I've been spending most of my free time playing Dragon Age Inquisition on the XBONE. Dragon Age Origins was one of my most favorite RPG's, but I didn't care much for Dragon Age 2. Dragon Age Inquisition is the best one yet, in my opinion at least. This is coming from someone who put Origins in the top 10 games of all time, so when I say Inquisition is better, that's saying something.
You begin like most RPG's. You pick your Sex, Race, Class, and Difficulty. The only thing that can change of those after you start is the difficulty, which is nice. Just in case you made it too hard or easy, you have the option to change it. You can be a Human, Elf, Dwarf, or Qunari. For the classes, there's Rogue Dual Wield, Rogue Archer, Shield and Sword Warrior, Two Handed Warrior, and Mage. The dwarves cannot be mages, that's the only restriction.
Then you go on to character customization, where you edit the appearance of your character. And again, like most RPG's, the "hair" options are terrible. I don't know what it is about RPG's and hair choices, but in my experience, they're always terrible. Not to mention, you have the exact same options for both male and females. The actual face customization is nice though, you can get pretty in detail. You can only alter the head though, so no fat, skinny, tall, short options.
Anyway, on to the actual game. I don't want to summarize the plot or story, so don't worry about spoilers.
The story is really well done. The fact that character development, for the most part, isn't necessarily required is awesome. If you don't care for a certain character, you really don't ever have to talk to them or advance their story line. It's waste if you don't, but the fact that the option is there is awesome. There's tons and tons of cut scenes, which I like personally, but some don't. The dialog is like Mass Effect, you usually have around 3 or more options to respond with each time, and what you say affects the story in some way, either big or small. When you're out roaming around, the characters in your party will occasional banter with one another, which is only pretty cool.
The world is massive, bigger than Skyrim, bigger than a lot of RPG's actually. Each new area you unlock is just as big if not bigger than the previous one. There's so much to do that's not the main quest, even some very trivial things like finding a wild druffalo and bringing back to it's home. Each area has it's own unique theme, unlike say Destiny, the world definitely isn't repetitive.
The gameplay is more like Origins than DA2, but it's like a mixture of both. You can pause the action and go into tactical mode, where you can switch between characters while time is frozen, and strategize. You can tell them to attack, defend, tell them where to go, to heal, cast a barrier, etc. On normal mode, however, strategizing isn't that important, but it's useful and will help you in the long run.
That leads me to the difficulty. I played as a Mage on Normal mode. At first it was a little difficult getting used to everything, and everything was a higher level than I was. After playing for awhile though, you get the hang of it. I was only using my character and not utilizing the other 3 characters in your party at first, then realized that was a mistake, the game got a lot easier after that. I also was overleveled for most of the game. There were a few areas I didn't unlock at the right time, so when I did, I was a much higher level than the enemies. I'm not sure if a Mage is the best class, but it seemed really really good to me.
The boss fights were epic, but there's not that many of them. There is like 7 Dragons (around 7) that you can find throughout the world, all in which are very hard to kill. These dragons don't need to be killed, but it's fun and you get good loot from them when you do. The final boss fight was awesome too, but easier than I thought it was going to be. I'm playing through a new character, a Rogue Archer, on Hard and I can already tell the experience is going to be better because it will be more challenging. So if you're good at games or RPG's, I'd suggest trying it on hard after you get the basics down, you'll enjoy it more and come away more satisfied when you beat tough enemies.
I didn't do nearly all you could do in my first playthrough, and after you beat the game you can still do stuff. I finished around about 100 hours, but about 5 or more of that was just me sitting idle while doing something else, lol. The fact that I'm still playing the game proves it's fun and a good quality game, considering I usually drop a game after a few days.
I recommend this to everyone, 9/10 for me. Also, it won Game of The Year last week. So if you don't want to take my word of it... GoTY!!
