Not sure what to make of Dragon Age: Inquisition.

So I'm a fairs way into Inquisition and have visited a selection of areas, but I really don't know what to make of the game. I'll admit the lore of Dragon Age as never really been the reason I played the Dragon Age games and Inquisition is absolute brimming with lore and stuff to read, but I have to admit the locations and visuals are splendid (playing on PC). Trouble is I have to admit I'm not always enjoying actually playing the game. I enjoy the conversations and so forth but combat as so far proven dull no matter how explosive it appears, plus I've found the tactical view more clumsy than useful. To be fair I'm still based at Haven its possible that I'm judging a little to soon and that this game is much bigger than I realise.

But still, is it worth knocking the difficulty up to hard because the only times I seem to die in combat is when I either end up running into enemies higher level than me or when combat gets a little to chaotic. Other than that combat as basically felt like holding down the right trigger waiting for the skills/power cooldown to reach zero. Am I missing something?

You're not missing anything. Combat can be as fun as you make it I guess. Try figuring out some cool combos between your character abilities and try chaining them. I admit that as a mage all I do is stand around waiting for my cooldowns but thats enough for me. I like the simple choices of whether I'm going to put a wall of fire here or an ice trap there. There were a few instances in the beginning where I really had to pop into tactical view in order to baby sit all my characters and issue commands every step of the way. As everyone leveled up and didn't die nearly so easy I've been able to just let them to their own thing.

Bump it to hard, I'm doing that for my second playthrough and I'm enjoying it far more. I'm still not using tactics all the time but I'm having to be more careful and plan fights out. Nightmare might be a good idea if you really want a challenge.

Had a very similar experience with the game. Played it for about 20 hours and just not feeling the need to go back anymore. The combat just isn't interesting at all, and in my experience making a mediocre combat system more challenging only makes it more tedious. The way I see it the game just suffers from your typical uninspired RPG design, where they just throw a lot of "random" numbers at gear and skills and try to disguise it as depth. And without any other core mechanic to lean on, like good shooting or twitch action game-style as we've seen in other RPGs, there's just nothing there. As a more strategic game it doesn't even stretch an incling towards something Souls-y either.

I really wouldn't put this thing down until after you complete the quest "In Your Heart Shall Burn". The game really picks up afterwards, and the locations get more varied and interesting. If you are blowing through Normal, I'd suggest trying out Nightmare. It's a decent challenge, though not ridiculous. Bump it down to Hard if you think it's too much to handle.

A lot of the complaints from people regarding the difficulty seems to be coming from the perspective of playing on Normal. Honestly, if you play a decent amount of games, no triple-A title is going to be a challenge for you on Normal. Hard is the new Normal if you play games as much as most people on this site. The result of making games accessible to more people and bringing in new and different players, is tuning down the default difficulty on pretty much all games. As such, I've been playing every game past 2009 one difficulty higher than the default, and I'd highly recommend doing the same.

The combat isn't that great, I think. I played on hard from the beginning because I heard it was super easy(and the games the bombcast crew talk about being too easy on normal usually get comments like DoctorDonkey's about upping the difficulty setting for this reason). It sort of is easy anyway, once you get through the first hard levels in Hinterlands with so few abilities at your disposal and starting equipment. What determines your success is abilities to a certain extent, but mostly it's just about being a high enough level and legging when shit goes wrong, so the party revives and Solas can barrier everyone up to try one more time even if we have no potions left(and repeat that process as necessary, whittling the enemies down a little more each time). Even on hard, I just end up mashing my abilities chaotically and it generally works out. If not, it's either time for fleeing like a coward and returning with a revived party with 1hp each and a barrier or fleeing like a coward and return later with a higher level/better equipment. Those fights are always the optional stuff.

Switching between characters a lot has helped me enjoy it more, though, so that's my tip to you, in addition to getting as many active skills as possible so you have more stuff to do. And speaking as a guy who only ever played the console version of Origins(and who is now playing a console version of Inquisition), this game's system pretty much feel like that. Only this time, you can actually dodge attacks by physically dodging them in stead of it being decided by numbers. That is an unquestionable improvement to me, however much they messed up the AI settings and how weird the animations are.

@ulquiokani said:

I second this as a guy that kept reading that the game was too easy.

