140+ hours spent on a game driven purely by ocd that didn't extend only to finding all the collectibles but also finding every bad design choice and weak workaround that someone thought was good enough to fix the issue and clever enough to fool everybody to think it's something good.
I have collected and killed everything, explored everything, and if I was into self-abuse I would also play it again to see the other story branches I could have seen. But I will say that once I turned into a knight enchanter and got rid of the combat aspect of the game and was able to focus just on story and stuff the game turned more enjoyable. If I had to review it without considering past titles in the series I would give it a 6 for being not terrible and with some potential of something great. If I would consider past titles I would note that said potential was there in previous titles and was just thrown away in favor of appealing to a bigger audience. Would still give it a 6 though, but I would also have a sad look on my face.
This is from the top of my head, so it's not going to be in order, it won't be neat, and I will forget stuff. So let's start a list of bad design choices, bad workarounds, and if I feel like it I would give my idea for a solution to it but I'm not claiming I got all the right answers.
1) appealing to a bigger audience.
"The root of all evil" I suppose and so I need to address it first. Now, while I understand from a business side why you would want to do that, I get it, I am a strong believer that games are split into categories for a reason, they were never meant to appeal to everyone.
The first title was a crpg. Not many enjoyed it but it was one of the best of its time in its category, if not the best.
But then you wanted to open it up for more ppl, taking out some of its personality in favor of appealing to more people, like a teen at prom night. Combat was altered, some abilities were cut out, entire trees were removed, and emphasis on previous stuff were changed for what would be more popular, in their mind. Speaking of DA2 so far btw. And that was a mistake, even bioware said that. And so they were raising the flag of "going back to its roots" and shoving stuff like tactical camera and exploration at our face the entire time until launch day. To our dismay it got even more streamlines to fit with other games of its time. story got weaker, tactical aspect got phased off, combat turned all the way from origin's crpg combat to today's high action, cool effects eye candy GARBAGE. Imho ofc.
Point is, a really good game is one that sticks to its core and doesn't bend to the trends of the current time. You just lose yourself and end up as "just another X" or a jack of all trades. And that's inquisition. It's a systematic thing in bioware over the past few years of sacrificing the soul of their games and moving more towards the "Michael bay" area of video games if I could describe because kids love flashy combat I guess? Right I'm not going to repeat myself over and over, let's go on to the next things so you'll see my point.
2) The new engine.
Ok here's the thing. As time advance you naturally try your best to make a good looking game and that's ok. It's good even because why wouldn't you? But a game is not just about the graphics and dragon age was never a good looking game in its time. Origins had outdated graphics, dragon age 2 was pretty weak as well, but neither were so bad that it made the game worse. It got the job done.
Inquisition is a pretty game, I admit that and kudos on using an engine that was never meant for this style of game and making it work. HOWEVER, you don't put so much emphasis on graphics to the point it diminishes other aspects of the game!
You sacrificed so much because of this stupid engine its stupid. Its buggy, not optimized, was never made to work with games like this and it's freakin hard to mod. Remember mods? That thing that fixed a lot of problems in previous titles? The thing that made games like the elder scrolls series what it is today? Yeah you took that and said "f*ck that noise, it's not important".
Well it kind of is. It gives your game more replay value, it gives the game a chance to appeal to more people by having mods that change the game to their taste. Yeah, that's how you make it more approachable in a safe way.
Also I can only assume it causes other problems like the lack of tactics, the poor and broken AI, and HORRIBLE hair and facial hair models. You took away all of those things and for what? Pretty graphics, flashy action focused combat, nice effects...
I won't complain about taking leaps of faith and trying things that could have ended bad, making an engine that had the potential of making your game pretty and actually succeeding. I will complain about accepting the sacrifices that needed to reach that goal.
THAT is a bad design choice for a game. Picking looks over quality.
3) Exploration and maps:
one of the key features that were hailed during promotion. Big and varied maps to explore. A pretty, almost open, living world.
Here's the thing, though. The bad design choice in this area was quantity over quality. The maps are indeed pretty but they are empty. Big open spaces of nothing but walking from point A to B which is a hassle, and there's absolutely nothing to do. I will talk about side quests and collectibles next, btw, as it needs a category of its own tbh.
Each maps has 1 or 2 towns AT BEST, some don't even have that. The only means of traveling around the map is by teleportation using camps that you set by exploring or mounts.
Ah, mounts... let's talk about mounts for a moment.
