Poll: Should I buy Dragon Age Inquisition?

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

I pre-ordered the Witcher 3 because I trust CDProjekt to deliver. Even if it isn't revolutionary, just more of The Witcher 2 will be enough for me to justify my purchase ^_^

As for Dragon Age Inquisition, I cannot say. I have the funds available to buy it, but it might mean being more financially restricted in the coming months to make up for the £40 loss. It certainly looks good, and the release hype has been pretty convincing in making me consider buying it, but I want to wait for TotalBiscuit's, Yahtzee's and Jim's opinions on the game before deciding. That might take some time, but I only trust them amongst reviewers.

And even amongst the three, I only truly care about Yahtzee's take, since he truly digs into the game to find what is wrong with it. TB will probably like it, Jim might give it a slightly more reserved review, but none truly try to look for badness as Y does.

 

[Da_Schwartz]

I visited this site jus tto find a thread like this today. Okay, so im a huge RPG fan, enojyed the other 2 DA's immensely. But yea, im sorry but inquistion is pretty dull..im a good ten plus hours into it, and so far nothing about it is exciting, at all. As said before the game seems huge, and detailed and there are so many side quests etc etc. SO far:

What i like: Scale..umm oh crap..

What i don't like: The character creator is crazy detailed but unless you want to devoted multiple hours and constant restarts usually your main comes out looking pretty busted. Alot of the things like crafting and slotting and upgrading aren't explained very well but alas not that hard to figure out. The map is godawful, hard to tell the differnce between roads, valleys, canyons, and mountains :/ and this game is in dire need of an good HUD. How you can have a game this big wihtout one is beyond me. The menu system item, journal, and basic screen navigation doesn't feel fluent at all. Its very unpolished and unintuitive. Graphical glitches galore, especially in eariler sections of the game and snowy patches on the floor. (Remember that RAGE game) Also combat is, weird. there is no auto attack ive ket to dabble or even need the set npc AI chart. so far its just go get that guy and hold down the attack button. Also remeber that moment when you first played DA2 and the combat was fast and fresh and way more responsive, yea its kinda like that all over again with more been there seen that. Hmm, what else. Oh, the landscapes are nice, (a pure skyrim lotr hybrid) but alot lighter this time around, i suppose without the blight the game is much more colorful this time around. I can see why the game was delayed, and tbh it still feels unfinished, close, but not there. So far the other characters have been extremely generic, nothing interesting to say and i dont care where they come from or how they got here. FOr me it really makes me want to just get the old gang back together and start making fun of allistar and slapping morrigan and teasing shale..this series has had some great dynamic characters and even only ten plus hours in you can tell that they wont even come close to any of them.

I could go on..but its unfair to bash a game this harsh ive barely dented. So that is enough for now. In short RPG wise does it have the DA2 wow factor? No. Does it grab you by the shirt and sink its fangs in you straight from the start like skyrim? no. Is it a better world then LOTR? Probably not. ALl things said, its not a bad game. lol. It's just...boring. I find myself wanting more and more and just wondering where the hell all of these great reviews came from. It's a hard game to explain, but it seems you always feel a bit lost while playing. not sure where to go..or what to do, who to talk to, which button to push or how to get to the correct screen. I'd wait. id get my money back if i could and give it another go after some much needed patches, or pc mods.

 

[Amaror]

snip

I have played Inquisition for about 12 hours now and i will answer your question. It depends. It depends on what your expecting.
If you expect an Dragon Age: Origins 2 then don't get it, it's not that.
I am a bit sad myself about it but i think the Bioware that produced games with carefull tactical gameplay is dead 100%. It doesn't exist anymore. You certainly can use tactics in Inquisition but you need to use the tactical camera for that and the tactical camera is tedious as hell.
The controls for taccam on pc are just plain horrible, it's hard to even move the camera and a chore to use. Additionally it barely zooms out the view so it's basically useless anyway. Another sad things that shows how much tactical bioware is gone is the tactics menu. It doesn't exist anymore. There are no if-then scenarios anymore. You just tell your ai what spells they are allowed to use and when to drink potions, that's it. No deep customization whatsoever.
It's not as horrible as it sounds, though. The AI is fairly proficient in combat and uses they spells fairly reasonable. It has one flaw though. Positioning. The AI is horrible in positioning. One common fight are fade rifts. these spawn waves of demons and when you killed them all you can close the rift. the problem is between each wave there is a short time were there are no demons around. And when there are no enemies around the Ai want to hug their master. So when you happen to be a meele character, all your mages and archers will walk right up to you and be right there at the front of the fight where the baddies spawn. You can order them to move, but to do that you have to go into tactical camera, which is horrible as i allready said.

