Dragon Age Inquisition

I have no idea what the rifts levels are, i don't remember seeing any indication.

 

Problem with combat is having to multitask. The AI for your teammates is not good: Varric for instance refuses to stay at range despite being an archer. When you face a large group of mobs it just becomes chaos. It was better in DA2, but DA1 had similar
issues.

It's unfortunate they refuse to optimise last gen ports. Not surprising I guess. The game looks ok in regular play, but the cut scenes have all sorts of problems with textures not loading in time.

 

I presume the 360 works the same as the ONE version.

You can set your characters behaviours for combat so they will do what you want them to.

I find setting one character to guard your Inquisitor is useful because they'll get involved with the fight but will step in if an enemy targets you.

The combat is where the Kinect feature really shines for this game on the ONE.

Instead of breaking the immersion by hitting the "freeze time" button simply to manage stuff like having someone take a potion you can command the party as if you're there with them. You just tell them what to do and they do it.

As for the more difficult rifts... you'll appreciate it more when you're strong enough to close them.

Much better than the original "Dragon Age" so far.

Wish Bethesda would hurry up and get "The Elder Scrolls VI" out though.

 

360 version tactics wise is the same as the One version. Which is a huge back step from Origins.

Now I know you don't like the Game Az but I'd find it hard to believe that even you could argue that Inquisition gives better party tactics.

 

I could tell those monkeys in "DA: O" to drink a healing potion until I was blue in the face.

Never actually happened.

 

Really? Did you ever try putting that at the top of the list?

Oddly enough in Origins they would attempt to follow their tactics in the order you told them to.

Put health at the top and that would be the first thing they did.

In Origins it wasn't enough just to put tactics down, you had to ensure the characters knew on what priority to follow them.

 

They do the same in "Inquisition".

You just have greater control and more flexibility in "Inquisition" which is what makes it a better system.

If you prefer the "Origins" set up I can understand that.

It's not a better system though.

I prefer the "Origins" set up to the "Inquisition" set up but only because I'm lazy and prefer this more limited system because you don't have to do as much.

 

YOu don't have greater control or flexibility at all. That's simply not true.

The camera in tactics mode is locked to the ground which makes it very difficult to navigate terrain. You cannot queue commands (such as telling them to take a position away from the melee and shoot).

You cannot reliably use abilities such as shield wall because you cannot tell the AI when to stop shielding or when to start without directly controlling that character.

For combats with few mobs it's not too bad, but when there's lots of stuff happening, it's a giant mess. The game wants to operate like a RTS but doesn't give you the means to do it.

And the 360 version is ropey as hell: aside from graphic issues there are all sorts of weird glitches. If i want to scroll through a menu i can scroll down no problem, but to scroll up i have to repeateldly push the LS up until it decides to move. Subtitles
seem to switch on and off of their own accord. Pressing the RT to forward time in tactic mode turns the screen black.

I have no problem with lower quality ports due to being on older tech, but if the machine isn't up to the job or the publisher won't allow the devs to optimise it then don't release it. I won't touch Shadows of Mordor because i know the 360 version is a
load of pants for instance.

I'm sure there's a good game in here somewhere, but don't pretend the AI/tactics in Inquisition is superior because that's just patently untrue.

 

Whilst the level of detail in the tactics has diminished, i prefer the toned down combat.

I never once used the tactical screen in a battle, the only thing i use the tactical screen for is to see the enemies weakness.

I also never had much of a reason to switch characters unless to heal. If yopur rougue/mage is running in close (after checking your tactics) check what abilities they have. I noticed that all of a sudden Vivienne would start running into the middle of fights
when she hadnt done this before. I realised that she had gained an ability for being a knight enchanter that required her to be close to the enemy (I auto level the ai characters).

I see someone mentioned Varric (even tho i have only ever given him Bianca to use he has some dual weilding abilities via auto level).

One thing i noticed yesterday is that you can literally buy power and rank from one of the stores in skyhold. (not that i need it with 229 power and one mission left to go).

They lied when they said this was a 100 hour game though. i think I will be done in 90.

 

Sorry Az but I believe it was better in Origins. I'm just the same, I can understand why you think it is better in Inquisition but you're not going to be convincing me that it is.

Inquisition Strange runs on Frostbite that it seems not to be wholly suited to the task. The big one being the tactical view. Apparently the only way they could get it to work was to make the cursor an object in the environment, so that's why it is stuck
having to follow the same routes as the characters.

PC modders have already made an option to be able to pull the camera out to a greater range, however they've encountered a problem and that is indoor environments. In Origins the ceiling would fade out as you pulled the camera out, in Inquisition it wont
do this as it is a 'solid' piece of the environment.

I can understand why people who've only played Dragon Age on the consoles are enjoying Inquisitions tactical view, it's their first experience with it after all, yet it's not exactly the best it could be.

Edit: One last thing. Why on Earth can't I select all the characters in my party at once? This would be very useful say if you wanted to get everyone out of the way of a Dragon fireball.

Edit 2: I have auto levelling turned off, I like being in full control of what my party does or doesn't do.

 

Apparently on the One if you put the console to sleep but have Inquisition still running in the background, the how long you've played timer keeps running. So it may not be an accurate count of how long you've played.

 

yep thats correct 4 hours of my playthrough were spent stood outside the war room whilst the console was in standby. I exit the game now after every play session.

The reason i auto level the AI is I see them as AI, I want to control them/their personality as little as possible.

I wish there was a way to make the AI make some of the decisions instea of me having to guess what they would do.