1) Mounts are useless. Nothing but another form on collecting useless stuff. Even my OCD didn't register it as meaningful enough to acknowledge its existence, thankfully, so I didn't bother collecting them. They are slow. So slow to the point it makes you feel weird when you rise one because you can sprint with them and have cool speed lines and stuff but you still go at some pretty slow speed. So you feel like you are fast but you see yourself running slowly. It's just weird. So it's basically useless and not fun. You can't even have mounted combat or anything. Just a bad way of walking faster from point A to B. failed at that, though...
2) it punishes you. what I mean by that is that once you hop on your mount your party disintegrates into the dark void like all of the other aspects of the game that were left behind with each new title in the series.
I understand that the game might be limited and you can't provide a horse to all 4 party members at once because pathfinding, different body types with each member etc. etc. but it gets rid of the banter while you ride your mount! You know banter? That thing that almost doesn't exist with all the "banter bugs" with millions of workarounds that don't always work. Yeah it get rids of that. Why would you do that? Combat is so weak I only keep my party members because of the banter, why on earth would I do something that makes them unable to do that. It's one of the only ways I could see them as characters with personality and not drones. No immersion, doesn't feel alive. Stupid. Maybe if the mount was so fast you would only lose like 30 seconds of travel time so not much banter taken away but it's not 30 seconds by a long shot. With mountains and hills and canyons and what not to circle around at the speed of the fastest human and not horse/deer/thing. ..
Other than that the issue about it is that the few towns there is in this game pose little to no character interaction with. you do get some side quests and stores but 90% of the NPC's there are just statues standing there in looping animation saying the same line over and over again.. They don't feel alive to me. Not even remotely immersive. Would love it if by based on my choices and reputations people would gather around me in places like Redcliff or that hinterlands refugee town, or that city I forgot its name and either praise me or yell at me or SOMETHING. There are a few NPCs, though, who acknowledge my existence if I walk by them though, I'll give you that. But it's a drop in the ocean and doesn't feel "real" to me. I don't know...
what if by going to the refugee camp in the hinterlands the first time ppl would start gathering around me begging for my help for food and shelter? What if they would cheer for me if I did those things?
What if people start yelling at me for pretending to be the herald of Andraste or bow at my sight?
Skyhold and haven are no different with big open spaces that do absolutely nothing and offer nothing but space to walk through from point A to B. could be fun to explore its dungeons or something, finding more about Skyhold for example and why it was abandoned and lost in time multiple times. You know how many towers Skyhold has? I don't know I never bothered to check because they serve no purpose. You know that big place under the keep building? Useless... just a big hall with a small library with a giant book. Would have thought what's his name from the mages quest would be there for me to interact with once I sentenced him to work for me to discover new arcane stuff but alas, just an empty space. The armory? Empty space. Your room? Empty space. Character interaction in my base is also quite limited save the companions dialogue ofc. Soldiers around me barely notice my presence and the cosmetic upgrades are pointless. Meaningless. As cosmetic as the description says and even more so. Doesn't offer you at least a passive buff or boost or anything. Not even a quest. At least do something to the story's outcome or epilogue, come on...
also a BIG issue with exploring said empty and lifeless maps are the enemies. Or should I say fodders. You know what's wrong with those mobs? You can't even fart without a group of them spawning on you or behind you for no reason. Not even a big fart, even the silent but deadly ones. Here are a few examples from my experience alone:
1) I fight a group of enemies, as I'm about to finish the last one another group spawns on me. Just fades into existence right on me.
2) Killing a bunch of enemies along my way when I encounter something I don't want to mess with. I turn around and there are enemies behind me. In the same place I cleared like 10 seconds ago.
3) I kill a giant group of enemies that got bigger during the fight because more seem to have spawned during the fight and another group just ran into us because their bandit sense felt my enjoyment and didn't want that to continue. So I save, close the game, go on with my day. I come back later and load that save and not only did I find that the enemies have respawned on me during me going away from the game and loading that save later, but they were fighting me as I was still loading the game!!!! Half my team was dead because I was still loading.
My last gripe with the maps is the fact they don't scale to your level. Nothing in it does. You can do an entire area and out-level entire maps. Why? Enemies yield no XP or decent loot, quests are not fun or rewarding, even RNG scales to the map's level and not yours.
