Dragon Age: Inquisition - Review Roundup # 3

Wow. I have no idea how to do combat in this game.

The third person combat is terrible? yes that's a question because it feel its terrible but I have to assume I'm not doing it right. It can't be that bad.

Tactical view? no. It may be tactical? but there's no view. If you zoom all the way out its a straight down view and you can't really see anything. rotate the camera so you can and it drops straight to the ground and you can't really see anything.

I'm reserving final judgement because I can only think I'm doing it wrong.

If they wanted to make third person action combat then great, follow dark souls, lords of the fallen or even Skyrim. If they wanted to do RTWP great DAO and DA2 do it fine. If they want to make both, please don't.

In third person is there a way to lock on the target or do I have to hold down the left mouse button and follow the monster with no way to dodge? Can you even dodge or is a hit determined by stats and dodging must just be walking out of the way since theres no dodge button?

In tactical view is there anyway to really control the camera to see the battle or is it going to be a battle in itself the whole game.

When I hit hold position why can't I hit it again to release them? how do I release them other than pause and issue separate commands to each?

Is there a select all button?

Of all the problems I imagined in this game controls weren't one of them DAO controls were great and while I didn't care for DA2 the game, the controls were solid there as well.

I'm really hoping the next post is someone telling me I'm a dumbass and telling me how to control the game because I hope it's user error and that combat isn't really this bad.
 
Ok, played a little more turns out I'm half dumbass and half totally correct.

So everyone can ignore my previous post.

Oh, wait everybody already is. Carry on then.:)
 
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After reading your first post, I'm really happy that you're at least half a dumbass. ;)
 
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Ok, played a little more turns out I'm half dumbass and half totally correct.

So everyone can ignore my previous post.

Oh, wait everybody all ready is. Carry on then.:)

So How do the controls work? What weren't you doing? I'll be starting my playthrough tomorrow and would prefer not to have to learn things the hard way ;-)

Also, is there a manual? A lot of games seem to forgo that these days - which I hate. I'm one of those people who likes reading them,and I expect everything game related (mechanics, stats, spells, controls etrc) to be detailed there….
 
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Best approach would be to just ignore all 10s and 0s and to calculate the average score with the spare scores only. So we need a Metametacritic site. ;)

That's what I do, and usually the result comes close to what I would give the games in hindsight heh.
The official review numbers have usually been completely useless to me, although as said before some of them are worth reading while ignoring the score.
 
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After a couple days w DAI (wife is OBSESSED YO) I have to say it's much, much better than DA2, but not even scratching the surface of DAO. It's a solid game, with a lot of bugs on the PC, but overall OK. The writing is still good, though the acting/directing has taken a step backwards, and the gameplay is... well... it sucks, but it's not totally unbearable like in DA2. As much as I wanna say they can do better, tbh for a Bioware game, "streamlined" gameplay ala ME2 and DAI are mosty painless if you enjoy the art and story. As with ME3, the story lacks any of the potential of the respective series' openers, but are still better than 95% of the crap out there. Would you be better off reading a book? Yes... but we both know you aren't going to do that! ;)
 
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So How do the controls work? What weren't you doing? I'll be starting my playthrough tomorrow and would prefer not to have to learn things the hard way ;-)

Also, is there a manual? A lot of games seem to forgo that these days - which I hate. I'm one of those people who likes reading them,and I expect everything game related (mechanics, stats, spells, controls etrc) to be detailed there….

I wasn't really doing anything wrong, unfortunately. Very thing I said is true, I just should have spent some time figuring it out rather than posting a mini rant.

The problem with the tactical camera is that it won't clip through things. So it your in a tight area the camera will hit walls, ceilings, etc. when it does it will usually drop to the ground or zoom way in on you making it impossible to see anything.

The second problem is that nothing goes transparent. So if your under a tree or behind a structure you need to try and move the camera to see. Many times obstructions block the camera and you can't get a view. Several times now I find myself just watching the health bar as the fight that I can't really see plays out.

The third problem is if you switch out of tactical view so you can get a good angle of the fight the controls change. You can no longer click on an enemy just once. It changes to 1 click = 1 hit. So it basically changes to Diablo combat, endless clicking and hit the # to a skill you want to use occasionally. This might be fine for some but I can't stand Diablo games for 1 reason and 1 reason only, the combat. Worst combat system ever invented imo. So for me the only way to play is tactical view which is awkward at best and broken at worst.

The problem with combat is they tried to make to systems, RTWP and action. As a result they both are pretty bad. They should have concentrated on making one really good.

