Dragon Age: Inquisition received critical acclaim upon release, with critics praising its story, voice acting, soundtrack, detailed environments, and engaging combat. The game did receive some criticism for the presence of technical issues. It was awarded over 150 year-end accolades and nominated for more, including Game of the Year and Best Role-playing awards from several gaming publications.
Gameplay
Dragon Age: Inquisition is an action role-playing game similar to its predecessors. At the beginning of the game, the player chooses a race for their player character: human, dwarf, elf, are playable races, with Qunari playable for the first time. Players customize the Inquisitor's physical appearance, and gender, among other things. Players choose from three classes, warrior, mage, and rogue, and can specialize their character, which grant them specific abilities. The character would later evolve to become the Inquisitor of Thedas, who is considered "holy" by the citizens there. As the Inquisitor, players had to make choices and decisions that affect and change the game's world state. In addition, they can "judge" certain people on their behaviors and decide their fate.
Thedas is the game's world, which includes Ferelden, where Dragon Age: Origins was set, as well as three new unexplored regions, which include Orlais, Nevarra and the Free Marches. The game is not an open world video game, as the world is broken up into several sections, which can be freely explored by players. Despite that, BioWare claimed that one of the levels featured in Inquisition is larger than the entire game of Dragon Age II. In addition, each region features different environments like deserts, swamps, and mountains. In order to allow players to navigate the game's world faster, mounts, which are creatures that can be ridden by players, are introduced.
The romance aspect of the game has been overhauled. As opposed to the previous gift and dialogue based system, romance arcs occur in reaction to story events and variables specific to each character and include sex scenes. Additionally, not all romance arcs require sex. Josephine, for example does not have an explicit sex scene with the inquisitor during the main plot. Among the nine companions, who assist players in battle, and three advisers, eight of them can be romanced. Some of these party members would decide whether to fall in love with the Inquisitor based on their gender and race.
Customization was significantly overhauled, specifically by allowing equipment and other items to modify their appearance based on who it is equipped to. Depending upon which party member has received it, a piece of armour would automatically adjust its shape and aesthetics in order to fit that particular character while still maintaining their identity. Players can craft and customize armour or weapons using the materials they have collected; rarer materials give the particular weapon or armour piece better attributes. Players can customize their keeps, such as rebuilding a garden as a Chantry church or a herb garden. These upgrades have minor effects on the Inquisitions espionage, commerce or military capabilities.
Players do not have the ability to import their save files from the first two games into Dragon Age: Inquisition "to shore up world consistency". Instead, Bioware released a cloud-based online interactive story creator called Dragon Age Keep, which is narrated by Varric. Players can detail the major plots of the previous two Dragon Age games to provide this level of customization without requiring replay of the initial games.
Players gain influence in areas of the world by capturing keeps or forts. This is achieved by defeating the occupants of the keep or fort or establishing camps, which are used to provide fast travel and resupply points. Operations can be discovered to repair various structures and pathways, such as bridges or collapsed caves. These operations will allow exploration of previously unreachable locations and side quests.
Combat focuses on the player's ability to prepare, position, and form a cohesive team with their party members. Inquisition features two forms of combat systems. The first is reminiscent of that which is found in most action role-playing games, including Dragon Age II. During combat, players can switch to control other party members, while artificial intelligence will take control of the Inquisitor and other members in the party. This system is action-oriented and follows the player in a typical over-the-shoulder third person style. The second is closer to that of classic role-playing games, including Dragon Age: Origins. This combat system allows players to pause the game, assign locations and orders to the party members and then resume the game to see it played out. During the use of this second more strategic combat system, the camera will be closer to that of a top down view, instead of the usual over-the-shoulder third person style of the action based combat system. This combat system is named Tactical View and allows for the placing of traps while the game is paused. The Inquisitor also has the ability to close and manipulate the rift, which can stun all the enemies nearby.
As the Inquisitor, players influence how to deploy agents and troops of the Inquisition through their primary advisers, which influences the rewards and time requirements of the effort undertaken. The various regions that make up the game world do not scale in level. They have a fixed level, which means players can be either too weak or strong for the enemies found in that region.
Dragon Age: Inquisition also introduces multiplayer, which is described as a "dungeon crawling experience" by BioWare. The game features a co-operative multiplayer mode which tasks players to play as an Agent of the Inquisition. Players had to play through levels, and to fight against increasingly difficult AI. The mode can be played with three other players, or be completed solo. At launch, the game features three multiplayer campaign and nine playable characters. The mode is completely separated from the main campaign. As a result, the progress made by the player in the multiplayer mode would not carry to the campaign. Players can upgrade and craft items, and unlock new characters in the multiplayer mode. Since time is needed to unlock new characters, micro-transactions are featured. Players can purchase an in-game currency called Platinum to speed up the process of unlocking new characters.
