Dragon Age Inquisition Review

[Tobal]

best thing about the update is the radar ping graphic when you use sonar, helps a ton finding where the heck the ping is coming from.

[Uli]

no update for Xbox One yet, but the radar thing was already implemented.

has the romance meter gone? if so, how to find out about the affection of your party members? also, not a single dragon fight yet, by the way. is dragon hunting a specail quest?

[Tobal]

Lol i never noticed it before somehow... anyway for the love metre the only way i seen to tell is the characters card art changes. As for dragons there for 90% of them (killed 7 so far) just about finding the nest on each map, sometimes take a map operation to reach unreachable areas or finding in map transport.

[Uli]

i came across 2 dragons yet but their apppearance seemed rather scripted to me. one was fighting with a giant which was stunning to watch. he eventually flew off and i killed what was left of the giant with just one shot. cheap but epic victory!

in terms of romance i didn't notice any change in Cassandra's card appearance. she really is a tough choice for romance as it's very hard to get any approval from her if your not totally convinced of the holy cause. that's kind of annoying and i wonder if, when and how this "romance" is ever being concluded. anyone managed yet?

also, is it possible to romance more than one party member and also none-party members like harding? i occasionally get romance dialogue options with her.

[Tobal]

I've been pulled aside by certain party members into cut scenes to see if I was playing about or wanted something to happen, Harding was one of them... broke her heart . In the original if you went slutty it would meet disapproval of the other members you romanced and can cause people to leave the party.

Reached level 24 and done near all the side quests, 9/10 dragons slain to which im expecting the Arch dragon to be the 10th, about 80hrs... probably not many main missions to go after Arbor Woods, and so far I feel all this build up and alliances forged haven't been needed in the same way the armies came together in origins, hopefully I'll get to see all my work pay off at the end, otherwise playing selfish asshole (if I play 2nd run through) would be just as easy.

[Tobal]

And finished. Can't say im all that chuffed about the final fight as it a slave to the gameplay but the story was good enough to keep me playing to end and gave a few surprises in the last 3 story missions which actually felt like it had been planned since Origins, hats off to bioware. Liked the ending and the epilogue which did leave out what everyone went on to do, so i assume thats to free them up for another game.

My ending

->Open Spoiler<-

Allied with the old elf, and had morri drink from the well, Flemith found her from that and took the old god soul out of Morri's son and left without a fight, later died in Solos arms sending what looked like her combined (triple) soul in to the mirror (never trusted that bore). Other than that Morrigan using the wells knowledge to the form of a dragon and fought the arch dragon to half HP for me, not that a needed help as i could of solo it

I had Celene execute Gaspond, but left the Elf alive which I was told is acting like terrorist organisation now, this lead to Celene growing cold to the inquisition and the possibility of war.

I used Blackwall to save half the Wardens in mission against them, saved Hawke over Loghain who then travelled to Warden HQ(to write her out the story), the southern wardens along with the a spared "Blackwall" rebuilt the wardens into a better organisation and is perhaps having a secret war with the northern HQ where Hawke disappeared to and has not been known since.

Leliana became the 5th and brought harsh and bloody changes to the chantry in order modernise it, firmly behind the inquisition, lets mages govern themselves.

Mages of the inquisition, who I choose over the Templars formed a new Mage council with that ex warden mage Fiona leading them, no trouble so far.

Morrigan and son leave skyhold and speak of the inquisition staying strong.

Had a crack a multiplayer to, seems to be a 4/6 player co-op in random missions getting loot to level up to get perks and random chest with loot cards in them, seemed decent enough that i stick with it, similar ME mp i guess.

[Golgo]

Thanks for extensive impressions, Tobal, through to end. I've requested this game from Santa. Presuming I've been a good boy, would you recommend starting on normal or hard? I've read reviews that normal isn't too challenging/rewarding. Be interested to know your views.

