Saturday 24 January 2015

Dragon Age Inquisition: First Impressions

Hi guys,

I hope you have all had a brilliant Christmas and a smashing New Year! One of the games I gratefully received this Christmas was Dragon Age Inquisition, and today I will be giving you my first impressions after spending about 20 hours with the game. I have played as an Elvish Warrior. When you boot up the game you will be prompted to select a class, race and difficulty, I went for Warrior, Sword and Shield, Elvish and Normal. You then get to customise the character who will embody your journey, I spent about 40 minutes creating my character which is more than I have ever spent in customisation before! Once that is complete you will watch a few cut scenes and then be released into the first mission with your first few companions. This mission will come to a crescendo with a boss battle which was highly enjoyable, but the fun really happens when you are released into the fully explorable world. Don't worry about being overawed by the size of it, you are given certain sections of the world to explore, then as you progress the story/explore more you will unlock new hubs to work your way through.
     Bioware have done a stellar job in making both the world and characters feel believable, in what time I have spent in the game I have already grown attached to specific characters and most importantly taken a disliking to certain groups. Within your inquisition you have advisers and companions, what is really nice to see is that non of the characters in those two groups are annoying.
     This game does have it's fair share of glitches, and does give throw back memories to Skyrim, in more ways than one! However none of these glitches ever massively affected my gaming experience, the worst one I have had was when I booted up the game one time and found there was no sound, however I only had to exit the game and relaunch it and I was fine. Randomly catapulted enemies and glitched characters in cut scenes aren't all that rare, but as I said, they are never more than amusing! Whilst we are on minor flaws of the game, I don't like the emphasis the game puts on Power. If you haven't played the game yet, or are indeed playing the game but are in the infant hours of your adventure, then you won't really know what power is, let me explain. Power is earned by closing rifts, recruiting agents, completing requisition orders and setting up new camps. That may sound like quite a long list, but I feel like more quests should give Power as a reward, and maybe for every five locations you discover in one hub, you get a Power point. My problem is that Power comes to, at least personally, me quite slowly, and when some of the "main missions" need 20 power to unlock them, I feel like the game is forcing me away from those missions, in favour of exploring the world. I have no problems exploring the world, it is just that the choice of doing the main missions isn't in my hands all the time.
     Moving on from that slight niggle, let's look at the combat! This is ludicrously fun, it feels incredibly satisfying when you co-ordinate your teams strengths and weaknesses to come out of a battle with a victory. Even when all four of your squad die,(which doesn't happen unless you take on enemies above your level) I have never felt like I was cheated into death. There is about a 50-50 split when my squad dies as to if I want to just walk away and come back to those enemies later, and sometimes I go back into the battle more prepared and actually nearly always beat them!
     Tying into the combat are the classes in the game, at the beginning of my voyage I got annoyed every time I would get a weapon or piece of armour locked to another class, such as rogue or mage. Then I realised that the people who fight with you aren't just there as AI, but they are fully controllable! With each character having the ability for you to equip any peice of armour of weapon you acquire! This means that no matter what mood you are in there is a class, and probably a character with you to suite. Whilst we are on the topic of combat, I feel I should mention the tactical camera. I personally don't like embarking on 
All in all from what I have played I would highly recommend this game to anyone, especially if you are an RPG fan! It is shaping up to be one of if not the best games I have ever played and I can't wait to play more of it.
Signing off,
Ed

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