blacklamb

This is a pretty game. It looks good, sounds good, and the gameplay is fluid and satisfying (to a point). And that's where my praise has to end, because after sinking 20-some hours into the game, I'm bored. The RP is neutered to the point where it feels like Rook will never be my own in a way my Warden or Hawke characters were, and the quests are shallow as hell. You can't kick characters out of the team (which has to be a Bioware first), you can't choose to bargain with a demon for power, you can't even really be aggressive, just varying shades of milquetoast. If devs want to tell a certain story in a game with no player input, that's fine, but then don't tell potential buyers they're buying an RPG. I hate being limited to two party members (and sometimes just one when a quest requires a certain character. I'm a mage, and having someone around with a taunt is almost mandatory, giving me very little choice on my "adventures"). I wouldn't mind not being able to directly control my party members if it let me do more than press a CD every 20-30 seconds, but that's what party play has been reduced to (if you pick one ability, you have to wait out a cooldown before being able to use another, which is a HUGE downgrade from previous games). The levels are super linear and starting a companion quest requires you to go to a certain part on the map and press a button to load the quest (wow, such immersion!) Also, the quests are boring. For example (spoilers, obviously) tonight I came across a well with a malevolent voice coming up from the bottom that echoed everything my Rook said. I grew excited at the thought of solving the mystery of what exactly was in the well, and why it had been terrorizing the village I was in. Instead, the game had me walk around said village picking up a few short notes, and quickly ended with my Rook just sealing up the well. That was it. No explanation, no real backstory, no boss fight. The monster didn't try to bribe me with money or power to allow it to hunt freely, Rook just threw some boards over the top of the well and called it a day, which feels like a good parallel to how the devs have handled this game. I waited ten years for this?