The only reason to do those maps would be to complete it for the sake of completing. Out-leveling stuff is a big problem in this game and extends to a bunch of areas, even the main story.
so yeah... the bad design choices would be trying your hardest to make a really pretty and impressive maps that are big, almost trying to make it into an MMO, but forgetting to fill the world with the content to support it, or good ways to travel through it. In the end we are left with a world that feels fake, lifeless and boring. It's pretty though. If it was up to me I would make the maps smaller but denser with content and world interaction. Stuff like finding broken bridges of things that block you from progressing in the maps are a cool idea that could be expended upon since you need to use your influence and power to have your army take care of it. You actually interact with the map itself to change it. That is a good thing and makes the world feel more alive and real.
4) Side quests and collectibles:
ha. Well with my ocd I managed to do pretty much everything. And let me tell you something... its garbage. So bad and flawed I'm willing to risk saying it's not even an opinion but a bloody fact!
The side quest are, to most part, unmemorable. Not interesting. A chore. Around launch bioware came out and said "don't do the hinterlands" which is the first place you are thrown into. Why? It's full of side quests and collectibles. So? Because its f*cking boring and tedious. They are AT BEST just generic MMO quests to get X out of Y items for Z NPC with stories so dull and dry I can't honestly think of one. Fetch quests and kill quests and find quests. The GOOD side quests are the ones with actual effort in them. Like taking over that keep in the snowy place. The companion quests. The puzzle quests to some extent. The quest with Crestwood. Something with meat and not just a random NPC asking me to do xyz. At the very least try to make it look more interesting and add a few cutscenes or something. More people to judge in the end maybe? A celebration of sorts? Something.
Again the character interaction with the world is bare minimum even with the NPCs you are doing the quests for or the people you are saving/helping. You could replace all of the NPCs asking me to do the random mundane quests with a big message board with bounties on them and pleas for help and it would feel the same.
Also the rewards. My god, the rewards. I know "RNG is RNG" but ffs it's as useless as a glass of sea water in the desert.
One last thing, some quests are unable to be completed if you did something else in the game that messed with it. Like judging that woman from the snowy place b4 you can return her quest...
collectibles are filled with flaws. The sheer amount of them is ridicules and after collecting all of the shards I'm still unsure what they are and how they got to where they got. Some are on mountains and overs are on new buildings and wood structures that were built not long ago. Other than the amount of them the location of some is just annoying. Like I had to find the right side of a mountain and hop and use that teleportation mage dash to exploit the meshes to escalate to that shard. Others are just hard to understand where they are with the map and "minimap". Is it above me? Is it below me? Is it inside that rock for some reason? Let me mark it on the map that would help. Nope, didn't help.
The "connect the dots" thing was ok. I like connecting dots, what can I say. Didn't care for the lore behind it because I couldn't take it seriously. What I can say is that the rewards from it are pretty bad. God forbid you do it at a higher level than what it is set to. And even for the level its set to, I can get better items by crafting. Useless.
Runes and that globe thing are a mixed bag. Not sure what those globe things are or do but Solas likes them. I think I got them all but I'm not sure as it doesn't seem to appear in the collections tab. I just remember going into an area with Solas after a long time of not using him and suddenly I get a codex about them. So if they do reward you with anything after getting them all it would be a codex entry. Runes are annoying to get but there's something nice about holding a magical flame and searching for an invisible painting on the wall. It can, however get really annoying if you can't find it. At least you are rewarded with rune schematics most of the times though. So it's probably the most meaningful collectible in the game.
Lastly, the tile thing... what can I say about this collectible? Nothing good. Collecting lost lore is nice and all but I can just go to Wikipedia and read it there instead of wasting 10-20 hours looking for them all. Your reward of getting all of them is simply another codex entry. Honestly it's like a sick joke on people with ocd or something... "thanks for getting them all" *pat on the a$$* "how 'bout you be a good boy and collect all the wine bottles in the world"
in conclusion, the bad design decision here would be that quantity over quality takes a big part in this section and fills the maps with boring and repetitive side quests and collectibles that yield little to no worthwhile reward. And even then the reward doesn't even scale to your level when you do it. I wouldn't suggest to anyone to do half of the things in the world if even that. Unless you have the need to complete everything which is understandable. But trust me when I say it's not worth your time and you won't enjoy most of it. If it was up to me I would make it there is far less to collect but it has a lot more impact in the game and ensure the rewards would scale to the player and be of the highest quality.
I would also make side quests fewer but bigger with more branching options and meat behind them. With visible changes to the world and a rewarding conclusion.
