Dragon Age Inquisition Review

Dragon Age Inquisition is the newest game from RPG games developer Bioware. Dragon Age Inquisition is the third game based on the Dragon Age franchise created by Bioware. DAI is an action-RPG with a couple elements of strategy but ultimately it's a semi-open world RPG that places you into a dark fantasy world.

Setting
Dragon Age Inquisition is set after the 2nd game in the series with recurring characters from the previous title as well as the first. The world is constant and it places you into the continent of Thedas of which you can explore from one side of the continent to the other. Now don't confuse this as a complete open world game because it isn't, DAI features a semi-open world experience meaning that you can travel to large pieces of land through a world map system but you can't traverse from one side of the map to the other without loading inbetween. Even though the world isn't open world, the land masses you can explore in each region is large enough to give you a few hours of content.

The lore of Dragon Age Inquisition isn't as clear to a first timer as it is to a veteran of the series. The game fails to particularly entice you into the world of DA as interesting or believable. What DA does do right is steer away from the general bad guys vs good guys and instead pits different kinds of factions, per se, against each other as well as against the main enemy of demons. The world of Dragon Age is unique in its own right but it isn't something we haven't seen before. Elves, dwarves, humans, mages and demons, all the types of characters you'd expect from a generic high fantasy world. All the factions are ultimately fighting against demons but the way they handle the problem is what divides the groups from each other. There are Templars and Mages of which continuously are at war against each other.

The world of Dragon Age, to me, felt generic and slightly boring. It wasn't interesting enough to get me to go to wikipedia sites and read more about the lore but instead sort of pushed me away from it because nothing ever came up that sounded interesting enough to find out more about. The only thing I searched up and read about was the recurring characters of which are Varric and Leliana and a few others I'm not going to mention for spoilers sake.

Story/Story
The story of DAI is as generic as you can get. You are the lone hero among a group of similar minded people wanting to get rid of the blight of demons that threatens the land of Thedas. You and your band of merry men and women venture across the lands of intrigue and politics in order to defeat the ultimate boss of which all this debacle started from.

What does separate the story a bit from the general heroes fighting demons is that early on in the game you decide whether to befriend the Mages or Templars of which are at war against each other. This adds a little bit more to the table of political conflict as not only do these two factions go at each other, there are actual political figures within the game that play a role in the overall story.

The story in general has a few holes in it that they don't necessarily explain. As I said before, it is your typical hero save world story so don't expect a lot of sacrifices to be made along your journey. The story was fine in its simple state but it definitely left me with more to desire from the whole experience as it felt a bit dry and gave me that feeling of,
"What? That's it?".

Story/Characters
Even though the story felt a bit shallow, the characters you can interact with was probably the reason that the story was so unbearably normal. All the characters that you can interact with in the story or on a personal level all have their own personal stories to tell, the backstory, the future plans and the reason why they joined your group in the first place. If you so wish to continue to find out more about a certain character, all you need to do is talk to them after every main mission or so and they'll spill their heart out to you. Some might do it on a romantic level but the main point is that each character has a few quests you can embark on to discover more about them.

These quests and character interactions is what kept me interested in the characters of the generic story. Their stories were well thought out and well written and each character had an interesting quest line to follow up their stories.

Gameplay
DAI has your typical RPG elements of leveling up. You can spec your skills, change your weapons, armour and accessories. You can also adjust the levels of aggression or the way your teammates use potions as you wish. The leveling is short with a max soft cap of 20 which took me around 14-15 hours to reach on my first play through. You traverse through lands in Thedas ranging from deserts to snow covered landscapes and even into swamps. All these locations have different kinds of enemies for you to fight and many quests for you to partake in and the map objectives are clearly laid out well enough for you to complete a whole map ins 1-3 hours depending on your general playing speed.

One thing I found extremely disappointing was the amount of loot you could acquire from fights or from chests. The loot table was minimal and I found myself using the same weapons for long periods of time because I couldn't craft or find anything better. This was one of the biggest downfalls for me in the game. The inability to upgrade my armour because the game couldn't create any for me or I couldn't create any for myself.

Even though there are many quests to do in the game, only a handful of them are any interesting. Most of the quests have you running around collecting, finding or killing stuff and returning for a reward. The fetch quests felt boring and uninspiring but because 100% a single map was easy to do and the quests were easy enough to finish quickly, I was somewhat obliged to do it for the 100% completion of the map along with a crap reward and a few points of EXP.

Combat
The combat is action based somewhat similar to action MMOs with your skills you can use based on a stamina system. Similar to mana but not called mana, that replenishes with each regular hit. The combat in general was fun and simple enough to master quite quickly. You'll find yourself spamming the same skills or spells over and over again, sometimes in an order to achieve maximum efficiency but nothing so bad as to stop you from playing.

There is a tactical mode that pauses the camera for you to survey the battlefield and line up skills while the game is frozen. This dynamic isn't really needed until boss fights or dragon fights.

Of all the fights you encounter in this game, boss fights would rank second in difficulty and fun with fighting dragons as the main highlight of the game. Dragon fights are tough and enjoyable the first few times but you'll soon realise that all Dragons have the same attack types and you easily counter them. But knowing the combat mechanics of the dragons didn't put me off as much as it sounds like I'm saying as the fights were really nice and epic.

Overall,
DAI is a good game, probably the best game to come out of 2014 of which was a pretty bad year for gaming. For me, it felt like the only game really worth playing in the year and I definitely enjoyed my time with the game. I know Bioware are known for being one of the best at making RPG games but in my opinion DAI had many flaws as I was playing through it that I wish hadn't existed. I don't know if you'll get the same problems as I did but I do believe that Dragon Age Inquisition is definitely an RPG worth checking out, even if it's your first Dragon Age game. Through all its flaws and small problems, it does come out as a great game.

8/10