Dragon Age: Inqusition

BUY.

This.. is an amazing game. My first playthrough with a large portion of the side content left uncompleted clocks in around 92 hours. There's still quite a bit of meat left on the game for me to go out and explore now that I've completed the game, and there's so many choices I made I want to experience differently. This is a monster of a game.

It's so much easier this particular entry in the series to The Elder Scrolls games, because in DA:I you have massive areas to explore, and almost complete freedom on how you choose to explore them. You do have to unlock specific zones in order to visit them, and each zone a location on the world map you have to "travel" to, so it's not a seamless transition, but it's a massive change over the previous two games in the series. 

The first big change you'll notice is to the tactical "mode" of game, where you zoom out and treat the game like a top-down turn based rpg; you queue up actions and hold R2 (I'm on PS4) to progress time, second by second. I'm a huge fan of CRPG's like Divinity: Original Sin, so when I first dabbled with the tactical mode, I LOVED it. However, when you actually get to using it in real combat situations, it's not all that great.

The camera is difficult to maneuver properly, and it constantly resets your view when you switch characters; you also have trouble zooming out as far as you'd like, and the need to constantly hold R2 is both a curse and a blessing. While I'd like to just have my characters execute their moves and then freeze time, I have to constantly reassign their attacks; it makes things more varied and interesting, because I can constantly change my tactics to reflect the battlefield, and probably defeat enemies I'd otherwise be unable to, but it's also incredibly trying when you're so used to a turn-based style of gameplay.. a silly complaint, but in the end, I just stuck with realtime gameplay and avoided the tactical view for the most part. The only time I really felt I needed it was during dragon fights, when I was moving the AI out of the way of breath attacks or fireballs.

Which leads me to a pretty BIG complaint about the game -- the tactical menu was completely neutered. In origins, and possibly even DA2 you could customize your AI's tactics to behave exactly as you wanted them to, and once you mastered the tactics menu, you didn't even need to play the game. You could just sit back and have your AI play the game for you. It was an incredibly deep system, where you could say "Don't use this spell until this enemy is attacking this player, and don't use it unless you have this much Mana.." it lead to incredibly intelligent partners that you didn't feel the need to constantly take control of and micromanage. The tactics menu is now down to 5 commands, which are incredibly vague. "Use a health potion at X% health." that's about the level of depth offered to you now. Use X at Y%. There is no more, "Use X at Y%, unless you're attacking Z, then Use XYZ."

That's not to say the AI in Inquisition is terrible, per se. The melee-oriented AI is pretty good at getting its guard up, and keeping enemies taunted; the mages mostly stay out of harms way, but there have just been more times than I can count where Sera would run up to an enemy and get killed, or stand perfectly still when a dragon was breathing fire on her, forcing me to command her to move your ass out of the way so you don't die. Support from the AI was pretty good as well -- they'd typically cast barrier on me without me having to command them, and for the most part, stuck close when I needed them to. This is all on Normal, however. I have no idea how this fares in the harder game modes, but I can see it being incredibly frustrating.

What amplifies the stupidity of the AI and makes you want to bash your head into a wall is the healing system, however. Healing spells have been removed from the game completely -- which isn't too big of an issue on its own. You have the barrier spell, which acts as a second health bar, that slowly degrades over time. Once that's gone, however, you're fending for yourself, with your limited supply of potions, which are shared. You have 8 to begin with (and I never bothered taking perks for more, I didn't need them all that much in ordinary encounters) and you can only replenish them at camps, or supply caches. When you have braindead AI sitting there taking massive amounts of damage, then chugging your very limited supply of potions, which your tank needs? That's when you have a problem. Again, you do have a barrier spell to offset the damage, and warriors have "guard", which is another health bar ontop of that, but the cooldown on barrier is long enough that you can't constantly sustain it, unless you specifically gear yourself to do that, and without a deep tactics system, you can't rely on the AI to do it themselves.

They have made some positive changes to the potion mechanics though, you research "upgrades" on your potions and can amplify the effects of them. This makes upgrading your basic health potion incredibly enticing, especially considering it's "free" -- there's no material cost to replenish them. You have other potions like a regeneration potion, resistance potions, and even grenades that you can slot in your potion bar; you initially only have two potion slots, but you can unlock more with belts, or perks in the game. These extra potions are unique to the individual carrying them, and are not shared -- which is another thing that I both like, and am slightly annoyed by. It means you can carry more potions, and in the case of the regeneration potion, you can upgrade it to give you an healing "area" around you, so you can have four times the normal amount of potions per character, but this costs a few materials to replenish the potions, and there are times with the grenades that one character would be in position to use one, but they were on the other character. Minor gripe and just something that annoyed me, but overall, I really enjoy this new system.

My final gripe with the game is the "collectible fatigue". When you first start the game, you're dropped off in the hinterlands. It's a massive area, and it has shards of .. something to collect, rifts for you to close, landmarks to visit, and quests to accept. At first you'll spend tens of hours exploring each and every nook and cranny in this area, looking for mosaic pieces and trying to find hidden treasure. By the time you've cleared four or five of these zones though, the fatigue really sets in. After around 50 hours into the game I stopped collecting the shards altogether; I'd only hit up the landmarks if I was immediately near them, and I ignored rifts completely unless they were directly in my path. It was incredibly fun finding all of them at first, but the reward for closing rifts is a fight and some essence for runecrafting (which is a pretty important thing, mind you) and collecting the shards is .. for opening up doors inside a specific temple later in the game. I won't give any details on that to avoid spoilers, but I didn't really find it all that worth it. Landmarks don't really grant anything else other than lore, and I don't really care about the elves history.

