Rating: ★★★★ - Great
Time Played:47.1 hours
Difficulty: Normal

Gameplay:
• The game is of two minds, giving you typical great Bioware narrative, choices and character development on one side, whilst giving you (and sometimes forcing you) to do Ubisoft-like open world checkbox quests.
• The tactical combat system is deep and rewarding, requiring strategic thinking and careful planning, especially on normal and higher.
• The character customization options are extensive, allowing for a wide range of builds and playstyles.
• The party-based mechanics encourage thoughtful selection and synergy between characters.
• Exploration is engaging, with a variety of environments and dungeons that offer rewarding challenges.

Story\Dialogue:
• The story and characters are rich and immersive, set in a well-developed high-fantasy world with a deep lore.
• The dialogue is well-written and often presents meaningful choices that can significantly impact the narrative and relationships with companions.
• The characters are memorable and well-developed, each with their own backstories, personalities, and unique albeit sometimes grindy questlines.

Graphics:
• While the graphics are of a more modern age, the art direction is strong and the environments are atmospheric.
• Character models and animations are detailed and smooth.
• In main missions, Camera angles in some scenes can sometimes clip into objects, showing nothing. In side quests, camera is distant and lacks immersion for quests.
• The spell and ability effects are visually satisfying and add to the immersion during combat.
• Game on modern hardware is somewhat stable and only has crashed\infinite load screened a couple of times.

Before you Play:
• For your first playthrough set the difficulty to Normal. This will give you enough of a challenge without making it feel boring to fight through.
• If planning to use previous save file decisions to link into Dragon Age: Inquisition, be sure to recreate story decisions in Dragon Age Keep (Link below). Note Dragon Age Veilguard will only require decisions in Dragon Keep from Inquisition.
• Unlike the previous titles, this game is better played on Controller. The exception to this is if you intend to play in tactical mode all the time.
• Save often, as some battles can be challenging and require different strategies.
• Focus on 'The Inner Circle' Companion quests and 'The Inquisition' Missions up until you get to Skyhold, from there, feel free to branch out. You will be tempted to stay in Hinterlands but staying in the first half of the game will ruin the pacing.
• Make sure to play as each companion individually to ensure a good build for great synergies amongst the team.
• Horses are not fast in this game. Only suggest using them if trekking long distances that don't have fast travel. Otherwise, it's more often not much different to walk.
• Invest in getting to know your companions and make sure to talk to them every time you enter Haven\Skyhold, as you may miss important lore or companion quests.
• DLC's are best played after completing the base game in the order of: Base Game > The Descent > Jaws of Hakkon > Trespasser.

Gameplay Setup:
• Ratio of Classes (Warrior\Rogue\Mage) in characters are evenly spread at 3:3:3. No suggestions on class pick.
• Make sure Mages have Dispel and Warriors have Guard Break Abilities.
• When getting Inquisition Perk points, make sure to get Additional Potions and Inventory Management Upgrades first.
• The Black Emporium has craft items and schematics to purchase for anytime, but best used end of base game purchases.
• 'The Tacticians renewal' Accessory is available at the Skyhold Undercroft to reset skill points and experiment with builds.
• Go to 'Special Shipment' in the Undercroft often. It paces out decent gear\schematics based on game progression, which will help with crafting weapons up to scale.

Mod Recommendations:
Shorter War Table Missions - 25 Percent - https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonageinquisition/mods/3121
More Banter - https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonageinquisition/mods/1454
Quicker Looting - https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonageinquisition/mods/788
Conversationcamerazoom - https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonageinquisition/mods/313
Open All Halla Doors - https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonageinquisition/mods/986


Helpful Links:
Best Order to Play: https://www.reddit.com/r/dragonage/comments/5nut4g/comment/dcehv42/
Dragon Keep: https://dragonagekeep.com/en_US/

I've only ever played Dragon Age Origins when I was younger so I was a bit excited to get into a more modern Dragon Age game, I have been trying to give this game a chance and it feels so stale. The characters I've met are alright, not like super in depth or anything they're just kinda there (including the other companions because it feels like they just show up all at once). The main story feels extremely basic but at least my character can complain about being held up as some divine savior, I don't mind that my character talks because the voice acting (at least the voice I chose) is actually good. When I was a kid playing Origins even then I felt the combat was a little stale but omfg the combat in this game feels so boring, its been awhile since I've played Origins so I don't remember how different the combat is but why can I not switch to my bow mid combat? To sum up what I'm trying to say without ranting for an hour this game is just eh, its not the worst thing ever made there def is some passion put into it but its not really a good game either, play Origins instead tbh.

Just like Dragon Age 2, regardless of positives and negatives, it's impossible to launch half the time because of the awful EA app integration.

As for the game itself, easily the worst in the series and everything feels like it was designed to waste my time.

Not very long into the game, I realized that I was not a fan of the changes from the previous games so I switched to the lowest difficulty and hoped to coast through the story instead of dealing with the gameplay. Unfortunately, this didn't change much. The difficulty didn't feel very different from Normal, and enemies were still health sponges that made combat drag on forever. Abilities were shrunk down to 8 active slots which made end game levels almost pointless due to not having any space to cast spells. The default was changed from auto attacking to manually holding to continue attacking. Instead of holding tab to highlight all interactable items you had to mash the "search" button to scan a tiny area. All of these changes were done with console gamepads in mind with no consideration to PC users.
The environment was beautiful and massive, with realistic elevation and rock formations, which unfortunately didn't translate well into gameplay. Most of the map is empty and going from place to place took forever because the bumpy elevation made it difficult to navigate, often making you circle around mountains just to advance a couple of feet forward. The pointless collectathon fetch quests and items were so numerous that I had to double check if Ubisoft bought the IP at any point or not. Making me grind for ores and herbs WoW style in a single player game should be considered a human rights violation.
The gameplay pacing was atrocious. While the main campaign consists of 10 quests, each a few hours long full of cinematics, big choices, and party banter, each subsequent quest is locked behind the Power mechanic, which requires you to grind out side quests and rifts scattered around each area map so you can unlock the next main quest. This would be great incentive to try out the rest of the game if the side quests didn't feel like a chore (Collect x amount of resource or fight a group of enemies x times around the map) and the rift fight wasn't the exact same thing every single time (Fight 2 waves of demons then close the rift). The cherry on top was the mobile game style War Table, which was necessary for completing certain companion quests. This brilliant piece of work requires you to complete chains of "missions" that require you to wait real time hours (Sometimes as high as 30+ hours!) before advancing the story chain.
On the positive side, the writing and immersion in this game was pretty solid! Background NPCs always have something to say regarding your choices and the development in the story, the companions are all fleshed out and interesting in their own way (Dorian and Cole stood out to me the most), and despite the general outline of the main campaign being somewhat of a bland rehash of Dragon Age Origins (we must unite the great powers in the region against the darkspawn!), there were huge revelations about the story going all the way back to the first game. I only wish they didn't program the party banter on a 15 minute timer that got reset by ambient npc dialogue because I almost never got to hear party banter.

TL;DR decent 30 hour story driven game got dragged out into an 80 hour slog with Ubisoft collectathon/mmo mechanics

4/10