[Uli]

i am playing on normal and can attest it's not too challenging if you do lots of sidequests and level up quickly. so if you like to play tactical and don't mind dieing often you should ramp up the difficulty.

i have put in appr. 50 hours so far and i am level 15. just killed my first dragon in a battle lasting for nearly 30 minutes. the last 10 minutes of it i fought without any health potions and my party was sometimes down to just one. epic!

@ Tobal, good work! how is your completion rate in terms of sidequests?

[Golgo]

Thanks Uli, I may try hard and see how I get on.

[Tobal]

Depends on how you want to play, I imagine hardmode is just the more mobs, hitting harder with more HP which probably won't be fun if you need to babysit the party for every minor scuffle, normal mode was little challenge if you did a lot of sidequests and barely moved locations, I think the best way to play this game is to head off to a new location asap and have a poke around, if its 3 odd levels above you it will provide a decent challenge, note down the level of the open locations mobs as it will be a the standard for most of the map until you get near dragon nests, so If place is to high for you, you can come back in a couple of levels.

For the sidequests, I completed all but 2 (half completed) quests left in the overworld map, possibly 3 has I was missing a few shards to open the last spirit door.. so im not sure how im missing any as there no shard quest active, so I'm guessing the last few might be on some map I failed to open via the wartable which is possible as there are few operations I can still complete in the aftergame although some I did have, have now gone as they depended on the war effort like working out the weakness to a major boss (in the end I destroy him with my invincible tank). I was getting close to 90 hrs.. and Hissing wastes, that map is a lie as the scales are nothing like the other maps so expect twice the journey (also a good reason it has 7 camps on it).

a few more tips, the 1st inquisition perks in each table will give you extra options when talking to people so if you want to try and talk someone of a ledge or find out as much lore as possible it would be wise to these 1st, followed by bigger pockets and armour plans. You can get your hands on some high lvl plans for armour early on that trump the majority of the games treasures if you craft them with teir3 or 4 items, I was rocking 300+ armour and 60+armour shield by midway , I imagine this is the only way to play if planning to do hard mode to keep the damage to your party down for none sword/shield types.

[Uli]

anyone else having problems with freezing dialoge cutscenes? happened to me first with the Cassandra romance scene and then serveral times after seemingly randomly.

apart from that still enjoying the game a lot. put in about 70 hours alrealdy and i still have tons of stuff to do. the worlds is so massive, even if compared to Skyrim or GTA5, and the level design is very mindful and full of varity. combat it also a good blend of DA:O and DA:2 which sometimes lack the tactical finesses of DA:O but it's so much more fun and the AI does mostly a good job so no need for too much handholding. the tactical camera needs some work though as it's to limited in range and options for adjustment.

[Tobal]

The freezing happened 3 times for me, had to mash the skip dialogue button to get through but then lost out on the story.

I'm going through playing as 2 handed warrior, tyrant(to everyone) on hard and the 2nd time through its not as fun, the limitations of the combat just stick out when you have use tactical camera move the tank to go head 1st in to every fight (or end up losing a lot of potions) and micro manage where the idiot A.I. plonks the mages and archers. Knowing the side quests are all fetch this for that aside from about 3 big in map quests which effect that maps geography just to get my exp up it looking like to much work, when I know now it barely effects in the game story no matter what alliances(all) I pulled together for the 2nd to last mission and the epilogues still drawings and narration you get are only effected by the main story line.

Also doesn't help here's no HK or Shale archetype to tag along so you get nothing but bitchy ass whining from everyone (not gotten to iron bull yet but I fully expect his caring for the soldiers to get into the way of good ole tyranny) and on the whole I really grew to dislike Sera at the end of my 1st play through, a retarded murderous robinhood, spewing out the most internet teen'tumblr bullcrap I've heard into along time, leaving only Dorian(who really is just a modern day hipster, lashing out at society), varric and ironbull as the only decent characters, the rest being to boring and bland to put up with.

