Dragon Age™ Inquisition
analyzed 2026-10-14 · sample of 565 English reviews across the whole review history
Across 565 sampled reviews, the story draws the most attention, at 25.5%, and it is overwhelmingly positive: 115 of those 144 reviews praise it, with players calling it "good" and "incredibly fun". Characters (16.3%) and player choice (7.6%) follow the same pattern, and one reviewer notes "Most of your choices actually matter". Graphics (9.2%), world (9.6%), lore (6.5%), and music (2.5%) are similarly well received, while exploration, replayability, and build variety earn mostly favorable mentions. Combat is where opinion splits: of 76 reviews (13.5%), 34 are positive and 34 negative. Gameplay (11.7%) divides almost as evenly. Criticism concentrates on quest design (9.4%, with 41 of 53 negative), controls (6.9%, 34 of 39 negative), level design, pacing, balance, and UI. Platform access is the sharpest sore point: 51 of 53 reviews are negative, with "Origin launcher is absolute garbage" among them. Stability, bugs, and developer conduct also skew heavily negative. Players repeatedly raise grind and romance, and DLC, mods, and content amount come up favorably. Praise for the writing, voice acting, and atmosphere sits alongside complaints about animation and AI behavior.
numbers checked against this report's stored data · quotes copied verbatim from reviews · plain text is the language model's own wording
Aspects
share of sample, axis to 30% · ± is the sampling uncertainty around each share
- positive
- mixed / neutral
- negative
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story
115 positive · 17 negative · 9 mixed · 3 neutral
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Good game and story.
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The main quest story and presentation is good but is spaced out by the endless side quest grind.
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+ Good ol Dragon Age story with excellent voice-acted characters.
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characters
76 positive · 11 negative · 5 mixed · 0 neutral
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I will say the game looks great though and I really hope I can find a way to play it in the future as i really like the universe and the characters.
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I love all of the characters and the writing, although sometimes cringey, is always meaningful and fun.
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The music, characters, story, combat, worldbuilding are all on point(some more than others), making this one of the best BioWare games yet.
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combat
34 positive · 34 negative · 6 mixed · 2 neutral
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Let's just be straight up honest here, the combat is not great, dragon age has never had good combat.
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It has everything it needs to be a good game, but the combat is repetitive and boring, and it’s like playing an MMORPG without friends.
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This is essentially like playing an empty MMORPG solo with a crappy generic combat system, console ui and a stupid story about random demons spawning from invisible spawn points and you have to close them up.
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gameplay
30 positive · 28 negative · 5 mixed · 3 neutral
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The gameplay is easily the best out of the three games, and the story and hub are incredibly fun.
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☑ Fun
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While the origin launcher is a bit obnoxious, the game itself is wonderful.
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world
40 positive · 12 negative · 2 mixed · 0 neutral
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The diffrent worlds are great but the rest is not good at all.
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Really ambitious game with a huge world but lacks meaningful content to keep me engaged.
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+ Beautiful landscape and world map than DA2, which is miserable consider re-using the same dungeon layout map.
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platform access
1 positive · 51 negative · 0 mixed · 1 neutral
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I played this game since it first released, but I don't remember the camera control being this clunky and annoying, and if you have multi-monitor and like playing in borderless-windows, it will send your pointer away to another monitor.
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Origin launcher is absolute garbage.
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While the origin launcher is a bit obnoxious, the game itself is wonderful.
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quest design
9 positive · 41 negative · 3 mixed · 0 neutral
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… me extremely bored and made the game feel very repetitive, I've seen others say it in the reviews before but this combined with the 'go here and get this item' quests make me feel like im playing an MMO by myself and honestly, if i wanted to scratch that MMO itch, I would go and play an MMO with …
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The different areas all have similar objectives and side quests without any interesting back story.
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- Lot of sidequests felt like unimportant.
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graphics
47 positive · 3 negative · 0 mixed · 2 neutral
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I will say the game looks great though and I really hope I can find a way to play it in the future as i really like the universe and the characters.
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+ Graphics still pretty decent for a 7 years old game.
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☑ Good
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player choice
38 positive · 5 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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Most of your choices actually matter but what good does it do to the overall experience when the game is boring?
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You are no longer restricted to a single race nor to a fixed backstory.
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Compared to dragon age II, the choices you make and the interactions you have are way more often and there's a lot more information to go around.
