You are here? Glorious. You can click away now because I am sure everyone's sick of seeing these "Review" type of threads. But it's fun to write! And maybe Bioware will read it and consider improving on the areas I criticise (who am I kidding?). Also Origin doesn't have a review system like Steam, so I guess it goes here. This "review" is a bit more technical than most, which you may find either interesting or boring. I am an aspiring designer myself (halfway to graduation), and this kind of written analysis also helps me train my mind to dissect products better.
First of all: thank you BioWare for making me able to play and actually finish the game now without cheating. Previously I was not able to play due to severe pain that orbiting camera caused due to having to hold RMB all the time. Since you patched in the toggle, the game is actually properly playable and I had no other major issues with it (well, except for the 21:9 behaviours screen clipping, but the behaviours are only used once per game to turn off potion autouse, so that's not a gamebreaking issue).
Second: when I first launched Inquisition and saw the quality of most of the content (i.e. sidequests), I was ready to put a cross on BioWare as another casualty of EA - as we all know EA is a master at destroying great studios and turning creating passionate franchises into trendy soulless DLC platforms. However BioWare has just barely pulled through in my opinion - because of that post-launch support.
There is no stronger indication that you still care for your game and don't just view it as a checklist from the publisher than good post-launch support. This is something anyone should remember. A lot of problems remain control scheme and no area resource looting, being the biggest, but just as many issues, reported by community, were patched in. This is really good. Even though your game tried to be something it shouldn't, even though there are some serious mistakes in how you constructed this part, there is no doubt that you care, and that's the biggest precedent for future improvements.
As for the game? Well my opinion here will be par-of-the-course. I am mostly thinking the same as the majority.
Game stages
Startgame
Beginning-Skyhold(player levels 0-8).
Start of the game is terrible. Not only because you don't get as many companions, but actually because of quest and level balancing - I suspect they wanted to stuff the Hinterlands with a ton of content (never mind the quality of it), but were afraid that players would overlevel by the time they unlock Skyhold, so they made these crappy quests award little experience. As a result to actually make meaningful progress the player has to do a lot of these quests, especially before the XP acceleration perks are obtained.
Because the quests are of MMO quality and completely uninteresting and forgettable, the only reason anyone might wanna do them is for XP/Power/Influence they net and as a direct result, when they don't award enough of it, they feel extremely unrewarding.
There is literally only one positive experience in the entire startgame (besides the plot conversations of course) - that side quest with the elf that teaches you about magical artifacts and runes. The elf actually takes part in your activity, interacts with companions, the activity doesn't involve half-map fetching and it organically teaches you an important game mechanic. But that is literally the only enjoyable startgame experience I had aside from main plot.
Midgame
Midgame is what I consider the part from unlocking Skyhold to the completion of either Wicked Hearts or Adamant. In terms of player progression it is levels 9-17. By that time I would kill 2-3 dragons (killed 3 I think in my "proper" playthrough) and outfitted the entire party in crafted equipment.
This is in my opinion the strongest part of the game. The reason for this is combat balancing. It is the stage where you are neither too weak to be completely destroyed by mobs outleveling you, nor too strong to breeze through fights without any challenge. A lot of it comes from the way combat is designed (I talk about that in later section).
Again though - terrible side-quests that take up 90% of all time spent within the game. The problem is that if you have the "RPG syndrome" a.k.a. "Gotta have all purple! Gotta have all dragonbone! GOTTA POWERLEVEL BIATCH!", which most players do, you won't like missing a ton of leveling opportunities. You won't just walk past all the filler trash because as pathetic as it is it's got the "shiny" as a reward. It's a nasty aspect of human nature, something many companies exploit, but it would be silly to assume BioWare did this deliberately to make people endure the tedium - they don't sell XP boosters in SP games. Yet. But let's not give EA any ideas.
