Exactly the same happened to me. Warrior and Rogue were no problem but using a Mage and losing Bethany makes the whole party so damn squishy.

Warrior and Rogue are easy peasy with a lvl 1 Hawke. Mage Hawke requires bumping him up to lvl 2 to pick up healing, you'll be able to cast it at least twice and that will make all the difference in keeping Aveline alive, and you'll want her alive since Carver is rubish, no Beth and Hawke with just Mind Blast and healing means no AoE's to spam and Aveline will have to do most of the work.

Keep Hawke focused on Hurlocks. When Grunt Hurlocs pop up pull Aveline from the Ogre and have her focused on them. With Mage Hawke you'll probably will want to make use of the 2 or 3 healing potions your Hawke picked up along the way

Just completed the demo.

The flashy combat animations, not really a thing for me. Not that I hate it, just not bothered with it. Although I found some irritating.
The Mage shooting projectiles off the staff sounds like Blaster fire from Star Wars.

As for the difficulty and combat I'll wait for the full-game to judge, any harder difficulty with FF on other than Normal. In the demo I was happily spamming Fireballs and Firestorms in the middle of the party thanks to no FF.

Obviously I can't judge the story as yet.
I used a Mage too with no healing spells. The male Warr died on me during the Ogre fight. But I kept Aveline up with pots and my mage and she took the Ogre out.

Okay, finished the demo with a Rogue. Found it was fun and there are definitely some tactics required even on the Normal mode (second Ogre fight, while I got through it on the first try, could easily have eaten the party alive if I didn't switch between characters, pause, and issue orders).

I still hate the damned camera. I found I was fighting with it the whole time. I'm also not keen on the art style in some of those cut scenes, but that's minor and something easily overlooked. Noticed some clipping in the game but not as bad as DA:O. Again, I can overlook that, as it's not really a big deal to me. The visuals: they're okay. Not spectacular, but not horrid either. Basically, I found I didn't really notice them too much, so they're fine.

Combat is definitely snappier/more 'responsive'. I like some of the moves the classes have and some of the abilities are pretty sweet as well.

Looks to be a decent story brewing for the game, judging from the bit they gave us in the demo.

That being said, much hinges on the DRM they decide to go with. If it's something I don't like, then combining that with the constant fight with the camera and I'll wait for a bargain priced GotY/Ultimate edition months down the road.

A few things more (some nitpicking included and not everything is meant to be taken seriously or as criticism):

-M Hawke's VA is bad. I'm sorry but it is. I understand that this is mainly a personnal preference thing but i didn't liked it.

-Annoying that hovering each of the abilities doesn't show their descriptions but just that particular tree's name.

-Can't quite figure out quick potions and cooldowns. I assume cooldowns are represented by the potion's icon vanishing or turning black or something, but half the time popping a potion when the icon is colored just shows the 'quick heal' feedback next to the character's portrait but nothing really happens. I'm probably missing something which is no wonder since everything on the UI is so damn tiny @1920x1200

-It's a pitty that there aren't any female hurlocks since they'd make a lovely romance option. It wouldn't be too difficult to get lost in those sad, big, green eyes ;)

-Cassandra's funny accent and ever so slight lisp make her too damn cute for an Inquisitor. I can't decide on her hair color though, black looks good and seems to be a good fit but maybe white would have given her a more bad ass egde. Tough call.

-Aveline is bad ass, pretty and sweet. Also...freckles. Damn powerfull combo.

-Active dodge looks like a definite improvement

-Combat stance IS a definite improvement. No more silly 'I'm either going to fight OR i nedd a bathroom fast' combat stance

-Pauldrons clipping issues look as painfull as they did in DAO, not much of an improvement there.

-Hands are not perfect but Bioware seems to have at least cured the Clawtitis that plagued Thedas in DAO, maker be praised.

- As a mage, casting fireball at Hawkes' feet when swarmed feels like cheating.

-The more i play the demo the more i miss DAO's cam.

-Mind Blast seems to be off at times, weird delay between FX on screen and enemies being thrown back. It's not always but it does happen.

-New Flemeth, damn sexy. The older the berry, the sweeter the juice definitely comes to mind ;)

-Isabela...wow, just wow. I keep expecting to see her floating off with those baloons and everything.

