atomic_dumpling greatly disapproves
I was mostly curious. For years I wondered how DA:I plays. So, I patiently waited for a sale and finally picked up the GOTY on Black Friday 2019. I tried to manage my expectations and follow general advice. I left the Hinterlands ASAP, for instance.
Let’s get the good stuff out of the way, first. The audio-visual presentation is still top notch. In fact, cranked to the max on PC some areas and character models still look pretty snazzy for a 2014 release, though overall the art design is a bit too kitschy and shiny for my taste. Sound is mostly fine and the dialog well acted. Beneath the highly polished surface however lies … a weird mess of RPG x MMO.
Sadly, all the occasionally intriguing bits of RPG that manage to shine through the cracks – bits of lore, dialogues, companions, hidden rooms and such – are utterly smothered by the god awful checklist quest design, which afflicts main quests as well. The generally unsatisfying loot further compounds this, as working through one of the hundreds of menial tasks almost never results in a kick-ass item. The loot balance seems completely skewed towards crafting items yourself. At least I could give those my own stupid names (I got a kick out of naming my shield “Nope Sorry”). Speaking of balance, I encountered weird localized spikes in difficulty – but that’s probably DLC content I was able to access way underpowered, I suppose.
So, after about 30 hours of dealing with the bullshit power point progress gating and largely ignoring the table of war and all the other white noise, I made it to the mask ball. It seems widely considered to be one of the better parts of DA:I. Well, it made me rage quit the game after about 15 minutes during which I accumulated the following riveting quests:
- Get three statues to open a bunch of doors.
- Find three Red Jenny stashes.
- Fill the court approval meter.
- Collect 30 (!) scandalous secrets.
Just how many “x of y” quests can you possibly cram into a single confined location? “All of them” seems to be the answer.
In conclusion: There is absolutely no reason to play or revisit this in 2019. It does not hold up in any aspect other than the visuals and voice work. This is a mediocre MMO crammed into a mediocre RPG and the result is less than the sum.