Providing protection, supplies and food to the town in the hinterlands and completing enough quests there would result in a cut scene that would be based on my actions. Like a funny cut scene of a party at night with fireworks or something where everyone are happy and drinking. A small break from the sorrow of the world for one night, 'tis all... or perhaps once you establish all those things to the town the bandits gather up for a final attack and you need to defend it, later judging the leader.
Maybe lose influence if you don't help people? Or ignore them? Let them die... get scolded when you walk by those you ignore who seek help. Riots. Why not? Get an urgent message to defend a place under your protection. Makes the world more dynamic by maintaining your territory...
as it is now you have a pretty lackluster dialogue wheel with random npcs to get quests and get rewards, it lacks the soul behind it. Cutscenes. Do it.
5) Character creator:
flawed. Lacks variety of options and feels limited. It also lacks and good looking hair options or facial hair options... or eyebrows... or tattoos and scars...beards are not rlly a part of your face, just a piece of plastic you glued to your face poorly since there are gaps between it and your face. Most hair options look bad and the usual stuff we've seen many times b4, only less good. Also it's mostly buzz cuts.
As a qunari I felt sad to see what my options are. It doesn't even say hair options, instead it says horn options.
Also about qunaris. I couldn't help but notice you took away the tattoo slider and turned it into a helmet option. Very bad design choice and a poor workaround, and I'll talk about it later, believe me.
Also elves forced to use tattoos and unable to have beards. Wanna tell me what class to be as well? It's MY character. Stop it.
And why do elves have a weird and broken skeleton? Males look like females, thin as a pencil and the proportions are off. My male elf looks like a lollipop with his stick like body and huge head.
Final issue would be how I made a qunari, named him after careful thinking (LOTS OF THINKING) and then after one war table mission everyone is calling me Adaar. Yeah thanks for giving me the option to name my character for nothing.
In conclusion. The bad design choice here was being lazy and/or limited by the engine to make anything good as an option. The fact you don't have an option to change your looks (yet) is also a bad design choice but at least you are going to work on that.
6) Gear:
issues getting bigger I see. Let's cut to the chase here, the gear variety is limited to say the least. A workaround it by bioware was making the crafting system have your gear be able to change colors in different parts of it depending on the material you are using. It's a nice solution but overall the issue stays that there are simply not enough. But that's only a part of the problem. It just adds to other problems. In addition to that issue there was the problem that every race has a different body type. So understandably it put more work for them to make gear work for different body types. However, there is the issue of gear that is restricted to one race. In a game with 4 different races and a pretty limited variety in armors I would honestly say that making armors for just one race is a bad move. A few is fine, MAYBE, if lore supports it but were talking about clothes here. Can only not every human is thin and not every elf is tall and not every qunari is a pile of muscles with horns. And I'm not sure how much training you actually need to use a robe made by elves. It makes no sense that I can't wear a Templar armor because I'm an elf or a qunari. I'm the one crafting it ffs.
Weapon restrictions is another thing. Back in the day I had a main character who was a warrior who at times shot a bow and at close range used dual wielding with 2 swords. It's not a secret technique or a dark art passed from father to sun behind closed doors. It's holding a piece of metal in each hand and swinging. You have 3 classes, 2 splits into 2 types. Mages are stuck with staves for the rest of their lives. Rogues either use a bow or dual wield daggers (unless you are Varic because plot) and warriors can be either 2h or 1h and shield. The options are pretty limited and it doesn't make that much of a difference if you have a sword or a mace.
Why can't a knight enchanter use a real weapon? Why can't a rogue use a buckler? Why can't a warrior use a bow or dual wield?
I would say try to be innovative and use something less bread and butter but first I'd suggest stop going backwards instead of forward with the options you give the player.
Qunari helmets (vitarrs). What can I say about this little gem beside how poorly they implemented that system, how insulting it is to anyone who dared to try the new race they have offered us to play with, how punishing it is? How little they thought of ways to fix an existing issue present since origins.
Here's the problem with qunaris: they have horns. Not only that, but bioware gave us the option to have many different types of horns and even an option not to have horns at all. While it's cool and makes them feel more unique as a race, it makes it very hard to make a helmet for them, since each horn clips with the helmet in a different way. so you have a bunch of helmet options and a bunch of horn options, and that gives you over a hundred of combination of stuff that conflict with each other. Interestingly enough, some helmets do work on qunaris but are still clipping with the horns and are unusable because of race restrictions.