-Killing a Templar by shoving a dagger trough his breastplate seems downright silly. Not as silly as having Morrigan kneeling in Lothering's Chantry to receive a blessing from the Revered Mother, but still, silly.

-Cone of Gold is now a silly name for the spell.

Have yet to try Archery but i expect improvement there since it was pretty meh in DAO.

I had a go with archery earlier and it's seriously been beefed up. I love the fact that a solid hit from a bow can knock back attackers now, also when you get to H2H your character automatically switches to blades, no need to manually switch now.

I don't think we saw enough material to properly evaluate the performance (there were very few scenes where he was in the spotlight and that he spoke. By the way, it's the same VA as Bann Vaughan Kendels (Nicholas Boulton)

I loved the fact that we started overpowered because of an unreliable narrator. Makes me believe that Bioware was parodying those who whined that the game was too dumbed down based on their first impression.

I continued trying the various class, and it confirmed what thought yesterday, trying to play it more tactically, or at least how I played DAO is a shore, especially if you try to take FF into account (by positioning your character outside blast area) my main gripes with it are and remains, no matter the class :

Of course the camera, I can accept the whole silly "we cant have a top view because it would limit us in level design" excuse for not having the top camera like in DAO but why did they thought it was a good idea to lock it on a single character. With ranged character, when you try to target a specific enemy you often have to move your character closer or walk around a group of enemies until you have good angle.

Character control. Trying to control my character one by one like I did in DAO is a real pain, not only it's it harder to position them thanks to limited camera but also they only follow your orders when they feel like it. Apparently they stop attacking enemies when they are hit so you move your ally, tell him/her to attack a specific enemy, move to the next character, un-pause, only to discover that one second later half of them have stopped fighting and that you have to re-pause, re-tell them to attack the same enemy and hope that this time they will attack it more than one before stopping. Why? if I tell them to attack an enemy I expect them to continue until I give them another order or until the enemy is dead.

I just noticed something devilishly clever; look at the breast size during the exaggerated first part of the demo. Look at it again once the "real" tale begins.

That's good then, in that case i'll do one more run to give it a go.

I went thorugh all the investigate options and for me that's enough lines to get a feel on both M&F Hawke VA's. Regarding the remaining cast i agree, not enough speech to get a proper feel. In any case the VA usually boils down to personnal taste and that's why going from a silent PC to a voiced one on a sequel doesn't always works nicely for everybody.

I don't much care about what other parts the actor in question has done in the sense that a voice either fits a character or it doesn't, in this case i don't think it's a good fit for Hawke's character and that's pretty much that because it's mainly a personnal taste thing. That doesn't say anything about the actor's talent, it says quite a bit about how i feel about casting this particular actor for this particular character.

For instance, i love Claudia Black's voice, i don't think anyone would have fit Morrigan's character better but there's a whole bunch of females characters in the DA universe to which her voice wouldn't be a good choice.

Yes Varric is a Bethany fan.

I also like the fact that the exaggerated first part lets you sample some of the class skills so you can get an idea of what kind of character you want to run. I always run my rogues duel wielding (since my D&D days :B) but there's a few skills in the other rogue branches that I'll definitely be taking (I really liked both evade and rush a lot). If it's anything like DAO though I'll be trying at the very least rogue and warrior (though without Origins to make it different, and not knowing if each class will get their own little quest, I don't really know if I'll play different classes or just pump out tons of rogues :P)

Well, that's a pile of shit. Downloaded it twice and twice it's failed to install due to being corrupted. DA seems intent on making a bad impression on me...

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Just finished up, tried mage and thief. Mage was a little ridiculous at the full level at the start, but I guess fun. I feel friendly fire was turned off by default as enemies close fairly quickly and everyone and their mother has AoE attacks.

The archer is almost a mage in terms of utility. Stun, AoEs, etc. At least they're more useful as back support than previously. Although I feel EVERYONE'S abilities cool down too quickly or don't cost enough mana, although that just could be the demo.

Rogue was fun, jumping around, etc. Anyone else notice rogue weapons float about 12 inches above the characters back when not in use? Looks like they have floating wings.

I can see tactics still being required for harder foes, not really too much different there, but I would like the speed of combat slowed a little. Cooldowns come off really quickly, everyone is jumping around like crazy, its all instant tactics rather than any strategic approach, and yes, self immolating fireballs are OP.

It's not... bad. But it's not great either, too ADD for me. Slowed down like 10-20% would be great.