But enough complaining. If you can deal with the fact that there will be not many tactical fights, that the battles are action-oriented and that there are no tactics options then yes, you should buy the game. The presentation is fantastic, the characters are fun and there is an absurd amount of content. As i said i am 12 hours in and i only went to the very first open- world area and didn't even really touch on the main story. The game is massive. It's definetly better than Dragon Age 2. The game shows in every aspect that a lot of time and love went into making it as good as it can be. It doesn't reach the quality of gameplay that origins did, but i am fairly certain that no bioware game ever will again. The old bioware is sadly dead. The new bioware is still good at what it does, although what is does is different then what old bioware did.
If you want a content-heavy action-rpg with good characters, buy it. If you want an tactical rpg with carefull planning you will sadly not find it here.

Edit: Oh yeah nearly forgot some of the "options" and "reactions" of other characters on you are really fake. Some reviewers gushed how one horsemaster was racist towards them when they were playing as an elve or qunari. I played a human and the guy was still racist towards me, because he doesn't like the country i am from apparently. So same reaction no matter what you are.

 

[bluepotatosack]

I visited this site jus tto find a thread like this today. Okay, so im a huge RPG fan, enojyed the other 2 DA's immensely. But yea, im sorry but inquistion is pretty dull..im a good ten plus hours into it, and so far nothing about it is exciting, at all. As said before the game seems huge, and detailed and there are so many side quests etc etc. SO far:

Just curious, how much of that time was spent in the Hinterlands? They throw a crazy barrage of miniquests at you and I found it really easy to get distracted by them and never leave. In fact, Origin says I have 6 hours in the game (although 1 of those hours was probably spent in the character creator) and I still haven't left. Apparently it get's far more interesting if you just get out of there as soon as you can.

 

[Pete Oddly]

I'd say get it, but that's only because I already have 25 hours logged and I'm loving it.

Honestly, I prefer the combat system this time around, as I've always found BioWare's combat systems to be...clunky. Now, I don't have to worry about telling my party members what to do, I simply have to worry about balancing the party members. I like to be able to wade into combat and know I can focus all my attention on what I'm doing and my party will have my back.

The maps are huge this time around, and beautiful besides. Nicely varied and fun to explore. And, as always, the voice acting and writing are top-notch.

My only complaint would have to be that the side quests could stand to be a bit meatier. There have been plenty of quests which have simply been go here kill that come back, with no wiggle room to approach it in different ways. However; I'm not sure if this is a result of there being a lot more quests to tackle, as there still are a fair number of interesting quest lines to be followed. Even though I'm 25 hours in, I've not progressed the main story much at all, so whether the side quests get more interesting as I go along remains to be seen.

 

[StormShaun]

My only complaint would have to be that the side quests could stand to be a bit meatier. There have been plenty of quests which have simply been go here kill that come back, with no wiggle room to approach it in different ways. However; I'm not sure if this is a result of there being a lot more quests to tackle, as there still are a fair number of interesting quest lines to be followed. Even though I'm 25 hours in, I've not progressed the main story much at all, so whether the side quests get more interesting as I go along remains to be seen.

Ah, yes.
You've allowed to share that opinion. I couldn't see that problem before since ... well, I was doing so much that I didn't see this slight disappointment (so far at least).

The sidequests (at least 25 hours/10 levels in) are pretty damn short and simple. They really remind me of a MMO in this way. Not a bad thing, but I really want to get some really meaty quests like in the previous games. The quests that NEED a final choice in the end that has a consequence. I'm looking for them, and I really hope they are there!

Overall though, still damn happy about Inquisition.
OP, buy it!
As quoted by your lovely poll. "Yes! By Andraste's dimpled buttcheeks yes!"

 

[OpticalJunction]

definitely get it. its a great game. and quite an improvement from da 2, though in my opinion the negative reveiws of da 2 were exaggerated.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

It's been a weird experience for me.

I've played it for about 9 hours, and I generally found the game to be quite... dull. There's nothing I can point to and say is outright bad, except for the lack of hair options, but I really don't find it that engaging yet.

None of the characters I've met as of yet are interesting, except maybe for Sera, but that just might be because she brought a bit of life into the company.

And while the areas are frikking huge, I feel this is kind of a detriment to the overall experience. Though that might be because I never found the action in the Dragon Age games that riveting. In the previous games these sections were way, way shorter, which meant you could get to the story segments faster. In Inquisition you're spending huge chunks of time running around these expansive landscapes. And to me this kind of lost its luster after the first two times.