Multiplayer seems alright but if the game modes for lvl15+ are just more fight through random assorted furniture tilesets on the 3 maps followed by mob rush at the end (which I know now can be won by retreating to entrance and bottlenecking) it will run out of steam quickly. I played about 10+ matches each lasted about 20/30 odd minutes and I thanks to the RNG I haven't gotten anything for my own class, or any of the items needed to open the other locked classes. If anyone still playing and want to team I'm game.

what prompted me to talk about it again, was reading that the game has sold half as much as DA2 for the 1st week and is still tracking poorly which has to be badnews for Bioware, im guessing the DA2 burned a lot of fingers off pre-ordering and reviews confirming the combat is more DA2 than 1 and chucking out all the A.I. options didn't sit well core fanbase, along the preview press I saw (outside of E3) was about how fabulously LGBT the main cast is (which doesn't really feature at all in any story points) probably put a lot of people off, and when its got nothing similar riding against it on next-gen it really is a poor performance the game didn't deserve.

Bioware the next Westwood or Bullfrog?

[Bassman]

I am still at the Crossroads (doing a lot of side missions). I did go to the city though as I had gained plenty of Power.

Fortunately (?) I never bought DA2 so I was happy to pre-order this.

I did nearly fire this up after my aggravations with Far Cry 4.

[Brad]

The freezing happened 3 times for me, had to mash the skip dialogue button to get through but then lost out on the story.

Sad to hear of the bugs in this. I will get it eventually if they fix all the major issues.

Current gaming makes me wonder if we could shame the publishers a bit by creating a central site e.g. www.isitstillbroken.com that lists the current state of the most recent games to let people know the degree of brokenness of each game. We have enough people on here that we could maintain such a site ourselves I reckon.

EDIT: note that isn't a real website so don't try to click on it.

[Finsbury Girl]

The freezing happened 3 times for me, had to mash the skip dialogue button to get through but then lost out on the story.

I'm going through playing as 2 handed warrior, tyrant(to everyone) on hard and the 2nd time through its not as fun, the limitations of the combat just stick out when you have use tactical camera move the tank to go head 1st in to every fight (or end up losing a lot of potions) and micro manage where the idiot A.I. plonks the mages and archers. Knowing the side quests are all fetch this for that aside from about 3 big in map quests which effect that maps geography just to get my exp up it looking like to much work, when I know now it barely effects in the game story no matter what alliances(all) I pulled together for the 2nd to last mission and the epilogues still drawings and narration you get are only effected by the main story line.

Also doesn't help here's no HK or Shale archetype to tag along so you get nothing but bitchy ass whining from everyone (not gotten to iron bull yet but I fully expect his caring for the soldiers to get into the way of good ole tyranny) and on the whole I really grew to dislike Sera at the end of my 1st play through, a retarded murderous robinhood, spewing out the most internet teen'tumblr bullcrap I've heard into along time, leaving only Dorian(who really is just a modern day hipster, lashing out at society), varric and ironbull as the only decent characters, the rest being to boring and bland to put up with.

Multiplayer seems alright but if the game modes for lvl15+ are just more fight through random assorted furniture tilesets on the 3 maps followed by mob rush at the end (which I know now can be won by retreating to entrance and bottlenecking) it will run out of steam quickly. I played about 10+ matches each lasted about 20/30 odd minutes and I thanks to the RNG I haven't gotten anything for my own class, or any of the items needed to open the other locked classes. If anyone still playing and want to team I'm game.

what prompted me to talk about it again, was reading that the game has sold half as much as DA2 for the 1st week and is still tracking poorly which has to be badnews for Bioware, im guessing the DA2 burned a lot of fingers off pre-ordering and reviews confirming the combat is more DA2 than 1 and chucking out all the A.I. options didn't sit well core fanbase, along the preview press I saw (outside of E3) was about how fabulously LGBT the main cast is (which doesn't really feature at all in any story points) probably put a lot of people off, and when its got nothing similar riding against it on next-gen it really is a poor performance the game didn't deserve.

Bioware the next Westwood or Bullfrog?

I MAY buy this if I read they've fixed the PC controls and Tacital camera. The more I read about this game the more I shake my head and think WTF? Is this supposed to be an RPG? Glad sales are poor, perhaps they will make a proper RPG next time.