Do you recommend Dragon Age Inquisition?

As we near the start of a new generation, I was thinking back to the early days of the current one. I bought a PS4 two years into the cycle and I have many games I’ve been curious about that came out before that period but never got around to. One of those games is DA:I.

It seemed to review quite well at the time but for some reason, never garnered the kind of enthusiasm good BioWare games often do.

If you played it, what are your thoughts on DA:I?

Dragon Age is a bit complicated for me, because everything about it should make me love it, but I find the setting so utterly dull and uninspiring. I thought inquisition would fix that problem but honestly it kind of made it worse by letting you explore more of the land and interact with more of it's inhabitants but I find myself just being put off by how mediocre it all comes across. You have templars that hate mages, mages that are generally misunderstood but also sometimes not. Elves that are either slaves or spiritual(nevermind just generally ugly for some reason). Typical monsters and enemies and armor. The only real interesting thing to me, was the Qunari race. But that doesn't carry the rest of it unfortunately.

The writing and voice acting is top notch and I really do like the set up of the inquisition and how it ties in many of the other threads left off in the previous two games. The gameplay is probably the best it's been in the series as well. It does start slow like any rpg but there's depth to be found eventually. So honestly if you can get over the gripes I had with it, you'll probably enjoy the game.

Get out of the hinterlands as fast as possible though. Seriously.

It's been a long time since I played it but the first thought that jumped out at me was that the pacing was terrible. The open world wasn't a massive detriment in my eyes but by the end of the game it had definitely hurt the game more than it helped.

I was pretty disappointed by DA:I at the time, it had a pretty bland story and few characters that I really ended up caring about. I think I was also pretty baffled by how it didn't leverage the massive amount of set-up that DA2 did and instead focused its plot on something else entirely. The ending was quite bad, salvaged somewhat by the DLC.

I still wouldn't call it a bad game necessarily, and I enjoyed my time with it well enough, but I came away liking it less than DA2 which seemed like an impossibility at the time of its release.

First time I played it I had a pretty bad case of the "Not what I wanted"s, but I still made it through and did a lot of the side content because it was good enough, amongst the other games coming out that year.

Tried to go back to it last year on PC and dropped off after a few hours, found the writing very dull/dry and the plot centres around the most boring aspects of the world, considering the state of things and where they left off in DA2. I definitely remember there being some good stuff in there, but the character work was a huge step back from 1 and especially 2, which really killed a lot of my enthusiasm for this one.

It's assuredly worth the $5 it must cost these days to check it out for yourself, though.

I've started it a few times getting like 40-50h in, but I've never finished it. Take that for what you will, but I consider it a good game. I might just be biased by my love of DA:O.

As long as you're aware that most of the side content should be skipped you'll probably have fun.

It's fine. It's completely reactionary to DA2. Wide open worlds all over the place, content as far as the eye can see, and the return of the tactical camera from the first game, but on consoles as well and less useful.

The "get out of the Hinterlands" advice was almost a meme when it came out, but honestly.... when you start getting bored or irritated with any area in the game, go somewhere else. There are so many huge areas to do things in, don't try to hang around just to get everything.

Worth noting, I never actually finished it. I did enjoy what I played, but there are a lot of grindy filler quests that exist to give those big areas purpose and I just got my fill of those. If we didn't have nearly a decade's worth of good CRPG's available, I'd say it's a really good RPG, but on some level it has to compete with Divinity and Pillars and Wasteland and I'd recommend all three of those before Inquisition.

It's not amazing, but it's a pretty solid game. That said, DA:I is also the first stop on the road to EA/Bioware killing Mass Effect.

It's not what I wanted out after playing 1&2, but it is a pretty excellent game on its own. It is definitely bloated with bad side content, that can luckily be ignored for the most part.

A strong 5 to a light 6.

Long story short, I liked it well enough to finish it, but not well enough to go back to after I put it down. As a on-again, off-again fan of the series, it sits solidly between Origins and DA:2.

Long story long - I think I found it more interesting from a pure developmental perspective than a gameplay one. As others have said, it's a total reaction to the reception of Dragon Age 2, which sort of ends up highlighting both the good and bad points of obsessing over fan feedback.

On the good side, they have actual environments now, the characters are (for the most part) well written rather than the one-dimensional charactures of DA:2 and the combat is (slightly) less mindless than "hit A to win."

On the other hand, there's way too much content and a lot of it is bad filler quest stuff. It's basically AC: Odyssey v0.5. They brought back the tactical camera because people complained it wasn't in DA:2, but the combat is set up in a way that makes it pretty pointless to use.