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controls
4 positive · 34 negative · 0 mixed · 1 neutral
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So I give it a small try for myself, see that the default controls are absolutely terrible for movement, the ui elements are very unresponsive compared to other games so within 20 mins of starting my first playthrough i went for a controller.
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- Clunky camera controls that can be annoying at time.
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… you plan on trying it with mouse and keyboard which by the way was not meant to be played so whoever ported this game from console to PC had no idea how to make the mapping any good what so ever, cause they lie about full controller support, well maybe not lied cause there is but only 1 …
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see more
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lore
32 positive · 3 negative · 2 mixed · 0 neutral
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The music, characters, story, combat, worldbuilding are all on point(some more than others), making this one of the best BioWare games yet.
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Lore is rich/world-building continues to be impressive.
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I recommend to people who like lore-rich medieval rpgs.
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content amount
22 positive · 5 negative · 4 mixed · 0 neutral
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game is super fun and packed full of things to do.
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☑ Wealth of content (101+ hours)
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Dragon age always been a top notch series, inquisition just happens to be major improvement between origins and dragon age 2; very expansive, indirect passive missions, story development, easter eggs, graphics.
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dlc
20 positive · 3 negative · 3 mixed · 3 neutral
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If you get the base game, make sure to at least get the Trespasser DLC.
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An amazing dlc that give you access to a new area and a new amazing story about the fate of the last Inquisitor and you will also have a very very good boss fight in this dlc and more fun in this amazing game !
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Trespasser DLC a must play at the end to bring everything together.
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writing
18 positive · 9 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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+ Comprehensive dialog.
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I love all of the characters and the writing, although sometimes cringey, is always meaningful and fun.
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Great game with fantastic dialogue options and enjoyable combat, lots of replayability in terms of RPG potential.
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stability
0 positive · 26 negative · 0 mixed · 1 neutral
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I spend COPIOUS amounts of time just adding Mods & fixing the resulting crashes/texture errors.
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My only major issue is that if you want to play the game in its current form, the game tends to crashing the main menu.
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I can not run the game at all, it's keep jumping back out of the game.
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level design
3 positive · 22 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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There is so much running around, this combined with a looting animation just made me extremely bored and made the game feel very repetitive, I've seen others say it …
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+ Beautiful landscape and world map than DA2, which is miserable consider re-using the same dungeon layout map.
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The areas are samey, uninteresting, the more vertical they are the more annoying they get, the mounts add barely any movement speed (so unless you play a warrior with charge) prepare to spend …
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price value
18 positive · 3 negative · 4 mixed · 1 neutral
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Well worth the price you can get it for these days!
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I’d definitely recommend playing it, even once, or if you buy the game on a whim during one of the frequent sales or even watching a playthrough of it from another person!
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I really do think it's worth it.
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developer conduct
0 positive · 25 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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Huh a bid disappointed but it is not that bad as a game not origins lots of new things probably target at new audience, but that is no excuse what so ever not cool Bioware, but I would still recommend it if you like Dragons Age play it see how you like it
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Just because the publisher is ea i have to give negative review
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It's also a shame that this game is actually good, knowing the environment that led to its final production and shipment (pretty terrible crunch).
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exploration
22 positive · 1 negative · 2 mixed · 0 neutral
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Some of the treasure hunting can be fun like the shards and the asterium thingies you find during your strolls along the planes of existence in this game but I know it is not for everyone.
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It has very large, open levels with many things to explore, however the levels feel empty.
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There are also a lot of fetch quests, but I found that I discover a lot of the stuff just from exploring the maps.
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customization
16 positive · 7 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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+ Collectibles and crafting system.
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This is also the only Dragon Age where the character design and armor/clothing aren't eyebleedingly atrocious, but that's not saying much, considering.
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you play as a new custom protagonist.
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bugs
4 positive · 17 negative · 0 mixed · 1 neutral
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somethings in the game have the tendency to clip but nothing crazy the biggest bee in my bonnet is that rouges get all the best item drops
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and it has major problems
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Tbh I liked the game and grind but there is a bug that from time to time when you fight dragons that they cannot be killed, you cannot save and the only thing you can do is reload your prev save.
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replayability
19 positive · 1 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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Given the decision making in the game there was plenty of of repeat play.
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+ Lot of playtime and don't mention about replayability.
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Great game with fantastic dialogue options and enjoyable combat, lots of replayability in terms of RPG potential.
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progression
10 positive · 7 negative · 1 mixed · 1 neutral
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The game is kinda aged, but otherwise the level and skill gaining system is great and what keeps the game fun.
