Xariann

Lots of "reviews" here just parroting SkillUp and Asmongold without having played the game. The art style is subjective, personally I like it. I always considered Dragon Age adult, never thought of it as dark. This one does have a lighter tone, but it also has its peaks and throughs. This game does tell the story in the BioWare way, lots of talking to your companions back at base. While I have come to appreciate the immersive story telling of the likes of Ghost of Tsushima for example, I still like how BioWare does things as it lets me ask more questions to my characters and dig a little. The environments do feel a little closed off at the beginning, but as I progressed the story, they opened up and that feeling went away for me. Dialogues are fine, I found some of the examples SkillUp showed where they seemed a bit off were indeed a bit off, but I also found I disagreed with a couple of his “It's childish” comments regarding dialogue once it was presented to me within context. My pet peeve with the dialogue is the over exposition sometimes. I just watched a memory from Solas and then the characters repeat what I just saw. I got it the first time. There is a dialogue CHOICE that you can skip if you wish, about your character exploring gender identity, and like ANY OTHER dialogue choice in this game you can skip it, and the game does not push this on you. When you pick something else there is 0 reference to the gender identity part. Then there is a character who struggles with their identity. And you can either push them towards embracing that or not. Even for another character you have a choice. Bear in mind that this is not written as someone preaching what you should think, nor is this saying, “All male straight men are evil.” It's presented as, “This is a character who is struggling with their identity, and you observe how they navigate this.” There is 0 preaching, it's just showing the unhappiness of people in this position and how it vexes them to not fit in. I really like the combat, it is the best of the series. I did just come away from a major boss fight feeling it was too long. I have my settings where the AI is highly aggressive and does more damage, but the health is set to “standard”, and it still felt too long. The crafting has been streamlined. It's mostly upgrading your gear to your next tier, unlocking affixes by finding the same gear in the world or at vendors and then adding enhancements. I would have liked a more complex gearing system, but I also am fine with this one. I like the simplicity, so I don't miss a more complex system, I just would have still appreciated it. I honestly do not understand the whole, “This is not Dragon Age” combat has evolved every game and this game is fully entrenched into its lore. I picked Gray Warden and this is referred to constantly, there is even a particular part in the story where this choice influences a ton of dialogue. I felt choosing my character background really paid off. I think some people just liked Origins, not “Dragon Age”, judging by the amount of people who only compare this to that game. I liked Origin for the story, I enjoyed the combat for what it was, but I much prefer this game. It is my favourite in the series. What also intrigues me about the people singing the praises of DA: O is also the people who skip an entire Fade scenario in that game, but, sure, "it's absolutely perfect". One last thing I want to bring up is facial expressions. There are two tiers of facial expressions, one is in “full cut scenes”, where there are no player interactions. That one has really good animations. Then there is the one where you talk to NPCs, and that's done by algorithm with people going back to touch them up here and there. That's where the stiffness lies and it has varying degrees of it. It's mostly ok, but in some scenes you wonder if they forgot to touch them up. I do wish they improved this part, but it wasn't universally bad as people would make you believe. CONCLUSION Overall to me this feels strongly rooted in Dragon Age lore, and it is my favourite game of the series. I liked all of the Dragon Age games, but they all had something I didn't fully care for, but that didn't stop me from liking the games. The direction towards the combat to be more like Mass Effect suits me, as that is my absolute favourite gaming franchise. The story kept me interested, with my background cropping up all the time (unlike in Mass Effect). The old school BioWare story telling can slow down the pace at tad too much at times, but this is also why I buy a BioWare game, I like how they tell their stories and how they make me interact with them. Some bosses, even with low health settings have too much health, but otherwise I like the combat.

Although I wouldn't quite give it a 1, I have to agree with another reviewer here. I played this game years ago on console and expected this to be an actual Next-gen graphics game, albeit with the same type of hack and slash gameplay. Nope. The graphics look dated. The resolution is locked at 720p and if I try to run this game in windowed mode, I can't even decide what size the window is. The animations are as wooden as I recalled them to be, no next-gen physics either. And the tutorial? Well find the "Arrow + Horse" button on your gamepad. Or like it says press the "sword button." Really? I played this game for hours on end in its earlier reincarnation on console, so it's not like I didn't know what type of game to expect, to the point where I remember the sounds... That's right they haven't updated those either. I'm so disappointed to have spent the money on this "new version" yet I hardly see anyone mention just how unbelievably unchanged this game is.

The game didn't start well for me. I wasn't really impressed by the characters' proportions and I only like 1 race out of all. A second one I sort of like and the other ones I just can't play. The quests are usually "kill x, collect y" and no, not all MMOs out there are like this, or they are concealing this better, like ESO. Add the BSODs, which I eventually managed to work around, and the memory leaks, plus the graphic bugs and I almost wanted to give up. Then I saw a video of someone saying, "try it up to level 20 and try the dungeons." So I decided to stick with it. I am actually really happy I did. Carbine released a patch with game performance and graphics optimisation the day after the launch and the game runs smoothly for me. The combat is a lot of fun, and while the quests are nothing special, I found the paths to be interesting. The graphics are similar to WOW but they have an added level of polish that is hard to describe in words, you got to see them. I really like the music, too. Dungeons are challenging and fun, something I have been trying to find since I quit WOW and since WOW went EZ mode. I got hooked to this game, although I am not entirely sure if this hook will hold, so far I really can't wait until the next time I play.