Dragon Age Inquisition Review

 A Dragon Age Inquisition Review From Someone Who Hates Romancing, Conversations, and Video Game Plots

Review Spoiler Content – Extremely Low

It’s funny that here I am writing a Dragon Age Inquisition Review.  All I had ever heard about the Dragon Age series was from my room mate who is obsessed with the games.  Quotes like these described the highlights of her gaming experiences:

“I finally made Alistair fall in love with me”

“This is Morrigan, her mom is Flemeth.  They’re mages”

“This is Dog, isn’t he so so cute!”

Given the description in the title of this post, you can imagine that I’m not the kind of person who goes out searching for a game like Dragon Age to play.  Actually, I can’t say I’ve ever sought after a single Bioware game, now that I’m thinking about it.  But here I am, currently with more time on my hands than I’ve ever had, running out of house projects, and wanting so desperately to immerse myself into a video game.  The hope was that Halo: Master Chief Collection was going to be that game, but that… that will probably be another story, for another day.

So it started out with me sitting around on some of the days that she was playing it, and surprisingly finding myself half interested.  Only half, of course, because in between all of the action and gore, there would be an hour, or seven, where she would just walk around camp sparking conversations up with these peasants or warriors who are supposedly beneath her.  No offense to the people who play games like this, but I just don’t see how it can be any fun to ask as many questions as possible regarding a mage and her mother, or what the dog is thinking at the time (spoiler alert: it’s “woof”).  Worst of all, the idea of playing a video game for the sole purpose of making characters fall in love with you just seems desperate, sad, and lonely.

 Don’t worry.  I know I’m the only one that thinks this, and I can assure you that at least in her case none of those things are true.  Nonetheless this is when I made the decision that I was going to try out Dragon Age, but I was going to do it Sinatra style – my way.

 I was going to be cold, calculated, and emotionless on my journey through Dragon Age Inquisition.  I was going to make no bonds, no friends, and invest nothing more in those around me than a sword and a shield, and the accessories required to slay the demons, men, women, children that stand in my way.  In my way of what, you may ask?  I haven’t the slightest clue.   From the beginning I became very familiar with the skip button, and because of this I only have small details here or there as to the actual ‘story’ and where it takes us.  That being said, in my experience with games of this type, it doesn’t matter what they’re saying, and what your goal is…  That can only be accomplished by leveling as high as you can, gearing with the strongest of gear, and utilizing only the most efficient selection of the skill trees.  I dare any of our readers to find a game that has proven otherwise.

The result so far have been exceptional.  The amount of customization for the gear, skills, and multiple party members leaves for so much to play around with.  Some aspects of the game I’ll admit would probably make a lot more sense if I paid any attention at all to the characters, story, or in the very least the names of the different areas I’m visiting.  On the one side, it makes for awkward conversation when someone wants to talk about the really funny line a particular character said and you have to ask “Is that the one with the fire skills, or the sword?”   On the completely other side of things though, main characters/places have fallen from combat and I haven’t batted an eye.  Sometimes it’s nice not to get too involved or connected to characters – a skill that would have certainly come handy when I watched Season one of Game of Thrones.

I gave the game a 7.5 out of 10, and that’s definitely not the highest rating it deserves, but for a gamer like me – it’s as good as it gets.  The need for conversation, interactions, and “the right answers” was too often found getting in my way of having a fantastic hacking-slashing-questing-time.  One mission, in particular, became more than overwhelming and almost made me quit entirely.   Having to play the role of “guest at a royal ball” where the need to be proper puts a time limit on your actions.  Anytime you would walk too closely to someone having a conversation, or if you were found running through the halls of the event – your popularity rating would decrease.  When it came time to have a boss battle away from the guests and the event, your popularity begins to slowly decline.  Once it reached zero, the guests and hosts would decide that you are a terrible guest and, presumably, interrupt your battle to remove you from the premises (resulting in a Game Over status).  For someone like me, it’s enough to want to murder, and it didn’t help that I accidentally started the mission with 50% of the available party size, creating a much more difficult battle than intended.  Worst of all, the game forces you to live with decisions like this in particular missions, until you complete them or load from a previous save from hours ago.

On the brighter side of things, I will say that my favorite part of Dragon Age Inquisition was the fact that the enemies level alongside your character level.  I typically am the type of gamer who likes to grind my way to the top before advancing forward, allowing for quick and easy slaughter to the end, but not in this case.  This particular game provides missions and quests constantly, and most require you to bounce around areas you’ve already been to, so it’s nice to know you won’t be going back just to have to kill level 1 enemies with 0 experience while you go collect whatever you need.

To sum it up, it’s not the best game in the world.  I wouldn’t even put this game in my top ten games that I’ve ever played, but right now, with the slim offering of games for the XBOX One, and the complete lack of grind style games that have come out that I haven’t beaten, this one is definitely going to get some more of my time.  I may even get to the end where I complete that final thing in order to defeat that one guy.  Just don’t expect me to start flirting with that one girl with the wizard staff, or asking her how her family has been.

You can pick up your copy of Dragon Age: Inquisition off of Amazon using the link provided from the cover of the game!