Fair review. It’s good to bring up the technical problems, but I always try to remember that DAO wasn’t perfect when it came out, and I think a lot of things can be fixed with future patches.
I got the preorder months ago. Can’t wait to dive headfirst into this game :’) I’ve been missing Thedas.

This is the review that I was waiting on since Game Front was one of the few review sites that gave actual analysis to the ME3 ending. Since I played the previous games and I genuinely want BioWare to return to form, I’ll probably get this. That said, I will still be waiting for the price to go down. The behavior of the company after the last two games convinced me not to pre-order new games from them or even pay full price, thought the consistently good reviews are making me soften my position a bit.

Actually, now that I think about it, reviews in advance of release are really rare for EA games. I suspect that this was done precisely because so many people are now wary of Bioware.

Seems like a fair review, but to be honest, Gamefront gave Dragon Age 2 a 95/100, and that game was so bad I couldn’t play it for more than a few hours.

Far too generous and forgiving towards BioWare, a company that has yet to convince the majority of us that they ever learned their lessons from releasing DA2 and ME3 before they were finished and without features that were promised – in fact, they spent months telling us how they were right and the majority with legitimate complaints were actually a minority of entitled neckbeards. None of that was ever redeemed and even with the welcomed departure of Casey Hudson there’s been nothing from BioWare’s practices in the last two and a half years that has convinced me to give them any more of my money or, more importantly, my time.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s probably a decent game, but it could never be a ‘triumphant return’ because BioWare never even acknowledged that there was ever anything to return from.

@SweetPea – Not arguing, but I will point out that I didn’t review DA2. Ross Lincoln did, and he is on record as saying that’s the score he regrets most of any review he has ever done.

@DWP – It’s a return from the perspective of the player. Bioware doesn’t need to acknowledge it. I was very skeptical of this game going in, because I did not like DA2. At all. We’ll have to wait and see what they do with Mass Effect, though. That’s a whole different ball of wax.

@Viktormon – I mention the technical problems because I want people to know about them, but I’ll be honest – they really don’t affect you that much playing the game. We, except those long-ass loading times. Everything else is definitely there, but wasn’t a factor in playing or enjoying the game.

Does that make sense?

@Ron

Well, I do trust you a lot more than I trust Ross, and the fact that you didn’t like DA2 but enjoyed this one, is all the more reassuring. Plus I’ve seen some videos, and the gameplay looks fine. But I’m still skeptical about the story and the writing in general. I’ll wait some more, and if it really is that good, then I guess I’ll have to play through DA2 as fast as I can (hopefully there’s a mod that lets me skip combat), and then try this one.

“Triumphant Return”

Return from what? Almost every review is stating similar but nearly every game they’ve released has been scored well above 9 or 4.5/5

So far from the EA Access demo on the Xbox One, this game is already leaps and bounds over the last two entries, little things such as the Search ability, or being able to participate in party banter, or even being able to jump around and actually explore are awesome additions to the game.

The graphics are pretty meh though, some framerate issues here and there.

@SweetPea – Don’t blame you for wanting to wait. It’s especially understandable when you’ve been burned before. You should check out the Dragon Age Keep, which lets you make all the choices from the first two games without actually playing them through, and then export it so you can play Inquisition with those choices taken into account. https://dragonagekeep.com/

@SweetPea, you don’t need to replay through DA2 or Origins for that matter (while good, people seem to have rose-colroed glasses about Origins….btw I liked both games)

Use the Dragon Age Keep. It’s the online app that will allow you to pick what you did in Origins and DA2 to import a worldstate into Inquisition, since there is NO SAVE GAME import into Inquisition. Looks like it was a way to allow users to pick worldstates and deal with the import flag bugs that plauged DA2.

Nice bit about that is you don’t have to play through 100+ hours worth of two games to change one or two details for a new Inquisition playthrough.

No interest in this whatsoever. It’s probably weird but after ME3 I just can’t face another Bioware game. I never played DA1 before the end of ME3, but it was up for sale on Steam with all the DLC so I picked it up cheap and I just can’t do it anymore. It’s like ME3 killed all these interactive storylines, I just can’t make myself feel interested anymore. I got through about an hour of DA1 before breathing a heavy sigh and closing it down.

It’s hard to describe, it’s like an apathy to these things…

Welcome back Bioware, always knew you could bring glory back with this game!

So DWP…. every thread needs the guy so jaded that he more or less admits he isn’t looking at things objectively.

Bioware did some pretty awful things. Yet this doesn’t mean they can never make a good game again. Many of us want them to make good games. They had a long legacy of being on good terms with their fans, and why shouldn’t they be able to rekindle it?

If this is the first step back, then that’s a good first step.

My copy is already pre-ordered! I never doupted Bioware on this one!

