Dragon Age Inquisition review
Well, I finished the game. Took me approximately 150 hours do so. I scouted, gathered and opened whatever I could, but still was unable to finish my "Bottles Collection", "Mosaic Collection" and "Thrones upgrade Collection". Perhaps I've missed some other minor stuff, but I have run the game in every direction and believe that I have seen it all. Those have the right to post, more or less, detail and objective review.
Possible spoilers, read for your own risk.
Warning - massive wall of text bellow.
The story (3 out of 5):
This game positioned as RPG, those I will evaluate the story in regarding to that genre. The story of the game is average. It is not as bad as it could be, I guess, but it still feels lacking. First of all, the game is too short (game story), for the game developed by such company as EA/BioWare. Second, the story itself lacks the "feelings". The only story events that was rather interesting and dramatic was at the beginning of the game. There could be a couple events later, but it is strongly depend on your World settings, from the DA Keep. After that, it was just plain and boring. The final of the game and the ending was no different, felt cut and way too plain.
The gameplay (2 out of 5):
No secret that the game is full of minor bugs and have some of serious ones, despite been announced as a finished product. Mentioned that because that is strongly affects the gameplay. First and, likely, most important thing, that the game have a bit of tutorial. While I believe that finding your way around and see what is what is not so difficult in this game, tutorial is still a good thing to have (found the "Search" option thanks to it). The gameplay in itself is easy to understand and handy.
There is nothing "pressing" you to do something or dragging you forward. You are free to do whatever you want, go search the regions or advance the story.
Equipment and gear parts crafting/upgrading system is interesting, but lacks the variety, most of the designs looks alike. Not to tell that sometimes to craft most powerful armor you need to use some materials with "questionable" colors, like pink or poisonous orange. The color of armor could be made to be set differently, since some people would felt reluctant to run your male Inquisitor or Iron Bull in a pink armor. The potion crafting/upgrading is nice too, makes you consider your resources and be on look out for them.
The "court" feature, while not bad, it's lack the substance. Most of the sentences you deal out have next to no impact on the game World or your gameplay, just some comrades affections shifting.
The Skyhold modernization is... well, it is extremely lame. Only three possible upgrades with two options that dos not actually change anything, just a little shift in furnishing one or another spot of the Skyhold, while the castle looks remain deserted and half ruined in most places throughout whole game. The most ridiculous upgrade is upgrade of the "Garden", while choosing a "church" upgrade adds some statues to the garden, making it look more featured, choosing other option just adds 4 flour pots... And one question remain lingering in my mind, what was the rest of this "Logging Sites" and "Quarries" for, if you already built all 3 possible upgrades?
Advertisement promised us the Keeps customization and further region development that responds to that specialization, which in turn would give us one or another "strategic?" resources. Well, the game have non of it. You just capture the Keep and that is it, nothing changes. The best you can do is do some "missions" to unlock additional region of the map, which is completely irrelevant to whether you captured the Keep or not.
The World we was promised, supposed to be huge, From Tevinter Empire to Orley farthest reaches, from Karokari Waistlends to the cities of the Free Mark. And again the game have non of it, well, we have a huge map that lies on the strategic table, thats true. But I have to mention that the location we actually have access to is quite large. But even that location, developers managed to "ruin". Why every open World location in the game is turned in to climbing polygon is beyond me. Maybe developers wanted to make maps more diverse, but I guess they forgot that if everything is "diverse" in the same way, well, it is no longer diverse.
Character creation, while it is quite detailed and complex in most aspect, it is surprisingly lacking/few on hairstyles, voices and other fixed details. For a game from EA/Bioware it is vary strange.
One minor thing, why is Sera the only companion that we can kick out at ant time? No other companion has such conversation option. Do developers hate poor girl that much?
And last but not least, the characters and their relationship. The game developers honestly tried to make them good. And they half succeeded. The characters are quite interesting and unique, from main character, that looks actually alive, in contrast with some other games, to plot characters such as Empress Selene and King Alister (depends from your DA Keep settings), tho he appears only briefly and only if you peek mages as allies. As for your comrades, you can actually talk to them and learn about their past and even change the way they look on the world, trough their personal quests. It is quite interesting. But for such big game, I feel that developers could pay a bit more attention to our comrades and how they interact with the world and Inquisitor decision, beyond "Cassandra approves/disapproves".
The romance, no modern RPG could call itself an RPG without one or several of those. They look poorly in DAI, in the DA Origins some conversation, heck the ending itself could be altered by your romantic choices, not to tell about endless humor and sarcasm that was poured at you if you romanced Morrigan. In DAI, you have one scene when you initiate romance and (extremely ugly looking graphic vise) scene of kissing, which you can initiate at any time you are at Skyhold, that's it.