I'm also not a fan of the voices used for the protagonist, though I've only tried out the two female options. Again, just kinda dull. And unlike DA:O and DA2 you never get a good feel for your character's origin. You're just sort of chucked into the game with a few lines of 'you're a noble/you're a dwarf'. It makes it weird when some characters start asking you where you're from, since I have no fucking clue.

I'm playing it on the PS4 so the game does look splendid, and I'll probably keep playing it.

I'm only 3 hours in, but this is my experience so far too. The first area just felt like playing an MMO solo. Pretty meh so far.

 

[Godhead]

The gameplay seems like it's a very watered down version of an MMORPG combat system so that people with controllers can use it. If you enjoy WoW, you'll probably enjoy this in terms of combat, although if you're getting it on PC, from what I've seen the tactical camera is utter shit.

No idea on whether the story is any good, since my exposure has been TB and some livestreams, so take what I say with a hefty grain of salt.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

It is a pretty good game so far from what I have played. However, if you are buying it for the PC than be prepared to face heavy consolitis. The UI and controls are pretty neutered compared to prior releases. The removal of the scripting mechanic you could use to program your AI is also missing. Therefore, all your party members will require much much more babysitting than normal especially if you are playing on Nightmare.

The tactical camera is also pretty butchered and useless. There is also a 30 FPS cap during cutscenes that can seem rather jarring if you getting over 60 everywhere else in the game.

Basically, a lot of the abilities to strategically manage your party during combat is now gone. In it's place is kind of a more dumbed down action game. Isn't that always the way of things?

 

[Steve Waltz]

Yes, I think it?s very nice. It?s actually a good mix of all the Dragon Ages in some variation, along with sandbox aspects from Skyrim and Saints Row 2.

The story missions all feel like they?re straight from Dragon Age: Origins. You stick your nose into things like Templars vs. Mages and an Orlesian Civil War and you have to choose whom to ally yourself with-- just like in DA:O with Werewolfs vs Dalish. So, if you like the way the story played out in DA:O you won?t be disappointed there.

The combat feels like a nice compromise between DA:O and DA2. The combat is not dice roll-based, like in DA:O. Instead of mashing a button to attack, the player holds down [R2]/[RT] to attack, so it feels a little more automated and controlled. It doesn?t feel like a hack-n-slash unless you deliberately run around mashing on the trigger button. Since I didn?t feel too negatively about the combat in DA2, but preferred the combat in DA:O, this felt like a fantastic compromise.

When in the base, the game turns into a more advanced form of Dragon Age: Awakening. In Dragon Age Awakening the Warden-Commander had to do things like sending soldiers about, choosing whether to send them to defend the farmers or the city. Not only do you do that, but they give you more options. Instead of just soldiers, you can also send spies or diplomats instead of just soldiers, and it affects the speed in which the mission is done, but also affects the ending of the mission. For example: A Ferelden nobleman sends you a letter saying he wants to support the inquisition, but first he wants the inquisition to help him get elven and poor refugees off his land. Sending a diplomat will politely decline the nobleman?s request, sending spies will get the refugees off his land, and sending soldiers will start an uprising against the jerk nobleman. This is all done in text however, so if you hate reading than these war table missions are pretty much just free gifts overtime, I think. But, if you do like reading text, this all plays out very well and was done in a very thoughtful manner. For example: I was a Dwarven lyrium smuggler before the start of the game, and I had allied myself with the templars (which are addicted to lyrium), and I had multiple missions dealing the the Dwarven carta and smuggling lyrium for our templars, and my background with the carta was also put into context in the best way. Seriously, I missed being called ?salroka.?

You can also do things like customize you fort (although I haven?t tried it yet), and recruit agents and things as well. Honestly, I don?t know what recruiting agents does, but I know that I?ll decided to talk to a merchant and next thing I know she wants to join the inquisition, or I?ll help out a sneaky person on the field and he?ll join the inquisition. It feels really good getting that prompt saying [Recruited A New Agent!]. And occasionally, you also do that ?judgement? thing that the Warden-Commander did in DA:A also. Your character sits in the throne like Attila the Hun and you choose what to do with criminals and the like. Whether to execute them, send them to jail, or let someone else decide. I haven?t run into any *difficult* choices yet, though. I mean, the choices made in DA:A were all very difficult, but I?ve only run into one of these so far and it was a pretty dang easy choice that pretty much came down to whether your character was merciful or not.