Midgame also is when I unlock the most interesting perks. Dialogue options and XP boosts make a big difference in terms of enjoyment, not only by enhancing the player dialogue and integrating meta into the story (I don't mind a "best-of-all" dialogue option - after all if I was to learn all this crap about underworld/nobility/history, I'd expect a return on my investment in this exact form, and it's so much better than just stats), but also by making progression less of a chore with XP boosts.
Lategame
By this point the game becomes something of a meta simulator. Depending on your tolerance to tedium you will either try to complete everything you can, hunt all dragons and do all operations or rush the campaign and play something else. Fights are not challenging anymore because you have a lot of health and a lot of spammable abilities to keep that health up. And enemies do as well. In fact this part is very annoying, because due to MMO-style scaling of enemies in this game, lategame it becomes a sort of "tank-on-tank" combat, where both sides have a lot of HP (or in case of allies, spammable ways to keep that HP, like guard, many potions, barriers), and disproportionately low damage, which results in a lot of kiting and little strategy. I will talk about it later in combat section.
Same crappy quests done for "+100nm penis length" and nothing more than that are by this point a real turnoff. When I previously completed a BioWare game (except ME3 of course, and yes - even for DA2, I didn't dislike it), I wanted to press New Game button by the time I finished. In this game I don't. And this is solely because of those side quests, time they consume and the ratio to total game content they take. It's a grind of epic proportions, and in lategame is gets on your nerves enough for you to start hating on this game, despite the fact that in all fairness, it's main dialogues and characters are really not that bad.
I almost liked Emprise Du Lion. Until the 4th or 5th cage I had to open. The 10th "monster box" I had to clear. The 30 minutes it took me to just advance up the keep underleveled without many issues - because the mobs can't navigate terrain and find out that the final boss is basically unbeatable with my team composition and level, that it created an autosave after I entered that room, that it locked me inside that room, that it let me quicksave inside that room and that after I, via another navigation exploit, defeated the boss, he bugged out and the shields didn't go away so I had to use another exploit to advance the story without loosing last 1.5 hours of grind. Almost. But not quite.
Combat
Combat is a coin of 2 sides. There are good things about it and bad, and IMO it's pretty straightforward what is what, so
Good
The design of abilities - they mostly have low cooldowns. They are different enough. They modify gameplay sufficiently. They can be used for a variety of situations - e.g. leaping shot can be used as an escape, but after upgrade it can be also used for CC. Stealth can be used to take aggro off, but it can also be used for hunting easier. Mage dodging (in the cryo tree, forgot the name) can be used for escape and positioning, but if you cheat and take CD off it, it can be used as porn. Really, try it. It's so awesome.
Physical hitboxes - no, if I dodged away, they won't hit me. And if I have a huge sword, it will hit everything it passed through. And if I have a shield, the projectiles hitting it, will not damage me. And if I walked behind something, the projectiles will hit my cover, not me. This is such an important thing I can not overstate just how much it brings to the table. The combat would not be even 20% as good as it is without this.
Active field control instead of stats - combat is focused around active damage prevention and enemy control. Barrier, guard, dodging, blocking parrying. All of these things are infinitely more fun and enjoyable than just getting better stats and equipment and being able to tank all the damage coming your way. This sadly becomes irrelevant lategame because due to the amount of barriers, guard and the stats on equipment you have, all the strategy is taken away from using these mechanics. But they are there, and that's important.
Good enemy design and FX - telegraphs are important. And Inquisition knows it. Special attacks never come instantly and unexpectedly. There are always good animations to signify that **** is about to hit the fan. Also enemies are sufficiently varied. Immunities they have encourage switching party members, for as long as you are not OP. Using the terrain is also important for splitting enemies and taking cover from projectiles. What I would like to see is an ability to generate objects. Physical walls and barriers that stop movement and projectiles from getting though. Right now positioning is mostly about splitting mellee and ranged so they can support each other.
Bad
Balance - like I said: the only stage where combat works as intended is in Midgame. Before that you are too weak to take on enemies higher level than you (unless it's just 1 or 2 standard trash mobs) and after that all those nice ability designs are pointless because you will not need to use them.
