While its weaknesses tend to get talked up a lot, though, its strengths tend to be ignored. That said, magic is once again altogether too powerful - magic is presented as being incredibly dangerous and yet there's no practical in-game consequences for spamming it - and there's just a bit too much button-mashing. It's also undergirded by a strong crafting system and a sizable number of skill trees, which encourages you to think hard about how you want to customize your character. On the one hand, it's got a bit of Final Fantasy XII to it, absent the complex Gambit System, so I kind of like it. I'm a little more divided on the battle system. True, it's kind of a drag collecting a million items if you want to finish everything, and there's a definite whiff of filler to it all, but it's quite easy to ignore if fetch quests aren't your thing. In particular, BioWare does a good job of limiting the fetch quests to the optional content, meaning that you don't have to slog through interminable collect-a-thons to advance the story. I'm of the opinion that at least some of the criticism leveled against Dragon Age: Inquisition is somewhat unfair. If you haven't played Dragon Age: Inqusition yet, it makes for a nice all-around package and a very meaty RPG. The Trespasser is the most interesting of them, picking up from the cliffhanger at the end of the original adventure and wrapping up the events of Inquisition in preparation for the inevitable Dragon Age 4. Jaws of Hakkon is the sort of side mission that fits well into the Game of the Year Edition, which was released a month or two ago. The content since releaseīioWare has released three major pieces of content over the past year - Jaws of Hakkon, The Descent, and Trespasser. The lesson, as always, is that BioWare simply isn't going to get the benefit of the doubt from anyone anymore. Even among my peers, it tends to get a lot of crap. The resulting backlash came to define the narrative around Dragon Age: Inquisiton and when The Witcher 3 came out a few months later, Dragon Age: Inquisition was frequently used as a negative comparison against what CD Projekt Red had accomplished with their game.ĭragon Age: Inquisition is now remembered as a fairly divisive game. Old-school RPG fans, meanwhile, complained relentlessly about the battle system, which was admittedly a weak point. Casuals felt that it moved too slowly and found the progression mechanics opaque. What's more, it suffered from trying to make everyone happy, hardcore RPG fans and casual gamers alike. As it turned out, BioWare had gotten a little too zealous in frontloading DA: I with content and as a result, a lot of people complained that it was a fetch quest-oriented grind. One of the more telling moments came in a post on Reddit titled, " PSA - Leave the f*cking Hinterlands," which urged people to get out of the game's opening area and progress the story. In hindsight.ĭragon Age: Inquisition garnered good reviews, but people seemed to turn on it fast. Having learned from their mistakes with Dragon Age II, BioWare had taken their time with Dragon Age: Inquisition, and it showed in a much bigger and more developed RPG.
The environments were great, Skyhold was a nifty headquarters that reflected the progress of the Inquisition by growing steadily over time, and the Orlesian ball was one of the better RPG quests I had ever played. I really liked Dragon Age: Inquisition! I was skeptical going in, but it grew on me as I got further into the game.
After stumbling a bit of their past few releases, BioWare has recovered to deliver a truly excellent piece of epic fantasy." At more than 50 hours for a single run through the story, it packs in a tremendous amount of content across a wide number of locations. What we said at the timeįrom my review: "Dragon Age: Inquisition is a graphical showcase for the next-generation consoles-a sprawling, beautiful open-world RPG with a deeply satisfying exploration loop and just enough in the way of mechanical depth to keep hardcore adventurers happy. We'll start with Dragon Age: Inquisition, though, since it was the game that inspired this question in the first place. However, my turnabout inspired me to look back on some of the biggest games of 2014 and ask a very basic question: Does it hold up? I would say some of them definitely have. Does that mean Dragon Age: Inquistion is a bad game? Not necessarily! A few months later, I backed off and retroactively decided to name Shovel Knight my 2014 Game of the Year instead. When Dragon Age: Inquisition launched last year, I called it my Game of the Year.