So what did they do? Took the entire war paint slider from the character creator menu and spread it across Thedas as random loot. Added lore behind it as a type of poison salve thing that only qunaris can stand that hardens their face and gives them boosts or whatever. I can totally live with that and if done well it's a solid workaround. Only it was lazy and poorly made. First of all, type wise there aren't many. According to the wiki there are total of 7 to 10 different vitaars that look different. About the same amount if a little more of actual different vitaars with different stats and stuff.
Over half of them are of the lowest quality and are garbage. Only one of them is of epic quality and it only drops after you complete all the shards thing. Interestingly enough all of them add to your damage instead of defense. All of them are pretty much useless and outclassed by much lower leveled items. All in all if you are a qunari you have a very limited number of options for a headpiece. All of them are pretty bad.
The final nail on the coffin? It's uncraftable. There is not a single schematic in the entire game for a vitaar. Why? Who knows? Maybe the engine is at fault, maybe they were just lazy about it, fact remains you can craft some pretty good helmets but not vitaars.
If it was up to me I would just make it so you can craft more vitaars. Simple as that. It's made of poison and there are poisonous plants in the game. We have an herbalist, and we have a chemist. We even have a qunari companion who knows a lot of their ways.
Rings, belts and necklaces feels lazy btw. Most rings offer you increase damage or duration of specific abilities. Others offer you more penetration or whatever. Look, passives are nice and all but can I get a proc or something that would change the way I play a bit? Spice things up!
Belts are pretty much the same, health and guard, bla bla bla... necklaces suffer the same as well but some offer me a talent point and then break.
It's all pretty boring and not unique at all.
Loot is another issue. Not just the RNG part of it. you can clear a dungeon or whatever, kill a tough boss and loot it and the loot you get is either totally useless (like a dwarf warrior heavy armor), is too high level for you to use or to low level for you to find any value in. why? WHY?! I cleared a freakin deep roads tunnel thing with darkspawns. Thanks to the awesome AI who likes to jump off ledges I had a pretty tough fight. Why can't I use the stuff I earned???? Add that to the fact you have a limited bag space and NO STORAGE BOX AT YOUR BASE and you are left with a full bag for like 3 levels or more with items unusable. The logic behind this decision escapes me. Bad design choice. Bad. BAD! It can't be for balance, the game is broken as hell. It can't be so you won't use the same armor for the rest of the game, because I already do that with the current game. Why? WHY? Such a bad design choice that serves no purpose at all... quite sad to see, annoying to experience, and bothersome to understand.
Also in case I forget, inability to switch weapons during combat is a big no-no.
in conclusion, were it up to me I would spend more effort at making more varied loot system with a more fun and interesting twists on some of it to make each playstyle a bit different. Would also remove a lot of restrictions on armors and weapons to give more freedom and enjoyment to the player instead of punishing them and telling them how their characters should be played. as stated above there are many flaws in the current system, some questionable design choices and one very annoying and lazy workaround to an age old problem.
7) Spells, abilities, talents, and slots:
people still reading? Let's start by slots, it seems the easiest.
Stupid. It's stupid. You can make up excuses, try to find reason. It doesn't add to the challenge. It doesn't make it more "tactical" or makes me think hard on what I pick and when. It's just stupid. It's a bad design choice and I think the devs know that but what can you do, really? I mean, consoles, right? Didn't DA2 have more than 8 slots, though? I can't remember. Also I don't care. If you can't think of a way to have consoles use more than 8 slots than limit consoles to 8. Pc has its issues but a limited number of bindable keys was never one of em. As a mage I have quite a few abilities. Until level 10 its fine but after than you start having too many abilities. Not fun. Not smart. You know what's annoying? If I have to choose, most of the time my fire spells would be better than my ice or lightning spells 8 times of out 10. But sometimes you encounter an enemy that doesn't take damage from fire. Know what becomes of my mage? Useless. The word you are looking for is useless. Like the design process of the combat system. I'm not going to replace one ability for another based on the sole chance I might find an enemy that is immune to most of my abilities. at worst case I always have my chain lightning and spirit blade so I can always do some damage but come on.. This is not an MMO and I shouldn't be limiting myself for no reason.