Control scheme - by far the biggest problem in the entire game aside from shitty side quests. With how the abilities are designed the control scheme for action mode should have been like Smite! You ever played Smite? It's an action control scheme when positioning and timing precision is paramount. You have to worry about how and which abilities to use and when, instead of worrying about the execution. In Smite combat execution is smooth and natural. In Inquisition to use "Pull" I have to pause the game or spam tab to see the tiny indicator on the enemy I want to pull and then press the button.
What I SHOULD have to do is press the button, see the telegraph line, aim the camera such that the line crosses the enemy I want to pull (leading, if necessary) and then press LMB to execute. After that I should pause the game to switch to cryo mage character. While the enemy is disabled with pull and cant activate barriers or guard (ideally they should also have their CC immunities temporarily disabled), I can press freeze hotkey for a small AoE telegraph, hover it over the enemy, LMB to execute, which freezes them and then follow up with my Assassin's hidden blades to completely annihilate that enemy.
THAT is what the control scheme should do. What I do right now, is zoom out and use tactics mode for ANY of these setups, and that's not fun and takes away all the fun and challenge that COULD be put into the game, had the control scheme been constructed to support the physics-based nature of hitbox, the ability mutations, and the low cooldowns on some of these abilities.
So what does it all boil down to, now that there (finally) is an orbit toggle on the camera? Mostly 2 things:
- Character facing - they are not facing same direction as the camera. They should. A lot of abilities are designed to take advantage of the physics hitboxes - which means that it's a very easy possibility to add the skill of direction in addition to positioning to almost every single class - from parrying to shields, to using single-handed weapons to hit several enemies consistently, with skillful character orientation. Again - all the technology for that is already in the game, it's JUST a control scheme issue.
- Telegraphs - now I am not necessarily talking about super-fancy telegraphs like in Smite. A single projected line orienting from the character, coupled with automatic character-camera facing alignment from previous point would have done the job just as well.
There could be other improvements, like optional manual aiming on mages/archers for trickshots and other stuff, but the absence of those 2 are by far the biggest problem I have with the combat in this game and they are the reason I don't find multiplayer fun.
The final negative thing about combat is the amount of these abilities. There are just way too many. I would much rather prefer total of 8 abilities each of a certain type, and the tree mutating those 8 abilities to work in a certain interesting way. Because it already is like that. You can AoE effect abilities with different effects, you have single target instant cast, you have a single target projectile cast, a steroid (instant/semi-instant self-buff), a dodge, a parry and a stance. Plus your basic attacks. That's it. There are no more.
Every single ability is a modifier to those types, but they all follow the same basic execution process, which means you don't have to clone them, but instead just mutate them, and add a button for switching trees. It would also resolve the lategame issue of spam - while in Knight Enchanter mode I can't spam-cast barriers. I have to switch to spirit tree first. Again - more tactics, more possibilities. It's a crying shame that with all those things created, they didn't take advantage of their designs with a control scheme that supports it.
Progression
Aside from the mentioned issue of too many abilities with same execution sequence, I can't say I didn't enjoy the progression. I like crafting. I like giving retarded names to my equipment. Cassandra is dressed up in "Lewd sweaty scrap metal" and she seems to like it. Solas wears " Rags of The Oppressed" and seems happy. Maybe I am immature but it is enough for me. The amount of control they give you with crafting, while not driving complexity into the sky is an impressive piece of design work. All the more surprising that they couldn't design a proper control scheme for combat.
Unfortunately they decided to keep the old "Constitution/Magic/Hairstyle +3" system, which in my opinion hurts the game a lot and hurt the previous games too. It is in my opinion main reason for why people complain of the game being too easy. Id rather they did away with it and just gave us interesting passive effects to be used in combat, instead of buffing us statistically until the combat becomes easy regardless of our involvement. 25% damage reflection? Great, I will use "Challenge" on that enemy rouge and put my shield wall up and he can choke on his own damage LOL. But what is this? I have 100 constitution so who cares who attacks me? Just war cry everyone and switch to some other character. There is a lot of possible skill taken away with those stats.