That aside, I'm absolutely loving everything else about the game. Combat is incredibly fun; I started as a mage, and specialized as a necromancer, and there's nothing more satisfying than using walking bomb on a guy just as he dies, and setting off a chain explosion of death and carnage. Enemies are clearly defined in their roles, and if you didn't like the "spawning from thin air" of DA2? It's gone from this; you'll only face the enemies you see, until you move on to another area, no waves of enemies DA2 style. (I personally enjoyed it in DA2, but I'm also a crazy person who enjoyed DA2 despite itself.) Cross-class combos are still in this game, and they seem much easier to pull off than before; I constantly see effects triggering on the enemies I'm fighting, and the AI is actually pretty competent when it comes to setting them off.

The RPG-ness of the game is there in full force; gone are the "special armors" of DA2 per character! You have full customization over your parties armor, weapons, accessories, skills, the lot. Characters you recruit later in the game don't even come with skill points spent -- you're set to build them however you like. (There's also a merchant who sells a respec amulet from the beginning of the game - the first one is 1 gold, then he sells an infinite amount after that for 350 gold or so, if you're so inclined.) The characters do initially come with armor specially for them, and Varric can only use bianca, but the armor can be removed and thrown away (as you should do because their beginner armor is terrible) and Bianca is pretty upgradeable within the crafting system (which I'll touch on later) so you don't really feel like you're missing out in that regard. You no longer spend stat points on level up; instead you're granted stat points in the skill tree, by unlocking abilities which while a bit silly, make more sense than anything else. Sure, you can't have a rogue who has 100 points in magic, but your rogue likely couldn't use that stat anyways, so it's unnecessary. A good change in my opinion, however I do understand people who would feel slighted by that. 

The crafting system is FANTASTIC in inquisition, too. While a bit  annoying that you have to find or buy the schematics to make items, because the masterwork schematics for tier 3 items seem pretty rare, it also allows the intrepid explorer to find tier 3 masterwork schematics far earlier than they should, and so they gain an incredible power boost. You also have tiered materials, from 1 to 4 (however outside of dragon items, I didn't see anything above tier 3) which are common, rare, or masterwork. Rare items typically provide larger boosts to the items you craft, and you can use the highest tier you have in any tier schematic; tiering is more or less to provide you with insight to the "level range" of those schematics / materials, with tier 1 being lower levels, say, 1 to 5, tier to being 6 to 12, and tier 3 being 13+ (if not higher). Masterwork materials can only be put into a special masterwork slot (which some schematics don't even have) and they provide unique bonuses; for example, I crafted a bow that had a 10% chance to cast chain lightning... and it worked beautifully. The abilties masterwork items provide will work even if that character  can't use that ability themselves, which adds an extra level of depth and customization to your setup. Alongside that, you have slots on your weapons and armor that you can craft or buy upgrades for. Swords have hilts and pommels, for example. Axes have hafts. Bows have grips; staves have blades, grips, or heads.. and these too are customizeable, however they (to my knowledge) do not let you use a masterwork material (which makes perfect sense - up to 3 unique abilities on a weapon? A biiit overkill.) This allows you to craft some incredibly powerful weapons and armor however, and weapons can be taken even further. Non-staff weapons have a rune slot and can be given elemental damage on top of their normal damage, while staffs can use spirit runes for spirit damage. All weapons can use enemy specific runes (like dragon slaying runes, for example) which towards the end of the game, the highest end runes had pretty significant bonuses; a +16 or +32 to damage may not sound like a lot, but when my crafted staff was capping out at 90 damage, +32 damage ontop of that was a pretty nice boost.

The story is written fantastically, and has some pretty hilarious moments. There was one point in the story that a barbarian from a group I had destroyed made his way to my castle, and was throwing goats at my walls. Not launching them with a catapult, or using magic, no no! He was picking up goats, and throwing them at my castle walls. I hadn't laughed that hard in a long, long time. It even did a family guy cut when my advisor informed me, and you saw a goat flying and bouncing off the castle walls. Fantastic. The lore in the game is as deep and expansive as you'd expect in the game, and the characters are incredibly 3 dimensional. It isn't the case of DA2 where you don't care about anyone outside of one or two specific characters -- I was heavily invested in many characters who weren't even companions, and spoke to them as often as I could. Hell, I even had a love interest in this game sheerly because I actually cared about her as a character, and not because I wanted to see a awkward sex scene (which to my slight dissapointment, you only kiss this character, no awkward sex scenes here. Womp womp.) I absolutely fell in love with Sera and Blackwall; they played off eachother so well, as a naive child and a fatherly figure in my party, and they almost seemed to team up against any third party member I brought along. It was wonderful.

This game is also 110% Dragon Age fanservice, and if you've played the previous two games it will blow your mind. It ties up so many loose ends, gives so much background information, you find out what happened to the previous games main characters, you find out more about the side characters, you find out more about the expansive world, about the blights, the darkspawn, the tevinter, anything you could want to know about the Dragon Age universe? I'm pretty sure they go over it atleast briefly in Inquisiton. There were so many fantastic cameos, so many references, there were easter eggs, and so much more. This game is absolutley Bioware standing on their own saying "Look, guys. We made some mistakes. We can still make those games you love, and this is proof. Take this. Live it, love it. This is the Dragon Age you always wanted." and I am so hyped for the new mass effect because of it. I cannot wait to see what they're doing moving forward, my faith has been restored in Bioware; this game was Origins level of good, and I want MORE.