Dragon Age - Inquisition

[mckerney]

Originally Posted by Ironhead

FWIW - I just finished the game. It took 160+ hours but that includes doing every single possible quest.

Dragon Age Inquisition doesn't quite seem to know what it wants to be at times. It has gorgeous, meticulously designed environments and you can see the passion the developers put into the game. There are moments where the game really shines. And there are a lot of other moments where you stop and ask yourself "Why am I doing this again?" Being a fan of the series I must admit that looking back on the game now that it ended I must say the narrative feels fairly weak.


If I had to rank the series as a whole:

- Dragon Age Origins (head and shoulders the best in the series)

- Dragon Age Inquisition (while there are parts that drag on I don't think there is any way I could have played through DA2 for 160+ hours. I would have probably wanted to kill myself.)

- Dragon Age 2 (flawed in many aspects but still an enjoyable experience. I will say that by the end of the game I was definitely ready for it to end).

That's pretty much how I felt, though I finished it in about 70 hours after feeling like it was dragging on at that point. The storyline was mediocre and there were several incredibly cheesy parts that felt like they were trying to be epic fantasy moments. Gameplay and RPG elements were far from being anything special but the world, lore and most of the characters are great.

I thought it was good overall but the game of the year awards it has garnered has left me scratching my head a bit, I'm not sure I'd rank it as one of the 5 best RPGs to come out this year

[Ironhead]

Originally Posted by mckerney

That's pretty much how I felt, though I finished it in about 70 hours after feeling like it was dragging on at that point. The storyline was mediocre and there were several incredibly cheesy parts that felt like they were trying to be epic fantasy moments. Gameplay and RPG elements were far from being anything special but the world, lore and most of the characters are great.

I thought it was good overall but the game of the year awards it has garnered has left me scratching my head a bit, I'm not sure I'd rank it as one of the 5 best RPGs to come out this year

Agreed that this is not GOTY material. There really is very little new or innovative going on in the game and there isn't anything in the game done exceptionally well.

The main characters are interesting and I will definitely remember them. I can hardly say the same for the other NPCs. By comparison, I still remember characters I encounted in Baldurs Gate 2, Mass Effect, Dragon Age Origins, etc...

If I play through again in the future I will likely only do about 30-40% of the available quests. That alone should help out with the narrative.

[Peregrine]

I have to say I love this game and it's definitely a GOTY candidate for me - finished it once already but didn't explore a lot, now on my second playthrough with a different character on nightmare.

[Atocep]

I played 65-70 hours to complete it. I purposely left stuff for a 2nd play-through whenever they're done releasing DLC and the likely expansion.

I agree that it sits between Origins and DA2 and I have it much closer to Origins than 2 even though it's a flawed game. I don't think I've ever had this complaint about a RPG, but there's almost too much content. Some things begin to distract you from your primary objective and make the storyarch a bit confusing.

The characters are excellently written. The main storyline isn't perfect, but I commend Bioware for creating more of a politically-driven story as it's something that isn't done very often in RPGs. The world is amazing. Probably the best RPG world I've seen in a game.

With that said, combat is still disappointing. Origins and Divinity: OS absolutely nail RPG combat. This still feels like they're trying to keep things simple enough to keep the Call of Duty fans interested. There's so many things to do and they don't always tie together which at times leaves this feeling more like a MMO than a single player RPG. It's like the game requires an expansion to tie everything together.

Overall, it's a good game that I enjoyed quite a bit. As far as large, content-heavy RPGs go I put Divinity head and shoulders above Inquisition. I've played through Origins 3 times and I can see myself playing through this again, which is more than I can say for DA2.

[SackAttack]

Picked this up the day after Christmas. I've put in 30 hours already and I'm just now at what appears to be the end of the first act. Goodness.

[Drake]

Got about 110 hours out of it. Enjoyable, but it felt an awful lot like Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning after awhile. The driving narrative just seemed a bit too thin to sustain all of the sidequesting I was doing.

And I'm a guy who likes the Elder Scrolls, so I'm used to the main story arc being like 1.4% of actual playtime.

[Peregrine]

As much as I loved the game, I did think it could have used another chapter or two of main quest to fill things out.

[Ironhead]

For those who enjoyed the tavern songs in this game they are available to download for free until Feb. 9th:

http://www.dragonage.com/en_US/news/...songs-giveaway

[Peregrine]

Some awesome tavern songs in this game - will check it out.

[dubb93]

This was the longest game I ever played. Really really dragged on after hour 90. I managed to completes it at hour 160ish but skipped a zone. Even with the new ability to scale the world to your level, the challenge really drops off after the 1/2 mark (played on nightmare). My inquisitor's main nuke was doing 180k damage to High Dragons in roughly 15 seconds at level 24. That was almost 2/3 of their hp, they were toast the second time CDs rolled around. He also one shot the final boss after he finally stopped running away.

I kept trying to find another High Dragon boss fight like my very first one and could not find it. High Dragon #1 was a one hour epic whereas High Dragon 10 was a 1 minute snore.

I will say that the after credits cut scene has me googling a lot of things and I think I would still be excited for a new Dragon Age. They just really need to condense things and refine the combat some more.

EDIT: Not sure how many just played on PC with keyboard and mouse, but this game was designed for a controller and really requires one in order to maximize the combat. I played it both ways and IMO there is no comparison. It's like the complete opposite of DA: O which borderline requires a keyboard and mouse.