Dragon Age Inquisition has a surprisingly fun multiplayer. Though I guess it shouldn’t be surprising, considering BioWare did it. Even though the single player is huge, they were still able to put a solid multiplayer in the game without either having less quality.
Like Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, you’re playing one of the smaller forces in a much bigger group. Unlike Mass Effect 3, it has no effect on the single-player. There are a few more things to do in Dragon Age Inquisition‘s multiplayer, though. I’ll give you my thoughts on how this multiplayer is overall.
Dungeon Crawler
This is the first thing you notice when starting up your first game. It plays like a classic dungeon crawler, such as Gauntlet, but with all the mechanics of this game’s single player campaign.
Your goal is to defeat all the enemies in each area, to get the keys to move on to the next area. Along the way you’ll find plenty of things to break open for gold, and secret areas only certain classes can unlock for the party.
For this reason, it’s a good idea to have at least 1 rogue, mage, and warrior in your party.
These areas always have chests, and most of the time you have to fight a strong enemy before you can open it.
There are 5 areas in each level and the 2nd and 4th areas have a bonus objective. If you complete it, you get extra gold, but you can still continue if you fail. At the end, you fight a boss with many other enemies in one big area.
You can only equip 4 active skills in the multiplayer, so you have to plan what you’re using carefully and you can’t change anything while in a match. The trees for each character have a combination of skills from multiple trees in the single player.
Teamwork, you’ll need it
I know it’s multiplayer and it seems like a no-brainer, but it is especially needed in this game. After a while the lowest difficulty can be breezed by, but the higher difficulties take coordination.
When taking these on, it’s best to have at least one warrior that can take hits and draw enemies from your lower armored party members. You’ll also want a mage, preferably a Keeper, and an Archer if you can. It’s good to have ranged, but you still need melee to keep the enemies away.
The enemies hit hard, so even if you’re playing a character that can kill them really fast, you’ll die just as fast if they are attacking you. It’s good to see that you can’t just Leeroy Jenkins your way through multiplayer and expect to complete it.
Besides being able to open every room as I mentioned before, many classes can complement one another. There are several characters that inflict status affects and others that gain bonuses when fighting enemies with those status effects.
Some spells and abilities can combo with others so it’s a good idea to pay attention to these. This extra layer of complexity adds a nice touch to the already fun multiplayer.
Gold, Chests, Crafting, and Items
You use gold to buy chests, which get you multiple items and potions, You can unlock characters this way, but it is very rare. I’ve yet to get anything but alternate armor for classes I already had unlocked.
The main way you unlock classes is by crafting their armor. Whenever you get a piece of gear, you can salvage it for materials. You use these materials to craft gear for the character you want to unlock.
I went back and forth on this one. At first it seemed like a really cool idea, but then I noticed just how much materials you needed and how few you get from salvaging. It is also based on the type of gear you salvage.
For example, salvaging any rogue gear will only give you leather, warrior gear gets you metal, and mage gear gets you cloth. You may also only get 1 piece from salving gear and you need a lot to craft something.
This led to me originally not liking the system because it took forever for me to unlock 1 character. After playing awhile, I unlocked my first character and had a lot of extra materials, which made it increasingly easier to unlock characters.
Even though there are many kinds cloth, leather, and metal to get, making it more difficult, it still didn’t take as long as it seemed it would.
Finally, you can equip weapons, armor, and accessories. Weapons and armor can be upgraded, just like in single player. This gives you more customization, which I loved.
End Result
I really enjoy the multiplayer and I believe it will have a long life. Tha main things I took points away for are the lack of variety in levels and enemies. The available characters are solid for launch, especially since they will add plenty more, but there are only 3 levels and 3 types of enemies.
The enemies also play a lot a like, except for the demons. I’m sure the DLC will add more and they already said they plan on having a lot of it. The best part is that it will be FREE. If you like the single player and want to try multiplayer, I strongly urge you too.
Whether you play multiplayer in other games or stick with single player, I believe anyone that likes Dragon Age, will like this multiplayer.
Published: Nov 25, 2014 07:59 am