*****WARNING: Minor spoilers within. Nothing that would or could ruin the game's story, but fair is fair.****
So although I am fairly sure that at some point I said I was never going to buy this because I'd just wait for The Witcher 3, I saw it on sale and bought it. And now 100 hours later, I figured I'd give my impressions of the game in the same review style as I do my E3 press conference reviews, only with less than 10,000 words (but it's still got some girth to it). I want to see if this works out more objectively than the typical review, so let me know at the end how it goes. I've made my final scores green at the bottom for anyone who wants to quickly scroll down to find it first.
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Just for the sake of keeping it all clear, I'm going to start off with some bullet points that I considered important to mention while I was playing. Anything positive will be listed by "+", negatives with "-", and neutral observations with "=".
+ Conversations are a huge improvement over Mass Effect thanks to the indicators in the speech wheel that show what the line will convey and also thanks to the act that the "good" and "bad" options are not always in the same place.
= Astrariums are cool little star puzzles that I enjoyed finding and doing, but it's a shame that they only lead to a single cave unlock in each area which for the most part just has shitty gear inside that you immediately sell. I wish that they had instead used the astrariums to gain bonuses to stats like Willpower or Stamina; something actually useful.
= While I do not like that the main character is limited in their skill set to the preset classes and all that, I do like that you can swap between party members to mix up the gameplay if you tire of being an archer after 20 hours.
- The interface for making commands in battles is not user friendly, and I found myself too frustrated to bother with it again after the second attempt.
- You gear quality is much more important than your levels in terms of taking down the big baddies, but your loot quality itself is more based on luck than anything. I would have liked a little more consistency in getting useful gear, or at the very least getting better schematics for crafting rather than weaker ones. I found the Bianca Arms IV upgrade faster than Bianca arms II or III for example, and then later on found several of each weaker version without finding anything stronger EVER, eventually leaving Varric severely underpowered compared to everyone else.
- The world does not feel alive. Mass Effect managed to make it all feel alive as did Skyrim, but Dragon Age doesn't leave enough to subtlety. All of the story and backstory seems to be in the foreground, so exploring basically feels like little more than charting your map.
+ As a game world though; the individual areas are nicely sized and balanced with plenty of things to keep your time occupied. While many if not most of the missions were repetitive objectives, it didn't feel quite as repetitive most of the time (except for those boring fade rifts).
- Requisitions and Research both feel like huge missed opportunities. Requisitions are basically pointless, save for raising your Inquisition level and eventually gaining a few meta bonuses to the amount of EXP you earn or how much inventory you can hold. They entail an infinite number of "farm this material" objectives that repeat often and for the most part have no immediate benefit. Research is cool because you trade the pelt or whatever of your foes for bonuses to damage and stuff in future fights with said baddie, but they are never presented with any urgency or even purpose. It's just kind of there if you want to. I would have liked to see the research integrated with Requisitions in the field and possibly to influence the lands themselves. For example, your research could give your troops an advantage, and they clear out more of the demons so the roads are safer to travel. That sort of thing. Reqs should just be more useful; easily done by integrating them with found schematics for something more tangible than "geological surveys".
= The maps being blank upon arrival doesn't make sense to me in this game. I get that you haven't explored the area yet, but your spies have, and they also marked on your blank map where certain objectives are. So how did they do that if your map is blank? Doesn't make sense. It doesn't hurt anything for the most part, except for when you go to the desert areas and start running around just trying to mark your borders and then get stuck in slomo areas and the world travel map every two seconds because that happens to be where your map ends with no other indication to you until you're there.
= Item management menus are a little cluttered, and get in their own way at times when you want to compare gear. I do like the option to mark your worthless stuff into valuables for quick sale later though.
+ I love the banter between party members in this game; so much better and more frequent than in the ME games. Pairing different people gets different conversations specific to them, and they remember what conversations they've already had. An example would be Solas and Iron Bull. The two bickered about the Qun a lot until Bull chose his chargers over his duty. Now disgraced from his heritage, Solas opens up and offers him support rather than any further argument. This opens up more of a friendship between them, so they eventually begin playing chess with no board. They stop and start up again three separate times during this same game, each time picking up logically where they left off. The crazy part is that one of the times they were interrupted it was for a battle, and not because they stopped on their own. That kind of character depth went a long way to at the very least bringing the people to life, even if the world behind them felt more shallow.