It's also another strong argument that EA should stop forcing the Frostbite engine into every game. I will die on the hill that Frostbite games looks a little ass when they aren't a fast-paced FPS. The environments are really static and pastic-y looking, the colors are all super-flat, and everything animates super-stiffly. Those things probably don't matter in a Battlefield game where everything blows up constantly and you aren't looking at any one thing for very long. But those issues become painfully noticeable in games that are more deliberately paced.

It's my favorite of those games, honestly. It has a solid cast and (most of) a good narrative. There's a lot of things to do in Inquisition just make sure you exercise some basic self control and not frantically try to check every box in every zone.

I liked it quite a bit as a fantasy RPG. I can't speak on how good it is as a Dragon Age game since it was the first one I played. Surprisingly, the multiplayer was pretty good too, for its genre.

It has some of the best characters of the series and the Trespasser DLC makes it for me. The combat isn’t great, but it’s fun.

But if you were going to play DA4. you totally should play DA3 so you can hate the villain with the fire of a dying star. Because fuck the smug prick. I‘m gunna end him twice for good measure.

This ones a rollercoaster. Here's my background on this game:

Loved DA 1 (although I didn't like the setting so much, most of the rest is fantastic), DA 2 had good elements but overall was a big mess.

When DA:I came out I liked it and found myself pushing back on a lot of the dunking on it by some. It has some pretty good characters and I was enjoying the progression through it enough. It was my GOTY that year (...which in retrospect has shown how bad the year was).

But by the end and now even more in retrospect, it is SUCH an empty calories game. The whole story is based around the villain and there is nothing cool or interesting about them. It feels likea total side story to DA but also feels "epic!" in enough ways that its not like it has cool human drama to it. The gameplay is better than DA 2 but not that much so, still losing all the tactical quality of DA 1.

The part I do enjoy of the game is some of the companion stuff (some have cool arcs and I quite enjoyed) but even that doesn't really pay off in any way how it ties into the boring main story. Its a weird unfocused game that just feels there, all going down smoothly if you want to turn your brain off. So skip the side stuff. Its an alright RPG. 6 out of 10.

When it first came out, I actively disliked it, strongly. I was shocked to see all the mostly positive feedback surrounding the game, and the fact it took The Game Awards GOTY was mind boggling to me. As someone who loved Dragon Age: Origins, Inquisition seemed to have none of the heart and soul that game had.

Fast forward to last year, I decided to replay it to see if how I thought I felt about it held up. Upon the second play through I concluded that: Hey, this game is alright! It's far too bloated in ways that seem to encourage the statement "100 hours of gameplay!" but otherwise It's a fun thing. I still think it does a disservice to a fair amount of the lore/world building Origins set up (though maybe DA2 did that too, I have almost no memory of that game), but for the most part Inquisition was a fun enough experience. I ended up getting the Platinum Trophy, and had a good time. I'm hesitantly interested in DA4, but after the horror shows that were Mass Effect: Andromeda (which I also got the Plat in...because I'm a monster) and Anthem.....I do not expect much.

It’s a good game, much better than dragon age 2, I played through the series a few years ago. Inquisitions biggest issue is that to progress the very interesting main plot you need “power” a form and of xp that you gain from doing side content that is not very interesting. You can side step this by using cheat engine (that’s what I did) and still have a very fun experience.

I also remember really liking the final DLC which has some good story content.

I really enjoyed it for some strange reason. Maybe it was a time and place situation but I remember doing even the most mundane quests in that game and still having a fun time simply because I enjoyed the gameplay. At the time it was the perfect time sink since there are a ton of different things you can lose a lot of time to from crafting to base management. While the combat isn’t as intricate as the first game where you can setup powerful spell and skill combinations, Inquisition also has its own peculiar set of rules to play by that can be interesting if you engage with them it’s just that for the most part you don’t really have to. The various dragon fights are the only times where you might have to be a lot of tactical and even then it feels a lot more like a Final Fantasy encounter where you’re repeating a set of actions over and over waiting for that health bar to dwindle.

I recommend Trespasser, and you have to play all of DA:I to get to it. Fortunately Trespasser is that good and pays off all the time you spend picking up Elfroot.

Play Trespasser it's the last good thing BioWare will ever make.

Take a drink every time you do a pointless "go here and do a thing" quest and return to have the NPC tell you in a completely neutral tone, "well my (insert loved one) is dead, but at least you did a thing. You're really awesome, Inquisitor."

