I never thought I'd be a person who would thumbs down a game he spent 200 hours on, but here we are...

When senior writer David Gaider left Bioware he said Bioware no longer cared about writing quality, and man was he right. This game is embarrassingly poorly written in every way. The dialog is the worst millennial snark, the tone is Saturday morning cartoon shenannigans, the depth and maturity in the previous games has been completely stripped out. This game's writing is so afraid to challenge anyone, to make anyone think, to offend anyone, to have anyone take it seriously, that it ends up childish and boring.

The game's original muiltiplayer design is also all over it. All real dialog comes from quest steps, there's no real wandering around town talking to people. Levels feel like linear loot grind missions. Companions rarely chime in during dialog or appear in cutscenes unless it's specifically their companion quest. Even the kid's show tone is likely rooted in this desire to be an online game played by a billion Fortnite kids.

Why did I play it so long? Well the combat is actually really good! Making character builds with a plethora of choices and combinations of skills, gear and tactics is great stuff. That's what I spent most of my time doing, and I had fun doing it. I also wanted to see how the story of this franchise (likely) ended, despite the awful writing.

However from any kind of objective point of view this game is not that good. It's not good as a story whatsoever, it's not good as an RPG because of obvious limitations of multiplayer design, and it's not good as a Dragon Age sequel because of gameplay changes and childish storytelling. Maybe you'd get addicted to the combat and character builds like I did, but does that make it a good game? No. A game I can recommend to RPG players? No.

Thus 200 hours equals a thumbs down, and I don't feel silly doing it.