I´ve replayed the game about a year ago, with both post-release story DLCs installed, and found it a lot more enjoyable experience than the one I got when playing the game just after the release. The main reasons would likely include patches that made some issues with combat more tolerable or go away, quality of said DLCs and perhaps also the facts I´ve played a mage (as opposed to a bow rogue) and did so on hard difficulty (as opposed to playing through the first act on nightmare which, at least in the unpatched game, was seriously at odds with the combat system and encounter design).
Anyway, I haven´t read the article, but some of my reasons why the game might be worth playing would be:
The overall narrative experience is quite unique - while the plot that allows players to reach the end is often going places, I don´t think it´s actually the core of narrative experience in this game, it´s more of a setting that provides background for the actual core which consists of following and helping to shape personal journeys of handful of people (pc included) throughout the years in a troubled city. It´s a story about people and their development, not about defeating a big bad. When seen that way, the relative lack of reactivity during the main plot becomes less of an issue, because the game does provide a fair amount of it in the "people" aspect.
There are few elements that notably support the above.
First and foremost, joinable party members. Unlike in most other games, even after becoming available to join the party they don´t loose a sense of having independent lives. This is achieved by the combination of no main base of operations where everyone chills while not on a quest (they each chill in different parts of the city), each having a personal questline spanning the game´s three main acts, and what I consider to be the most robust banter system in an cRPG to date (they talk to each other a lot and their relations develop as the game progresses, sometimes there are also cinematic dialogue sequences of them meeting each other).
Besides that, while not perfect, the influence system is more granular than usual and doesn´t necessarily lead to a loss of content quantity if pc is at odds with the character, the only loss occurs if there are no strong feelings one way or the other. If there are though, a fair amount of cinematic dialogues play out differently, depending on whether a character is a "friend" or a "rival" and the mutual standing, as well as some personal quests´ resolutions, affect how the personal storylines play out.
As is usual in games with talkative party members, writing differs in quality and some personalities may rub someone wrong regardless of writing quality. Personally I found the one lacking the most to be Anders, on the other hand I really liked Aveline, Varric and Isabella, rest being middle of the road. I´d add that playing a mage also gave me a more compelling sibling of the two.
At any rate, the party members never really feel "recruited" in the sense it usually feels in other games, they feel more like characters your pc has strong connections with.
Second, the game (the first half at least) comes with a fairly strong family aspect that provides a different grounding for the pc than usual.
Third, there´s also a rather subtle system in which pc´s personality is shaped by dominant tone picked in other dialogues, utilized on occasions where pc talks without player´s control or after picking "non-tonal", non-investigative responses. Allowing pc assuming a certain tone without player prompt might be considered a flaw, but personally I found it a welcome additional way of showing how player affected pc´s personality long term.
As a side note, as someone who thinks that in games with cinematic dialogues it´s sometimes desirable to let a pc talk without player´s input for better flow of conversations, I wish more games adopted DA2´s dominant tone system in some form, since to me it seems like a good compromise (between maintaining dialogue flow and player influence).
When it comes to combat, I think it does have some strengths, especially after patches.
Probably the main strength comes from the ability trees which offer a solid variety of ways how to build (and progress in building) a character and keep on giving deep into the game, mostly thanks to cross-class combo possibilities and specialization trees.
In the field this translates into the combat experience that becomes more engaging the bigger player´s arsenal is, partly due to variety itself and partly due to having better means to deal with the game´s wave-y encounter design faster. Obviously this also points at one of the game´s weaknesses - the encounter design is strongly at odds with low player levels, resulting in a repetitive and monotone early combat experience with a good possibility of making players tired of the system before it gets the chance of feeling better.
Another good thing about the combat is general responsiveness (aka what the "awesome button" remark likely originally referred to) and fluidity, but I´d say to raise the chances of appreciating this, one should bury the notion of playing this game "tactically" with frequent pausing and adopt generally more immediately reactive real time approach instead (and use pause only when lining up combos or getting from a clutch). Though not to same degree, in this regard the game is relatively similar to the second and third Mass Effects, as in (and imo) if your´re playing these games with pause you´re "doing it wrong", regardless of what developers´ intentions might´ve been.
At any rate, regardless of whether the wave-y encounter design is a flaw or not (I think it certainly is), after the slow beginning the game in my opinion does manage to provide a potentially engaging combat experience if you accept it as a fast paced, visceral real time with an occasional pause kind of deal. On hard difficulty I found the ratio between combat and other activities to be pretty good too - there was just about the right amount of more challenging encounters that encouraged more attentive use of abilities and positioning, but the game´s numerous trash encounters could still be dispatched quickly. In other words, enough challenge to make character advancement feel meaningful, but mostly without the cost of abundant tedium.
Finally, I have to mention the two story DLCs here as well. I wouldn´t say either is perfect but they both show how DA2 can work when its strengths are not accompanied by some of its weaknesses. The party banter is more reactive than before and in both cases the pc also often chimes in with lines differing based on dominant personality, encounter design is almost free of waves and when they´re there they make sense (don´t appear from thin air), showing that the underlying combat system is actually solid, and vanilla style re-used environments are nowhere to be seen. There are also occasional puzzles that help the gameplay diversity.
Moreover, playing both within the game´s third act proved to be a great decision, since it made the game´s most lackluster part a lot meatier and actually turned into the most enjoyable segment for me, partly because of DLCs themselves and partly because it provided notably more time to play with a roster of fully advanced characters, which is when I think the game´s combat is generally at its best.
Besides some mentions above, I´m not going over the game´s weaknesses, except for saying that they may not turn out to be an experience-breaking deal for someone who appreciates some other game´s aspects in similar ways I did on my second playthrough.
I think that the unpatched game where I´ve played the whole first act on nightmare (the rest on normal or hard) with a bowman was about 5/10 for me, whereas the second playthrough with a game on hard and the two DLCs resulted in a 7.5/10 experience - I still couldn´t overlook the flaws marring the game, but some of its strengths and mainly the overall uniqueness made it a worthwhile entertainment after all.
