspect some of the negative reader reviews stemmed from some early difficulty spikes in the main story line.
2. Mages are very over-powered versus your melee fighters. Magic users have an array of status changing and area-of-effect abilitites that can paralyze large groups. Then they have giant fireball which insta-casts. And they can heal. Their abilites go on and on.
Basically, you make the game harder if your team has only one magic user and you make it a lot easier if you have 3 magic users on your team. Baldur's Gate 2 did not have this issue (all character types had notable advantages). Bioware might need to rethink character balancing and spell powers.
3. Unlocking chests and stealing is pointless. It is ridiculous to open a level 4 chest and find one standard leather helmet inside! There were only 2 times in the entire game that a locked chest didnt have junk in it. Stealing is barely worth the effort too. Again, Bioware could rethink this in the sequel. If these abilites are in the game make them worthwhile for your characters to have.
4. Traps and poisons are cool, but the abilities of your mages far outstrip them in every way. And you need to stock items to make poisons and traps, while the mages never need items to cast.
5. Archers cannot do as much damage versus any other type of character. I always had an archer in BG2, but here there's no point. Your magic users can do long distance "area of effect" attacks (see number 2) that make the archer's abilities totally pointless.
None of these are gamebreakers but they are noticeable flaws that could use some fixing whenever Dragon Age 2 comes out.