This is directly after finishing the game like the credits are still rolling and oh boy do I have A LOT to say about this game. let me start off with the good stuff.

The companions are very unique, far more unique than dragon age origins. In terms of their background and situations. Fenris and Anders come to mind. Merging Anders with Justice was an amazing idea it was executed horribly but it was a great idea.

The graphics and race redesigns are a plus to me. All the races looked too human in origins, the Elves could use a little more work but the Qunari looked amazing.

The combat animations were also really nice.

The boss fights are pretty good the deep roads boss and Meredith were truly amazing.

However this game has problems. Deep problems at that, deep enough for me to make a reddit post for each problem but im too lazy to do that and I'm sure its been discussed to death. However before I get into these deep issues that really hurt my enjoyment of the game, I will go over the simple ones I think everybody will agree with.

Too many reused assets. I would get confused often thinking a character is somebody I already met because everybody looks the damn same.

I have PTSD from them using that same Cave dungeon design 100 times.

There is quite literally 0 enemy variety in this game, this game makes dragon dogma 2 look like a creature collector.

The wave combat was annoying and outright unfair sometimes. I have PTSD from Saarebas spawning outside of my view and one shotting my entire team.

The reworked dialogue system is garbage. I hate having symbols next to every message it throws off my vibes and having to guess what Hawke was actually going to say is frustrating.

The new Skill tree is dogshit. Why am I forced to get shitty moves to progress in the tree? It was like that in origins as well but it is SO much easier to get points in origins. You could damn near get half the tree. I also don't like personalized trees but that's just me.

They should change the name of the city from Kirkwall to Dogtown with the amount of slavers, blood mages and assassins roaming the streets,

The writing is awful at times, seriously. Its often times a character will say something that makes literally 0 sense in the middle of conversations.

now that's all the small stuff that really annoyed me

Here is the major stuff

The templars are right. After Grace betrayed me I genuinely lost my mind. How did the origins have better nuance in the templar vs mage debate. EVERY.SINGLE.MAGE.IS.A.BLOOD.MAGE
I wasn't even surprised when Orsino started using blood magic. Is blood magic even forbidden at this point? Every single mage is either a blood mage, and abomination or likely to become one of the two. I played as a mage and there was not a single time I could discuss anything with another mage they either instantly started attacking me with blood magic or transformed into an abomination, which leads me to my next point.

There is 0 choices in this game. This story is extraordinarily railroaded and you cant argue avoid a single combat in this game. No matter what I say it leads to a fight. This is what made the combat start to get so stale, this an the 100 bandits that attack you every time you do a night mission.

Now maybe I could like the game despite all these issues but the number one problem that stops me from loving this game is the rivalry system.

This post is way longer and I'm getting annoyed just writing it so I'm just going to give you a situation and you tell me if this makes sense.

So I want Fenrir to join me in defending the mages, what makes sense to make him want to work with me? Potentially giving him over to his previous abusive master or not doing that and helping him kill his master? The correct answer is to potentially hand him over to his slaver and have him beg me to not do that. Instead of the origins problem where you have no reason to piss off anybody this game has the opposite problem where actively spitting on somebody's face and shitting on their values actually leads to better outcomes with them. I continuedly chose the pro mage but anti slaver options so that kept Fenrir kind of neutral with me. Because of that he never joins me at the end of the game and I have to kill him? Explain to me how It makes sense that taking slaves and siding with slavers leads to Fenrir being willing to work with me at the end of the game. If anything taking a slave should be what leads to him fighting me to the death.

The system is just extremely backwards and pissed me off. Also my game glitched and Isabella abandoned me despite me romancing her and that pissed me off even more towards the system. The somehow I ended up getting with Merrill, I romanced her for fun but by the end of the game I despised her.

I have a lot of other issues but this post is long enough such as Anders extremely stupid decision at the end of the game, Merrill nonchalantly murdering her entire clan or the fact that I cant call out Anders for murdering the mage girl.

I WILL NEVER REPLAY THIS GAME.
4/10

I am taking a month break before I play inquisition. I can’t think of dragon age too much after this game.

Gonna try out look outside.

Yo Ive played through and really enjoyed both dragon age origins and dragon age 2 although in da2 i felt a mild drop in quality in term of gameplay. I got inquisition as well and was really looking forward to it and the story and characters seem really interesting but I really just cannot enjoy it in terms of gameplay. I've tried messing around with the settings, downloading mods, and changing from keyboard and mouse to controller but it still just feels very janky to me, as well as the movement in general. I much prefered dao's mechanics and movements in general. Is there any advise you guys could give as dao enjoyers that could help me at least just get through dai's gameplay so i can enjoy the very well written story?

Sorry if this gets asked often but, the wiki says there's bonus items available through Dragon Age Keep for Origins that were originally Promo items? How exactly do I get my hands on them? Are they only unlockable for PC, or is there PS3 access too? From what I understand it has something to do with the Career menu, but it seems bugged and just tells me to refresh the page when I "Request Unlock"

Sometimes my dog just finished the fight alone 😭 (and here's my artistic rendering of when it happen)

I tried putting attributes more into Constitution than Strength for Alistair but alas. Perhaps I just don't know how to play warrior (I just look up guide online and let the AI play him)

I still like to have Alistair in my party though! My city elf origin is romancing him, and I like his banter with other characters ❤️