Valerie

Joshua The list of what I didn't like is so long. One of the biggest ones is the companions and the tone/style of the writing. There have always been more modern speakers in DA (Varric and Bull immediately come to mind), but the fact that everyone save maybe Emmrich speaks in modern tone and vernacular was deeply off-putting. There have always been snarky/humorous companions, but bang-bang quipiness of every companion was grating and disheartening. I didn't really like any of them except for Emmrich, actively dislike most of them, and they lacked any really strong traits that could make them interesting.

I hate action combat. There was no saving that for me. I know none of the other games were true tactical combat, but they were far closer to my preferred play style and I didn't have to dodge/parry/run around if I didn't want to.

Environments were pretty, but I hated the direction of character models.

RP was awful, especially for a DA game. I don't even mean in the "I want to be evil and kill everyone" way. I almost always do good runs, but what I appreciate is that it's a choice. How I choose to approach and deal with situations is what defines my characters, and DAV has so very little of that. Not to mention there are small things baked into Rook's dialogue that I vehemently disagreed with. The one that will always come to mind is when we saw the memory of Solas using a feinting attack, sacrificing some of his force to accomplish another goal. This is a valid military strategy throughout history, and my Rook, a child of a Tevinter Legate is disgusted and says, "He didn't care who he killed in the end." I had to walk away from the game for a bit then. It's something so very small and yet so emblematic of how this game didn't work for me.

The letters about what's happening is the South are egregious. Everything we did as players wiped away off screen.

I could go on, but I'm out of space. My hope is that I can fully divorce DAV from the series in my mind.

DA was my favorite game franchise. I have loved every entry and consumed almost all the side media. I was so excited for this game that I took days off work.

I have never been more crushingly disappointed.

I wish I could love this game like you do. Nearly everything you put down as enjoying was something that I didn't. I completed it once, attempted a few more playthroughs and never got past 8-10 hours with them. I have 2k+ in the other games and couldn't get to 100 in this one before I uninstalled it. This game has stayed with me in the worst way in that it killed my desire to play through the series again. My current playthroughs of the first three games have been untouched since DAV's release, and I haven't been able to bring myself to play again.

I'm glad that there are those people who enjoyed DAV. For myself, I'm just devastated this is how the series ended for me.