Trees and abilities:
Ya know, I always thought a sequel is a continuation of a previous game, with enhanced features and more varied options and basically building on the foundations of the title it was based on. Dragon age seems to be doing the opposite, believing the foundations is what holding it back. So every time it either changes or gets streamlined. We used to have a bunch of different trees that played very differently and many abilities and after 2 titles we are left with the bread and butter of the fantasy games. Mage? Fire, ice, lightning. Rogue? Daggers, bows, stealth. Warrior? 2h, 1h and a shield.
Ofc, mages also have the spirit tree or whatever it is..? Rogues also have the "traps" tree? Warriors also have the vanguard and the... umm... something else tree. All are pretty basics and can be combined to one tree, really... the fire, ice and lightning tree for example was the the primal tree in origins.
And b4 anyone gets mad there are 3 specializations for each class.
But let's face the facts, a big chunk of features were cut out and while it looks you have many options, you don't... just a lot of passives and a few abilities that can be upgraded for more talent point. Meh. Despite the fact there are not that many abilities for each class it's still more than 8. so good job on making a limited number of options and still finding a way to limit it even more *thumbs up*
also, some of these abilities are quite useless and are outshined by different, even better abilities. Like wall of ice. Useless. Flame wall. Useless. Fire mines, so good it makes Satan's nipples hard.
The last issue is that a lot of these abilities require some "tactical finesse" and what I mean by that is the AI is too stupid to use them. In other cases they do use them and end up dying because of it because charging off the cliff or back flipping into a chasm is hard to avoid.
So what's the bad design choice in a nutshell? Cutting content instead of adding one, streamlining and making things quite dull.
Healing!!!!
Ah, one of the stupidest design choice of the game. At least in my opinion. I don't care if it works or not I'm saying the logic behind every step of the way about it was dumb. Wrong even.
Let's start by basing the facts, once there was a healing tree with healing spells. It was part of the lore and still is to this very day, even in inquisition there are mages who heal.
the devs wanted to "improve" that combat to the best of their abilities and so they deemed the healing system flawed since all you need to do is spam heal everyone and then you just can't lose. I mean, come on... how can someone die if he gets healed? It never worked in other video games b4, right...?
While I disagree to the point it hurts, I can accept it. But their solution was making everyone able to heal and make everyone pretty much a living god unable to be killed. They took out healing for fear of spams and replaced it with potions and 2 new things called barrier and guard.
The potion system is flawed but it works. Just not in a good way. You can carry up to 3 different potions/tonics/grenades and you can improve and add to each one by upgrading it. Sounds good so far. Here's the problem. Never mind the fact it's pretty useless after some point in the game, the problem is how you handle it.
You have a limited number of potions. The main healing one is shared across all characters. Basically you have about 14 healing potions that makes the angel of death look like a little b*tch. You regain all of them by going back to camps, base, or find supplies that are left in the most convenient places. Even places like the fade. How you can explain that is beyond me but I'm sure you can somehow. The rest of the potions can be restored only by making more. You make more by using herbs that you collect and here lies the big elephant in the room. No one likes running around endlessly gathering herbs. You can buy herbs if you like but why even bother. They way alchemy works in this game SUCKS for many reasons, gathering materials is one of em.
Apart from that, potions alone can make anyone a dedicated healer and you can, to some extent, spam heal everyone. It's also quite bothersome to stop your momentum of exploration and run back to the nearest camp to gain your potions back. Also if you find yourself so unlucky and stuck in a place unable to advance because you are out of health, out of potions and can't escape be it from being in a dungeon or in a main quest, you either cheese it and exploit the AI or accept defeat and start over. The battle at haven is a good example. So if not game breaking, it's at least flawed.
Barriers and guard on the other hand is the most broken thing I ever encountered in a game. The fact it was used to avoid spamming an ability that would keep people alive makes it even more stupid. Understanding the logic behind it could make your nose bleed as it replaces a system that has an issue with another system that shares the same issues it was meant to fix. You have to go to the school of bad design choices and get a bad design choices diploma to conjure something so broken.
So what IS barriers and guard? Basically instead of healing your party you add another health bar above their real health bar. A protective bubble, if you may. Any damage you take would transfer to that layer first and basically you can hold a black hole in your fist or slap the sun for all you care, because for that short moment you are a living god. At the start of the game you only have Solas who has that, maybe you as well if you are a mage, so it's not all that powerful but the higher level you get and more abilities and passives you unlock the more guard and barriers you generate for doing almost nothing. At some point the damage you receive is but a drop in the bucket compared to the barrier/guard you generate.
