First Impressions Of Dragon Age Inquisition The Dragon Age Continues..... But Should it?

I want to start off by saying that I am a huge fan of Dragon Age: Origins. I loved that game so much I even bought the Dragon Age: Awakening expansion and played the hell out of it. I thought the story, game play, and characters were top-notch. It was a game that I cherished with my very heart and so I was hyped to play the expansion, Dragon Age 2.

I remember going to the midnight release of Dragon Age 2 and there was a young woman who got the game and ran to her car so she could speed home to play it. Little did I know the game sequel we were both excited to play would turn out to be the worst sequels to a game I have ever played in my whole life. It was such an utter disappointment that I have trouble describing it in words. I would not even wish that my worst enemy would play Dragon Age 2. So, with this bad taste in my mouth I planned on never buying Dragon Age Inquisition.

I resisted buying it for a week but I eventually caved. I bought the game because deep down in my heart I was hoping that it would be like Dragon Age: Origins. I was also hoping that the BioWare developers would not mess up a sequel so badly two times in a row. I am not finished with playing the whole game to conclude whether it is good or bad. Currently, I am 20 hours in and at about the middle point. So I will explain my first impressions of the game.

Graphics

At first I was surprised with how demanding this game was on my graphics card. I have the Nvidia Geforce 560 Ti and it struggles to run this game on low settings. I have a decent gaming rig consisting of a i5 Intel processor, 4gb of ram, and a HD monitor. Even with this decent set up I was experiencing low frame rates running this game on medium, high, and ultra settings.

If you plan to play this game I would first recommend that you upgrade your graphics card. I am not an expert on them but I plan to eventually upgrade my graphics card to an Nvidia Geforce GTX 760 or the new GTX 980 series. I think with this upgrade I can run the game on high or ultra settings with a smooth high frame rate. I will have you know that I do not get paid to advertize Nvidia although I believe they should pay me.

Right now I run the game on low settings with 60 frames per second and I have to say that the game looks very good. I will even argue that the game looks better on low settings on the PC than compared to either the Xbox One or PS4. If you can get the game running properly with smooth frame rate on the PC I think it will set you up to really enjoy the graphics of this game.

Leveling

I really do not like how long it takes to level in this game. For example, I am 20 hours into my first play through on my qunari warrior I am level 9. I researched online and apparently the highest level you can achieve without cheating is level 20.

The reason why I do not like how long it takes to level in this game is because the level of your character is important in combat. For instance, if your party is level 8 and you fight enemies who are level 12, the enemies will almost kill all of your characters in one hit. This is a very frustrating problem because you cannot kill these enemies anytime soon because it takes a long time to level up. Unfortunately, most of the time I will have to simply leave the entire area and level through the main quest. Once I level through the main quest then I can come back to the area to easily dispatch all of the enemies.

I became frustrated by this problem because the game would allow me to unlock areas that my character could not progress through. The reason my character could not progress through them was because I was not a high enough level. But why would the game allow me to unlock these areas if I would not be a level to kill enemies in the first place? It does not make sense to me and so far this problem does not seem to be corrected as I advance through the game.

Itemization

One of the areas that has really impressed me in this game was the itemization. In the game each character has a weapon slot, shield slot, armor slot, amulet slot, belt slot, and two ring slots. You can customize each individual character’s armor and skill build. The weapons themselves even have special abilities that enhance the skills of either warriors, rogues, or mages.

The quality of the items are similar to the role-playing game World of Warcraft. There are grey items (common), blue items (rare), and even epic items (purple). Not only that but you can add on armor and weapon modifications. This means that you could improve a rare or epic item to make it even better than it was before. If you cannot find use for gear you can simply sell it to a merchant to make a good profit to buy other items.

One problem I personally experienced with this extensive itemization system was paralysis of analysis. I experienced this psychological phenomenon because I was presented with too many itemization options. I had so many weapons, armor, amulets, rings, belts, armor modifications, and weapon modifications to choose from that it resulted in me making no itemization choice at all. I was simply overwhelmed to the point that I selected a random armor piece or weapon and just closed the inventory menu to continue the game.

I know other people may not experience paralysis of analysis with this itemization system like I do. But I think at the end of the day it is a good problem to have because you rather have too much itemization than none at all. I think in general people will enjoy the variety of different options to choose from.

So far I have been impressed with the graphics, story, and itemization. I think the leveling process needs to be faster just so players can progress through certain areas of the game. All I can say is that I personally have a fire inside me that makes me excited to play this game whenever I have the time at home. I always get excited whenever I boot up the game and I think you might too.

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