A review I posted on a different site - thought I would post it here for no other reason than people might feel the same way or have some counter points - all meant in a genuine, constructive, friendly manner with no intention to offend in any way.
As someone who was the worlds biggest Bioware fan until DA2 / ME3 I had high hopes for this one so while it might sound like I'm griping a lot, I really did enjoy it.
*warning - contains huge spoilers*
:-)
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So does it walk on water? Nope, but it gets to the surface and swims about in a fairly convincing manner rather than sinking to the depths like its predecessor. Biowares best game since Mass Effect 2 but it doesn't reach those dizzy heights and upsettingly it looks like the Bioware / DA of old really is gone for good and while what it's been replaced with is enjoyable, it's not the stuff of legend.
There's a general thought on t'net that Biowares' hey day is over and it's hard to disagree. I think the design, in its current guise it really showing it's age - it (in particular the MMO world gameplay which makes up 80% of the game) doesn't stand up to the presentation and polish levels offered by other games these days - the next one needs to update in several areas or it's in danger of becoming almost arthritic.
Most importantly of all, they need to bring back meaningful decisions *that affect the story at a later point* and an ending that you configure with your actions during the game. Two foundation points of a Bioware RPG that aren't in DA:I - My guess is that the content costs so much to create now that they can't have it missed by players. Another point that DA:O style is gone forever.
Would I buy the next one? Maybe - I did enjoy this but it could be so much more. 88 hours over 6 weeks is a lot of enjoyment and I was absolutely hammering it for a week or two (I've heard you can blast through it in 25 hours though with the exact same story) but it's not going to stay with me like ME1 / 2 and DA:O.
Origins is still the top DA game (DA:O 9, DA:2 7). There's too much filler, the story isn't as strong and crucially your decisions don't matter or change the story in any way. However I did get a lot of enjoyment out of it and there’s some thrilling moments in there.
8 / 10
The good:
- Better than DA2 in a lot of ways. Not hard but it wasn't always a certainty that Bioware were going to learn their lesson and in certain places they really haven't but they should be applauded for listening to some of the feedback even if the cynic in me thinks they saw people showering skyrim with money and said "lets make that!". (TBF, it appears to have been a sound strategy - DA:I is supposedly Bioware's biggest launch ever).
- There are some real moments of majesty here - the time travelling mission being the best example - absolutely brilliant. If the game had more of that level of quality applied to more missions (not just main path) around the various worlds it would have been mindblowing. As it is, the divide between main quest and everything else is too wide and the ratio between the two is too much filler. They should have cut the number of environments down by about a half and filled them with actual main quest quality level missions and random world building events. As it is, it generally felt like the main path missions were a reward for slogging through hours of mild tedium where not much happened.
- There's some very touching moments - everyone playing cards, the dawn will come singing etc etc. Exactly what you want from a bioware game. Lovely.
- One of Varrics first lines is "Whatever you've heard about kirkwall, it wasnt that bad". Had to have been deliberate lol.
- Achingly beautiful in places. However, while stunning, they were pretty lifeless with very few spontaneous events or things happening in the world.
- Good to see a few characters from previous games.
The bad
- Having the big bad be someone from DA2's dlc seems like a bit of a FU to players who didn't like da2 and therefore didnt play the dlc. Corephyus was pretty poor really - he lost at every available point in the story and the final encounter was shockingly easy.
- The story was lukewarm - it held my interest mostly but didn't grab me - there was no personal stakes for me other than me being in the wrong place at the wrong time and it was very by the numbers. No surprises, no failures or anything. Big whoop :-\
- I find the swearing and some of the coloquialisms really jarring. Its like if the cast of 90210 were in LOTR or something. I appreciate they need a character that appeals to different demographics and I'm not expected shakespere and ye olde English but speaking styles that reflects the content and mood would be better instead off things like "*******" which just sounds juvenile out and out of place.
- sera, at first is quite possibly the most annoying character to ever grace gaming. I almost declined her offer to join she was that annoying. She toned it down a bit as the game went on but jezuz!
- id been prepared for the first twenty hours being tedious fetch quests and they werent kidding. Its not just the hinterlands either. Until you pick the mages or templars mission at redbrick its decidedly light on story and drama and even then it goes back to it when you deviate from the main path.
- player should have to walk to a camp to fast track to another. Part of the implicit deal a game makes with it's players and the ability to fast travel. Its daft when your mopping up remaining missions and just fast tracking around and totally ruins immersion.
- good that they brought camps with your team nearby back but they also needed the map showing the player walking across it (the red line) from DA:O with the ability for spontaenous missions. Doesn't feel like a world so much as a hub level - there needed to be connectivity between fast travel and the game (i.e show the player getting into a horse and cart or mounting a horse, then fade to black).
- no where near enough dialog for the length of time you play the game. Characters are silent for hours at a time. They need to be talking a lot more frequently. Needs a lot more environment queues and characters responding to their environment / events around them.
