Next-Gen Reviews

Customisation is a massive thing in Dragon Age and Dragon Age: Inquisition doesn’t let the fans down. Before you start you’ll need to choose your background and race etc – after this you can customise everything on your characters face (literally, everything). So, once my character was created (always ends up looking like Jason Gardner) it was time to save the world.

 

Dragon: Age Inquisition does follow on from the other titles, but as mentioned above, you do not need to have played the others in the series in order to dive into Inquisition and know what’s going on. Anyway…..You play as the inquisitor, a person that has survived a strange ordeal that they cannot remember being involved in. You wake up with a green glow-like smoke that lurks around your wrist and you later find out that it enables you to close ‘tears’ that have occurred in the vale – a barrier that separates Thedas and the Fade.I think it’s best that I stop there because I wouldn’t want to risk ruining the story. However, I will say that the story is great as would be expected so make sure you listen and make the decisions that you’re happy with.

 

On top of the story and the massive amount of hours that it offers alone, you will also have the opportunity to do missions for random NPC’s within the world. Most of the mission are great but you’ll definitely be met by the obvious and expected ‘Go here, get this and then bring it back to me’ crap.

 

Gameplay is pretty easy to get to grips with as you’re greeted with the typical action RPG-type controls. A click of the options button brings up a wheel where you can look at yourself and party, look and equip weapons and armour and have access to a few other options.

 

Changing equipment is easy, but I’d prefer to have an ‘Auto equip’ option for the other party members – I don’t think that I should have to dress adults. Coming across weapons and armour is very slow and a little draining – I would have preferred to have found or even been able to purchase better weapons more often.

 

Moving through the lands is great for the most part, but there were times where I was getting frustrated with trying to get to certain areas due to the controls being a little clunky. It’s not too often that you’ll be aware of the controls being annoying, but when you get to a point where you’re collecting collectibles that need precision movements, you’ll notice it and get frustrated.

 

On your travels you will be accompanied by 3 party members – these members level-up in order to gain new attributes to make them more fierce on the battlefield, can change different armour found or bought, as well as equip different weapons (as mentioned above). Also, like before, you can control each of the other party members but I personally only do this if my player is down. As the story progresses and you travel further you’ll have the option to add new members to your party - It’s a great idea but I tend to stick with the original crew unless they’re totally useless.

 

Again, like the previous titles – you are able to go into a battle strategy mode. In this mode you go into a top-down view where you can give the team orders with hope of enforcing a winning strategy. This isn’t my type of thing, but it works well and does come in handy at times.

 

Ranging from the beautiful Canadian-like landscapes to the very dark and muggy swamps - Dragon Age has all of your vista needs. I am impressed with the visuals of Dragon Age: Inquisition, but I can’t help but feel that they could have pushed the hardware further (especially after seeing Assassin’s Creed: Unity in a flawless visual style). Having said that, I probably wouldn’t think this if I hadn’t seen Assassin’s Creed: Unity.

 

Whilst travelling the pretty lands you will have the ability to collect various plants and animals which you will use for potions and/or missions. This is a common thing in RPG’s and usually it’s a bit of a dull part of a game, but Dragon Age: Inquisition makes it quick work to grab what you need so that you can get back to your duties of being a hero.

 

Seeing the varied enemies is great and even though you will see different enemies depending on where you are in the world, you still see lots of unique enemies and wildlife within each area. The benefit of the diverse enemies is the loot that you can collect changes, also.

 

Dragon Age: Inquisition is definitely open –world to an extent, but to another, it’s reasonably linear. The areas are very large but you have to travel to different locations on different maps to get the change of scenery – this isn’t a problem, I’m just putting it out there.

 

Apart from the clunky controls the main annoyance isn’t game breaking but a definite distraction….. Cut-scenes. The cutscenes are great for the story but the lip-sync is so out that it’s like watching an old Bruce lee film and it’s a little bit naughty to allow this in my opinion.

 

Dragon Age: Inquisition is the deep and engrossing RPG that the newer consoles needed and it definitely delivers. Apart from the few little issues that you’ll come across, there isn’t really anything to complain about.Dragon Age: Inquisition will most definitely keep you busy until Mass Effect 4, so go and grab it as soon as you can because this is a game that most definitely pays for itself.

 

8/10