I recently for reasons not entirely clear even to myself played through the entire DA trilogy, first time I managed to finish any of them. And I don't entirely agree with all the haet.
DA:O -- tries to sit on way too many chairs and falls between them. Is it an epic Monty Haul romp where you end up killing a dragon? A grimdark blood-soaked revenge fantasy? A party-based tactical RPG? An aRPG? Nobody knows and it ends up kind of a mess. Mechanics are pure cargo cult totally-not-D&D with none of the richness and complexity that makes D&D fun. Companions are one-note caricatures. Great C&C though, some pretty cool encounters, a serviceable story, and a big sprawling playground to play in. Also, hard; stupidly hard in places -- like, some of the early-game random encounters while traveling are ridiculous, the dragons were easy-peasy compared to a few of them.
DA2 -- everybody hates it but I didn't. Main issue with it is that it was marketed as a sequel rather than a standalone expansion -- it's obviously made on a super tight budget and schedule. However the companions are better, I really dig the idea of setting it in a single location over several years, and the story arc overall is much better than in DA:O. Moment-to-moment combat is much more enjoyable too, this one decided that fuck it, it's an aRPG and rolls with it, and is much better for it. Crying shame about the masses of repetitive trash mob encounters with more mooks paratrooping in. Also, easy. Very, very easy.
DA:I -- yeah well. Mechanics have gone full MMO retard and it tries to fucking drown you in pointless fetch-me-ten-of-this generated sidequests. Moment to moment gameplay is about as good/bad as in DA2, but better than DA:O. The leveled loot and crafting system is putrid, yet more pointless grind; there's also rampant stupidity there like the typically American liberal approach to race, i.e. completely randomise racial features and pretend it doesn't exist, then throw in a fucking hilariously Orientalist stand-in for Arabs (rigid, expansionist, scary religious fanatics who will at the same time fuck any warm hole).
However if you have the intestinal fortitude to simply ignore the grind and focus on the main quest and better sidequests, there's a decent game underneath there somewhere. The companion writing is actually good in places: characters are more complex, they have their own agendas, and it's possible to build relationships with them that go beyond the usual BioWare harem anime. It's also big and lush and fun to explore, and the main story arc ties up all the random questing rather nicely really.
Overall I was left feeling better about the franchise than I did before. It's not one of my favourites and likely never will be, and it really exemplifies the decline of RPGs from the very start, but it's not irredeemably bad. No, not even DA2. I rate it 3 good-for-what-it-is-es out of 5.