Review: Dragon Age: Inquisition

I'm so very late with this one, and there is a very good reason for that, I've been playing and enjoying the game.

Dragon Age: Inquisition throws you directly into the action, going with the trope that the main protagonist have lost his memory he or she now stands accused for killing everyone in the meeting between the templars and the rebelling mages. Being a captive as the lone survivor and having a strange magic bound to your hand, your sent of to close the gigantic fade rift that tore the sky apart and killed everyone at the meeting, everyone but you.

From there the game is pretty much open for you to explore, with overwhelming numbers of quests to do, people to talk to, requisitions to fill and monsters to kill. This game is the result Elder Scrolls and Dragon Age making a love child! 

The Good

I love the openness in this game! It's the best that BioWare have produced since... Ever! There's so much to explore, and I'm pretty sure that it's designed to be more than most players will care to do. A game where there's always something more to go back to and do is a really good game. 

I must admit that I was afraid of the combat system in this game, but the tactical view have a nice flow and it is easy to tell your party what to do (even if they don't always listen, more on that later), and you don't always have to use it either, for those easy quick fights, some fast paced action might be better suited.

The war table also is a fun feature, where you order your advisers to investigate plots, gather resources or scout new areas to open them for exploration. I can only hope that a high tech version of this will be in the next Mass Effect!

Companions also have a story, and so much character! You'll have to speak to them often, and my only concern is that I don't have time to invest in all the characters. You'll have to help them with missions and bring them on side quests, which ruins my perfect combos! The ones I talked to are great thought, and remember to talk to the advisers as well.  

The Bad

I started playing on Nightmare difficulty, where almost every foe is deadly and will kill you if you don't know what to do. This game mode forces you to learn how to handle your party. Sadly, I had to change the difficulty to get past a certain step in the story where you can't change the party, and the notorious AI keeps screwing up what I'm trying to do. The AI of your party members make this game harder than it has to be, and that is the games major flaw. They sometimes outright refuse to do what you told them to and keep attacking something instead of reviving a fallen team mate. This made made the game more frustrating than fun, and the constant micromanagement in every battle felt more tedious than challenging. If you consider playing on Nightmare, make sure you optimize your party, and absolutely make sure to be over leveled!

The rest is minor flaws, things such as when you use your mount, your other party members disappear, only to reappear when you dismount. I'm guessing this has to do with pathing and the mounts being larger than characters etc. But it had been nice to have your whole party mounted and trotting around.

Bottom line

This is the best game I played this year, and it's the best in the Dragon Age series. It's not perfect, and I consider the AI a major flaw, but that's also the only major flaw there is. I hope that BioWare use this game as a foundation to build the next Mass Effect game upon. The only thing you have to consider before buying this is that your social life will probably take a huge hit from this. The hours spent in game go real fast, and there's always that "one thing left" to do.

Review: Child of light

So I spent about 10 hours last weekend streaming Child of light, which according to my viewers was more interesting than me dying in Destiny or any other FPS, and I now have a clear opinion on this artistic, beautiful game. 

The main story is heavily inspired by Alice in Wonderland, the game starts with you, Aurora, coming to this fantasy world Lemuria and simply trying to find your way home, and that proves to be harder than expected, even if you don't do any side quests.

The Good

This game is a piece of art, everything looks hand drawn and simply astounding, from environments, to characters and even enemies. When looking at how the characters move, you can see they are 3D-models, but the textures really make them seem to be 2D, and it's just so gorgeous!

The music fits in to every scene, they have worked this game out so it feels so complete, even the conversations are great. Mostly because they rhyme, which just keep getting better they more you play.

Another great thing with this game is the challenge, when you start you can choose to play either casual or expert, the game defines these two as a story and a challenge, I chose the challenge. This means that you quickly have to figure out the game's combat mechanics which are simple to understand, yet hard and frustrating when you can't master them.

The mechanics are time based, every character and enemy has an initiative value, and that represents how fast their round is, someone with a higher initiative can act quicker, and sometimes even more times than someone with lower initiative. When you reach a certain point on the initiative bar, the red part on the picture, you'll get to choose action for your character. While some actions are instantaneous, most of them take a varied amount of time based on the actions power. An attack that hits all enemies takes longer than an attack that only hits one enemy, and so on. If you get hit by an enemy attack while casting (being on the red part of the bar), you'll be interrupted and will be set back. This system makes combat more about interruption than about causing damage, control on the battlefield is the key to victory!

The Bad

This part is directly knit-picking, cause this is a great game, but no game is without flaws. And most of the flaws in Child of Light is on the story elements. The story isn't bad, but it is a bit simple and feels like a Disney movie rip off. The whole setting, also rather straight forward, yes I want to go home I know, but I also want to explore the world more, as it is now it's very standard RPG where you meet someone that you have to help to get to the next place and they end up following you, which repeats until you have a group that chases after the last boss, stolen from every RPG ever.  

  

One flaw in the mechanics I would love to change is that you can only have two characters each battle, I can see how cluttered it might look on the initiative track if you had too many characters and opponents, but I would love a support, a damage dealer and either a controller class or a healer in the same battle. I feel a bit to limited by having to choose among all the fun characters. 

  

I wold love some more living places with more people to talk to and more villages and cities to visit and why not some mysteries? Yes this is my wish list more then actual flaws, also, these changes would change the whole tone of the game, and maybe not to the better. 

  

  

Bottom line 

This game isn't ground breaking, and it might not be my game of the year, it is however a really good game, and I would go as far as to say that is the best RPG you can buy for $15. I've played it for over 13 hours and I'm still not done, which in my opinion is a great value for that money! I strongly recommend this game to every RPG lover!