Characters
I am a mechanics-focused person. In fact my sort of target career once I graduate is gameplay design, so I don't really focus on other parts as much. Characters in this game are for the most part very unlikeable TO ME. Ok. Subjective. I didn't like personality of most of them, I found them either boring or annoying, I only liked Iron Bull and Cassandra (and Varric, if he counts - he is old character). But there is one thing I have to mention:
Politics. Stop. Polluting. Your. ******. Game. With. That. ****. Stop it. Your are better than that, and your game deserves better. In your bloody quest for "tolerance" you have become so obsessed, it starts to do the opposite. The only one single character who actually benefits from this whole sexuality thing is Dorian. With him it actually DOES make sense. It enhances him as a character and is supported by his behaviour and look too, and in his case being gay actually does seem like a creative decision. With EVERY single other gay/lesbian/bi character this looks so FRIGGIN insufferably politicised and obvious it makes me wanna vomit. I hate politics with every fiber of my being. There is zero honesty in it. Zero creativity. It's a plague we have to suffer because we can't govern ourselves, but PLEASE. For the love of Andraste, keep this crap out of our entertainment.
I have nothing against people with untraditional sexual orientation. But I have everything against putting political agenda into games WITHOUT a creative reason to do so. It harms the game IMMENSELY. You are restricted with romances, on top of suffering so obviously out of place character traits. I am not even talking about BioWare's tendency for main characters - you can have either a man or a man with female body and voice (maybe consider having only female writers write the female protagonist, so my female protagonist doesn't seem like a gender swapped testosterone-powered war machine?). Like I said, every single untraditional sexuality decision except for Dorian, looks obviously political and contrived. I hate that in games. Stop doing that ffs!
Plot
BioWare plot™. You start by collecting silly hats off corpses. You end by saving the world and getting all the ladies (yes, the "fe-male" too, refer to above). Some magic happens in-between. Somehow it all ends up working out for you. Nothing else to say.
Honestly, who plays BioWare games for the plot? We play it for characters and lore. Not the main storyline.
Have to say though: contrary to popular opinion I friggin loved Wicked Hearts. It was a really unique and memorable mission, it reminded me in a way of Dishonored Boyle Manor. It could use some improvements (i.e. the removal of the stupid timer), but I really liked it nonetheless. I actually reloaded a save and played it again, just because I thought I missed some of the secrets and spying stuff. I would love the consequences of it to be more spread out through the game actually.
Bottom line/TL;DR
So, conclusion: not giving up on this studio just yet. Combat is good, but has some big problems with it's control scheme and balance. However that makes about 10% at most of the whole combat-related content. The rest is good, which just makes more of a shame that they wasted so much of their own work by not making a proper balance/control scheme to support the rest of their designs.
Progression is ok, like crafting, don't like the amount of abilities with same execution sequences. Startgame is terrible, midgame is best, lategame is bad. The war table is meaningless, not even worth writing a paragraph about. I thought it was gonna have strategic meaning, you would decide how and when to do missions, etc. But no, it is, in fact, just an elaborate level up/looting menu. Might as well have been a list with buttons.
Characters written well for the most part, but heavily politicised, which is insufferable to someone who hates politics as much as me. Most characters I personally found very to moderately unlikable, but that's just my personal opinion.
Plot is generic, and not the reason I play this game.
Overall not a bad game. Not quite what I wanted, but not quite the disaster it could have been. I give this game a Math.exp(2.7x)/Number of Side quests cheese slices. This makes about 5.5PI cheese slices. Glorious. With the excellent post-launch support they have, I am still holding onto some faith in BioWare. I want to thank BioWare for making this game, and you, insane and wonderful person, who read this review!
PS: Are the side quests in Jaws of Hakkon any good? At least any better than main game?
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