alias_sqbr (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alias_sqbr) wrote2014-11-28 02:02 pm
alias_sqbr) wrote2014-11-28 02:02 pm
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SO I FINISHED DRAGON AGE INQUISITION
Overall: really liked it! I think I got a but overhyped about it being better than the previous games: it was, but was still the same basic kind of game. Which I like! But part of me hoped for something more unexpected.
It took 62 hours. At around 50 hours the option came up to start the final battle, saying "some quests will be unavailable past this point", so I went and finished a bunch of companion quests etc. Of course doing all those made me much better placed to finish the final battle, which was still tough. But I didn't have to rush and while I missed a few things feel like it was a proper playthrough.
I played on easy, and it was entirely doable with everyone but my inquisitor being autolevelled and using default tactics. I'm not sure I bought anything from a merchant, and only crafted some armour at the end since it seemed a waste not to use all the materials and schematics I'd randomly picked up. You don't have to do much gathering but it can be useful for gaining the "power" you need to open up new quests and levels and for making cutsom armour etc if you're into that. I carefully timed my "operations" to get most of them done and ended up with what seemed like a ok amount of "influence" which...I have just discovered gets you the "inquisition perks" you can spend on useful abilities like more potion slots. I did wonder what it was for haha. By the time I finished the game I was at level 19, the highest level suggested for the final battle, and had a bunch of power left over, with heaps of sidequests left that would have netted me even more power, influence, and experience.
The only times I looked up walkthroughs was to find things (some sidequests need stuff hidden in wierd corners of the map, sometimes only accesible after a complicated series of seemingly unrelated missions), and the only time I needed one to finish the game it was literally a problem of me walking right by a door and not seeing it. I got lost a lot, which was annoying, but I think the pretty immersive environments were worth it :)
The overall plot was not quite what I thought it was going to be, but was good! My one complaint is that...the ending felt too happy? I made all these major decisions and feel like SOME of them should have unambiguously bitten me in the ass. Makes me wonder if a different playthrough would feel all that different. Also it felt a bit...empty? Not hollow, just...like there should have been MORE of something. More character moments? My relationships didn't feel as deep as they have in some other games.
My Keep setup: Commoner dwarf warden. Romanced Alistair, made Anora queen, did the dark ritual. I thought she made Harrowmont king but I now remember someone talking about King Bhelen, hmm! Saved the mages, brokered peace with the werewolves.
Diplomatic rogue Hawke. Sent Bethany to the circle, romanced Fenris, sided with the mages, let Anders live.
There were lots of subtle references to the situation created in the Keep and by my choices as I went along, and there were some small dwarf specific quests, mostly done via text-based letters. There was a deep roads related quest I didn't get around to doing, which in retrospect may have been interesting? Not much dwarf content other than that, or qunari, asides from the relevant companions. The vagueness of my background (I was told I was a Carta thug but never actually saw it) meant I didn't have a strong sense for Marijn's backstory, and she ended up a bit generic. Now that I know how everything turns out I might try for a stronger sense of my character for my next playthrough.
Wasn't a fan of the treatment of elves. They continue to show that city elves are treated like crap for no good reason, which is fine, but the portrayal of the Dalish hits soooo many gross indigenous people stereotypes: they're bitter, and stuck in the past, and doomed to a fading irrelevance, but the alternative is to give up that past completely and become entirely assimilated into a society which will always mistreat them.
Dwarves and qunari were fine, from what I saw, just barely there. Mages and templars were far more central and treated quite interestingly, with more nuance and choice than DA2.
Gender was treated ok? My femaleness was much less of an issue than my dwarfness :) But it felt like there were more random background npc female warriors. Sexuality came up very little, the way things played out I could easily have not realised any of my companions weren't straight, but I also could have assumed Cullen was gay instead of just not into dwarves. There's some background f/f and m/m that I noticed, subtle enough I could have missed it and may have missed more. There's a side trans man character who's written really well afaict, his transness is secondary to his character, you can ask some trans 101 questions and he answers politely but with this subtext that everyone's time would be better spent fighting bad guys. Ethnicity was treated pretty well, noone cares what colour you are but there was a variety of colours (and other ethnic markers), and Thedas ethnicities were varied and written with a moderate amount of complexity. Disability: lolllll I don't remember anything asides from lots of "madness" and "corruption", unless you count lyrium addiction which was treated...ok in parts? But often led to "madness" or "corruption", so.
Now to finish the post with my final opinions on the companions.
I romanced Blackwall, and quite liked it! He hits a lot of similar "self hating dude with blood on his hands" buttons to Thane, except less smooth, you will either find his moping charming or irritating.
