Early Reactions to Dragon Age 2

Now this is a mixture of a review and a preview, mainly because Dragon Age 2 is such a large game that i haven't had time to finish it.
Firstly i am a HUGE and i mean HUGE fan of Mass Effect 2, so when i began playing the new Dragon Age i was delighted by the fully voiced main character and conversation wheel. Then came the combat...
I have to admit after putting in around 10 hours i have a love/hate relationship with the direction Bioware took with this. The original dragon age had a wonderful but very complicated combat system in comparison, and whilst the action is heavy, well paced and sometimes it features gratuitous awesomeness this sequel has turned into a button basher. Mass effect 2 had a similar streamlined experience, however it worked much better there mainly because it was a 3rd person shooter rather than a hack 'n' slash.
This being said i do relish the combat, getting covered head to toe in the blood of my characters opponents but they did take it too far in my opinion with the bodily explosion. Sometimes on the final hit your enemy will literally explode into little bits. Which for me is slightly too OTT and unneeded.
The story is also slightly lacking in comparison to Dragon Age Origins and the Mass Effect series. They were epic in scope stopping the blight/reapers, this one however i found myself not getting involved and desperate to finish the tale. The characters i have encountered so far are neither here nor there, unlike say Morrigan from Origins or Mordin from Mass Effect 2.
I shall put out some more on my thoughts about this game once I've got further into it but so far i give the game a score of roughly 7/10. Not because its bad but its a big disappointing so far considering its pedigree.