The game is fun and engaging at first, but the longer you play the more it becomes apparent how formulaic, uninspired and truly shallow everything is. From god-awful dialogue, to fighting the same enemy for literally ten thousands of times again and again and again to the most shallow companions the genre has ever seen. Most companions have a SINGLE DEFINING TRAIT and will talk to you about ONLY THAT every conversation. Talking about what happens around you? Nope, better talk about my pet gryphon for the 20th time (no exaggeration). Then you get a quest to talk to him in another location and 3 loading screens later he talks to you about his gryphon. That's it. That was the entire side-quest. Guess what you will do the next time you go to you awful home base to talk to him? Yep, you get a quest to talk to him in ANOTHER LOCATION about his gryphon with an additional 3 loading screens... Jesus. Even if you stay at camp, it's gryphon, gryphon daddy, gryphon litter. Almost every companion is like that. It's truly awful and dull and you will check out out of 90% of the companion stories.

Otherwise you have awful dialogue without any RPG elements. Even your protagonist basically says the same thing regardless of what you pick. You have no meaningful impact on 99% of stuff happening and the few choices there are, are clearly indicated as to not engage you too much. The game also either treats you like a 12 year old child and talks down to you, or puts you into the big boy pants and lets you talk your companions squabbling like THEY are 12 year olds. It's honestly unbelievable that this comes from the same company that prided itself with good writing and dialogue in the past.

The game is just one-dimensional, even during combat. Every companion has 5 skills and a talent tree with enough points to max out 3 trees... but why? EVERY SKILL PUTS ALL SKILLS ON CD. So why bother using anything but the one-skill you skilled and just spam that whenever it's off CD? Companions themselves are so inconsequential in combat, they can't fight any trash mob by themselves in any meaningful way. The 'combo' system has no depth or impact and might as well not be in the game. Apart from buffing YOU they are basically useless. You have a skill tree, but once you reach level 30, your build is basically never changing and you will be doing the same sequence of abilities over and over again in every combat against the same enemies that don't have any strategic variety. I played the entire game on 'nightmare' and you can't change that difficulty mode afterwards, so do not make the same mistake and start on one lower. The HP Sponge just prolongs the awful arena fights without providing any meaningful challenge. I was basically invincible, but every enemy took way too long to kill.

Some talents are also buggy or not tested or hilariously awful. I've dealt up to 3x 9999 damage with my charged attacks, so why would I ever care about afflictions witch do not scale and are a flat amount of damage (50 per stack, with a max stack of 3 LMAO). You have like 3.000HP and a talent that converts your Rage spent to HP. An ability costs 50-100 and it's not like you can spam these. That's literally one of your 'special last skills', for which you need level 40 out of 50 to unlock. Other talents require you to have certain armor equip and stop working until you deskill it and reskill the talent and it happens frequently enough to be annoying. Same for your ultimate ability, which resets to default occasionally.

Puzzles are literally 'use your interface and push a button'. That's it. See a torch? Use your wheel to automatically ignite it. Then you also have the very difficult puzzles of 'find a battery around the corner and put it in here'... It's insulting even for pre-schoolers, how does this make it into a mature game at all?!

Speaking of mature, none of the mature themes and topics of past Dragon Age made it into the game. You have some slight glimpse into it some mature themes at some minor points, but overall, it's babies first fantasy adventure.

You will maybe enjoy the first 10h, after that it becomes more and more of a trainwreck for the most part. If you do struggle through it, you will be rewarded with a decent last segment, that showed a way better direction, but it's ultimately not worth sticking with it.

[h1]5.5/10 Tedious, shallow and uninspired but not awful[/h1] The game is fun and engaging at first, but the longer you play the more it becomes apparent how formulaic, uninspired and truly shallow everything is. From god-awful dialogue, to fighting the same enemy for literally ten thousands of times again and again and again to the most shallow companions the genre has ever seen. Most companions have a SINGLE DEFINING TRAIT and will talk to you about ONLY THAT every conversation. Talking about what happens around you? Nope, better talk about my pet gryphon for the 20th time (no exaggeration). Then you get a quest to talk to him in another location and 3 loading screens later he talks to you about his gryphon. That's it. That was the entire side-quest. Guess what you will do the next time you go to you awful home base to talk to him? Yep, you get a quest to talk to him in ANOTHER LOCATION about his gryphon with an additional 3 loading screens... Jesus. Even if you stay at camp, it's gryphon, gryphon daddy, gryphon litter. Almost every companion is like that. It's truly awful and dull and you will check out out of 90% of the companion stories. Otherwise you have awful dialogue without any RPG elements. Even your protagonist basically says the same thing regardless of what you pick. You have no meaningful impact on 99% of stuff happening and the few choices there are, are clearly indicated as to not engage you too much. The game also either treats you like a 12 year old child and talks down to you, or puts you into the big boy pants and lets you talk your companions squabbling like THEY are 12 year olds. It's honestly unbelievable that this comes from the same company that prided itself with good writing and dialogue in the past. The game is just one-dimensional, even during combat. Every companion has 5 skills and a talent tree with enough points to max out 3 trees... but why? EVERY SKILL PUTS ALL SKILLS ON CD. So why bother using anything but the one-skill you skilled and just spam that whenever it's off CD? Companions themselves are so inconsequential in combat, they can't fight any trash mob by themselves in any meaningful way. The 'combo' system has no depth or impact and might as well not be in the game. Apart from buffing YOU they are basically useless. You have a skill tree, but once you reach level 30, your build is basically never changing and you will be doing the same sequence of abilities over and over again in every combat against the same enemies that don't have any strategic variety. I played the entire game on 'nightmare' and you can't change that difficulty mode afterwards, so do not make the same mistake and start on one lower. The HP Sponge just prolongs the awful arena fights without providing any meaningful challenge. I was basically invincible, but every enemy took way too long to kill. Some talents are also buggy or not tested or hilariously awful. I've dealt up to 3x 9999 damage with my charged attacks, so why would I ever care about afflictions witch do not scale and are a flat amount of damage (50 per stack, with a max stack of 3 LMAO). You have like 3.000HP and a talent that converts your Rage spent to HP. An ability costs 50-100 and it's not like you can spam these. That's literally one of your 'special last skills', for which you need level 40 out of 50 to unlock. Other talents require you to have certain armor equip and stop working until you deskill it and reskill the talent and it happens frequently enough to be annoying. Same for your ultimate ability, which resets to default occasionally. Puzzles are literally 'use your interface and push a button'. That's it. See a torch? Use your wheel to automatically ignite it. Then you also have the very difficult puzzles of 'find a battery around the corner and put it in here'... It's insulting even for pre-schoolers, how does this make it into a mature game at all?! Speaking of mature, none of the mature themes and topics of past Dragon Age made it into the game. You have some slight glimpse into it some mature themes at some minor points, but overall, it's babies first fantasy adventure. You will maybe enjoy the first 10h, after that it becomes more and more of a trainwreck for the most part. If you do struggle through it, you will be rewarded with a decent last segment, that showed a way better direction, but it's ultimately not worth sticking with it.