To keep the game from progressing too fast, the game progresses in a similar fashion as to Saints Row 2, where you spend points to do story missions. However, unlike SR2, where you grind mini-games to get points, you?re dropped in a sandbox and you do Skyrim stuff to gain points. You go around doing various stuff and raising your ?Power,? and you use the ?Power? points on story missions. You'll do things like, taking over forts, killing bandits, returning stolen necklaces, etc. If you liked doing that in Skyrim than the ?grinding? in Dragon Age: Inquisition will actually be fun for you instead of just a bunch of boring, mindless chores.




So, yea it?s all down to personal likes and dislikes, but I can say that I REALLY enjoyed it. Still, I?m only 22 hours in and there?s still SOOOOOOOO much left for me to do. I mean, I?ve only been in 3 sandboxes so far and done maybe 5 story missions? There?s still a TON of stuff for me to do, but all of the stuff I?ve done so far is very fun and I enjoy it a lot so far.

 

[esserin]

[...]and recruit agents and things as well. Honestly, I don?t know what recruiting agents does, but [...]

Agents can unlock new war map missions or reduce the time it takes to do the different types of war map missions.

If you play the game, make it a priority to get to orlais as soon as you can. Apparently, that's when the game really opens up. DO NOT grind through the all the sidequests in the hinterlands or you'll be overlevelled for Orlais.

Besides that, have fun.

 

[Carnagath]

I'd wait for a few patches. The controls have issues and the game is pretty buggy. I played it for a couple of hours and then realized that the gender selection was bugged when I made my character, and people started referring to my bearded brute of a character as "my lady". It was quite hilarious actually, but I was scared that it might fuck up more things later on in the game, so I had to restart the whole game and I just lost the will to play it. That's a known issue that they are working on, among many other things, but I'd hold off for a bit on buying it.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

Everyone still stuck on the 'last' gen should avoid it entirely - it seems both a con and an insult to charge full price for the garbled shitty looking mess that is Inquisition at the moment. The worst looking game in the series so far is not what anyone expected or deserved.

I've not played enough to judge gameplay (aside from the woeful lack of an auto-attack and what seems to be the removal of heal spells), but I've been disappointed from the prologue on with the presentation of the story and characters.

Oh, and anyone on PC and XB1/PS4 should just wait till the lazy bastards patch the thing.

 

[XSTALKERX]

To keep the game from progressing too fast, the game progresses in a similar fashion as to Saints Row 2, where you spend points to do story missions. However, unlike SR2, where you grind mini-games to get points, you?re dropped in a sandbox and you do Skyrim stuff to gain points. You go around doing various stuff and raising your ?Power,? and you use the ?Power? points on story missions. You'll do things like, taking over forts, killing bandits, returning stolen necklaces, etc. If you liked doing that in Skyrim than the ?grinding? in Dragon Age: Inquisition will actually be fun for you instead of just a bunch of boring, mindless chores.

Oh fuck, really? So it falls in the exact same trap as 90% of all open world games where most of the side content is boring and repetitive shit and it's overall more quantity than quality? That's disappointing, I really thought it was going to be a good open world RPG, but it looks like it has the same problem as all of Ubisoft open world games. Oh well, thanks for letting me save money, was about to buy it but after reading this thread my worse fears are confirmed. I'll get it on a sale sometime in the future.

 

[babinro]

As a fan of both DA: Origins and DA2 I'd say no.

I bought the PC version and am finding that the user interface choices have killed my motivation to play. The combat, characters and story that I've experienced in my meager 3ish hours played are pretty solid.

Having to hold down R/mouse to attack...have to constantly spam v while walking, having no click to pickup objects at range option, having a terrible map that doesn't easily show your path (like in prior games), having no auto-run feature, and having a slow and clunky equipment management system has all killed my desire to play the game.

I feel like I'm endlessly fighting the control decisions to have fun. Which in turn has led me to only putting 3 or so hours into the game rather than the 20+ hours I could have easily spent on it by now.

Actually, I haven't tried it with a controller on PC yet. This might resolve a lot of issue. Time to try that out.

Update: wow...controller makes things substantially better! I really want to play this game with mouse/keyboard but I guess it wasn't design that way. Still can't recommend the game for purchase though as I need to invest more time on it.

 

[Steve Waltz]

To keep the game from progressing too fast, the game progresses in a similar fashion as to Saints Row 2, where you spend points to do story missions. However, unlike SR2, where you grind mini-games to get points, you?re dropped in a sandbox and you do Skyrim stuff to gain points. You go around doing various stuff and raising your ?Power,? and you use the ?Power? points on story missions. You'll do things like, taking over forts, killing bandits, returning stolen necklaces, etc. If you liked doing that in Skyrim than the ?grinding? in Dragon Age: Inquisition will actually be fun for you instead of just a bunch of boring, mindless chores.

