This is legitimately an excellent game, one which was unfairly maligned for dubious and spurious reasons - and one which I unfortunately bought into at the time. I regret listening to the creators who dismissed this game as cartoony and equivalent to a Marvel-isation of Dragon Age. It's a legitimate successor to Origins, an excellent game in its own right, and was extremely fun from beginning to end. More detail:
[h2]Gameplay[/h2]
It's a full action-RPG, done in a way that still allows for deeper combinations of abilities and strategy. There's weapon combos, ability combos, three builds per class, plenty of variety between abilities, and they actually feel substantial and powerful. The different weapons have different feels, too. Overall, this is easily more fun and engaging than Inquisition, and while 'simpler' than Origins prima facie, it actually has plenty of its own depth and feel. Definitely fun to experiment with the different classes and subclasses.
[h2]Visuals[/h2]
A lot of doom and gloom is directed towards the 'cartoony' character design in this game, and while I do feel like the characters can look a little cutesy, this is also well-contrasted with several exceptions. Antagonists and monsters feel rougher, more brutal, more alien. The Antaam and Blightspawn are imposing and huge. There's no 'cutesy' aspect to the Risen Gods, either; they're eldritch and horrid.
The actual world design is outstanding, and makes every single zone feel unique and immersive. They hit lighter notes at times - there's beautiful patches of forest or gorgeous cities - but this then makes the Blight more effective when it shows up. When you wander into a corrupted village early game, it feels grotesque, alien, unsettling. The visuals on some of the more fantastical parts of the setting - the Fade, the magitech aspects - are extremely impressive.
[h2]Story[/h2]
This is probably where a lot of people - like me - got misled by a slew of videos which led a crusade against some of the characters and themes in the story. Honestly? It's excellent. It delves into deeper lore for each of the different factions and races in the game, exploring the underlying causes for why they are the way they are. Why don't dwarves dream? Who were the Titans? If Solas is an Elven God, who were the rest of them? What are the 'gods' in a setting like Thedas?
It explores the political and emotional consequences of being in this world and dealing with these threats. There is humour - the main character Rook is pre-disposed to quips and wisecracks, though you can obviously be more stoic and gruff. But it feels real. It echoes Varric in Inquisition. Companions range from the younger and more anxious to more fully-developed and established people to whom Rook is just another chapter in their life.
YouTubers fixated on characters like Taash seeming to have "modern" dialogue, missing that this is a character who is an alien everywhere they are - a stranger in Rivain, a stranger to the Qun, a stranger to their own mother. Explorations of the emotional side of this - how easy it is to close off to others, when you feel foreign in your own home - are actually compelling, and interesting to see in a fantasy RPG. There is also some of this in Baldur's Gate 3! Feeling like an outsider in fantasy settings is an underutilised theme. DA has never been purely Shakespearian in dialogue, and the contrasts between the more rough-and-ready and the more eloquent companions actually emphasise how they're at different stages in their lives, and from different places. As a result, the setting actually feels more [b]real[/b], not less so.
I thoroughly recommend this game, regret waiting this long to play it, and encourage people to ignore YouTube influencers who hate games just because they feature people they're not used to seeing in media.