I enjoyed Dragon Age 1 quite a bit, but I was not a fan of this one. A big problem for me was the combat. A lot of it was just clicking on stuff to shoot magic lasers of some kind, which was not satisfying at all. It was just very chaotic, and the game didn't go out of its way to explain what the hell was going on. I would choose spells mostly at random to watch the fancy effects fly everywhere, and then when I died I had no sense of what I did wrong. It's very possible there is a deep, satisfying combat system under the hood but I could not see it. It felt like the game was designed with a complicated system that was totally disguised so that casual players could just click on stuff and watch it die, and as a result it did neither goal particularly well.

The story was also weirdly convoluted. It felt like they were trying to do Game of Thrones-style worldbuilding and politicking, but you're given no reason to care about any of the factions involved. In a game like this I really just want to be a somewhat anonymous hero exploring the world and meeting people - I have no desire to be a commander of a huge army. And of course as others have said, as in every game in this series, the world is *very* cliche fantasy stuff, with elves, dwarves, dragons, etc., feeling like a throwback to 80's/90's LOTR ripoff novels, and I feel like RPGs have moved on from this to some extent.

All that said, I think there is a quality game in there somewhere. It just wasn't for me.

Yes, but with caveats. Don't stay in the hinterlands trying to do every quest. It's boring and will suck the life out of the game before the game is done opening up. Do just enough to get to the next story mission and keep going until you get to the point where the prologue "ends". You'll know when. Things will be fully set up for the rest of the game at that point. Then you can run around doing all the side content you want, or none of it if you want. I really just did the major side quests for a few of the maps, the character missions, and the main story missions and that was enough content for me. A lot of the padding is unnecessary and will big down the game if you think you have to 100% it.

Also get a version that comes with dlc. If there's an ultimate edition or goty bundle or something. The dlc completes the story and makes it worth playing through some of the more boring parts of the game.

I beat it and liked the first half but got super sick of it by the end. Very repetitive, bad combat, really forgettable story and so many bad fetch quests. The game is way too long.

I'd say play the witcher 3 instead. Still long and the combat isn't amazing but the story and setting are so much better.

I hated the combat; couldn't stomach more than a handful of hours with it. This is where they went full action, so not only was it just not what I came to DA for, but it's also just not a good first attempt. Having to hold down a button for auto attack was just stupid, and also proved to be nigh impossible to connect with as a melee unit, as enemies are constantly doing that ole' MMO Shuffle, where they forever make these micro-movements to be at just the right distance from you, which I found was always just outside of my auto attack's range.

The extra time spent constantly repositioning my character led to not only my character being dramatically less effective in combat, and forced me to rely more on my party members, who are unfortunately terrible as well. Something you did in previous DA's (which apparently you're expected to do in this one as well), is pause, instruct your party members to do something, and then start time again. Well, you can do that, but whether they remember your instructions a moment later seems to be completely at random. Sometimes it worked and I got a combo of sorts, sometimes they all just ignored me. Sometimes Varric would do as I said, but dour elf boy wouldn't. You can't rely on any of them; it's just an inconsistent mess.

I had been interested in the idea of DA4, but once they started that segment in the recent Gamescom thing with, "Remember when DA:I won GOTY?", it became clear what era of DA they wanted to return to, and now I really couldn't care less about that series.

My view has softened since replaying it not that long ago. The world is pretty, some of the characters are fun to be around but as an RPG it felt much too thin and shallow despite being a very large game. Hated the loot (far too much crafting), story had its moments but was otherwise quite bland, yet Trespasser, especially the end of Trespasser, was one of my favourite things Bioware has ever done.

Its highs are high and its lows are boring and numerous. I'd never call it bad at any point but the people calling it a single player MMO are not wrong.

I really dont understand side quests in RPGs. Especially if it detracts from the logical consistency of the world. For the most part you are in a race against the villian... and the majority of the game is side quests. And the majority of those sidequests are fetch quests and literal go here and kill X bad guys then come back for a one line of dialog reward.

