Inquisition is a follow-up to Dragon Age II. Mages and Templars rendezvous at the Temple Of Sacred Ashes to form a truce. However, an explosion occurs which kills all apart from your character. Divine Justinia was among the casualties, and people suspect you are behind the atrocities. You don't recall what happened, but you have a glowing hand that appears to have the power to close Rifts which unleash Demons into the world.
You can choose to be male or female human, dwarf, elf, or Qunari, and choose between Warrior, Mage or Rogue. After you close your first Rift, you slowly begin to earn the trust of the people. With the many races at conflict, and Rifts unleashing Demons in the world, your party forms the Inquisition, who aim to unite the races and oppose the evil.
You have a homebase which allows you to talk to your party members, and has areas where you can purchase or upgrade your equipment. You can choose missions at the War Table, which also has timed rewards in a similar style to Assassin's Creed Black Flag. You select a mission, and after the specified real world time has passed; you then get a reward; coins/materials/equipment/extra missions.
Once you have unlocked a new area, you can quick travel there using your map (or War Table). Some of these areas are huge, with an insane amount of tasks in each. There's plants and materials throughout, landmarks and caves to discover, side missions to complete, and camp-sites to set up. Once you have set up a camp-site, this acts as a quick-travel point and restores your health and potions. Most of these actions give you a Power point which you need to unlock the story missions. This means you are required to do a certain amount of the side-quests rather than them being completely optional.
Most of the side-quests are the usual busy-work. Go here, kill/find thing, sometimes having to travel back to the quest-giver for a reward.
The combat has a similar feel to old RPG's like Baldur's Gate. In this game you can take control of a specific character (not just your main character), and can control them freely. You can also switch to the tactical camera and dish out instructions that way too. But the combat is mainly moving a character into position, holding the attack button, then using special skills as the cooldown timer completes; rinse and repeat. I was disappointed there wasn't more interactions than this. I had a character with a sword and shield, but the shield just adds a defensive bonus, rather than being able to explicitly block.
When you level up, your stats increase. You can spend a point in your ability skill-tree to customise your character. It would be nice to have been able to spend your stat points too. You can craft equipment if you have the schematic and materials to create it. You can use loads of different materials you have found in the world which will give different effects when used.
Aside from a revive spell, there's no healing spells. You have a stock of 8 standard healing potions which are replenished at camps when resting. Other types of potions have to be discovered, then restored by collecting plants for their ingredients. I didn't discover many potions, but I did enjoy unleashing a Jar of Bees at groups of enemies.
There's quite a few characters to obtain throughout the game. You can take 3 characters out with you, and although you can select who you want, you are encouraged to take a Mage and Rogue with you since Mages can break magical barriers, and Rogue's can unlock locked doors. There's quite a few characters returning from previous games, although I only recognised a few of them.
The way the game is structured seems very much like Mass Effect Andromeda. The main story is weak, but there's an insane amount of dialogue, backstory and lore. It definitely feels like a lived-in world with a massive history between each of the races. Certain dialogue options can have an emotion associated with them, but for the most part, it didn't seem as well done as it is in Andomeda. I found my character was delivering her lines in an inconsistent tone at certain points. I initially decided my character would be quite bitter and snarky, but the game mainly uses standard responses. The standard responses seemed quite caring, so I got used to that personality instead. Then when I chose a standard option and she was negative; I was disappointed.
The game is huge and is one of those games where it is easy to play for long stretches of time. It's a very long game, but would have been better if it was more focussed with fewer side missions and more story missions. The story partially relies on you knowing the events and characters of the first two games, and I couldn't recall enough about them.