Another problem I've encountered is while there are big areas they are empty. I find myself walking for long stretches encountering nothing but an elfroot here and a chest there and chest placement is weird. Seems they wanted to do away with barrels and such so chests and vases are laying everywhere across the countryside.

Still haven't found a button to select all my characters. There's a separate button to cancel hold position rather than just being able to press hold position again to cancel it. Minor annoyance but an annoyance all the same.

Can't comment on the story as I'm skipping it . I wanted to see what gameplay was like before I decide if I will go back and finish DA2 before playing. Now I'm not sure if I want to finish either.

Best thing if seen so far is no loading when going into buildings. The side effect though I'm guessing is the long load times even on SSD.
 
At least it's not constantly crashing like on PS3. ;)

it crashes consistently on the pc. every time a cutscene starts I have about a 1 in 3 chance of crashola. but i guess i can play for close to a half hour at time. So i might finish it by february! :D
 
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Not on my PC.
Sorry.

It does crash sometime... But frequently? Nah.
 
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I had my first crash last night after about 50 hours, and the speed is fine. My rig is just ok — a GTX 560 was minimum, not recommended specs, so I was a little worried when I bought it, but no problems so far.

I see quite a few little cosmetic bugs — dead mobs remaining on the battlefield as phantoms, combat barks about characters being wounded when that character isn't wounded, etc. But nothing gamestopping.

(I don't think I actually ever really had the dialogue bug — I was just impatient)

[edit: oh argh I just accidentally deleted my newsbit ... I'll repost later]
 
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good for you. my revised estimate is once per ~70 minutes.

And my revised experience after I finished the game…
Cutscenes are forced into 30 FPS. Somehow it causes DX11 eorrors and the game sometimes crashes.
The workaround? If it crashed during cutscene, reload and just skip the chatty you've already seen (with ESC). Won't crash again.

But bigger problem IMO is game cache usage. I'm unsure where is it and I can't erase it. It causes bad script behavior on throne judgment (the script breaks after very long loading time) and not appearing sidekicks in Skyhold sometimes.
I've seen on EA answers several quests that got borked because of "not clean" game cache. The game crashed and upon reloading the cutscene doesn't replay properly or "forgets" to offer all choices, not just two.
Already mentioned that I didn't get two achievements nor completed a few collections, again I suspect bad game cache data. The achievement to kill all 10 big dragons apparently "fixes" itself if you reload the game prior to the last fight and kill the last dragon again. I didn't know this so I don't have this achievement - serves me right for not checking EA answers daily.

This is happening on all platforms, not just PC. But, as usual, I couldn't care less for consoles nor I care for problems on them. Because DA3 is consolegame ported on PC, we on PC share the same problems though, but unlike console owners, at least we can do something about them.

Unlike Sims 4, DA3's game cache is not inside Documents/Bioware. If someone finds where it is, please do share info.
 
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good the hear from others (others who pass the watch muster as opposed to the bw forum masses ;)) on this sort of thing. i have been lucky regarding quest bugs, but otoh i am not feeling completist with this game nor into achievements. My wife has a (minor) quest she thinks is borked, tho. The crashing is annoying but it's sort of like a regular reminder to quit playing when i'm getting grouchy ;) …the weird thing i notice - and worry about wrt quests - is the quite frequent autosaving. It's saved my bacon a few times already but then is absent at the most OBVIOUS time - right after character creation. Anyway a few times I've noticed that the world seems set slightly off after a dialogue cutscene crash (our crashes are vaguely 50% cutscene, 35% looking around too fast in big vistas, 15% uaing ocularums) - like inventory items I hadn't looked at being unstarred after reload, some notifications being skipped, etc. They're subtle at first but I've no doubt that eventually they occur at a critical quest moment and set the wrong flag during an autosave, as you say… :F
 
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Bioware forum sometimes looks like Codex forum. :D
Trolls, trolls, everywhere!
They only need to allow vulgar pics and it'll become RPGCodex 2.
 
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I'd never been to the Codex until the other day. I saw all the snark on here, and thought it was a bit of fun rivalry. But... Holy Crap on a Cracker! There's some sick puppies in that house, and they're not toilet trained!
 
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It seems Denuvo has been cracked after 15 days. So much for DRM… all it took was a popular enough game. Apparently they didn't bother for Fifa 15 or Lords of the Fallen but DAI made them try it :D
 
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LOL
Breaking news for black market in India!
Man, I wish I was there... I'd be a millionaire today.
 
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I knew it! Half a billion pissed off Indian nerds - this was never going to go well for Denuvo.
 
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