I will be the first to admit that I am the minority in thinking this, but I loved it. Maybe it was just one of those right place right time sorts of things in my gaming career, but I was hooked. The main villain story isn't too great, the Dwarven mines DLC was not good, and a few parts were a little dull, but the grandness of it, the worlds, the characters, and how epic the lore is, and how it was intertwined with the story (if you don't play it with the Tresspasser DLC after finishing the main story you didn't get the full story) - I'm very excited to see what comes next. It's very different than Origins, which was legendary in its own right, but Inquisition struck a different chord with me

Edit: worth noting, I played this not too long after it launched in 2014. We now live in a post-Witcher 3 world and expectations for open world RPGs are different now - while I have been getting the itch to go back, I wonder if I would be as enthralled as I was my first time

Dragon Age Inquisition is an odd one because it feels like two games spliced together: One is a good bioware RPG with a great cast of characters and really good plot (as long as you have the trespasser DLC which extends the ending - the original ending is abrupt and really bad), while the other is a very mediocre mmo-style fetch quest grind session - large, open zones that are filled with mostly nothing but very repetitve side missions with the occasional interesting boss battle to seek out.

That may sound harsh, but honestly it's still a good game and if you're already into Dragon Age I'd recommend it easily, but if you're not I'd recommend it with the caveat that the further you stray from the main quest and companion missions, the worse the game gets. it's still absolutely worth a play through either way. Just don't linger in the Hinterlands.

I'm always gonna recommend Dragon Age: Origins (and even 2!) over it, but Inquisition is still pretty good.

Its a strange game with weird pacing, its not bad but its also not good, there is a lot of it but it feels shallow and boring the more you play the game, and as for the story I played all most to the end but didn't finish the very end bit as I just couldn't bring myself to care anymore. For context Origins is probably up there as one of my favourite games of all time.

I'd give it a hard pass. I know the game seemed fairly well liked, but I borderline hated it. Dragon Age Origins is an all time favorite for me, but since then I haven't really enjoyed the series. I didn't enjoy the story or characters, but the biggest downer was the combat. I found it awful. It was just, boring. It felt like you never did anything. I would stand there, watch my mage doing random backflips while little projectiles shot from her staff and use one of my maybe three boring abilities when they were off cool down.

Just the feel of the combat, the impact, the boring skills and dull character leveling. Wasn't a fan. I know a bunch of people did like it, but this game just didn't work for me on so many levels.

I loved Origins.

2 was average at best.

I liked Inquisition.

It's worth a play but leave the Hinterlands as soon as you can or you'll be there for hours grinding needlessly.

Inquisition is a good game saddled with a lot of busy work. You don't have to do it, but if you have an obsessive personality prepare to spend hours on unfulfilling sidequests. Despite this the character work is solid and combat can get pretty interesting on higher difficulties.

I liked it but never finished it, I basically never get through bioware games the first time i sit down and play and usually come back a month or so later, but I never did with inquisition (or the latest mass effect andromeda).

I remember it looking great, and I liked the combat pretty much. The voice acting was great but I don't remember much about the plot

DA:I is a respectable RPG. I'd recommend it if you can snag it for $25 or less. Not my favorite RPG nor entry in the series (Origins is the best, if not a tad aged at this point) but if you need a fantasy RPG to play, you could do worse.

I don't have a whole lot to contribute here aside from what other people have said (I wasn't a fan and couldn't work up the enthusiasm to finish it after 20ish hours.)

My recommendation would be to sign up for EA Play and give it a whirl to decide if you want to see through the entire story or a get it at a steep discount.

Dragon Age Inquisition is a game that I would have enjoyed a lot more if they hadn't included the Dragon Age name. If you do not have any ties to the rest of the series then it was, or at least the time I played it (launch), a game that played decently but with several things about you could tell were unfinished or not completely flushed out that they probably planned to address with DLC/sequels (not sure they ever did) and some gameplay hindering but not necessarily breaking bugs. If you do have ties to the first game than the things that relate back to the previous games will both simultaneously make you happy (Yay Alistair is back) and furious (WTF did they do to my boy Alistair).

I struggle to love Dragon Age, the franchise, despite adoring Dragon Age: Origins and really liking Awakening. 2 has a host of problems that have been discussed widely, but Inquisition is the game I have the most divided feelings on. I liked the aspect of exploring the open world zones more than most people seemed to, but I found most of the combat in the game to be the most boring in the entire series. Just very flat and uninteresting for the majority. The story itself is pretty mediocre and rote.

However, the game really shines in how it handles some of its characters and dialogue. For my money, Inquisition has the best party banter of a video game I've ever played, and I grew to really love my core party members (Dorian, Vivienne, and Iron Bull). They are what pulled me through an entire playthrough, and they remain one of my favorite video game parties ever. It's not that any one of these characters is incredible on their own, but working together as a team, they were extremely compelling to me.

