Dragon Age Inquisition (PS4): Final Thoughts and advice

First off... if you are an RPG fan, go and buy this game right now. It is on super special on the PS Store for 90% off. You can get it for something crazy like $5. It is worth much more than this. It is one of the most all-encompassing games that I have played in quite some time.

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I have sunk a lot of hours into this game. I am not sure exactly how many but I would imagine it is well over 100. I have completed the base game and after the credits roll you have the option of continuing. I think some DLC that that must have been included in my base game automatically kicked in because there is still a LOT more to do.

Anyway, enough with the sales pitch. It's a great game and might be the best $5 I have ever spent. This is not the point of this article though. I am going to offer you some advice which is spoiler-free that I wish I had known when I started playing.

Resist the urge to set the game on "Casual" difficulty

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If you are like me, you might be a casual gamer. I actually think i am something between casual and normal, but I also give up on games pretty quick if they are kicking my ass right out of the gate. Dragon Age Inquisition has a LOT going on and could be perceived to be quite difficult for anyone who has never played it (I hadn't) therefore I almost immediately set the difficulty to "casual" not realizing that this what actually going to negatively affect my gameplay for the entire time.

I just defeated the game and have pretty much annihilated half of the optional bosses using very little in the way of any sort of strategy because casual is extremely easy. There is so much opportunity to really get into the nuts and bolts of this game and make it so you genuinely need a real strategy to win fights but not on the casual setting. It is, like the setting would suggest, extremely easy.

I think I kind of ruined a lot of the game because of that. So do yourself a favor and put the game on at NORMAL and just learn the game properly.

Pick up all the plants and other materials that you see

When you first start the game you will notice a bunch of plants that are highlighted all over the map and they seem inconsequential for quite some time. They do become extremely important later on in the game and if you didn't pick them up, you will find yourself running back to get them again in old maps.

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This is particularly true of Elfroot, which is so prevalent in the beginning levels that you quickly stop paying them any mind because you don't have any idea what they are for. You will need a ton of them for upgrades later in the game. So yeah, pick em all up or you will miss out on some of the stuff later in the game.

don't specialize your companions in everything

There is an ability tree that you upgrade your toons over time. You will feel the desire to give them all the damn abilities on the tree thus making some of them lower powered just to have variety. The thing is, the AI only allows them to use a certain number of skills. Unless you are constantly rotating their skills in the menu, the skills that you don't specifically tell them to use, wont get used. Maybe this doesn't make sense.

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This is particularly true for mages because as you might expect they have different trees for different type of elemental damage. I foolishly upgraded across the board only to wonder why later my mage seemed to almost never use some of the skills I in fact upgraded. That is because you can only have a certain number of skills ready to use at any given point of time.

I would say focus on one skill at a time... in the later stages of the game you can delve into the other elements. This of course doesn't really apply if your main is going to be a mage.

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tl:dr

This game is $5 or less right now for reasons I do not know. However, it is an amazing game and is one of my favorite RPG's ever even after just a couple of weeks. Basically the above said that when you are playing here are a few tips to make the game better for you.

• Don't play on the "casual" setting, even if it seems like the game is difficult at first
• pick up all herbs and stones that you can collect all the time - just trust me on this one
• focus your AI controlled characters in just one specialty at first... you can branch them out later and are limiting their capabilities in battle if you spread them too thin across all "jobs" from the start.