Late to the Game my thoughts on Inquisition, 5 years later.
First of all I loved characters and the development they got during the game, as always Bioware knocked it out of the park in that department. I was really surprised when Cassandra, Viv and Sera wound up being my MVPs and my most-liked companions, because I had gathered I would disagree with them on a lot of things and that we just wouldn't get along, but as I played on I found many of Cassandra's ideals to be reasonable, I appreciated Sera's non-sequiturs for what they were and gave me a good laugh, Viv was a killing machine.
Now my gripe(s), Bioware really really shouldn't have tacked on that potion cap, or removed healing spells/class with the excuse of "the goal is to not take damage!" well yea ideally that's the goal in EVERY action/RPG game. I feel like the base game was stripped of any challenge and actual tactical thinking, with any and all opposition easily being destroyed by either Vivienne or Cassandra.
I did NOT appreciate how everything in the game seems to be a damage sponge; like I can understand that great bears, dragons and story bosses would be. Jaws of Hakkon was a particularly big offender of this, tuskets and bogfishers having become tanks and the would0be squishy spiders taking an inordinate amount of time to kill (this is with a mixture of Descent + Dragon/Inquisition arms & armor crafted with Tier 3-4 materials, with runes applied). This becomes even MORE apparent when you do Descent and realize that killing several waves of Darkspawn that they are all essentially damage sponges (yes yes I know standard DA DLC mechanics) but there was zero challenge or need of tactical regrouping UNTIL I fought the Guardian, which even then I was still able to laboriously and painfully cheese to death with a solo Sera once I figured out the glitching spot.
Trespasser, awesome story, really great update to what was left over in base game Inquisition, it felt like it was a timed mission because my Inquisitor's hand was blowing up (and I did NOT appreciate the over the top dragging around, lifting into air animations that also damages the Inquisitor & everyone around him for half health) so I felt like I had to hurry along and rush through each area because the hand was getting worse, and of course we're limited on what potions we can bring. Honestly the final fight with Saarath didn't feel as bad as I thought (even though with proper tactics & healing from DAO implemented it would have been better), Cassandra of course tanked him and was untouchable (much like she was during the Gurd Harofsen fight) and all of us managed to stay alive.
From JoH onward I was at level 27, which is the max level for DAI + all DLCs, had decent equips and even respecced a few companions to make them better suited for combat - and a lot of the battles were still a slog...like they didn't feel challenging and we weren't dying left & right (the Guardian killed us several times, Gurd killed us once) it just felt time consuming like they were bosses so of course they were going to absorb damage, but I felt like with the levels we were at and the right combination of equips + abilities would have made short work of them but I was wrong. I had done some googling about this, and it seems there have been threads about this in the past involving the tankiness of all the DAI enemies, like I figured by the time I finally faced Corypheus he'd be dead in minutes, no that too was a slog...though I suspect that was more of story purposes because he and the dragon were taking damage and putting up a solid fight then in a flash cut-scene they died one after the other.
When people are still having issues with these fights even after lowering the difficulty down to casual without any trials, I feel that it's a problem. I'm not advocating for the next DA4 game to be super easy but there should be options, there should be some degree of tactics involved such as choosing to fight Cauthrien the first time in DAO, getting past the Harvester in GoA. DAI was a good game, I feel that it's true potential was bogged down with fake difficulty (removing options & making enemies sponges is not an actual challenge, it's just time consuming) and telling players to "not take damage" is just a lazy attempt at justifying the lack of any real challenge (which I would argue only exist in the Guardian boss, Hakkonites, and maybe the dragon bosses).
The game was rife withe fake difficulty in the form of "damage absorbing" NPCs masquerading as intelligent AI challengers. All in all I enjoyed my time playing Dragon Age: Inquisition, I wish things were more like how they were in Origins or even in DA2 (potions, tactics, etc) I just feel like Bioware really dropped the ball on what was supposed to be a stellar game in the DA lineup.