This should have been a poll but it would probably have skewed heavily into the negative. As one of the few weirdos that really enjoyed it, warts and all, I'm very much aware of what a minority sentiment that is. This makes recommending the game difficult because the few people that like it seem to really enjoy it, but if you don't then it seems opinion swings wildly in the opposite side of the spectrum. It's difficult to let someone know "you might like this a lot.. or you might really hate it.."

It's a fine game, and definitely worth the price now...just as has been said before, get out of the Hinterlands. I didn't, and it made some parts of the game a challenge-less slog. My wife is nuts for DA, and it was her favorite, but she is also a completionist and it was wild seeing her get to the final encounter and not even really taking damage. The game is just very weirdly balanced.

This thread (and game) is interesting, because anytime it comes up you have people saying "I'm in the minority, I hate the game" and people saying "I'm in the minority, I like the game." It's a pretty good encapsulation of what Bioware has slowly become.

I loved it. I think it's the closest Dragon Age game to Mass Effect 2, and consequently the only Dragon Age game that I've wanted to play from start to finish.

Yeah, I love Inquisition. The biggest issue the game has is that the majority of side stuff isn't great; it's a lot of collecting with little to no pay off story/character-wise from what I remember. I didn't mind it too much because I enjoyed being in that world though. Overall it's a superb experience, surprisingly better than Origins to me. I feel like the soundtrack doesn't get enough praise. I really hope they bring Trevor Morris back.

I love the world, even if there isn't a variety of things to do in it, I like the characters a lot (although, for better or worse, they are very typical Bioware characters so by now maybe predictable/trope-y), the soundtrack is great, I enjoy the combat, and I like the equipment customization. If you're in the mood for a high fantasy RPG game, it's worth checking out.

@liquiddragon: If you have any inclination towards Dragon Age 4 you need to have played this & its Tresspasser DLC (or watched it on YouTube). I will always remember it as being my favourite game of 2014 at the end of 2014, but now I think of it as a pretty good game that is my 2nd favourite game of 2014 behind Bayonetta 2. It doesn't crack even my top 20 games of all times, whereas Dragon Age Origins is in my top 5.

I initially hated it, but then went back to it last year and finished it and...hated it less, I guess? It's not a bad game, per se, but I found it very lacking as a Dragon Age game/party-based RPG. It has some clever ideas (The Winter Palace in particular is a great sequence), but it's all hampered by a combat system that tried to split the difference between being tactical and actiony and wound up in a middle ground so deathly dull and slogging that I literally fell asleep playing it once in the middle of the day. But if you have a lot of time to kill and want to play a competent single player MMO-type thing with a lot of content and pretty graphics, you could do a whole lot worse. In a world without The Witcher 3 and Assassin's Creed games that ripped off Witcher 3, I could see myself playing it again to scratch that itch.

You know I have really fond memories of DA:I. It was probably too long for the kind of game it wanted to be (there were some late-game areas that I just never bothered to fully explore), but I still spent 80 hours in there! I remember the pinging ability to be super annoying as you were basically doing it ALL THE TIME, though.

I think the game is enjoyable with some caveats - mainly the combat. In addition to being this weird middle ground between being tactical and actiony like BaneFireLord mentioned, it is also inconsistent: If I tell my party members to stay here and not move, will they? "Maybe". If I'm auto attacking and then activate a skill, will I continue auto attacking afterwards? "Maybe". It is also buggy (i.e. characters will just freeze in the middle of combat until you switch over to them and do a jump) even when I tried playing it again recently.

So if you don't mind lowering the combat difficulty so that these issues don't really matter that much (but making combat dull at the same time), I think the rest of the game is pretty good.

I think at this point the game is so regularly on sale for little enough for it to be one of those “worth a shot” no-brainers, regardless of how you end up feeling about it.

I absolutely loved Dragon Age Origins when it came out, and played it through to completion, including the expansion. I played the Dragon Age 2 demo for about 30 minutes and decided I was definitely going to skip that one. I think I got about halfway through Inquisition before just getting bored.

Inquisition kind of faltered from its open-world design. It was a welcome change, until I realized how much busywork I was actually doing. I probably should have just kept moving forward with the story, instead of burning myself out while trying to clear out each map.

@ntm: Absolutely, the soundtrack really elevates this one. The "In Hushed Whispers" track that kicks in during the Dorian (frozen in time/space) quest sequence was so haunting, I remember it vividly and still listen to it from time to time.