After thinking further, I had to come back to this review and change it. Comparing this to prior DA games, DA:V only leaves me disappointed.

TLDR - No. This isn't a dragon age game. If you've been a DA fan since Origins, don't get this lest you want to be upset at Bioware's ruining of the franchise. If you've NEVER played dragon age, you'll get a generic action adventure game - but only buy it on sale.

Fantastic job making you question whether you really sympathize with Solas or despise his self-righteous actions and realize what he really is, another "god" with little regard on the wrongs he does under a veil of righteousness. absolutely amazing and gorgeous graphics and environments. Especially at max settings with ray tracing on. Great music. Great/beautiful environments

Complete disregard for the universe's own lore on so many levels. Where are the Templars? Where are the circles? Why does everyone use magic now? Why is all the lore washed down? Why do I have no real agency in Rook's reactions? You can't be mean or gray. I'm always encouraging people.

Many of the strong emotionally driven (at least intended to be) scenes/stories I was completely detached from because I had no investment to the character or story because it was so bland, unbelievable, or outright unlikeable.

Companions are not-believable, interesting, and washed squeaky clean to have the most bland and 'forced' feeling there is.

I couldn't get immersed into the story because of the atrocious lore contradictions, the missing of key elements to dragon age, and the horrid dialogue. The only emotion i felt during this playthrough was for Emmrich's story, mandred, and my spite for Solas.

The story is about uber-powerful mages and spirits that became mortal and then immortal again. Why is there absolutely 0 mention of the Maker and the actual god(s)? it's as if religion was white washed out of this completely. The only time I heard the Maker mentioned was when one of my companions went "OMG"

Seriously, you have power creep out the ying-yang because you have these uber-powerful beings (not gods) tearing things up, but .... NONE of that anti-magic rhetoric from the previous games is at play. At all.

Dragon age has always had LGBT stories in the games, but Taash's story, while can be relatable, felt completely forced. A missed opportunity given the Qun's culture.

The factions felt forced into the story, the environment, and the game overall as a means to shorehorn in gameplay mechanics. Troubled development? Lack of skill in designers? It's like they hired someone who just graduated and did the most basic/bland style.

Everything in the game has a 'theme' relating to factions. Where are the nations? Where are the politics that drove so much in previous games? Why do the shadow dragons have so much at play for a 'secret' spy organization in one of the most powerful nations in Thedas?

I strongly dislike being limited by console-focused designs. Why do I only have 3 abilities? It sucks. The combat mechanics for the player comes from the various ways to do combos. If you're relying on your primary attacks to be from abilities, you're doing it wrong. Abilities augment your basic attacks and combos.

Have I already mentioned that I felt like I was progressing on auto pilot a lot because of the level design? Move 5 ft, push a button, just because. repeat 10 more times, now you can pew pew.

Why am I a warrior throwing my shield like captain America? Calling down thunder and fire from the sky?

Combat kept me interested in playing the game until i broke the game's mechanics. Quite literally. I am not a min-maxer in games, but i very much enjoy the playing with your gear, builds, and anything related in making yourself more powerful or making your play style more fun and effective. Once I found a powerful build, everything in the game became trivial. It was boring. Even with everything at the hardest possible difficult - everything was trivial. I couldn't die. I could kill anything in seconds. My only desire to continue the game once I hit this point was to see how it ended.

The ending being akin to ME3's is not an overblown trope. It's true. You're literally given three options to pick from to see how the next 20 seconds play out.

All the extra grinding you may or may not do for the various factions will result in credit scene giving a couple sentences of what continues on.

Your choices are meaningless -- in all aspects (except combat). Especially in act 3. Your story is on a rail and you're given an illusion of influence on the story.

The only world building or changes you'll see are going to be based on your % of progression through the story and whether or not you've unlocked new areas of the maps/regions.

To be fair, every Dragon Age game has fundamentally changed itself at every release. DA:V is no different. It plays more of an adventure game with heavily watered down mechanics. The puzzles are easy an 8 year old would be bored with it. Everything is predictable. You'd think there might be a piece of loot behind this totally inconspicuous box? Yes. Is there another spot to go in this area that has absolutely nothing to do with any quests or why you'd be here? Does it make no sense to have an expanded area just to grab meaningless loot while rushing to save to the world in act 3? Yes. There is. Just to give you meaningless loot.

Speaking of loot. The game SHOWERS you with it. At first, it just threw the adventure gameplay design in my face. I liked it at first because I was always getting new gear to look at. But it's allure lost its effect because you are constantly flowing in loot and treasure chests - both from mind numbingly boring puzzles and simply by walking in any given direction.

The combat is engaging, until you figure it out and then its completely predictable and becomes a spam of i-frame dodging, abilities (yes abilities give u iframes), or abuse of block mechanics. Wait for your window to spam attacks. Rinse repeat.

The dragon fights are very fun, but after a few of them, you've seen it all. Just instead of a lightning beam, its a purple beam. They rehash some mechanics from DA:I dragon fights in this one, albeit at a larger scale.

The vast majority of knowledge is mind-numbing, boring, and absolutely interesting. It's written by someone with little to no-skill in story telling or character building. It's as bland and crispy clean as you can find. This is utterly offensive for a dragon age game.

The only interested character to me was Emmrich. Harding's companion quests appeared interesting, but I couldn't allow myself to tough through her dialogue to learn more about the Titans.

The gearing, skill tree, and loot system is deceptive. It'll come off as deep, but in fact, it's fundamentally hollow. Why? Because all the complexity or strategies you may or may not want to do for your build is rewarded with repetitive, predictable, and easy combat.

I appreciate the easy upgrading of gear by continuing to loot the same items resulting in increased levels/stats as a result. However, I miss crafting and the hands-on ability to get the gear I want. It also shoe horns you in what you can or cannot do with your character. The only way to get better gear is to just keep looting. Well, with a finite amount of opportunities to get gear you leave yourself to RNG of what gear you get and thus you adapt your build to the gear you've gotten. The final tier (legendary/tier10) of a staff i needed for a build, i didn't get until right before the final boss fight. Gee, thanks.

The level design is mind numbing and boring. I caught myself constantly in auto-pilot and bored until the next fight broke up the motony a bit with flashy spells and pretty explosions. They were often too short and I was back to the mind numbing "adventure" in the basic, boring, and predictable level designs. The simple designs are an affront to the gorgeous environment and art.