Ea learned from the mistakes of DA2, and finally got it right. (Mostly)
If you have read my reviews of the preceeding two installments of this franchgise, you know that I love good RPGs. The operative word being good. And after the fiasco of DA2, EA finally got it mostly right. DAI has an even more immersive plot than the original DAO, More charracter development, better graphics, more excellent voice acting, and a great, if somewhat convoluted plot. After DA2, I went into this game not expecting much, but I was mostly pleasantly surprised. You really start to care about all the characters in this game.. There are a few minor points I didn't like though. First off, the whole crafting system is confusing and sometiems a bit frustrating. You have to keep copious notes on what materials you need to create each item, and also to remember where to find them. The next annoying bit is the limits on items you can carry. It's too small. Other fantasy RPG games have things li8ke Bags of Holdding which allow you to carry more items as your character progresses. Considering the enormous costs of semi-decent items, weapons and armor, ity makes the game feel more like a resource management simlulator of some kind. Since your lead Character and the party are basically out to save the world, you would think that someone else would worry about making sure they have the right equipment, and enough of it. As it is, you end up having to repeately run around gathering resources instead of battling bad guys. The level up system is another sticking point. Unless you "farm" bad guys to get up inn levels, which takes forever, plan on spending an even longer time to reach higher levels. Often times you will find that the available missions are too dangerous for your character, so you go back to just hunting critters to stomp just to gain levels. Oh yeh. One thing that isn't mentioned a lot is that if you kill critters that are more than 3 levels below you, you get no experience points for it. That's right, zero, nada, none, zip. And when you level up, no matter how hard it was to do so, you are rewarded with just one measly ability point and a slim stat increase. And there are a few technical hiccups as well, and as with DAO and DA2, you are basically on youre own unless you like reading multiple irrelevant canned support emails. Stick to the forums. There is for instance, one quest that requires you to kill a bunch of bad guys holed up in an old keep. But depending on your hardware, it can and will crash to the windows desktop as soon as you enter the keep and initiate combat with the first bad guy. From what I have been able to tell, this is a bug that has been in the game since it came out, yet EA has done nothing to fix it. Luckily, I stumbled upon a thread from another user who had the same problem and it turned out that you have to turn off one of the antialiasing video options in the game for it not to crash. You would think that EA would turn this "feature" off by defauilt. No so... One again the user has to help them debug the software. When the game came out it was very highly priced. My Daughter's copy cost me almost $70! for a buggy game thast kept crashing with no help. Luckily it has gotten more reasonable as the game aged, and EAs cash gluttony was satiated. This IS a good game, but you have to taker the good with the bad. The game has incredible graphics and acting, an incredible plot, seemingly unlimited character development, tons of side quests and runs fairly well on a mid range system. But keep the negatives in mind when you think of purchasing it. This is NOT the game you want if you lack patience and/or are easily frustrated. But if you're up to the challenges, go for it by all means..Read full review
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: New
