I didn't buy the game first day, but I always cash in a lot of my vacation days at the end of the year. I took advantage of the Origin sale and used some of X-mas bonus. I first have to say Origin is trash and I'll never buy another game on it. It took 13 hours to download because the percentage kept going backwards. But I digress, on to my impression.
I've been playing 25 hours and just got to Skyhold
Graphics:
The game is beautiful, I bought a 2560x1440 monitor Black Friday and it looks outstanding, I'm playing on High settings, can't even imagine Ultra. Only complaint is the hair, I mean honestly why are we still here? You have these nice textures on the armor, clothing, skin, but then this atrocious hair.
The Controls:
They aren't as bad on the PC as I thought they would be. I've played one MMO and they're very similar to those so I'm used to them. The tactical cam is terrible though, even rebinding the keys it's hard to use. It doesn't go out far enough, it's pretty much like the console version of the cam for DA:O. I've had bugs, but not too many annoying ones. Only one that really hurt the gameplay a lot. Been a few CTD, but not a lot.
The World:
I think this a good first effort at a semi-open world game. The areas are large, explorable and varying and the game does decent job at rewarding you for going off the beaten path. I think some of the areas are large for the sake of being large, and that they could have possibly reduced some of them and added more content to them. But it looks awesome, and I've enjoyed running around. I think Bioware needs to make the world more living, add a day/night cycle. The zones are really nice the first time, but subsequent journeys, always being the same time of day, always raining takes a little away. I'd love to just sit at camp and watch a sunset on the Storm Coast or something like that.
Combat:
A little actiony for me, but after playing and loving Dragon's Dogma, I'm more used to this type of gameplay. I'm playing a dual wield rogue and it's pretty fun, Stealth and dual wield tree are awesome, anyone playing it should get Deathblow as quickly as possible it really gets fun. I haven't unlocked any specializations yet. But the game combat is fun, and it seems the tanks (I'm using Cassandra) have better ways to keep enemy attention.
The lack of healing is good and bad. I think you just traded a healer, for a barrier provider. But since the areas aren't level scaled, if you fight one thing you're not ready for it's pretty much back to camp even if you aren't fighting everything you see. But it does make you decide it fighting something really worth it. Sometimes I just run by. I think they could have left healing in and accomplished what they were trying to do. But it does take me back to old school RPGs, so it's not horrible for me.
Companion and enemy AI could be better, but it's not terrible. I'm playing on hard mostly, I turned it up to Nightmare for a while because I stayed in the Hitherlands and Storm Coast too long and once I got back to the story I was above the recommended levels and had good gear.
Story:
I had the identity of the Elder One spoiled for me in the non-spoiler section so that didn't have the umpf it would have. I only had a quest for one side show up on my war table, so I really had my choice made up for me, I don't know what happened. But all in all the main quest missions have been good, the one you do right before Skyhold is outstanding, one of my favorite missions ever, just special.
Quests:
My biggest disappointment so far. Nothing really to them, I would have liked to see some multi step quests. Then the way you get some of them just seemed lazy. Someone tells you their husband is dead, or their loved one is missing and you just say Ok now, gotta go, bye bye. Just seemed kind of cold to me, at least let me say "I'll find it" or "I'll look for them", something. I don't even recall even being given the option to decline on some. I just listened, said goodbye, and then had the quest. Not impressed with them so far.
Companions:
I'm torn. I really don't like most of them individually, but the way they interact with each other and some of the banter is awesome and hilarious lol. Some are growing on me, some aren't I'm just disliking them more.
Crafting:
Love it, love it, love it. I like to make gear and other things. So being able to make armor, weapons, upgrades in awesome for my. Even down to being able to control the color of some things based off the type of leather used. Downside, I stayed in the early areas too long, made too good of gear, and was overpowered later. Not really the game's fault though.
Misc Stuff:
- The paraphrasing is terrible, the phrase and what comes out your mouth aren't anywhere close to each other some of the time. Even using the icons in the middle it's hard to judge a lot of the time. For example once it said "Where does it come from", I'm thinking I'm about to ask if they had more info on it or something that, but I say "I wish I knew where it came from." Why not just have the phrase I wish I knew more about it?
- There should be some mechanism to nudge you out of the early areas, really easy to get caught up in them. Some of the areas are hard at first, but you can tackle them soon by doing more quests. Maybe they should have made the level gaps larger where you had no choice to move on or actually grind.
- I think some of the War Table missions would have been better as actual quests. I would have liked to have gone and had some of those conversations in person. But I do like the fact that which agent you use can change to outcome/reward of some of them. I tested it on some of the shorter ones.
Conclusion:
I'm enjoying the game so far, which at the end of the day is really what counts. Not outstanding, but definitely not terrible. Some things I would have done differently, but that's with any game. I can already see myself doing multiple playthroughs of this, which wasn;t the case with the last game. As long as it doesn't fall apart at the end I'll be fine. I have it around an 8 - 8.5 so far if I had to give a score. Well worth playing, would not have been disappointed if I had paid full price for it.
Sorry to be so long winded, but there's a lot to go over.
A few screen grabs from my game, tried not to put and spoilery ones in. My friend said it was going to be hard to create a decent looking female, I beg to differ, I like mine.
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