Other party romances:
Cassandra: really like! Not 100% sure on romancing her with a dude, would romance her with a girl in a heartbeat.
Solas: irritatingly smug and narrow in vision: all he cares about is spirits and magic, and maybe elves. Literally said something like "you're not as stupid as other dwarves" because obviously if we can't access the Fade we're worthless. Am curious to see how his romance would go, though.
Sera: I liked her and her general anti establishment attitude but she was a bit narrow minded and thoughtless. I can see her being a fun romance for a less serious minded Inquisitor.
Dorian: I loved this dude so much. Charming and fun and basically a sweetie under all the pomp and bluster. I feel like I already understand him pretty well but a romance could be sweet.
The Iron Bull: Didn't love quite as much but still a really great character. Very curious about how a romance would go since qunari don't really do romance (except when they do ;)) Cam says he's really interesting when you're a qunari yourself since as a Proper Qunari he used to hunt down renegade qunari like your family.
Non romanceable party:
Varric: Continues to be Varric. I like him well enough, and his content was well written. We didn't bond much about being dwarves, and overall I didn't feel as close to him as Inquisitor as I did as Hawke.
Vivienne: annoyingly smug, also super haughty, but interesting, and I think a different character might like her more. Didn't get around to doing her personal quest, oops.
Cole: Interesting! Creepily loveable.
And the non party romance options:
Josephine: I really liked her, but didn't find her very exciting. Might appeal to a different Inquisitor?
Cullen: Really grew on me, I didn't like him much in the previous games and rolled my eyes at him a bit at the start of this but in the end I liked him. Not all that interested in the romance though he does have enough "self hating dude with blood on his hands" tendencies to be mildly appealing.
Dorian and Iron Bull both bring really interesting outside perspectives as people from Tevinter and Seheron who still have a lot of affection for their homelands even while they recognise some of the flaws.
Leliana...ah, that girl needs a hug :(
Totally failed to ship the companions who get together, will try harder if I do another playthrough where I don't romance either of them. You gotta take them out with you, is the trick.
I really liked the cameos by some of the characters from previous games, but won't spoil them (Varric, Leliana and Cullen are there from the start)
Oh and a final really obvious tip: bring companions along to major quests involving stuff relating to them (eg bring the warden companion to a quest involving wardens) It doesn't always make a big difference but I always felt curious about what I'd missed when I didn't do it.
And you may find some of the puzzles easier if you familiarise yourself with semi-Eulerian paths. And people say a Phd in pure mathematics has no practical applications! (...ok I learned about them from a puzzle book I read in primary school)
It took 62 hours. At around 50 hours the option came up to start the final battle, saying "some quests will be unavailable past this point", so I went and finished a bunch of companion quests etc. Of course doing all those made me much better placed to finish the final battle, which was still tough. But I didn't have to rush and while I missed a few things feel like it was a proper playthrough.
I played on easy, and it was entirely doable with everyone but my inquisitor being autolevelled and using default tactics. I'm not sure I bought anything from a merchant, and only crafted some armour at the end since it seemed a waste not to use all the materials and schematics I'd randomly picked up. You don't have to do much gathering but it can be useful for gaining the "power" you need to open up new quests and levels and for making cutsom armour etc if you're into that. I carefully timed my "operations" to get most of them done and ended up with what seemed like a ok amount of "influence" which...I have just discovered gets you the "inquisition perks" you can spend on useful abilities like more potion slots. I did wonder what it was for haha. By the time I finished the game I was at level 19, the highest level suggested for the final battle, and had a bunch of power left over, with heaps of sidequests left that would have netted me even more power, influence, and experience.
The only times I looked up walkthroughs was to find things (some sidequests need stuff hidden in wierd corners of the map, sometimes only accesible after a complicated series of seemingly unrelated missions), and the only time I needed one to finish the game it was literally a problem of me walking right by a door and not seeing it. I got lost a lot, which was annoying, but I think the pretty immersive environments were worth it :)
The overall plot was not quite what I thought it was going to be, but was good! My one complaint is that...the ending felt too happy? I made all these major decisions and feel like SOME of them should have unambiguously bitten me in the ass. Makes me wonder if a different playthrough would feel all that different. Also it felt a bit...empty? Not hollow, just...like there should have been MORE of something. More character moments? My relationships didn't feel as deep as they have in some other games.
My Keep setup: Commoner dwarf warden. Romanced Alistair, made Anora queen, did the dark ritual. I thought she made Harrowmont king but I now remember someone talking about King Bhelen, hmm! Saved the mages, brokered peace with the werewolves.
Diplomatic rogue Hawke. Sent Bethany to the circle, romanced Fenris, sided with the mages, let Anders live.
