(This post contains some spoilers)(TL;DR at the bottom)
After playing the game (with the JoH DLC) I have finally beaten DA:I after 96 hours. I am a player who preordered the digital deluxe version of this game, someone who bothered to buy DA:O for his friends despite not having what I would call a "comfortable income," and bothered replaying DA:2 more than a few times, but only now after all this time have I finally sat down and finished the game.
What does this mean? I'll start by saying I enjoyed the game and look forward to the possibility of new dragon age games. I love the world, the lore, and the characters. Still, this game, for all of it's spectacle and all of its wonderful moments has a problem that started subtly and grew into something I wasn't too comfortable with. I want to say it started before the destruction of Haven, but in all honesty I believe it started in the Hinterlands, possibly even before that.
My first hint at the actual problem I want to address was the wartable. My initial reaction to it was positive, because it had stories attached to what was happening and it made me feel like I was actually in charge of what was going on, like I was actually the Inquisitor. But I noticed really quickly that timers were attached, some would say to make the game, "feel more realistic." After all, things don't just immediately happen because you will it. But keep in mind latter on there are missions, some of which are important to the plot that take over 14 hours, there are missions that take over 30 hours. I am a player that doesn't like to abuse cheats or exploits, at least on the first playthrough, but I'm going to admit right now I changed my date and time settings a lot and I feel no shame over that. At this point in time I figured, hey, as long as they DON'T patch that, I'm alright with it.
Now, the destruction of Haven is important because I am a Dragon Age fan that likes to do everything in the game, but I saw the destruction of Haven coming from miles away, and as a veteran gamer and player of RPGs, I decided to postpone that and do all the side stuff I could (which probably isn't a good thing for a "realistic story). This made a second problem I experienced for the next 60-70+ hours come to light. The collection quest and astrariums.
If you're going to make me collect all of those damn shards, I would much rather see an interesting story play out than get a permanent boost to stats and some weapons I don't need, it takes some people DAYS to farm those things, and the astrariums? I felt compelled to do them just so that the quest log would leave me alone. I didn't honestly expect better from the devs to make it actually worth my while, and while permanent resistances and maybe the gear depending on where you are in the game is good, it's not worth doing for the time you spent unless you're playing on the hardest difficulty of the game and you claim to NEED those increases.
Why do I mention these things now? Because the common theme of these things, the shards, the astrariums, the war table, and the invisible things that make some of these things undoable made my first playthrough of this game a form of self-inflicted Hell. It's obvious that these things were put in here to make people play the game longer but they do not ADD ANYTHING to the experience of the game, they break the flow of the game and after all that time didn't feel rewarding for doing. I strongly question why they're even there.
I also want to mention what this does to the pacing of the game, for most of it, my companions wouldn't say anything new for the longest times of me roaming zones and doing quest, they never asked anything of me regardless of their influence, but you do a key event then SUDDENLY everybody goes HAM on your ass and people come to you for favors or their personal drama just because... well because. They should come to you organically, not because some world ending event or invisible quest barrier you passed says they should. Once you go through that dry spell of completing all the side quest you're paranoid of not being able to do after you pass the green sparkly one on your wartable, you are suddenly bombarded with all of their bullshit at once, which sadly was refreshing more than overwhelming because FINALLY you get some damn character development. I play this series for the meaningful bond you establish with the characters and to see the effects you have on the world and you guys are purposefully depriving me of both despite all the side stuff I do with the exceptions of clearing forts and finding campsites.
I have many other things I want to say, but I feel this is enough to convey what the largest problem I felt the game had was. 96 hours and only about 15 hours or less of it was meaningful, and only a handful of moments made me think, "wow, this was worth waiting for, this was worth doing all of that unrelated crap and grinding to my level to do was for."
(TL;DR) The game is good but bloated with unnecessary or unrewarding things that break the flow of the game.
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