My only question is, is a male character have many romance choice in that one? Straight ones i mean?

Probably won’t get it, as while I did play Origins, it was more because it was on cheap, and I was killing time for ME2 at the time. Was an alright game, just not generally my sort of thing as far as the setting goes, and wasn’t planning on getting DA2, even before I heard about all it’s problems.

That said, if it really is that much of a marked improvement over DA2, then hopefully that bodes well for the new Mass Effect game in the works. I still have no idea what exactly they plan to do with that series considering how 3 ended, and I’ll probably end up holding off before getting it regardless, but it’d be nice if the trend continued with the ME franchise as well. I’m sure I’ll end up holding off regardless for at least a while though, until I know for sure it hasn’t turned into another mess of it’s own, but we’ll see what happens.

<– followed a link from Bioware's scuttlebut. http://forum.bioware.com/topic/518325-da-i-critics-reviews-mega-thread/page-39

This is all well and good, but a professional shouldn't get it so wrong. Also, if I mess up that bad in my job, what do I do? What do most of us do, especially if in retail?

A professional reviewer can't do those things. They can't refund time. But his(your?) boss could have (when it mattered) authorised the updating/downgrading of DA2's score. They chose not to. The rest is mealy mouthed words to me. After DA2 & DA3 there was not much chance that I would buy DA:I at release. There still isn't. Maybe even less. The tone of most of those professional reviews sounds very much as it did last time. The review, like most of them, is almost unbelievable. But then, I can count on my thumbs the amount of game purchases I have made based mainly on professional review, across about five years. Luckily DA2 wasn't one of them and I got it later on a sale.

@Ron, @Hemlock3630

Thanks for the info guys. But I actually meant to play through DA2 for the first time, not replay it. I tried it once, but found the gameplay so bad that I quickly lost interest in it, and stopped playing. Now, I’m not sure if I want to start playing the third piece in a trilogy without having played the second. I know that DA2 was kind of an isolated story, that only focused on a city, but I also know that at least a few characters from DA2 will return in DA:I. I still think that I should play through DA2 to get to know the characters and the story. Plus, after a quick googling, I just found out that there is actually a console command to kill all hostiles, so I won’t have to suffer the awful combat system.

Umm, not sure what just happened, but the previous comment was me, actually. I’ really tired, so I could have been stupid enough to type in the username of the person I was trying to reply to (I’m not automatically logged in on this site). Oh and a little side-questions to the admins here: any news on the reworking of the comment section? I know you guys said that it’s something you’re looking into, but I haven’t heard anything since.

Anyway, sorry Hemlock!

*goggles* Wow! I replied to myself!

@sweetpea…thanks for the laugh, I thought it was the wine I was drinking at first.

Mage in DA2, overpowered. I’m plaything through again and thought, ‘What the heck, I’ll play with mages in my party this time.” Have one spec’d for support the other damage, take a tank, and my Hawke as a rogue….slice through everyone pretty quickly on Normal. (rogue is my fav class in DA2, except for all the flippity flips She likes to do if the enemy she’s attacking walks away from her)

DA2 is a framed narrative story…..so you are only ‘filling in the details’ of the past that’s already happened. (I think many people didn’t quite get that)

I spoilered myself for a couple of things for DAI…there are definitely choices in the Keep that wouldn’t make sense without understanding what happened in DA2.

Parts are good and parts are total BS… I just died because I got in a fight with an 8th lvl bear (my parties 4th lvl). Ok, not too big of a problem. We beat it but took a decent beating. Seconds after the fight (not even 5 seconds), a second bear simply appears out of nowhere. Scotty beamed it to me. He does this a lot. I have had Templars and mages appearing out of nowhere, right next to me quite a bit. The respawning is freaking ridiculous. This game respawns faster than most mmo’s. Well, here’s to hoping they do a better job with the rest of the game.

@Ron: I read in some other review, that there are some immersion-breaking things like vanishing companions the second you use a mount and the world around you (ie. people in an inn) not showing any reaction when you, the Inquisitor, enter (like whispering etc.)

And others mentioned that there’s disparity between what your quest is (e.g. getting weapons for the fight) and what you see on your troops (everybody rigged out to max).

Can you give some comments on that? How has that been in your experience? Also, I heard from a friend, who pre-ordered (yeah, I know…), that there’s a decent amount of brainless mini-games and button-mashing in DA:I. What percentage of the gameplay, would you say, is that?

Thanks in advance for sharing your perspective,
Drizzt

@Drizzt

The mini-games are totally optional. Gives some information about constellations.

@Hemlock3630: Thanks for the info!

Game is wank, and over hyped. It’s really not that good… most effort has been spent on the graphics.. and of course rpg’s are all about the graphics now aren’t they…