- the dragons are incredible but are just "there". There's no narrative reason to kill them other than because you can whereas skyrim had them tied into the story. If they aren't bothering people, its a bit malicious to go after them for sport. I think they should have been story beats with Corypheous' dragon / demon spawn instead where you just have to damage it enough for it to fly off. Would have led to a more personal final encounter with it too.
- bit too much harping on about "the game". We get it, we've all seen game of thrones too.
- Again with the design being old, the romance stuff is cool but its been done and done better by DA1 with the gifting and actually having to listen to people to find out what they like. Here it was signposted with big arrows "go hear, buy this, give to partner, get jiggy!" Which spoilt it a little as it removed the work and just made it rota. Its tricky because they want the user to feel like the hero and get the girl / boy but equally you should have to work a bit for it (and i dont mean follow the instructions, i mean use your intuition like DA:O).
- In terms of story, the characters are very much there to do a job - I didn't really form much of a connection to any of them as it was almost business like.
- Didn't get to the deep roads of dwarven undergrounds - shame - quite annoying since Varric's mission takes you *to the entrance of the deep roads* then aborts - WTF?
- Far too MMO with the general gameplay.
- Upgrading was poor - I just maxed the bespoke skill tree for each character and that was more than enough - after level 10 when you've unlocked and powered everything there really was no point in it anymore. Definitely needed more than 8 slots or more than two tiers at max for each power.
- Being able to fail missions on the war table or have them alter the story was required - as it was, the timer just seemed a way to artificially stretch the story out.
- Having to go back to sky hold to command your troops to repair bridges to unlock new areas in a map was silly - they have messengers in Thedas - why couldn't the inquisitor just send a message to get help to come to him (I know why in game terms but it was daft).
- enemy variety - no where near enough of it and pretty boring.
- its been humanised, same as DA2. No werewolves or rhyming trees or anything. Its humans ( or human shaped) only in the real world with fantasy stuff coming from the fade. Takes some of the fantasy shine off. I want trolls and stone gollums and other stuff like that. Dragons actually seem a bit out of place since there's nothing else that inst anthropomorpically correct.
The ugly
There's no reason to play twice which i suppose is an odd thing to say but its what Bioware rpgs are supposed to be about. - - The paragon / renegade playthroughs to see what happens when you make different decisions.
There are no truly meaningful decisions in this game - nothing has an effect on the story at a later point or unexpected consequences. Everything takes place in its own bubble (presumably so it can be cut or slotted in during development with minimal headaches). Even something as binary as "mages or templars" which is the first choice you get is a total illusion (I choose mages but apparently if you choose templars, you get one harder mage mission but then the enemies are all templars throughout the rest of the game anyway).
- What was the point in my spending hours and hours amassing a force through out the whole game that I didn't get to use at all in the finale - don't they understand, that's the entire point of playing the fecking game - to have influence into the outcome. I couldn't wait to see everyone fighting together, who lived, who died and all the people I'd hired providing interesting additions or options but no, none of that - WTF?!
- Too much text to read - for a game that is (apparently) dumbed down to appeal to the COD crowd and seems to think its audience has the intelligence of a potato, it really shouldn't throw volumes of text at you. There's too much to take in and it all just dissolves into an amorphous blob.
This is made even more apparent during the mission in the elf tower / well of souls mission where Morrigan is talking to you about things you would have been reading in any other mission. It's just so much better / more interesting to have a character talk with you than it is to read. They need to basically apply that to the entire game - have characters who are there to be sources of knowledge about the world and it's history - don't make the player read through textbooks.
- The inquisitor is a blank slate of a character - no defining qualities or personality traits - I can see why this might be deliberate but it stifles the role playing.
- Same as all RPGS - quite a lot to take in at first. Really needed a mentor to guide you during the early stages or at least limit things a bit until the player gets used to it. Took me ages to work out how the war table was supposed to be played.
- i think the terrain traversal is last gen. Maybe its because i played shadows of mordor last but having the character sliding down inclines he could step over and generally struggling to move around the environment (and of course the rather stupid decision to make the character have to climb inclines to find hidden objects) makes things look stupid. Make walls either so steep its obvious you cant climb them or have them accessible with foot paths. Don't have grey areas unless your character won't flip around like a fish out of water.
if you are making terrain travesal part of the game, you also need to include climbing and characters pulling themselves up onto ledges that are within reach as well as jumping. Or you know, team work helping each other since there's four of them (and bull is 8ft tall). It's really annoying when they can't get to somewhere easily within reach.
- When a mission wasn't new but hadn't been played it has the same icon / war map marker as a played mission so you had to manually go through all the missions on the map looking for ones you'd not played yet - annoying. You needed a way to highlight a chosen mission on the war table so the player could fast find it if needed. I had to look up where Cassandra's 5 knights mission was on the map, on the net because I couldn't find it.
- You need a rogue to unlock this door / you need a warrior to break this wall down. Great - don't put mission critical items behind those walls ffs - they should be bonus items only - design 101. Very annoying to have to go back to a camp and come back.
- Inquisitor still can't swim - bless 'im.
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