Dragon Age: Inquisition is the latest game from Bioware and is the latest game in the Dragon Age series following Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II. Dragon Age: Inquisition is a massive game that will entertain players for easily more than 50 hours just to get through the entire story and is well worth a purchase if you are interested in the fantasy genre and enjoy role playing games.
In terms of the plot which I don’t really want to spoil because I think that people should go through and experience it all for themselves, it basically revolves around your character who is known as the “Herald of Andraste”. The game starts off with this big green light and you at the centre of it, there are demons coming out and the world looks like it’s going to end. But somehow you have the power to close these big green portals and it falls on you and your team to stop these portals and also deal with many issues in a war focused world. You are the saviour, but it’s going to be a long and difficult journey with many trials and experiences for you and your team which make up the Inquisition, it’s mission, find out what the green light is and get rid of it and all the demons.
You will need to create who you will be at the start of the game and this person will be your main character the whole way through. The character creation in Dragon Age: Inquisition is quite in depth and has a lot of features for you as the player to edit and customise. You’ll first need to select your class for your chosen character. The class will determine the type of play style for your main character and will heavily impact on your entire game. When you’re selecting your class you can choose between being either a Rogue (Dual Wield or Archer), Warrior (two handed), weapon and shield or being in the Mage class. For my game I chose to be in the Mage class, but actually when you’re in game you will have party members that come along so you’ll be able to experience all the classes in time (9 party members will join you in total).
The character you get to create is for your entire game and will be central to your experience so if you do get the game I suggest spending a lot of time with it. I was playing as an Elf and I found the mage class to be the best and I also enjoy being an archer, but I guess it’s how you like to play the game. I prefer to just stand back and shoot stuff, others might prefer being right in the action. You can read more about the character creation process here.
Dragon Age Inquisition Character Creation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1F6L_OPi_4
While I’m not going to really go over the plot of the game for this review, I will say that it is quite in-depth. There is so much dialogue, books to read and lore in this game that there is almost more content within Dragon Age: Inquisition than most games released this year put together. There is just so much content in Dragon Age: Inquisition that it felt to me that it was a fully thought through world with characters within it that just seemed like they could realistically live there.
You can spend hours and hours in this game just talking to everyone and asking them things about themselves, what they think about the inquisition, what they think about different situations or other characters and even after a time you can start romancing different characters. I only had one romance in my game and it was with Josephine, but I found her to be a character with quite a lot of depth and each character slowly develops along the way, in fact all main characters have a lot of depth to them.
I haven’t played any of the previous Dragon Age games so I am not sure how they were but I have played other Bioware games such as Mass Effect and if you’ve played Mass Effect you know you can spend ages talking to characters in the worlds you explore and Dragon Age is like that as well. But in Dragon Age, I felt that the world was just so much larger with so many things going on that the content alone is reason enough to get this game.
In speaking of the world you will explore in this game, it’s beautiful. I played this whole game on the PS4 and I have to say it is probably one of the better looking games on the system. Its’ not the best looking game graphically ever made, but it does have a good art style that I really started to like as time went by and I mean a lot of time (so far over 60 hours before I reviewed this) and I am still happy to keep visiting it. There are desert areas, jungle areas, snow areas and beaches and old ruins and large castles to explore. The rain effects were a favourite of mine and I always enjoyed the areas I went to that had a lot of rain, everything in Dragon Age: Inquisition just looks awesome and epic.
There are many creatures that you can find when exploring the worlds and also many enemies you can find. The best of all is the dragons but there are also giants and massive spiders and even bears and most of the time these are hostile towards you, so you have to be careful. But what I did like is that often times I saw these creatures fighting each other or even occasionally fighting your enemies. I have seen a bear go after enemy bandits and I even saw a giant fighting a dragon once. You can watch that below, although I do kill the giant afterwards in the video, I didn’t manage to kill a dragon for some time after that (they are strong).
Finding A Dragon!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1d6K1r2lx0
If I had to mention an issue with the game, I can only say that it was because of the inventory management system. I had a large problem with it for many hours and even past the 15 hour mark I wasn’t really sure what I was doing in there. I found it a bit difficult to understand what I was doing when I was upgrading weapons or armor and I never understood what a lot of the items did or where they were stored. But after a long time, maybe in the 30 hour mark I had a good look at the inventory and figured out how it all works (mainly because of trial and error). But I did feel it could have been better explained or managed as it left me lost.