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Legendary RPG Game, Graphic, stories, soundtracks, plots, abilities / skills system and battle mechanism should be as standard of how RPG and its world complex built based on.
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All three classes come with their abilities (perk trees), for instance; Mages have the Frost, Electricity, Spirit and Fire perk tree, which allows the player to further customize their playstyle and immerse themselves into the character they would like to develop.
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game length
8 positive · 4 negative · 0 mixed · 5 neutral
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I spent roughly ~100 hours on my first playthrough over about a month and I still have content I could go back and complete; I only finished 57% of all content presented in DA: I.
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☑ Long - If you do all the side quests and war room stuff
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Good 100+ hour RPG.
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mods
13 positive · 3 negative · 0 mixed · 1 neutral
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I spend COPIOUS amounts of time just adding Mods & fixing the resulting crashes/texture errors.
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with mods 9/10
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I kept playing it because the mods I have installed helped me bypass what I didn't like so I could jump straight to what I wanted the most - the companions bantering and bickering every five minutes.
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pacing
3 positive · 13 negative · 0 mixed · 1 neutral
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The main quest story and presentation is good but is spaced out by the endless side quest grind.
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I absolutely hate the fact that there is no healing and to refill the potions you have to go to a camp or fast travel, makes for so much boring going backwards and forwards.
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I personally like the open world a lot, but be ready to spend a lot of time traveling to get to quests since they can be very spread out.
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build variety
13 positive · 3 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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rogue is squish but can do some nutter damage. warrior is slow but also nutty later into the game, and mage is pretty fun as well.
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Character building allows you to customise your companion's moves whilst getting to explore their class strengths (rogue, warrior, mage).
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The game features 3 different classes: warriors, rogues and mages. All 3 have subsections for specifics, like rogues that wield daggers and others that use a bow and arrow.
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performance
6 positive · 8 negative · 2 mixed · 0 neutral
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30fps cutscenes lock sucks but the game is OK
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Just not at all impressed, and really poorly optimized for PC as far as I can tell.
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Cutscenes weirdly run at 30fps while gameplay feels much smoother, which is a bit jarring for me.
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balance
2 positive · 12 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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somethings in the game have the tendency to clip but nothing crazy the biggest bee in my bonnet is that rouges get all the best item drops
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Everything else is more of a single-player MMORPG and unfortunately the enemies can be very tanky for absolutely no reason.
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The difficulty jump between early game content and the first major boss (templar route wise) is kinda shocking and almost detoured me from the game, but I'm glad I stuck with it.
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music
13 positive · 0 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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☑ Fantastic
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The music, characters, story, combat, worldbuilding are all on point(some more than others), making this one of the best BioWare games yet.
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Legendary RPG Game, Graphic, stories, soundtracks, plots, abilities / skills system and battle mechanism should be as standard of how RPG and its world complex built based on.
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ui
1 positive · 11 negative · 0 mixed · 1 neutral
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So I give it a small try for myself, see that the default controls are absolutely terrible for movement, the ui elements are very unresponsive compared to other games so within 20 mins of starting my first playthrough i went for a controller.
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This is essentially like playing an empty MMORPG solo with a crappy generic combat system, console ui and a stupid story about random demons spawning from invisible spawn points and you have to close them up.
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Also the mini map is not a mini map but a sonar system with no sort of measurement or way to tell depth.
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multiplayer
3 positive · 8 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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It has everything it needs to be a good game, but the combat is repetitive and boring, and it’s like playing an MMORPG without friends.
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In someways Inquisition hasn't held up well, and I certainly never cared about the bolted-on multiplayer component, but those are relatively minor gripes.
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Feels like i'm playing an mmorpg with no players, nothing outstanding mediocre garbage
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voice acting
9 positive · 3 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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+ Good ol Dragon Age story with excellent voice-acted characters.
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All in all, it is a good time sink, and the last bit of the DLC finally had some excellent dialogue with proper voice acting, but that does not make a good game.
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The story and voice acting is substantial and the graphics are gorgeous.
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animation
2 positive · 8 negative · 0 mixed · 1 neutral
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- Awkward bowing character after acquiring/ recruiting agents.
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I don't know who thought the 'lets make the character sit down and loot' animation was any good.
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It is pretty nice game but modded of course, I wouldn`t play vanilla with standard skill tree and loot animation.
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ai behavior
2 positive · 5 negative · 0 mixed · 1 neutral
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AI of both your companions or enemies is also subpar.
