| Platform | OVERALL |
|---|---|
| PlayStation 4 | 8.80 |
| Overall | 8.80 |
|
After a stellar original title, Bioware had a misstep with Dragon Age 2. The scope of the game was shrunk down to one city and its surrounding areas. The lack of interesting environments and the small scale of the story were two of the most common complaints. Bioware took those critiques to heart when designing the third Dragon Age game as it has by far the largest game world of any Bioware game. This is a massive game in every which way but there are benefits and negatives that come from this new giant world focus. Inquisition borrows the game world structure of MMOs; you explore large areas that are self contained and are populated with all sorts of side quests to complete and new areas to discover. As you explore your map will begin to be filled with waypoints leading to many points of interest, it will be overwhelming. The first 50 hours of playtime is filled with a great sense of discovery as you jump from location to location, each vastly different from the last. From farmlands, to an undead bog, to a beach with a never ending storm that is being fueled by an evil spell; the variety of the areas keep you engaged. As with the size of the game world, the story is massive in scope as you lead a newly formed inquisition which develops into a massive army and shapes the entire nation. The game begins with a literal hole opening in the sky with a stream of demons invading the physical realm lead by an ancient god that wants to rule the world. Your character, the inquisitor, is the only one who can close these rifts that are opening across the nation of Thedas. The themes of the story parallel real world topics, mainly religion, homosexuality and racism. It only lightly touches on these as the main focus is destroy the evil demon wizard. And so your journey begins, with a mission to grow the inquisition by completing quests and building up your base of operations. This game does an excellent job of making you feel like you are in control of an upstart power player in world affairs. There is a war table at your base where you send agents to complete missions to gather supplies and sometimes unlock new areas. It is all done through menus and it can be a bit cumbersome to navigate but I always enjoyed feeling like I was commanding a major organization. In your home base you can converse with all members of your party which of course lead to character side quests. You can customize your party member's inventories and craft new equipment. My favorite but underutilized event at the base is when you judge criminals medieval style, from your throne, you may choose to spare someone or behead them for instance. Dragon Age Inquisition addresses many of the complaints of the combat system from the second game, mainly the lack of a tactical view. This is the first time the console versions have a tactical mode; this is easily accessed by pushing a button, the time stops and you may micromanage commands. Occasionally the cameras do get stuck on objects and the targeting system could be improved but for the most part it works well. Real time combat is fast and fluid and almost could pass for an action RPGS, shields even have real time blocking. For some strange reason though the AI controls have been butchered, allowing for only basic commands like choosing which spells the AI could use or not. Gone is any situational AI commands like using shields only when someone is below a certain health level, this means that for any advance battle micromanaging is a must. It's also a pain in the ass cause the game does not have the ability to queue up attacks so with four characters to manage it becomes a mess. As long as the battle is evenly matched you can easily get by with a mix of real time and tactical but any major boss battle will require a more attentive strategy. The general combat in the game is fun when you are leveled properly. The first half of the game should provide plenty of well balanced battles where using sound strategy is key. Classes have specialties which makes every character unique and there is always the ability to respec any character allowing for much experimentation. Most of the time you fight small mobs you find wandering around the world; only when you enter a mission area like a dungeon to battles really get intense. There are also rifts all around every area and these battles play out the same each time but with increasingly difficult enemies, though by the hundredth time you close a portal you are quite sick of them. I am glad the endless waves of enemies that populated Dragon Age 2 is gone but I do kind of miss the constant strategy that was required in that game, in contrast most regular battles you can sleep walk through. Dragons provide some of the toughest challenges and they would be interesting if not for the cheap ways you can defeat them. Once the honeymoon phase of the game is over a whole litany of issues become noticeable. The main issue is that level balancing is horrendous. Here is this giant world to explore with hundreds of side quests but if you do them all you level up far quicker than the game expects which means you become overpowered for all the story missions. I played the last 60 hours of the game on nightmare, the highest setting and it was still a cake walk. It doesn't help that one of the classes is practically broken, knight enchanter allows a mage to attack with a spirit blade that regenerates a shield basically creating an endless loop of invulnerability. As I reached the 70 hour mark all the locations and side missions began to blur together. So many waypoints, so many poor MMO like fetch quests. What happened to that story driven adventure Bioware games are known for. Nearly every moment in the Mass Effect game involved a major character and some story choice that impacted the course of your story. Not the case here, if you choose to explore the large areas you can go 10 to 20 hours without doing one important story moment. Instead you read random letters about random characters you don't care about. Yes it is impressive how fleshed out the lore of Dragon Age is but I am playing for the party characters and their story. When you go into the story missions that classic Bioware feel returns and I was left to wonder why wasn't the entire game like this. This new game structure left me with some interesting questions, is it on me, the player, to balance the story and side missions. I could have just as easily ignored the majority of side missions and focused on the story ones, making this game feel more intense. But then why have all this content if exploring all of it ruins the difficulty balancing and destroys any momentum the story has? Some side quests have to be completed to unlock the story missions, but only a small amount. It is a shame cause many of these areas are beautiful. There are certain missions within those areas that are absolutely worth playing, it's getting through all the repetitive junk to get to those that is the issue. My thoughts on this game went through a rollercoaster of emotions. If I write this review at the 60 hour mark it is my game of the year and it gets a higher score. 70 hours after that (I spent 130 hours on it and still skipped a whole area) I felt the game went on far too long and cannot sustain the amount of content it has. It also doesn't help that the final mission is complete garbage, second only to Mass Effect 3 as the worst bioware final mission ever; oh and it was glitched on the PS4 to boot. Again it is a shame cause when this game is at it's best it is magical. The cast is excellent, the story had major potential and the combat had the pieces in place to be really special. There is a whole multiplayer component that I only dabbled into, it is mostly straight combat and I don't feel that is the games strength. It seemed to be a quite deep multiplayer mode, not that this game needs any more content. Graphically the models themselves aren't the most impressive but the art direction is superb. There are many breathtaking vistas in the game. The musical score is movie quality, there are some incredible tracks that can fit the largest of movie fantasy epics. Dragon Age Inquisition is too ambitious a game; Bioware should stick to a more linear story driven structure like their past games. There will be others wholove this game and don't experience the same issues I did. Perhaps some one only does a small amount of side quests and finishes the story in 60 hours, they may love it. I have to review what I played and I feel like I played this game so long that I started to dislike it. I recommend only doing a small amount of side quests, explore enough to satisfy your curiosity and the moment you feel bored of the side quests do the next story mission. This is still one of the better games of the year and I saw glimpses of the game I wanted but the total package is not one of Bioware's best efforts. |
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Posted by Dvader Sun, 04 Jan 2015 16:59:44
Sun, 04 Jan 2015 20:10:26
The sheer size of this game scares gamers with little time, like me, away. Even if I had a PS4, I think I would skip this.
Sun, 04 Jan 2015 21:47:31
The sheer size of it scares you? Hmmm... where have I heard that one before? 
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