Dragon Age 3 Review: Is Inquisition Still Worth It?

Dragon Age 3 Review Inquisition is the third mainline entry in BioWare’s fantasy RPG series, released in November 2014 for PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. It picks up in the aftermath of a war between mages and templars that’s been building since the previous games, and drops you into the middle of a catastrophic explosion that tears a rift into the sky and leaves you as one of the only survivors with a mysterious power tied to closing it.

You create your own character, called the Inquisitor, choosing from four races (Human, Elf, Dwarf, or Qunari) and one of three classes: Warrior, Rogue, or Mage. From there, you’re building an organization from the ground up, recruiting allies, managing political alliances, and eventually confronting a villain named Corypheus who’s after considerably more than just chaos for its own sake.

Combat and How the Game Actually Plays

Combat blends real-time action with the option to pause and issue tactical commands to your party, which gives you flexibility depending on how hands-on you want to be. In my experience, players coming from more traditional CRPGs tend to lean on the tactical camera heavily, while players used to action games mostly just play it in real time and only pause for tougher fights. Both approaches work, though the tactical camera can feel a little clunky compared to more modern tactics-focused RPGs, and that’s a fair criticism even now.

What tends to surprise newcomers is just how much side content there is. This isn’t a tightly focused 20-hour story, it’s a genuinely massive game, and depending on how much of the open-world content you engage with, playtime can stretch well past 100 hours. That’s a selling point for some players and a real drawback for others. If you want a lean, focused RPG experience, Inquisition can feel bloated in its middle stretch, particularly in a couple of the larger open zones that lean heavily on collect-and-fetch style side quests.

Story, Characters, and the War Table

The story is where the game earns most of its praise, and deservedly so. Your companions are well written, with genuine banter and relationships that develop naturally as you explore and make choices. Decisions carry real weight, and the game does a good job of making you feel like the Inquisitor you’re building is actually yours, shaped by choices that ripple forward.

One system worth calling out specifically is the War Table, which lets you send advisors on missions across the map to handle political and military matters outside of direct combat. It’s a smart way of making the world feel bigger than what you’re physically walking through, though it can occasionally slow down pacing if you’re the type who wants to check every available option before moving forward with the main story.

Base-building also plays a role once you establish Skyhold as your headquarters, and there’s a real sense of progression as it fills up with allies, upgrades, and evidence of your growing influence. It’s not a full management sim by any means, but it adds texture that the earlier games didn’t really have.

Where the Game Struggles

I want to be direct about this rather than hedge on every point. The crafting system is more confusing than it needs to be, and a fair number of players find themselves ignoring it entirely rather than engaging with it deeply. A couple of the open-world zones, particularly earlier in the game, are noticeably weaker than the more tightly designed later areas, padded out with repetitive fetch quests that don’t do much for the story or characters.

The tactical camera, while a nice option to have, doesn’t always behave the way you’d expect, and larger fights can turn into a bit of a mess if you’re trying to micromanage four characters at once. None of these issues are dealbreakers, but they’re worth knowing about going in so you’re not caught off guard.

Critical Reception and Legacy

The game holds a Metacritic score in the mid-80s, which reflects a genuinely strong critical consensus at launch. You can check the current aggregated score and full critic breakdown on Metacritic if you want the full spread of reviews. It also won a wide range of Game of the Year honors following its release, including recognition at major industry award shows that year, cementing its reputation as one of the standout RPGs of its console generation.

It’s worth noting the ESRB rating here too, since it matters for anyone deciding who should play this. Inquisition carries a Mature rating for blood, intense violence, nudity, sexual content, and strong language, so this isn’t a game aimed at younger players despite its fantasy setting.

Should You Play It Now?

If you’re new to the series and wondering where to start, Inquisition is playable as a standalone experience, though you’ll get more out of the story if you’ve played through Origins and Dragon Age 2 first, since references to earlier events and characters carry more weight with that context. If you’ve already played the earlier games and bounced off Dragon Age 2 specifically, Inquisition really is the correction a lot of fans were hoping for, closer in spirit to the scope of Origins while keeping some of the more streamlined combat improvements from its predecessor.

The Game of the Year Edition, which bundles in the three major story DLC packs (Jaws of Hakkon, The Descent, and Trespasser), is generally the better way to experience the full game today, since Trespasser in particular ties up loose ends that the base game leaves open. You can find current pricing and platform availability through EA’s official site.