WARNING: POSSIBLE MINOR SPOILERS!
 
I probably should've worked a little more and played a little less, but truth is I ended up spending about 10h on DA2 in the past two nights.
In a nutshell, I'm enjoying it, even if the combat is kinda silly and way too fast-- I'm playing on the normal difficulty setting and I've custom tactics set for all my party members and so far I find myself never even needing to pause the game whenever we encounter some enemies. But to be completely honest, I really don't care all that much for the combat aspects of the game. Same as in the Mass Effect series, I just want to get through the combat sequences to reach the next story bit. Some of the side quests have been really cool, particularly the one where you get to escort a Qunari mage; I felt like I learnt a lot about their culture in the final segment of the quest.
 
As for the main quest... well, there hasn't been much to it, really. Getting into Kirkwall was fast and easy and then a year suddenly goes by and you don't even actually do anything during that time. And then I had to gather money and a map (which I already got a long time ago, but I like to finish all side quests before moving on) to go on an expedition into The Deep Roads, but to be completely honest I'm not even sure why I'm doing this expedition in the first place... but there's always the remote chance that I've missed something. Anyway, the main plot is looking very random so far. But hopefully that'll change (don't tell me, though!)
 
Now, "relationships". These have been kinda weird, I gotta tell you. I'm playing a male character and for some reason all male characters seem to be hitting on me (apart from Varric). I had to "break their hearts" in order for it to stop, but then I get rivalry points for it, which doesn't seem to make any kind of sense. As for female characters, there's been an opportunity to say something cute or whatever to Merril, but that's about it so far. It just seems a lot easier to "get it on" with a male, even if you're also a male. Everyone just seems to be bisexual and it all seems a bit... statistically innacurate, if you know what I mean. Oh well, we'll see.
 
Finally, the character creator.
Everything about Dragon Age II looks more cartoony, but who'd knew more cartoony actually meant that I'd finally be able to create a character that actually looks like me. Maybe I just couldn't manage to really exploit the capabilities of every single character creator up to this point, but truth is I was never able to create a character where there was an actual resemblence with yours truly. But that changed with DA2. I mean, of course the likeness isn't top-notch, but this is the first time that I've looked at my character (even in-game, during dialogue and cutscenes) and didn't immediately thought "man, despite all the time and effort I spent around this thing, it still looks NOTHING like me".
Anyway, they don't have my haircut type so I had to go with one of their silly ones, but the more cartoony approach of Dragon Age II still did the trick and I finally kinda look like me. Maybe I'm a real-life cartoon? ^^