Where 2009's Dragon Age: Origins set out to be a modernized, spiritual sequel to Baldur's Gate, this latest installment takes the form of an honest-to-god action game with moderate RPG elements sprinkled in. And that's not a bad thing, per se, even if Inquisition's design feels more than a little familiar. After just a few hours with BioWare's latest creation, I couldn't help but get some serious Assassin's Creed vibes.
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If seeing a map dotted with quests, treasure, and various other worthwhile ventures does it for you, there's a lot to love about Dragon Age: Inquisition. BioWare's placed a real emphasis on exploration this time around, and the most fun I had during my session came from gradually charting uncharted territory. Even if you don't have an agenda—and I sure didn't—it doesn't take much wandering before you'll stumble into something fun. Just exploring at random, I gathered resources for crafting, set up camps to unlock waypoints, took on quests from NPCs around the area, explored mini-dungeons full of enemies more dangerous than the ones on the overworld, participated in arena style battles against demon-spawning portals, hunted for fresh meat, and ran from things that were far too deadly. And, refreshingly, my time exploring didn't involve me staring at a mini-map in the corner of the screen: If something looked worthwhile off in the distance, I headed in that direction, and my curiosity was usually rewarded.
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most fights with my archer didn't require tactics beyond holding in RT to continuously pelt my targeted enemy with arrows while using my special abilities as soon as they became available. Melee combat isn't much more complicated, and since characters don't have many defensive options, you really just trade blows until an enemy dies.