Late last month I had written about my journey playing through the Dragon Age franchise this year. Now that I’ve rolled credits on the fourth installment of the franchise, I have a few thoughts I wanted to share. I’m a bit taken aback by the severe ups and downs of this game. Some of the finished product is very high quality, others either aren’t to my taste or would broadly be considered low quality.
Pros and Cons
- Graphics – Environment (Pro)
- The environments are some of the most beautiful I’ve seen in games. The environments are stunning in this game and one of the best things about it to me.
- Graphics – Characters (Con)
- The character designs are not to my taste, specifically the Qunari (See below for comparison). The style is a cell-shaded style bringing it a bit closer to animation which I don’t often mind, but in this context, as a sequel, it’s such a step back.
- Gameplay Mechanics (Mid)
- I appreciate the mechanics and leveling, it’s missing a bit to make it great. Ideally, I’d love to see a progression system that can be tied with enhancing equipment to make a build incredibly powerful. I feel they took it about 70 to 80% of the way there. The puzzles and environmental aspects are elementary. Long story short? They made an effort but didn’t see it all the way through, assumedly to make it approachable.
- Combat (Mid)
- The combat is good, I enjoyed it for the first 20 hours. The issue is tied to my comments on progression, it doesn’t mature, evolve, or change in a way that enhances or makes you feel more powerful.
- Music (Mid)
- The music is good, which is to say it fits with the scenes but it doesn’t stand out in any way to be memorable. I didn’t find myself thinking about it or humming it. All in all, it was serviceable and not bad, but not great.
- Voice Acting (Mid)
- While the performances are generally a pro, the direction and the writing are unfortunate. Multiple scenes do not fit the performances well together. There’s incredible talent in this cast, but the overall composition didn’t come out great.
- Writing – Story Arc and Worldbuilding (Pro)
- The overarching story beats I thought were very well done. If the details were executed differently this game could have been something special.
- Writing – Characters and Dialog (Con)
- The writing in this mature-rated video game at over 95% of the game felt like was geared toward a 2nd grader. Dialog is written to explain to the player (most time repeatedly) what they were doing instead of the characters being believable entities in their own right. This would have fine if it were a series dedicated to 8-10 year olds, but there’s a nudity option. I honestly did not see any nudity in the game and using google, no one else did either. This makes me think the game was initially going to be a bit edgier but they changed direction (probably multiple times) throughout the game’s 10-year development.
- Technical Performance (Pro)
- The game performed very well on both the PS5 and PS5 pro. I did not have a single issue in my 60-hour playthrough.
- Wrap up
- The game feels muddled, and due to the long development cycle with multiple creative leads, it’s frankly a miracle the game got over the finish line. The game has high highs, but pretty low lows. That writing… it’s some of the most disappointing (due to my expectations of it being a sequel) writing I’ve endured in recent memory. Contrast the writing with the environment design and stellar technical performance the overall composition is just slightly better than OK.
I played this game for 60 hours and would broadly give it a 6 out of 10.
Qunari Comparison