There were lots of subtle references to the situation created in the Keep and by my choices as I went along, and there were some small dwarf specific quests, mostly done via text-based letters. There was a deep roads related quest I didn't get around to doing, which in retrospect may have been interesting? Not much dwarf content other than that, or qunari, asides from the relevant companions. The vagueness of my background (I was told I was a Carta thug but never actually saw it) meant I didn't have a strong sense for Marijn's backstory, and she ended up a bit generic. Now that I know how everything turns out I might try for a stronger sense of my character for my next playthrough.
Wasn't a fan of the treatment of elves. They continue to show that city elves are treated like crap for no good reason, which is fine, but the portrayal of the Dalish hits soooo many gross indigenous people stereotypes: they're bitter, and stuck in the past, and doomed to a fading irrelevance, but the alternative is to give up that past completely and become entirely assimilated into a society which will always mistreat them.
Dwarves and qunari were fine, from what I saw, just barely there. Mages and templars were far more central and treated quite interestingly, with more nuance and choice than DA2.
Gender was treated ok? My femaleness was much less of an issue than my dwarfness :) But it felt like there were more random background npc female warriors. Sexuality came up very little, the way things played out I could easily have not realised any of my companions weren't straight, but I also could have assumed Cullen was gay instead of just not into dwarves. There's some background f/f and m/m that I noticed, subtle enough I could have missed it and may have missed more. There's a side trans man character who's written really well afaict, his transness is secondary to his character, you can ask some trans 101 questions and he answers politely but with this subtext that everyone's time would be better spent fighting bad guys. Ethnicity was treated pretty well, noone cares what colour you are but there was a variety of colours (and other ethnic markers), and Thedas ethnicities were varied and written with a moderate amount of complexity. Disability: lolllll I don't remember anything asides from lots of "madness" and "corruption", unless you count lyrium addiction which was treated...ok in parts? But often led to "madness" or "corruption", so.
Now to finish the post with my final opinions on the companions.
I romanced Blackwall, and quite liked it! He hits a lot of similar "self hating dude with blood on his hands" buttons to Thane, except less smooth, you will either find his moping charming or irritating.
Other party romances:
Cassandra: really like! Not 100% sure on romancing her with a dude, would romance her with a girl in a heartbeat.
Solas: irritatingly smug and narrow in vision: all he cares about is spirits and magic, and maybe elves. Literally said something like "you're not as stupid as other dwarves" because obviously if we can't access the Fade we're worthless. Am curious to see how his romance would go, though.
Sera: I liked her and her general anti establishment attitude but she was a bit narrow minded and thoughtless. I can see her being a fun romance for a less serious minded Inquisitor.
Dorian: I loved this dude so much. Charming and fun and basically a sweetie under all the pomp and bluster. I feel like I already understand him pretty well but a romance could be sweet.
The Iron Bull: Didn't love quite as much but still a really great character. Very curious about how a romance would go since qunari don't really do romance (except when they do ;)) Cam says he's really interesting when you're a qunari yourself since as a Proper Qunari he used to hunt down renegade qunari like your family.
Non romanceable party:
Varric: Continues to be Varric. I like him well enough, and his content was well written. We didn't bond much about being dwarves, and overall I didn't feel as close to him as Inquisitor as I did as Hawke.
Vivienne: annoyingly smug, also super haughty, but interesting, and I think a different character might like her more. Didn't get around to doing her personal quest, oops.
Cole: Interesting! Creepily loveable.
And the non party romance options:
Josephine: I really liked her, but didn't find her very exciting. Might appeal to a different Inquisitor?
Cullen: Really grew on me, I didn't like him much in the previous games and rolled my eyes at him a bit at the start of this but in the end I liked him. Not all that interested in the romance though he does have enough "self hating dude with blood on his hands" tendencies to be mildly appealing.
Dorian and Iron Bull both bring really interesting outside perspectives as people from Tevinter and Seheron who still have a lot of affection for their homelands even while they recognise some of the flaws.
Leliana...ah, that girl needs a hug :(
Totally failed to ship the companions who get together, will try harder if I do another playthrough where I don't romance either of them. You gotta take them out with you, is the trick.
I really liked the cameos by some of the characters from previous games, but won't spoil them (Varric, Leliana and Cullen are there from the start)
Oh and a final really obvious tip: bring companions along to major quests involving stuff relating to them (eg bring the warden companion to a quest involving wardens) It doesn't always make a big difference but I always felt curious about what I'd missed when I didn't do it.
And you may find some of the puzzles easier if you familiarise yourself with semi-Eulerian paths. And people say a Phd in pure mathematics has no practical applications! (...ok I learned about them from a puzzle book I read in primary school)