DA:Inquisition - Review after 100%

I'm fine with that. DA:I was a pretty good game, and I have good memories of it. Me wondering the purpose of a review 6 years later doesn't evaluate the review itself, it's just kinda impractical in my opinion but if he had fun doing it and gets some viewers because of it, all the more power to him.

While I'm very, very critical of most YT content - I can see the point in reviews like this, if handled well.

I have a gigantic backlog - and I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about games I missed that I should probably play (or even games that I tried but ended up dropping). Sadly, I end up thinking and fretting about the "right choice" much, much more than actually playing a game.

Reviews like this can alleviate some doubt - especially because they can compare older games to more modern ones, with a more informed and insightful underpinning than would have been possible at release.

I find myself often checking this kind of material out on YT.

Also, since I exercise from home quite a lot these days, and I absolutely CAN'T do that without some kind of background noise - I much prefer the larger more meaty videos that can last for the entire training session at 1+ hours.

I never start a game with the idea of getting 100% achievements. If I exhaust the games content but find I’m still enjoying the combat, gameplay mechanics then I’ll start working my way through the achievements to give myself something to do other than just play through the content again.

If at anytime it starts to feel like a chore then I know I’m done and I just quit. For instance I was really enjoying nioh 2 so I thought I’d do the achievements but some of them were to get max proficiency in all the weapons which I had no interest in so I didn’t do them.

So for me it’s not an OCD thing it’s simply a way to prolong a game I’m enjoying.

I've never quite understood even the concept of achievements within a game, perhaps because such a thing didn't exist when I first started playing video games? In any case, I've never gravitated to them, and I doubt that will ever change. Quests I understand, accomplishing tasks/goals the same, that achievement thing is just a meaningless word to me. At least within a game, my achievements in real life endeavours are to be honoured by me, for sure.

I noticed that on forums, where playstation crowd is discussing games, its pretty common to get platinum trophy achievement for whatever games they are playing. By my understanding, that means clearing all trophies (achievements) the game offers. To me, doing that for any game, makes absolutely no sense. But even more Im confused how common it seems, at least as far the internet discussions suggest.

I'm obsessive enough as it is, trying to explore everything. Then, trying to actually keep myself focused enough to complete the main quest can be daunting.

I cant imagine also giving myself ANOTHER metric to actually "finish" the game. I'd lose my mind!

The opinion quotes from the video I enjoyed hearing:

The Hinterlands. Pheeeew. I don't know what they were thinking here. I guess they were trying to go big for the intro but they really didn't have a lot of content to fill this place with and so it's, like, every time you turn around someone is throwing some dumb quest.

Now, that's not to say that everything in the Hinterlands is bad, there is content there I enjoy, it's just that there's so many pointless quests that didn't need to be there.

This is a terrible way to start a game. Just point blank, it is.

So you have this really cool set-up, you're starting to lead this inquisition, and the you're, like, hey, go do these random tasks for me that in no way serve the plot but I'm actually forcing you to do them because you need to get power [to advance the game].

It's easy to get lost in the side-quests and then be, like, why am I doing this? It's just a weird start to the game.

Not all the side-quests are terrible, it's just that most of them are terrible.

And then 10 minutes later he says:

There's a good amount of build variety, but the problem is that it's all basically all the same stuff. There's a set amount of enemy types, there's a lot of enemies, but they all come in generic types.

There's, like, the heavy hitter two hander guy, the sword and shield guy, there's the mage and archer in the background guy, and the second you learn to deal with those, congratulations, you've figured out combat for every fight for the rest of this game as every fight is going to be basically the same.

I don't hate it, its not bad, its just that it lacks a lot of the depth that it tries to convey that it has, and this might just be where I'm being picky because I play a lot of cRPGs which are all about combat and customisation of classes and stuff and giving you all the options for combat, but this? It's really like you're just pigeon holed into a few different builds because that's all there is available and so just feels real samey.

Important points that have been repeated about a lot of 'RPGs' over the past decade or so. Shame really.

One advantage of reviewing a game a few years later is that the reviewer can play the product as it is, not as it was. That includes all patches and DLCs, which could change the overall quality considerable.

That might be relevant for anyone looking to get into the game later on. For example, someone looking to play Cyberpunk in 2024 should probably look at a later review, not the ones reviewing the buggy version that was released in 2020.