I have been struggling getting infatuated with this game for a while because I did miss the tactical slots and many things seemed clunky, not enjoyable...but once I started playing with cross class combos in mind all the time, I started having a ball (as well as destroying everything on normal and therefore need to bump to hard I reckon).

one thing is also what class you play as your main: I tried everything and only dual dagger seem to justify being focus on the main character. If you let the AI spam skills you will go through the game mostly easily if you geared up your crew properly, but you are missing the whole fun of the game, that is setting shatter, ruptures and nightmares on the mobs ^_-

totally true

As others have said, I strongly recommend doing "In Your Heart Shall Burn" and whatever the main/major questlines in Crestwood are (they're right after). The game will either hook you there or you should probably stop playing and find something else.

I guess I've just found the story moments to feel far less powerful than I did in Dragon Age 2. I felt like every 45 minutes or so in Dragon Age 2 I was zooming in to the bioware face view and having crazy conversations with characters in Kirkwall, whereas here I just end up doing that 3rd person zoom with dialogue that's too quiet to get a bunch of fetch quests. I might try bumping it up to hard as suggested because I've also found combat to be a snooze, but I can't help but feel disappointed after spending roughly 35 hours with the game despite the fact that each new environment is drop dead gorgeous on PC.

Anyone else on the same page with the effecting story moments being few and far between in this game though? That's definitely my biggest issue.

Like others said, do the quest "In your heart shall burn". If you aren't hooked and wanting to keep playing after that stop the game and don't go back. This games big weakness though is the sparseness of the main story. There are tons of zones you never need to visit if you just main line the plot. Upping difficulty helps a lot too. Nightmare is down right hard until you hit about level 15-16 and start finding tier 3 schematics and crafting materials. If you play completionist and get into the 20+ stuff even on nightmare by the end the only hard enemies will be story mode bosses (and even then not all of them) and some of the dragons.

Hit the 80 hour mark with Dragon Age and, by the end was kind of like...."is that it?" Not much really seemed to happen at all during that story. It wasn't bad, but the characters were extremely bland to me, (including their personal story stuff, which is usually Biowares best) and the story is just painfully uninteresting (minus one fucking amazing scene at the end that doesn't really have anything to do with the core story).

Most the content, I found was just running around picking up collectables. A couple side quests stick out to me and it was fun running around a couple dungeons, but the wonderful maps felt very much wasted opportunities and fairly needless.

The core of that game still strong enough though, if only they succeeded where Bioware usually strides in so well, which is the growth and connection they form along side the characters and their relationships. The stories those characters tell are usually the aspect that adds the actual weight and stakes to their games for me, as oppose to "oh, the worlds gonna end." Lots of political droning and bickering with almost invisible gain or loss. "Important" decision had little to no explanation and the whole "this person agrees, this person doesn't" was absolutely beyond pointless and sometimes completely inconsistent and random. Little hints of character moments, but zero pay offs or literal intrigue. Didn't help that large portions of those character missions were off those table top missions.

@czarpyotr: You're pretty much spot on regarding the main story in this gam, but the story in DA2 was definitely no prize either and it didn't flow properly.

But holding the main story on a pedestal hasn't been the Bioware MO for a long time and this game is no different. I certainly enjoyed that character stories in this game even if their specific missions were very shortened.

Nightmare is excellent if you want to play max tactics, which is how I like my DA (all behaviors, etc set to off, pure manual control). Hard is actually pretty good but still too easy when fighting enemies even 1 or 2 levels below you.

Nightmare can be a bit much though, especially with Friendly Fire on. Honestly that option changes everything a whole lot. Give it a go if you're enjoying Hard but want to be pushed to tactics more.

That said, I do think there is some decision to be made, purely on your part. At some point you either commit to playing tactics, real-time, or both.

Yes, bump the game up to hard. Also realize that most of the interesting stuff happens in the middle of the game. The beginning is pretty boring until you finish "In Your Heart Shall Burn," gets interesting for a couple of missions, and then get really boring again for the last two or three missions.

I think Dragon Age just suffers from being incredibly bland, even the first game had this problem but people liked the combat enough to get into it. Now they've stripped down the combat, kept the blandness and thrown in what feels like the most boring of MMO style quests. It's like the Mass Effect formula with more downtime, a lazier setting and no particularly memorable characters.

I have put about 70 hours into the game and it has certainly exceeded my expectations. With that said, I do have a few pretty big gripes with it.

(1) The combat is bland. It has nothing to do with the difficulty level. You literally hold a button and manage cooldowns/potions.

(2) The story is meh.

(3) The main character is a pretty big tool and they don't give you enough dialogue options to make him/her more interesting. I would strongly have preferred it if they kept the paragon/renegade options and then added 3 more ambiguous choices in between.

The more I play of the main quest the more I prefer the aimless running around in the wilderness. The story picked up briefly circa discovering Skyhold, but soon flatlines again.