- I wish the dragons in the game felt more like boss battles and less like overpowered animals. There's little difference between fighting a great bear and a dragon in feel; the dragon just takes longer and dished out more damage.
- I do not like that you cannot change your gear during battle, nor that everyone shares the same number of healing potions. For the former, it's annoying when you find a stronger weapon and cannot use it. As for the latter, if everyone carries their own tonics and grenades, why must everyone share the same potions? Until I figured out how to change the AI from using potions at half health, most of the big fights where I would need the aid of a potion I ran out quickly because the other characters hogged it all. As I said, eventually I figured out where to change those tactics, but it's still ridiculous.
- This beards in character customization do not look as though they are attached to your character's face; they look more like beard masks. And while I'm talking about customization, what was the point of letting me put a tattoo on my face when I'm THE ONLY DAMN CHARACTER IN ALL OF THEDAS BESIDES HAWKE WHO HAS ONE? And his doesn't look like a tattoo or war paint; it looks like his face took someone's sword.
= The first thing my Inquisitor said after his first kiss with Josephine, I shit you not, was, "They have certainly spared no expense." Granted, that was in the quarters that I had only ever been in once before and by that point she was out of the room, but still. Hilarious timing.
- Speaking of romances, Bioware often takes the creative route when it comes to the on screen kiss by avoiding the actual kiss altogether, and instead showing the back of someone's head. It's a creative workaround since they obviously haven't been able to properly render a kiss (who has?), but even so the position of the characters' heads and even the way their hands touch still doesn't look right. Like Josephine was trying to stick her tongue in the Inquisitor's eye while she literally put her hand through his hand. Kind of kills the mood. Unrelated to romances but related to character movements and stuff, I also want to point out that Leiliana's attire and movements strongly remind me of Tali from ME. Like enough to make me think my character called her the wrong name from time to time.
- This game is buggy. And not Skyrim buggy where it's obvious and you can just sort of roll with it either; this game has glitched trophies and glitched loading screens galore. There's one point in the game where time is a factor to your success, and I had to wait for an area to load. But while my screen just went black with a green Inquisition logo in the bottom right of my screen for about five whole minutes, I still heard the sounds of the room I was in, and heard not only the warning bells that I was about to lose points but also the Inquisitor acknowledge that I had. When it finally finished its loading, I brought me into the same area I was trying to leave, positioned as though I had just entered. And yes, points had been deducted. This is the most immediate hurt the issue cause, but not the only time it occurred, It actually happened about 12 or so times through my whole experience with the game.
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So that's it for my thoughts as I was going, so now I'll figure a base score for the game and add some bonuses to it as I see fit.
I have three positive notes, five neutral notes, and nine negative notes. Giving two points for each positive, 1 for each neutral, and none for each negative we get 11 points out of 20 talking points. Divide it out and the base is .550 From that, I look at the more standardized factors about the game to allocate the remaining possible .450 points.
Tech: Good, but definitely leave something to be desired when it comes to facial hair and a person's physical interactions with other people or food. The game ran smoothly, until you get to the load screen issues and trophy glitches. (.060 out of .100)
Fun Factor: It's there, but it wanes over time depending on how much you invest on side missions. I tried a completionist playthrough, and I starting having some bland feelings on and off at about 50 hours, which is still quite healthy. Gameplay for the most part feels smooth and fun, with the frustrating bit being completely optional. (.125 put of .150)
Story: It wasn't amazing, but it was a better take on "holes in the fantasy sky" than Oblivion's story IMO. The background tensions between elves, mages, templars, etc felt more interesting, but wasn't quite strong enough (.060 out of .100).
Industry Standing: It falls into decent territory. I enjoyed it a lot more than Oblivion overall, which is the most similar game plotwise that I know of. In terms of setting type, Skyrim skill kicks its ass in most areas for me. And with the Witcher 3 on the horizon, there isn't much hope for this one to have any long lasting impact. (.050 out of .100)
All that considered, I will grant the game .295 bonus points of the remaining possible .450, which brings the grand total for DA:I to an .845 out of 1.000, or in simpler terms a B.
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So there's my attempt at a more broken down, subjective-yet-objective type of review. Comment below with your thoughts on the game, the review style, or the review's content as you wish.
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Quote Of The Day
"I'm nicer than stupid people think I am."
-Fellstrike
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Today In Music (April 18th)
"Tush" single by ZZ Top released on April 18th, 1975. Sadly, I've got no full albums on my list today.