But it is good still, it’s just not very user-friendly. You can craft your own weapons from schematics that you find around the world and you can also craft your own armor. Sometimes you’ll have weapons or armor that are above your characters level, so you’ll be level 8 but might have level 12 armor. This will mean you can’t equip that item yet and I found that a bit annoying as I just wanted to use it, but the game makes you wait. But that’s how these games have always been ever since I started playing them. You collect hundreds of items, some you can use some you can’t, some are for certain purpose and that’s just how it is.
In moving on to talking about the sound and music, it’s all phenomenal. There’s this one song that plays when you are a fair way into the game at the “Skyhold” location where a lot of characters sing and it’s just so good! But that’s not all, there are songs you can collect and you can hear people sing them as you explore the world and it adds so much atmosphere into the game. Sound effects for the battles are also good and so to is the voice acting. It’s weird though, some characters sound boring to listen to such as Varric while others are much more lively such as Cassandra, I guess it depends who you like and who you don’t. I didn’t like Varric and often left him out of my party, favouring Cassandra, Cole and Blackwall instead.
Gameplay in Dragon Age Inquisition is quite smooth. Battles can be quite large and often times revolve around you needing to close a rift or fight a monster (there are also boss fights). You can see how the battles are like in my dragon video I posted above. But there is also a tactical element to them. If you are playing on the harder difficulties you definitely will need to think about how or where you place your warriors as the harder difficulties are very punishing. I played through most of the game on the easier settings as I was constantly wrecked in battles because I’m not the best at RPG’s. But I’m more into this game for the story and the characters so the battles are just a bit of fun for me. For others who need a challenge though, it’s certainly there, I promise you that! It’s very difficult to play especially on the hardest difficulties.
Tactical Camera In Dragon Age: Inquisition
Exploring the world in Dragon Age: Inquisition never gets boring or dull, there are always things to do and hundreds of quests for you to finish. Your game will be split up into main missions and side missions. I actually wasted quite a lot of time at the start of my play through doing the side missions in The Hinterlands thinking that was what the main missions were. But what you have to do is travel back to the war table (the place where you pick your missions) and you’ll see the layout of what you need to do. You can of course complete all the side missions in each area, but you can’t do it at the start of the game. You’ll eventually come to an area that has enemies far more powerful than you and they are there for later, or you might find dragon and it will certainly kill you in the early stages, so the game eventually will push you to where you need to be which is a good thing.
Another thing that I also really like about the game is that you can also pass judgements on characters that need punishing. As a leader of the Inquisition you can often judge certain criminals or harmful characters and choose to execute, exile or jail them or let them go. This has an impact on the story and how characters in your party might perceive you. I just found it fun to do it as it allowed me to experience being a king for a bit (even though I’m not technically a king in the game, I felt like one) I very much enjoyed it.
Dragon Age: Inquisition Review Conclusion
Overall there is just so much content in Dragon Age: Inquisition that I can’t see any reason not to recommend it. It’s not for a casual gamer as the game requires you to devote a lot of time (more than 50 hours easily) and that’s a good thing if you are into these big games. The main missions are fantastic and the journey your character embarks on is a magnificent one. The side missions provide insights into many of your party members and the world you are in that adds so much depth into the game. It’s great to have so many characters to explore and the lore for this game is so detailed that it should keep any player who is interested busy for a long time.
The music and the sound is fantastic and the graphics and art style of Dragon Age Inquisition is something to be marvelled at. Bioware has created such a large and vibrant world that it must have taken millions of collective hours to craft this game. From the in-game books, details of weapons, character creation and character development. The main story and the design of the world and the sheer attention to detail at times and the scale of things you can explore is simply massive. You can spend hours just looking around and finding treasure, talking to people, fighting dragons or giants or even just horse riding.
Dragon Age: Inquisition is the biggest game I have on the PS4 and it’s the best game I’ve played this year on the system and actually the best game I have on the PS4 since it released last year. While I have some gripes with the inventory system, the sheer content you get in Dragon Age Inquisition plus the work that it must have took to create the game outweighs it massively. This is a game with a lot of heart and a lot of character and I hope to see more like it in the future. It’s a must buy for any gamer who loves fantasy games or RPG fan out there.
rkillens thanks for reading. Glad to know you’re enjoying the game so far, it’s likely going to be the game of the year on this site 🙂
Nice article. Just bought this over the weekend. In love with it already. I havent play Destiny since purchasing Inquisiton. I didnt think i’d find a game a good as Destiny but i was wrong. I wouldnt give Inquisition a 10/10 but its damn close to it, and has my vote for game of the year.
jennymy90 thanks for reading, yeah it’s a great game I’m still doing all the side quests and things there’s so much content in there it’s a really good game
The best game this year easily is this, no where near finished it and won’t be till next year haha