If you want to be the new toughest element in the chart called the "inquisitorium", have your gear generate guard on hit. Done. If you are a knight enchanter its gg. Add to that a piece of gear that heals you for 25% of damage taken and you could potentially be wolverine.
In conclusion, dragon age was always game that you could potentially break, but inquisition has replaced the old system with a much more simplified system that is broken from almost the start. At about level 10 it becomes pretty much the ultimate defense and you will never die. And I played on nightmare all the way.
Very, very bad design choice. Very. Can't say it enough...
EDIT: Automated attributes allocation:
Totally forgot about this one!! Umm.. Yeah, its stupid. I get why its very debatable but a middle ground would have been an option to click "auto allocate" and then you wouldn't need to bother with it if you didn't want to. Instead, EVERYONE are forced to have their stats allocated for them. There are workarounds, using gear and stuff, but its not the same. So yeah, a bad design choice, but maybe i was spoiled by previous RPG and CRPG titles who enabled me to fully customize MY character over the years.
8) combat
well you streamlined the abilities and spells and everything around the combat, how can it not suffer?
For better or worse, the design decision here was to move away from the tactical aspect of the game and go to the action side with the big flashy effects and all. Too bad it isn't excellent in either aspect of the spectrum. But it does look cool at times and people seem to enjoy that, at least.
So while I can't REALLY say "hey it was a bad design choice to change the combat system" I can still question it. I will address other stuff about it though.
Staff combat is weird. It used weird martial art moves but doesn't actually do anything with it. It's just there to look cool. Also if I could shoot 3 bolts instead of 1 I would shoot 3 bolts at all time. And hold it like a shotgun... you have an option to add a blade to your staff. Why? It's cool. Does it do anything other than add stats? No. if you do martial arts with your staff at least make it so that in melee range it doesn't melee damage. It's a big piece of hard wood with a blade in its end, it's not rocket science what you can do to enemies in 2 meter radius from you.
Inability to change your weapons mid fight. A lost relic of the past like the ancient elves, or decent endings by bioware.
Here's the thing. If you are a rogue and you can have points in both a bow and dagger trees, but can't you switch to either one mid fight? If you are a mage who uses a fire staff and need to kill an enemy immune to fire, why can't you switch to a frost staff? If you are a warrior and the other tank dies, why can't you switch to your 1h and shield?
I have the high ground!""
it seems the game can't handle that though. Be it the tactical camera or not if you and the enemy are not on the same level weird things start to happen. With enough distance it gets better though. Still, using the tactical camera to attack enemies from different heights is the real challenge of the combat.
Interaction with the world
I was quite sad to see a beautiful world that I could not use to my advantage. origins did it, divinity original sin did it, so when bioware switched to an engine that is capable of pretty decent looking weather and effects, it was weird how I'm unable to do stuff like cast rain to make the ground muddy, how I can't have a spell or ability to cast oil on the ground like in origins, how I can't electrify pools of water (a dragon could do it, why can't I?!)
Basically the point is that it doesn't matter when or where you fight, be it a building or the desert or the jungle or the ocean, the environment doesn't play part in the combat. Another thing cut from the core. A shame.
Enemy variety
it's no secret how the enemy variety is quite lacking in this game. Be it a group of bandits or darkspawn or whatever, if it's not demons it would be basically assassins/mage/brute/archer/shield. Might look a bit different but play the same. demons are no better having the wisps for ranged, that terror demon that uses portals on the ground, a pride demon, rage demon, some sort of witch demon that shoots ice and that demon that uses a sword and shield and can pull things that I forgot his name. Revenant? W/e. oh and that spider thing demon very rarely. Big game, little variation of enemies ultimately. Quite repetitive imho.
ALSO NO FREAKIN OGRES!!
No Slow-Mo fatalities
origins had a cool slow-mo kill move sometimes. Was pretty epic. Not a REAL issue though.
Combos
once upon a time there was a combo system that enabled a combination of abilities and spells to start a chain reaction that would result in a devastating outcome (link).
As stated above, instead of expanding on it, the system was changed to class combos, making one class able to use the abilities of other classes for a combo. A shame it wasn't just expanded on it but such is life...
inquisition made it worse though, streamlining it to the point where I just encounter the shatter combo. There are a few more but the combat is so fast and flashy it doesn't have any real emphasis. A shame.
Broken AI
yeah... not much you can say about that... ai is just broken, really... enemies are easy to manipulate, some even drop everything and go back to their spot if wonder too far away. Your companions often kill themselves using abilities at the wrong time and ignore your commands if you dare try.
