[No DAV Spoilers] Honest opinion from a 10+ year fan of the series...

A couple things to start - I am a huge DA fan. I've made YouTube cinematic series of the games so my non-gamer friends and family could enjoy them too. I have been eagerly awaiting this game for 10 years. The fact I am forcing a break from playing to share my thoughts is telling.

I am massively disappointed.

Comparing this to games like BG3 or Witcher 3 is a nonstarter because within the first couple hours, it is obvious this was intended for an entirely different audience and age-group, and that audience is definitely not older fans of the series. I'm about 6 hours into the game, I haven't yet even recruited all the companions, and I am struggling to keep playing. I have never once struggled to finish any Bioware RPG (not even ME:A).

I hoped the visual overhaul was an artistic choice alone, but it is representative of the game as a whole. They said the first launch trailer was misrepresentative, but it definitely was not. This is no longer dark fantasy, this is high fantasy, whimsical, and geared toward a much, much younger audience (preteens?) in every aspect from dialogue to music to action. This simply doesn't fit into existing DA lore at all. It's like they created an entirely different game and slapped a DA coat of paint on it at the last moment.

This story trivializes over a decade of rich lore, character development, and world-building, to the point I was getting angry playing it. The exclusion of the Dragon Age Keep was certainly a decision, but this goes so far beyond not having past choices impact the game. The soul of the DA series is simply... gone.

There are so many other things I could criticize, between the confusing UI, dated facial and fight animations, bizarre stylistic changes to the Qunari and Darkspawn, patronizing puzzles, labyrinthian and repetitive regions, cluttered upgrade system and skill trees, lack of party control... I mean honestly, the only thing this game seems to have done well are the hair physics. Yes, the character creator is great (even though there was, again, a very strange decision to exclude any body hair options).

But for me, personally, I wasn't waiting 10 years for this game to be some groundbreaking action RPG. I waited 10 years for a proper continuation of a story I absolutely adore, and if it delivered that and that alone, I could've looked past everything else. Sadly, it didn't.

If I had to guess, I think most DA fans are probably in their 30s or 40s now (or at least late 20s). The truth is, this game is not for us. It is a soft reboot for a much younger, inexperienced gamer.

I just cannot believe how disappointing this is. In my honest opinion, this isn't just a bad DA game, it's a bad game, period.