Oh fuck, really? So it falls in the exact same trap as 90% of all open world games where most of the side content is boring and repetitive shit and it's overall more quantity than quality? That's disappointing, I really thought it was going to be a good open world RPG, but it looks like it has the same problem as all of Ubisoft open world games. Oh well, thanks for letting me save money, was about to buy it but after reading this thread my worse fears are confirmed. I'll get it on a sale sometime in the future.

You?re welcome, although I wouldn?t say that the side-missions are much different than in Dragon Age: Origins. In Origins, the side missions involved you going to the chantry board, signing up for the mission, and then practically doing the same kind of chores. Rescuing refugees by killing all the darkspawn, or raiding a blood mage hideout, killing demons in the orphanage, etc. The main difference is that the side-activities are now mandatory, because you need points to proceed. But don?t get me wrong, the game does have a compelling and high-quality story.

Seriously, the Orlais ball mission was so much fun. It was part-investigation, part-political stand-off, part-murder, and (of course) it had betrayal. The Dragon Age writers seem to sprinkle betrayal on everything as if it was salt or something. The companion missions are also very interesting as well. Yesterday, I actually ended up kicking Sera out of the inquisition during her story mission because she did something incredibly frustrating.


But yea, it?s just like you said, if you didn?t like Skyrim you probably wouldn?t like the sandbox part of the game, and that part of the game *is* mandatory. But if you liked the other Dragon Age games, you?ll definitely enjoy the main storyline. I guess you?d have to decide whether the Skyrim part of the game would ruin the Dragon Age part of the game for you or not.

 

[Trunkage]

DA:I is better than DA2 for the most part, but it's still a really mixed bag. First off, DO NOT GET IT ON PC. I swear... How the hell did a series that prided itself on being best on PC end up giving them the worst version? The interface is kind of fucked up, mouse buttons can't be mapped, and there is no "loot all" button for whatever reason. It's also poorly optimized and my fairly above average PC has been experiencing lengthy load times which are much longer than they should be, not to mention the FPS drop that happens now and again. Keep in mind, I only had the settings on high and it still persisted when I switched them to a lower setting. Gameplay seems neutered in most respects, especially in terms of skill tress and attributes (seriously, you can't even allocate attribute points when you level up now. The game automatically does it for you now). They've also removed auto attacks, targeting outside of tactical mode is a hassle, and companion AI is downright stupid so you have to really babysit them. The game itself feels like a singleplayer MMO for the most part. There's wide expansive areas to explore, but they're pretty empty for the most part. Side quests are also mostly lacking since most of them end up being very little beyond your standard "collect a certain number of X" or "kill this many of Y" type MMO quests. Unlike Origins which had a fair amount of choice in handling even the smallest side-quest, you're not going to see a lot of player interaction outside of the main quest. I'll admit companions are a lot more interesting this time around as the only one that I legitimately hated was Sera because of her moronic sense of "humor" and her potato face. Speaking of which, the game is really weird in that it will look really good graphics wise in some respects, but in others it's downright ugly. Textures like hair look like plastic outside of the highest graphic settings, and even then beard models will always look terrible and flat. A lot of the animations are ridiculous and they're not helped by the rampant clipping throughout the game. The story is good for the most part, but I'd argue the antagonist is one of the worst of the series. I won't spoil anything about them, but their motivations are anything but complex and they end up being one of the most cliched in the series. This probably wouldn't a problem if they had an interesting deuter-antagonist like the Arishock or Loghain to bring a more "human" element to it, but the Elder One plays the role of both throughout the game and fails to be compelling as either. Lastly, the "40 endings" thing was a complete and utter lie. There is no big ending choice at the game and the main variation you see is with the slideshow epilogue instead. Overall, if you're REALLY desperate for a new RPG, I'd suggest that you wait until the price goes down. DA:I is far from a bad game, but it's simply one I can't recommend to buy at full price.

Many of these issues I find annoying, especially the load times. The worst is the camera view, mostly in tactical mode. Unlike origins, which probably didn't have ceilings due to staying in tactical mode, this one's tactical view follows the ceiling, which means the small enclosed spaces make seeing anything difficult

 

[Infernai]

Hmm, I do admit i didn't mind the combat mechanics too much in the second game and from the looks of responses so far Inquisition does improve over the second game immensely.

Still, there does seem to be some annoying problems with it in places but given I know about them going in and they don't appear TOO gamebreaking. I guess I'll have to try it myself to find out if it's worth it.

Worst case scenario, I hate it and I give it back to the store. Best case scenario, I like it and play it.

Thanks for helping me reach a consensus everyone.