And good luck trying to play with friendly fire on. Your companions would just use chain lightning be it a group of enemies or one enemy and the rest of your party around it. How do you think it? Tactics. What did they do? Removed tactics.
No tactical value
all in all, with all the limitation, the broken AI, the lack of tactics, etc. etc. the combat is just boring. You attack until all are dead, no need for clever tactics here. Bottleneck the incoming group of enemies? Meh. Just spam abilities, most do AoE damage anyway.
It's also quite easy and I played on nightmare as stated earlier.
9) Tactics
ahhhh, tactics... good times. Good times... yeah where the #$%^ is it?! Many threads questioned it, one of them was mine with like 12 pages. None had an answer or some sort of response from bioware.
easily the stupidest of design choice, and also the one that hurt the most to the fans of the series over the years, as the "going back to the roots" and the fact they kept praising the tactical aspect of the game throughout the promotional period of the game left many with the huge surprise that is a poorly made tactical view and a non-existent tactics menu.
Honestly this tops the "no tactical camera" design choice of DA2 and will only be out-done on the dumb decisions scale by removing the party entirely in dragon age 4.
Many issues would have been avoided if we only had the awesome power of the tactics menu, alas we are left with a behavior system that gives us pretty much no tactical value unless you count when to use a potion tactical. The actual "tactics" menu is even more pathetic with 3 options for each ability: 1) use often 2) use normally 3) don't use it.
3 options. Tactics. Let that sink in. this is one of the laziest, most insulting and deceptive design choice on this list and by GOD what I would do to know why they did it. I must know. Why would someone do this stupid move?
The old tactics system not only was optional and unintrusive to the playstyle of the player, it pretty much compliments everyone in a way and has no real cons that I can think of other than making me sad to see it taken away.
Want an action focused gameplay? Hate controlling other characters to do specific actions? With the tactics system you don't need to take over them. They would do it themselves if the situation would arise.
Want a tactical game, top down style? You got it, man! To help you with micromanaging and preventing the AI getting in your way the tactics system would help you with everything. It doesn't play for you but instead help you do the optimal thing. More so with the advanced tactics mod on the nexus.
as it is now, without the tactics system you have a broken AI that gets in your way, you are at times forced to assume direct control of other companions to do specific things because they wouldn't do it themselves, and if you want to play top down view and be tactical have fun pausing every half a second micromanaging EVERYTHINTG your party does. Sounds fun? It sure is when they refuse to do as you say.
I would like to make it perfectly clear to both the customers and the company. This part of the game? Gone. Destroyed. Understand? Your choice of where you took this game made a big part of the title die. I hope you understand this, it's not a small feat.
You killed a big part of the game. It was a very BAD design choice and one day when all the big questions of this universe would be answered people will still wondered what the logic behind this decision was. And none would know. It is so bad it is borderline sabotage.
A big No-No. Possibly the biggest No-No. I can go on for many pages just venting my frustration with this.
10) War table
here's the thing about war table. Other than it being an app game within a game and for some reason using real life time to stop the momentum of your progression in the game, one has to question WHY we are unable to do more than 3 operations at a time.
I had another thread (link) that suggested a solution to this problem and some other small issues of this part of the game but in all honesty... it's both fun and useless. I do enjoy that part of the game's quests than the actual side quests in the game. But power is meaningless and the rewards are almost always bad. Add that to the timers and you have a really awkward system. Would also like to see a more visible changes to the world caused by my decisions. Not even sure if my choices even mattered on how I approach them but basically Leliana almost always sounded like the best idea, followed by Josephine who is an excellent diplomat followed by Cullen who likes to dump soldiers on his problems and tilt his head to the side in an awkward way.
If someone could help me understand why my generals can only do one operation at a time, by all means...
the end I think?
I might have went more and more negative as I progressed through the bad design choices, and I'm sure I forgot many other things they decided to do with the title but I got stuff to do, you see.. But despite all the bad things I still say it's a good game. A 6 out of 10. It's just held back by many problems caused by weird decisions during development.
Retour en haut
It was quite the "project" to make all the bottled feelings be expressed in a coherent way, and im sure i still forgot a lot of things. i left out stuff like PR, story and bugs because i felt it was not a true design choice thing. i mean.. story is a big part of the gameplay, sure, but its kind of its own thing or something..