The battle system (1 out of 5):
We was promised a glorified return of old school RPG battle system (based on DA Oigin) with "unprecedented before" level of tactical and strategic combat. The game have non of it. The combat itself is dangerously close to a mindless slasher (no offense meant to people that love that genre). In the chase to cover all platforms at the same time, developers made the game to lose it's appeal to PC. The only interesting feature that was added is potions/bombs, it is quite interesting idea, forcing you to use your head as to what to take with you and how to use it. Other then that, things dos not look so bright. The tactical pause is reduced to a poor parody of what we had in DA Origin, it is useless in most cases as the camera flows too low and love to "stuck?" at various places. The available hotbar, without a way to expand it, limits the abilities that we can use in combat, making us unable to fully use the potential of our characters. For some unknown reason the game was stripped from the healing magic (abilities tree), cutting us off from the potential playstile way. The companions AI is extremely poor, ranger fighters would go in melee or if pulled would stay there and will receive damage. While our melee fighters aether run around the field, chasing new target every time we switch it, or stay still and gape at foes if they set to "protect me". On top of that we can't create a chain of skills, those, we are forced to take control of our companions every time we want to put them out of harm way or make them cast a skill that we need. Why? Because DAI have no AI settings, other then "protect me" and "attack my target". Developers did not even bothered to just copy the system from DA Origins or DA II, at the very least. And to wrap it up, the developers tries to make up to us for all that with new feature, "magic shields" (for mages) and "armor levels" (for warriors), rogues have to do whatever, I guess, maybe developers dos not like them. This new feature are meant to serve as temporary additional protection instead auras and others alike abilities from DA Origins. And while it is serves the role, more or less, I can not help but wonder, why developers have to go out of their way and try to invent a wheel, when they already had a perfectly recommended itself and loved by many players system from DA Origins.
The game graphic and models (3 out of 5):
The graphic and overall picture looks beautiful, especially the look from the balcony of the Skyhold or other high places. However all the beauty of the game easily negotiated by a horrible models. The characters models looks bad, some parts of them constantly get misplaced. The movements during conversation and in movies looks somewhat robotic and stiff. The mimic is awful, especially when some parts start to act independently. When the characters try to smile and the edge of his/her lips remains still, that looks bizarre. Some objects looks artificial and too "shiny", especially most hairstyles. Some objects are misplaced so they go "merging" with other objects or "fly" around. And finally some characters looks so ugly, I know that what some find attractive other could find repulsive. But general views of beauty are not so different, would it kill you to make Sera more pretty? Like closer to how she looks at her card (in companions selecting screen). I can't believe EA/BioWare did this after nearly "perfect" (graphic vise) Mass Effect.
Music (4 out of 5):
The only thing that is actually good in this game, but unfortunately, there is only one notable background track. Naturally it is the game them.
Summary (2,6 out of 5):
However one can look at it the outcome looks sad. EA/BioWare have means and support to make a great game. Especially since they promised that they would listen to their games fans and have learned the past mistakes. Yet, we see again the situation when yet again the game developing company stepped on the same rake. It is really depressing to see a game industry to degrade so much and so quickly. Once grate companies, that given the World one of the best games ever made, becoming some money hungry junk makers. DA Inquisition could be so much more. It could rival Mass Effect (will not talk about how it ended tho...). But what we got: it is somewhat bugged, cut to a bare minimum, unfinished beta version of the software, created for a sole reason - to extract money...
The only thing I could think off, for developers, to improve the grim situation, is to release a massive DLC, like the one Origins had: Dragon Age Origins Awakening, was the name. And to finally include all cut off features it it. Naturally, it should be free for those who bought the game, as a compensation for the lies that we was feed with to buy DAI.
Or, they could make a sequel DAI 2, since the scene was set for a continuation in the DAI. But I wonder, how many people will believe you again? I am sure, that I will not pay a penny until the game is out and I research all independent game footage and reviews out there.
Feel free discuss the review or the game, you can go so far as to add your own review if you wish, maybe developers would heed us.
P.S.: And now, once great customer support starts to decline as well. Contacted the service to discuss refund, and while they was not plain insulting, the conversation left me with quite poor impression...
Here is the link to the txt file with the log, feel free to amuse yourself and read trough. Would be glad if it will see some people with authority within EA/BioWare, maybe that would help in some way - https://mega.co.nz/#!KpYlEbgD!W4i7fQ4olDV2cXOVAOUJU_tGrzuZAiTUIDEmtNXrPB0
And here is a couple links for my other posts for a possible reference: DAI - issues and DAI as it was intended?
