Don't be fooled by the hours. I first got this game on my partner's ♥♥♥♥♥♥ little hand me down xbox and played it until was barred from coming over because of 2020 quarantine. I had to stop 75% of the way through. Worst moment of my life right there. Then I bought a gaming laptop and my best friend installed it for me through some divine means. 5 years of playing it on and off, on and off. Finished it once, twice, three times, then I lost count. Now, I have a complete desk setup with monitor, peripherals, and a cat. Bought it on steam, modded it to get rid of that pesky Fog of War, add more inventory slots, and put Solas in clown makeup. Voila.

I will play this game until 100% completion. After that? Well, I'll keep playing of course. This game has shaped me, helped me through some tough ♥♥♥♥ as a form of an escape. It's a safe space. A good place to get your mind off of things as you focus on rifts and romances and riding the tide of the Inquisition. 11/10

One of the best single player RPG games ever made, if they ever make dragon age 5, I hope its similiar to inquisition.

[★★★★★★★★☆☆] ─ 8/10

There comes an issue when creating sequels to video games in which the creators struggle with: how do we make this better than the last one? Dragon Age suffers from this an incredible amount: Origins is an iconic RPG game that people adored, DA2 was - rushed, yes - received well especially later on ─ this leads to the issue of what sort of hero do we create, what sort of story do we tell that makes people go "wow"!

Inquisition is, for all it's faults, an incredible game - they found a decent balance between the slow-paced actions per second of Origins to the fast-paced hack-n-slash feel of DA2 with what they created in Inquisition: the real-time inputs, the tactical camera (which I admit I have never used and will most likely never use), and the overall lack of tactics you can set your AI companions up to. Does this sound like praise? In a way, yes. Some classes who attack quickly feel very rewarding, the slow wind-up attacks from heavy attacks do feel as if they have weight behind them, and the spellcasting from the mages is interesting and unique - the specializations are fun, but that doesn't mean they aren't without faults. The combat heavily wants you to swap rapidly between characters to set up combos when the previous games, you could tweak the AI to do certain abilities at certain thresholds or when requirements are met. The technology is still there in Inquisition, but not nearly as satisfying - in my opinion. It's fun, it's flashy, it's unique. But you don't get as many slots on your hotbar as you did previously, which is a bummer.

The story is fine. I don't really have much else to say regarding this: you're labeled as the Herald of Andraste, Andraste being the figurehead of the Chantry (the real world equivalent of the Catholic Church) but you are able to, if you want, to deny this role - but that's about it. The game will critique the Chantry (and as a whole, Christianity and Catholicism which like - nice.) but there's nothing in this game that's been said that wasn't already talked about in DA:O or DA2. For example, you could be playing a non-human race that doesn't believe in the Maker: Elves can believe in their Pantheon, Dwarves can revere the Stone, and the Qunari can follow the Qun ─ this does not matter. Your denouncement of being the Herald of Andraste fundamentally has no changes on the games, only the companion approval - which even is laughable considering you can get it back easily. The story leans less into the religious aspects of it as time goes on and goes more into the inevitable conflict between the big bad and your PC which is fine, but you're never allowed to really... dig more into that. There's no real conflict in the game. You can support the mages, but almost all of the Templars now are evil and infected with Red Lyrium and your advisor's nemesis is set as Samson. You can support the templars, but now almost all of the mages are evil and use blood magic and your advisor's nemesis is set as Calpernia. You can choose to recruit them as honest allies, conscript them to your cause and force them to work for you, etc, etc. You can do a lot of questionable actions as Inquisitor with the Judgements, but it doesn't... affect the gameplay. Oh, you put a Mage through the Rite of Tranquility? Here's an angry letter from the mages saying "how could you" but nothing else. Your actions don't feel like they have any real consequences to them. Your character can rage and rebel all they want, but it doesn't affect anything substantial. You're still called the Herald of Andraste/Inquisitor, and everyone will still bend over backwards to help you save the world. Such is life.

As well, the approval system: there is no friendship/rivalry system like there was in DA2. There is no gifting system like there was in DA:O. Whether or not your companions like you is just up to you if you - the player - like them and care about having that approval up high enough. If your approval dips low enough, they can threaten to leave and do, if you don't care. There's no gameplay rewards from the approval like there was in DA:O and DA2 - while I don't think there NEEDS to be one in a game to make people want to understand their companions, in a series where it was common to have that in the previous games, it feels odd.

If you've been on social media, you've probably heard the joke in Dragon Age circles where people will joke about how "they might be done with the Hinterlands" by the time X/Y/Z is released. This is also an issue. Do you like open-world exploration? That's good! I hope you enjoy VERY large maps that often times don't have anything within them. (Hissing Wastes, I'm staring at you angrily.) Over time, I've become used to the largest maps in any video game I've ever played and just dealt with it - but it does kill the want to play the game to completion when it's a slog to even go through any zone within the game. (I believe the creators really wanted to make it feel like you're exploring Thedas but forget to realize that sometimes, maps that are too large are worse than maps that are too small.)

I like the game, I wouldn't have so many hours in it on the EA app (500+) or on Steam (200+) if I didn't - but that doesn't mean I can't critique the game for everything that makes it insufferable to play through, even as an experienced Dragon Age player. Also, who thought of real world time for the missions on the War Table? We need to have words: don't ever do this again. Overall, I understand it is not entirely the fault of the creators and developers and that the big studio - EA - can be blamed for a lot of the issues (forcing multiplayer into the game, forcing them to swap to Frostbite engine rather than the previous engine, etc) but it also doesn't help that this feels entirely like a game that you hype up to everyone that it's so amazing and the best game ever and when you play it, it falls short of expectations. It's good, but not... the best Dragon Age game there is..

If you play it and enjoy it, I'm really glad! I like the DLC, I enjoy the cast of companions, and I think the combat is quite fun (I'm biased as a Rogue Archer-Tempest player), and it's a good timesink. But if you don't want to easily drop 100+ hours in a playthrough, you miiiiight want to wait on starting this one.