Yeah that was my problem. In the other entries I'd do all the sidequests because I loved the extra lore and what not. And in Inquisition it felt more like a chore than fun.
In the DA seri s though you have to do the side quests due to level limitations. Side quests are really the only way to grind up to complete your player. If they are boring and you skip them you end up under levelled late game. So in a way though they are optional they aren't really optional.
Of course they're optional. You can very easily complete the game without being max level.
I'm gonna be one of those outlier blasphemous fans since I bought most BioWare games day one. But it took me forever to beat Dragon Age: Origins, and I never played any DLC and have little interest in playing through it again. I eventually got the GOTY package or whatever with all the DLC and got about halfway through before losing interest. I love the beginning origin stories and ideas. And I love the things they tried to implement. But it was no Baldur's Gate like it was supposed to be
Then Dragon Age 2 tried to pretend to be an action game and for some reason I hated that even more. It took me forever to get over that and actually get into it, and in the end I think I like it more than DA1 just because I like the characters even more. The story is very tight-knit being in one city and dealing with the same characters over the course of like 10 - 15 years as the story unfolds. My character gets a voice and a personality to boot. But I never beat the game. I liked it better, but it still wore on me
Dragon Age: inquisition was a similar thing. Even more action'y and even less interesting things to do. Find plants, rocks, and codex entries. Hurrah sounds like a fun way to spend an open-world adventure...
Fortunately I kinda lost my first character due to playing a good amount on someone else's console without realizing it would lock me into the DLC they had even though I'd made no use of that DLC at all. Now it expects me to buy it to use that character. So I had to start over and I'm actually loving the game. It seems to almost have as much character personality, interaction, and consequence as the second one, and a good portion of the lore and choices fleshed out to the extreme that the first one wanted so badly. Only thing lacking that I can tell is a dwarven stronghold to visit. And the fake-action in the second game is more close to real action now, and combat is actually fun. There was nothing wrong with the strategic aspect of the first game, but if they're going to go fake-action, they've done it right in this one
We'll see how long this love lasts, or if I get bored of this one as well, but for me is the Mass Effect 2 of the series. Good enough plot and characters to be compelling without being a masterpiece, but any shortcomings are made up for in the actual gameplay with fun fast and sometimes intense fights to keep me going
Personally, games like Dragon Age bore me to death. I guess WRPGs just don't interest me as much as JRPGs. I need my anime characters with quirky tropes.
I wish I had a powerful enough computer to play the Dragon Age games on computer for those sweet, sweet mods.
Today I found Dragon Age Inquisitions and all DLC for $15. Going to make an attempt at it, yet it is my least favourite I played of the Trilogy. Never beat this one so am interested to see how the story unfolds.
You're in luck, it's pretty much all 3 of them.