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The AI companion is dumb as hell, this is my second DA after DA2, so i think this is a good upgrade.
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[*]Party pathfinding in some of the areas is atrocious.
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atmosphere
7 positive · 1 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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The atmosphere? Like a warm winter breeze.
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The dystopian City 17 is a hauntingly atmospheric setting, and the character animations and facial expressions of NPCs, especially Alyx Vance, are remarkably lifelike.
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This game is bloated with Ubisoft-like open worlds and some meaningless side-content but none of that really matters when the main story and companions and tone and music and graphics and lore and combat and pretty much everything else are as awesome as they are.
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learning curve
1 positive · 2 negative · 0 mixed · 5 neutral
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You have to get used to the gameplay and interface as usual, but once you're used to it it works fine.
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A bit of a learning curve but if you get around it the game is a blast i love it
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I had a hard time getting used to the game, but the more I played, the more I liked it.
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difficulty
3 positive · 2 negative · 0 mixed · 2 neutral
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☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
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Challenging at times.
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☑ Easy
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emotional impact
5 positive · 0 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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i remember playing this for the first time when it came out and how sad i was after it ended.
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Incredible story, wonderful cast of characters, total devastation.
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I'm very happy to play the game again and i think if you don't take it all too seriously, it's certainly a game that can tug at the heart strings, be entertaining and yet keep you invested wanting to see where the game goes.
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sound design
4 positive · 0 negative · 0 mixed · 1 neutral
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The maces graphics and sounds, using stagger and enchanted with a shield bash!
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Graphics decent for that time and audio is really good.
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☑ Very good
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Emergent themes unvalidated
topics reviewers bring up that are not on the validated list; raw counts only, no error bars
- grind 15
- romance 11
Review timeline
monthly peak 585 reviews · all languages
monthly share rated positive · 50% reference · months with <5 reviews faded
the timeline as a table
| month | reviews | up | down | positive | note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 2020 | 585 | 392 | 193 | 67% | |
| Jul 2020 | 226 | 172 | 54 | 76% | |
| Aug 2020 | 110 | 83 | 27 | 75% | |
| Sep 2020 | 294 | 213 | 81 | 72% | |
| Oct 2020 | 227 | 158 | 69 | 70% | |
| Nov 2020 | 575 | 499 | 76 | 87% | |
| Dec 2020 | 514 | 383 | 131 | 75% | |
| Jan 2021 | 382 | 306 | 76 | 80% | |
| Feb 2021 | 350 | 253 | 97 | 72% | |
| Mar 2021 | 258 | 199 | 59 | 77% | |
| Apr 2021 | 174 | 142 | 32 | 82% | |
| May 2021 | 417 | 273 | 144 | 65% | |
| Jun 2021 | 490 | 358 | 132 | 73% | |
| Jul 2021 | 470 | 329 | 141 | 70% | |
| Aug 2021 | 322 | 253 | 69 | 79% | |
| Sep 2021 | 300 | 230 | 70 | 77% | |
| Oct 2021 | 215 | 159 | 56 | 74% | |
| Nov 2021 | 287 | 236 | 51 | 82% | |
| Dec 2021 | 550 | 396 | 154 | 72% | |
