Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Reading the reviews, it's always amazing how people interpret things in a video game. Some background: I'm in my 30s. I grew up on crpgs. At the time, I thought BG 2 was the best thing ever (today? I don't think it's aged all that well.) I enjoyed DA:O, though thought it a bit dated in being so closely tied to crpgs like BG 2. While I enjoyed the writing of DA 2, I hated how cheap the game was (never in a AAA game have I ever seen so many short cuts taken with recycled textures, etc), and I also hated how much potential story seemed to have been glossed over (when looking at the recycled textures issue, it was easy to assume many other design choices were due to being on a limited time frame). So, Inquisition. The controls are a bit gimpy, but after putting 20+ hours into it, I'd gotten used to it. At the beginning, however, playing a melee character was all sorts of frustration. Now that I'm used to it? Not a problem, but ranged (whether archer or mage) is infinitely simpler/easier to play. The world...is vast. I applaud Bioware on the size of the world, and while the inevitable comparisons to the Elder Scrolls games have to be made, I consider this far and away better than the typical ES game map. If only because there's a heck of a lot more variety than cave with dead people and heads staked in front of it. There's more quests than you can shake a stick at. A ton of them are fluff (gather 10 of this, etc). They're rather organically done, which is a plus, but they're still kill 10 rats. The war table, which is where you send your advisers/forces on missions is more of a gimmick to regulate the time you spend on the game than any really useful/interesting game mechanic. As everything on the table is time-based, you have an artificial limit on how "fast" you can blow through the game. Or, you can largely avoid most of it if you wish. One of the ways you interact with the board, "Power" is severely undertuned. You're going to have more power than you know what to do with. Prior to the point of no return in the main story, I had hundreds of power with nothing to spend it on. A cost for things is pointless if the currency flows like water in Seattle. Tactical combat...I hear complaints about this in both this game and DA 2, and in both cases, the complaints are rather absurd. Yes, at the default difficulty you can basically mindlessly spam "R" (your auto attack), and not really spend any time bothering with combos, positioning, etc. There are higher difficulties where you can't do this, and if people really want tactical combat, they would play at those difficulties. This complaint, in both games, seems to stem from some weird idea that normal difficulty should be tuned to require this, which if there weren't difficulty levels might actually hold some water. That said, the actual tactical combat has never been simpler. While there are a great deal of skills you'll end up with (leveling is also so easy that you'll run out of hotbar space quickly and basically have every ability you could wish for unless maybe you're a mage), many skills are basically the same thing, with different names. It either sets up a combo or activates a combo. Because so many skills are basically the same thing, just with cosmetic differences, the tactical part of combat at higher difficulties pretty much falls to positioning and micromanaging that positioning. And killing archers first. They removed most forms of healing outside of potions (which can be spammed with no cooldown, but you have a limit on how many you can carry). But, they introduced two types of damage absorption in barriers from mages and guard from warriors (both effectively are the same thing). Unless you're playing at the highest difficulties, if you spend any iota of time managing the use of barrier and guard, you'll take no health damage 95% of the game. My second playthrough, I'm playing a mage, and with two mages and one warrior and one archer in the party, 20 hours into this second playthrough, I'm fairly certain I've used less than 5 potions in total. The story...well, I'm going to say it's great. It's not really great, but I have to applaud Bioware for going out of their way to try to bring some closure to a gazillion different story lines/questions dating back to Origin. I never expected them to, as I've always secretly thought game designers take perverse pleasure at watching fans go crazy trying to figure things out. So, 5 stars at just how many things Bioware cleared up, often in ways that made me laugh, because either that was always how things were supposed to be, or they couldn't help but make these things this way after reading the often absurdly ludicrous theories on their forums. :D Be forewarned. If you take the lore/theories/speculations over the years too seriously, it's possible you may be affronted by the "answers" found throughout Inquisition. While I found them refreshingly...human, for lack of a better word, I can definitely see some people being angry/let down. The companions. I didn't like any of them. At this point, between the DA games and Mass Effect games, it's become apparent that they can slap different names and different skins on them, but the characters all essentially stay the same. I'm tired of them, and would like some actual new characterization in a Bioware game. The social issues. Hey, it's Bioware's game. They are free to push whatever social issues they want. Do I think some of them seemed a bit forced and overblown in the context of the game (and real life)? Sure. Life goes on. The overall "spirit". It's an old school crpg in an action/mmo body. I wish they'd taken bigger risks, rather than play it so safe, though I can begrudge them the safe part, after the reaming they got from DA 2. But, if you're in your 30s+, you've done it all before. Roam the lands. Build your keep. etc. But, it does so on a much larger scale than any previously similar older school rpg. Much, much larger scale. The choices. Not sure how big the choices are. Eventually, someone will figure it all out and document it, I'm sure. I'm keeping an eye out on my second play through. There were only a small handful of moments where I felt, in my first play through, that I was at one of those intesections where if I made a choice, there was no going back, so to speak (and with constant auto saves, I probably could load and try the other choice(s) and figure this out once and for all rather than do a whole other play through). Your race. I don't know how much it affects things. Not much I think. I suspect an elf is the "best" choice, just based on the story elements, but I also suspect it's very superficial and periphery in terms of how it changed things. 