TL:DR – DAI is a great 40-60 hour game in a 100+ hour package. It looks great, the writing is great. It suffers from bloat with many meaningless quests and content, while looking good to explore, doesn’t give you much choice other than in its main or companion quests. Its villain is an afterthought but its conclusion satisfying (with Trespasser DLC). Its failings can be mitigated by mods or Casual Mode. This game is better played with a guide or player’s guide to help direct your flow, which I did, but you can play the game how you want.

Playthrough Breakdown – I have played roughly 80 hours on Xbox over a 10 year period since 2014 and then In 2021, in anticipation of what’s now called Veilguard, I restarted my playthroughs and this is the accumulation of them. I have carried my choices from the first two games to this one, focusing on Pro Mage/Pro Dalish choices. I also played this game in Nightmare Mode until I got the achievement. It was painful and spongy. I recommend playing the game on normal or less for a good experience. I mostly 100% this game.

Your Character – Inquisition is strong here. Not quite the choice you get in Origins, but the class, race and gender you choose will affect your characters choices and how the world reacts. I played a female Dalish Elf Mage, which apparently is the most popular AND has significant ties with the story. What this game does well is allow you to choose your characters beliefs. In this case, I could be a dalish elf that believes in the “chantry”, rejects it, or something in between. Where in Dragon Age 2, you play a set character Hawke, with different flavors of tone, your Inquisitor is a set character with a lot more personal choice to shape them how you want. However, this is not the blank slate of the Hero of Fereldan from origins. IMHO, this is probably the best part of the game, but my bias for the Dalish Elf story lines may be shining here.

Content, Quests and World – The way the game is generally structured is that you have these main quests which are mostly isolated missions/encounters between your world exploration. World exploration is the “Ubisoft/MMO” open world type content which has you doing tasks to build power. You use this power as currency to make the Inquisition more powerful and “unlock” the story. You do not need to 100% this game, however you may feel compelled too to make sure you can move forward, learn more lore, or unlock some seen or dialogue you may not have before. This game has the “hinterlands” problem where the first area is much bigger and is meant to be done after different level thresholds but the game doesn’t tell you. I feel like many players probably gave up here. The saving grace is that the “stories” in each area are interesting, lore-wise, but the game doesn’t give you much agency over it. Save the area from its plight, that’s about it, with some minor exceptions. The main quest has most of the choices to shape your game. The other bit of content that allows you to make choices is Companion quests. They mostly consist of open world content with some sprinkled “unique set pieces” dashed in. There is also a “war table” where it has mobile-esq “click-and-wait-for-a-timer” to give you some items, content, lore and other things. The last missions are only roughly an hour each and the ending will slap you in the face. The ending is basically a cliffhanger for the Trespasser DLC.

Characters and Writing – This is probably the second strongest point. The characters are all well written. The lore is great and is provocative. I understand why many people may think this is their favorite game. They fell in love with characters. I even have a soft spot for Sera (who I romanced as an “elfy” Dalish Elf) which I feel was fantastic. Sera is not liked by many, but if you get to know her, and understand where she comes from, she grows on you. By Trespasser DLC, I loved her. By the end of the experience, even though I knew the ending already (more or less) the lore implications of this game were the biggest the series has had so far.

Combat – Its not great. They tried to keep the “action” combat of DA2 while retaining the tactics of the first game. It doesn’t do it justice. Maybe if I had played the game mostly in Casual, it would have been better. My saving grace was that I played a modded hybrid class which was very fun when mixed with the right sub class. Its also possible I didn’t take advantage of all its systems of weaknesses/donations/combos. I don’t think this game is known for its combat.

Performance, Bugs and Mods – Performance, overall was good. I had some crashes, and some slow down on some cases. This is a game from 2014 which targeted the 360/ps3 era. This game has some quirks which I will explain.

Bugs: I did encounter smaller quests bugging out which I couldn’t complete. Annoying.

Ultra wide: This game doesn’t support Ultrawide cutscenes, with a utility, Flawless Widescreen, you can access this and its what I used.

Crashes I could recreate: Both in a place called “the winter palace” I would crash. This was an issue on many peoples playthroughs on console aswell. Modded made it worse. To get around this I had to limit my framerate and bypass these areas. The second was in the Trespasser DLC, I could recreate a crash while going through.. some “portals”. Same fix.

30 fps cutscenes: You feel this, there is a mod, but it is unstable and creates weird issues with lip sync and animation. Don’t recommend.

Modding: Frostbite engine is not easy to mod compared to others. There are some guides on whether to use Frostbite mod Manager or DAI mod manager depending on which mods you want to use. I used Frostbite mod manager. You can use both too with guides. Mods I can recommend below.

Character Creation Cosmetics (any mods you want for characters)
Speed Launch

Eldritch Archer

Dialogue Wheel Overhaul

War Table (no Waiting)

Faster Movement Speed

Search Radius Increase (100%)

Launcher issues: This game is not steam native, it uses ea app. This can cause issues for modding or just opening the game. It used to be the Origin app, which was worse, but letting you know.

DLC – Jaws of Harkon – This DLC was a huge world area in the core game which is leveled 20-27 (cap is 27 in game). This is best done after your playthrough or before you last missions. It’s a big area, which has some neat lore and an interesting main quest. It feel like they took criticism from the other open world areas of the game and made this more interesting. Yet, once again, very little agency until the main quest part of the area. This area is also end game content, its very hard. Sucked on Nightmare. I beat most of it before I beat the main game but got stuck on the final boss gauntlets. I then beat the game, lowered the difficulty, and enjoyed the rest. Time wise, it was like roughly 6-10 hours.

DLC – The Descent – This DLC took me roughly 5 hours on casual after the main game. It is basically a dungeon crawl in the deep roads with great lore. It is gorgeous and interesting. Introduces some great NPCs and worth doing IMO.

DLC – Trespasser – This is an epilogue DLC that was “next gen” only at the time. This is worth doing. If you don’t play this, you don’t have the ending of the game. It takes place 2 years after the game, you start in a small hub area where you can catch up with your companions and romantic interest. This follows up on the cliffhanger and I quite enjoyed this. I see why people praise it. There is no open world areas, it’s a mostly linear experience that allows you to make some great choices. This clocked my over 6 hours. I expected it would be a bigger DLC, but it didn’t need to be. Based on the content, how its tied to the main story, this is the best DLC and required.

Play the game on casual, set up your Dragon Age Keep World States (if you want). Enjoy and thank you for reading my chaotic thoughts.

Perhaps I treated you too harshly.

Not the best Dragon Age game, but certainly leagues above the newest travesty that Bioware calls a video game.

This is my roman empire