| Jan 2022 | 510 | 377 | 133 | 74% | |
| Feb 2022 | 259 | 204 | 55 | 79% | |
| Mar 2022 | 275 | 198 | 77 | 72% | |
| Apr 2022 | 206 | 155 | 51 | 75% | |
| May 2022 | 156 | 131 | 25 | 84% | |
| Jun 2022 | 344 | 249 | 95 | 72% | |
| Jul 2022 | 290 | 237 | 53 | 82% | |
| Aug 2022 | 188 | 156 | 32 | 83% | |
| Sep 2022 | 235 | 171 | 64 | 73% | |
| Oct 2022 | 161 | 131 | 30 | 81% | |
| Nov 2022 | 195 | 145 | 50 | 74% | |
| Dec 2022 | 378 | 306 | 72 | 81% | |
| Jan 2023 | 425 | 317 | 108 | 75% | |
| Feb 2023 | 262 | 192 | 70 | 73% | |
| Mar 2023 | 191 | 133 | 58 | 70% | |
| Apr 2023 | 251 | 179 | 72 | 71% | |
| May 2023 | 340 | 221 | 119 | 65% | |
| Jun 2023 | 271 | 185 | 86 | 68% | |
| Jul 2023 | 251 | 177 | 74 | 71% | |
| Aug 2023 | 233 | 148 | 85 | 64% | |
| Sep 2023 | 334 | 224 | 110 | 67% | |
| Oct 2023 | 208 | 146 | 62 | 70% | |
| Nov 2023 | 229 | 173 | 56 | 76% | |
| Dec 2023 | 263 | 195 | 68 | 74% | |
| Jan 2024 | 252 | 198 | 54 | 79% | |
| Feb 2024 | 183 | 144 | 39 | 79% | |
| Mar 2024 | 266 | 198 | 68 | 74% | |
| Apr 2024 | 199 | 156 | 43 | 78% | |
| May 2024 | 313 | 212 | 101 | 68% | |
| Jun 2024 | 555 | 376 | 179 | 68% | |
| Jul 2024 | 476 | 346 | 130 | 73% | |
| Aug 2024 | 439 | 323 | 116 | 74% | |
| Sep 2024 | 317 | 254 | 63 | 80% | |
| Oct 2024 | 326 | 236 | 90 | 72% | |
| Nov 2024 | 398 | 322 | 76 | 81% | |
| Dec 2024 | 311 | 254 | 57 | 82% | |
| Jan 2025 | 247 | 200 | 47 | 81% | |
| Feb 2025 | 146 | 112 | 34 | 77% | |
| Mar 2025 | 183 | 145 | 38 | 79% | |
| Apr 2025 | 141 | 107 | 34 | 76% | |
| May 2025 | 156 | 123 | 33 | 79% | |
| Jun 2025 | 128 | 109 | 19 | 85% | |
| Jul 2025 | 126 | 106 | 20 | 84% | |
| Aug 2025 | 117 | 93 | 24 | 79% | |
| Sep 2025 | 124 | 90 | 34 | 73% | |
| Oct 2025 | 117 | 87 | 30 | 74% | |
| Nov 2025 | 118 | 93 | 25 | 79% | |
| Dec 2025 | 169 | 116 | 53 | 69% | |
| Jan 2026 | 160 | 124 | 36 | 78% | |
| Feb 2026 | 132 | 104 | 28 | 79% | |
| Mar 2026 | 131 | 90 | 41 | 69% | |
| Apr 2026 | 111 | 86 | 25 | 77% | |
| May 2026 | 109 | 80 | 29 | 73% | |
| Jun 2026 | 142 | 113 | 29 | 80% | |
| Jul 2026 | 152 | 123 | 29 | 81% | |
| Aug 2026 | 140 | 106 | 34 | 76% | |
| Sep 2026 | 128 | 87 | 41 | 68% | |
| Oct 2026 | 54 | 44 | 10 | 81% |
How this report was made
- Population
- all Steam reviews of the game (every language, purchase type, and verdict), walked newest-first per window; only English-language reviews are analyzed
- Sample
- 565 English reviews, time-proportional draw over 77 windows (newest-first within each), taken from an all-language walk and kept English-only — where English is a minority the sample runs smaller than the draw, and every margin of error is computed at 565
- Aspect yield
- 351 of 565 analyzed reviews carry at least one aspect (62.1%); every share on this page divides by all 565
- Interval regime
- calm: standard margins of error for a share of a sample (Wilson interval), no widening needed
- Fetch paths
- 77 time windows fetched directly (windowed)
- Language mix
- 1,000 fetched: english 565 · russian 78 · brazilian 71 · 21 more
- Steam-marked windows
- none flagged by Steam (Valve's off-topic flagging began March 2019)
- Marked share
- 0.0% of sample inside marked windows, under the 2% floor
- Narrative
- passed the grounding gate first try
- Evidence floor
- aspects and emergent themes appear only with 5+ supporting reviews; smaller counts sit at the classifier's false-positive floor
- Instrument readings
- measured once on the study corpus for this model and prompt: frozen calibration, not properties of this run
- · aspect tagging vs. human labels
- 0.801 [0.752–0.844] (F1 against a human-labeled test set; 1.0 is best)
- · quotes filed under the wrong aspect
- 11.6% [6.6–19.6] of quotes, measured by hand on a sample; lower is better — measured on the prior model (2026-08-05); re-measurement pending
- · independent model vs. production labels
- 0.791 [0.772–0.810] (F1 of the production labeler against an independent judge model) — measured on the prior model (2026-07-25); re-measurement pending
- Versions
- deepseek-flash · prompt classify-v1 · ontology v2
- Run
- serve-20261014T234403Z-fabda320 · code 798e06c
full methodology in the milestone write-ups