Wednesday 11 March 2015

Review: Dragon Age Inquisition

This is the last of the games that I bought just before Christmas and I decided to save the best for last. I have spent a quite considerable amount of time on this game and I really do love it. The graphics are beautiful both in the style of the characters and environments and in the execution. The opening environment with the snow and the ice effect really took my breath away and there are many other environments just as stunning.

There are area's for improvement. The cities, don't really feel like cities and after playing Assassin's Creed Unity, feel extremely bland and restricted in comparison. The NPCs in the cities don't have any life to them. The just stand around fairly pointlessly. One thing I did like in Assassin's Creed was that you could just stand in pretty much any part of the city and watch the NPCs go about their lives. There is a lot more life in the natural environments, however, in Dragon Age with wildlife hunting each other, I just think it's a pity this life and energy can't be brought into the city.

I like many others, missed the inclusion of a relationship bar, showing how much or little each of the main members of my party approved of me. It makes trying to gauge when to ask characters out, like trying to fish in murky water, but I guess you could say it is true to life. Personally, that's part of real life, I would prefer left in the real world. The characters are great in DA:I my favourites are Solas, Cole and Dorian. Dorian particularly is a great laugh. My least favourites are Sera, who I find a bit crude, and Vivian, who I found unpleasant in an arrogant/ rude way, however the characters well written and designed, I just personally didn't like them much.

I know many people had issues with party chat and the group not talking much if at all when out in the field. I didn't really have this issue. It was a bit quiet in the early area, the hinterlands, but never silent. But PC games like to have their quirks between PCs and operating systems so perhaps, like with Assassin's Creed, I just got lucky.

Romance wise I chose Solas. Bit of a mistake really because his romance was just so good that I'm having issues romancing any of the other characters. I am currently romancing Dorian with a male character. I can't really go into any details without spoiling the game, but both are good romance options. With Solas it can be a bit of a slog to get the rep up, and his line is dependant on being started before a certain point in the main storyline but in my opinion it is worth it.

I quite like the combat in the game too. It's one of those games where you can make it as simple or complex as you like just by raising and lowering the difficulty. At lower difficulty levels your NPC team mates can pretty much take care of themselves and at higher levels, you will be forced to manage them and start thinking tactically about which team members to have and the synergy of their abilities as a group.

Anyway, over all, love this game. It is my favourite of the pre Christmas releases that I played, and I will likely still be playing it for a while yet. I really hope they release some DLC as the game does end on a bit of a cliffhanger.

Happy gaming all!

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