20 hours in as a human, and there's been almost no difference so far. Even started a Qunari, played for an hour or two, and no one (other than Varic) seemed to care I was a Qunari, further insinuating your race probably has very little to do with the story. The voices. Generally, Bioware has great voice acting. But, I think I'm feeling Bioware fatigue. After the previous two DA games, their Mass Effect games, and the sheer number of people being voiced by the voice actors in Inquisition (you'll hear what sounds like Varric everywhere in the background voices, as an example), I'm actually rather tired of the voice acting in Inquisition. The female voice actor, in particular, sounds far too much like way too many of the other voices in the game. Your main character should be easily distinguishable in some way. Visual quality? It's both beautiful and horrible. So much plasticity, even at higher settings, offset by gorgeous vistas and scenes. The hair styles are especially bad (almost half of them are variations on baldness.... I mean...wtf). You'd think if a game designer spent even two seconds on any modding site, they'd quickly see the types of things (putting aside the inevitable nudeness) that players always find lacking in a game, and hair tends to be one of them. Yet, game after game ships with just the worst hair selection possible. Unlike the previous two games, there does not appear to be a way to mod hair in Inquisition, and somehow...despite the new engine, this has the worst hair selection out of all three DA games. Oh, it suffers from the same issue as DA: O. If you play a female character, it uses the male skeleton, with all the similar awkwardness in cut scenes, etc. What's hilarious is watching some of your female companions which obviously do NOT use the male skeleton for animations. Why they worked on female animations for some of your female companions, but not others, and not you, the main character, would be funnier if this whole female skeleton animation thing hadn't already been talked to death in Origins, by both Bioware and its fans. Almost a slap in the face, really, that it shows up again. And, unlike Origins, there's no apparent way to mod the skeleton, so don't expect the community to fix the issue this time. Some of the faces your character makes on a female are downright hilarious in their ghastliness. I actually adore the heck of it, I think, though I doubt the horribleness was intentional (if it was, kudos). UI issues. Mouse click (left click) stops working often. Right clicking sometimes makes the left click start working if you're on the war room map, etc, but if you're out in the world adventuring and this happens, you have to save, then reload your game. The default sound setting is absurd, and the first thing you should do is change it (I use headphone mode). Yes, it has all the fallacies of virtually every multi-platform game in that its UI is obviously designed for a gamepad, not a keyboard/mouse. At this point, that's just beating a dead horse, and I think we just have to accept it. The tactical camera is laughably bad at implementation, though I suspect that's because its designed around the limitations of a game pad. Still, after writing all that, I have to give it 4 stars. It's an ambitious game in terms of scope (even if it's largely retreading old ground...it's doing so on such a huge scale), which I didn't think Bioware was capable of any longer. Especially with Laidlaw at the helm. Not that I think this means he should remain at the helm. But, color me surprised that a project helmed by him can turn out this good. In fact, I almost wonder if his name was simply on it and he had nothing to do with it at all, because there's a part of me honestly incapable of believing he could have had any hand in this after the sheer number of shortcuts in DA 2. I'd be more pissed at the consolization if this was 2010 maybe, but we're so deep into it in virtually every game that isn't an MMO (which is about the only genre on the PC that largely remains non-multi-platform), that complaining about it at this point just seems like beating a dead horse. It's time to move on and accept it, and has been for years now. The story was largely good (I actually think the writing for DA 2 was better, if far less epic in scope), and I absolutely loved how they shoehorned in so many ways to answer fans' burning speculations and questions. Almost makes me wonder if this is the end of DA, and as such, their swansong. Oh. Time spent on a play through? This is always a highly personal thing, from my experience. So, to set the stage, I completed virtually all of Origins in 48 hours, all of DA 2 in 22 hours, and my first play through of Inquisition...was 54 hours. But, and this is a huge "but", I eventually got side quest fatigue and just finished. I strongly suspect if you want to do every side quest in your first play through that you're looking at at least 100 hours, if not 200. There seems to be an almost infinite number of them. Most are so boring to do that if I wasn't slighly OCD about it, I probably would have stopped bothering with most of them far earlier in the game. You're going to have to do some, I think. If only to acquire enough power to keep the main story rolling. If you just did the main story and the side quests to acquire enough power to keep the main story rolling, I'd estimate it's a 20-30 hour game. The main story parts of the game, looking back, are a very, very, very minuscule part of the overall game, and without the artificial limitations of power, you'd probably finish the main story in under 10 hours.