For those of us who used VPN to unlock early, and soon enough folks all over America, I thought a first impressions thread to collect early feedback was in order in a no-spoilers section. Haven't found any yet (direct me if I'm mistaken) so here we go, I'm starting one.
After 5 hours of play, my general impression is that I'm going to love this game to death, even if it's not flawless, Couple of points;
-I'm on PC, and on my AMD Phenom six core @ 2.9 GHz and ATI R7 260x card (fairly mid-range hardware), the game runs pretty fine with most settings at High, textures at Ultra, no AA and no SSAO. My FPS oscillates between 35 and 60, with the occasional stuttering which I don't care about in a single-player game. It looks pretty gorgeous at those settings too, the lighting is amazing, albeit even at Ultra some textures stand out by being blurry, especially on some landscape objects. Metallic textures, however, are top notch, armor looks incredible.
-I had 2 game freezes in 3 hours, then none afterwards. I'm not too worried, but I hope it's gone for good because those are annoying as hell. Good thing I diligently quicksave.
-I love the combat overall, my Mage feels great. Only thing I dislike is the tactical camera, on PC it's kinda awkward to use since you need to hold down both mouse buttons if you want to move it with the mouse instead of WASD, and it doesn't zoom far enough to truly allow a good view of the battlefield. Gets stuck on the geography in close quarters, too. Apart from that? Great. I'm playing on Hard with no FF on (yet) and I'm feeling a challenge.
-I absolutely adore the no-healing design. It forces you to be careful and makes for great moments. For example, in the Hinterlands (first available region) I managed to seal a Rift after a hard fought battle (those Lesser Terror demons are really powerful!) but was down to one healing potion. Seeing the initial camp was too far for my tastes, I saw that there was a campsite fairly close, so I soldiered on though bandit camps and Templar battles. I finally reached the campsite with no potions left and everyone down to low HP save for the PC, but it felt like a reward to set up camp and top everyone off. I rarely felt that in a Dragon Age game, and I loved it. Then I promptly went further into the path and got my ass fried by a dragon in two fireballs, which was also great!
-Characters so far are interesting. I play a mage and it gets reactions from many people, and recognition when it should. I like Solas and Cassandra the most so far, albeit I haven't unlocked any other party members save the inital 3 admitedly.
-Side-quests in the Hinterlands were mostly fetch quests (find this guy's wife, find this Templar, bring back 10 ram hides), which is a bit dissapointing. At least it's usually given context , and rewards you Power every time (which is used to unlock new regions), but I would have liked more involved affairs. I did find a nice quest where I helped an elven mage in a dungeon, and Solas had a few things to say here.
-Nothing major, but a touch I liked; as a mage, my staff is taller than me. As I was exploring Haven's chantry, I found its basement, which was lit by low-hanging metal bowls with fire in them. To my delight, the game actually recognized when my staff collided with them, which never happens in games and would usually be clipped through. Here it made the thing clang and spew ashes. I liked the small detail.
Overall, I'm loving it so far. I already had more fun in 5 hours of Inquisition than I had in the whole of DA2. Technical problems mar it a bit, but it looks to be an extremely good RPG so far.
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