Game review: Dragon Age: Inquisition – The Descent

Dragon Age expansion pack is deeply disappointing.

Dragon Age: Inquisition – Descent. Courtesy Bioware / EA Games

Dragon Age: Inquisition – The Descent

PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One

US$14.00 (Dh55)

Three stars

Dragon Age: Inquisition –The Descent, the game's penultimate expansion pack, returns to the Deep Roads – a world of linear corridors, enemies-of-the-­universe Darkspawn, and crazy-making crystals – to investigate the source of earthquakes that threaten your allies in the Dwarf kingdom Orzammar.

Not everyone wants more combat from a DA:I expansion pack, but combat is what you get with The Descent. Big pitched battles with an updated and toughened array of Darkspawn across underground "thaigs", or settlements . Large, linear environments that struggle to look as though they aren't linear. And a more-than-slightly confused storyline about something called a Titan, which causes earthquakes. Having completed the game, I still don't really know what the Titan is or where it comes from or why it exists. But I did get to kill a lot of things in order to not find that out. Most of the effort has gone into making a game out of Darkspawn battles, and battles with a new enemy type who appear after the game's midway point. There is one major set-piece battle that is exceptionally challenging – assuming you're playing on a high difficulty – not least because of the lack of save points.

Bioware has struggled across the Dragon Age series with balancing the combat between complexity and fun – I still prefer DA:I's more cumbersome, unbalanced PC incarnation to its Xbox One combat experience, and an expansion pack dedicated to combat brought this point home clearly. The mathematical logic of combat governed by Dungeons and Dragons rules and the demands of customers do not sit together well.

Previous expansion pack Jaws of Hakkon blended a variety of different kinds of challenges in a visually lush environment, plus new recorded dialogue for your companions – including a fun shouting match between the characters Scout Harding and The Iron Bull. The expansion pack did include pitched battles, but also had a broader range of new challenges and a few new characters. This was a better purchase – the world of the Avvar was worth ­exploring.

Bioware's strength has always been its characters. DA:I has soul because, ultimately, you care about what happens to the team of people you've gathered together. In contrast, I was left cold by Witcher 3 which, despite a lot of technical strengths, didn't make me care about what happened to the same extent that DA:I did.

The Descent advances the game not at all on this front. It introduces two new dwarven characters, but both are humourless additions of the plot-advancing type. Dragon Age Origins: Awakening was a textbook example of how to build an expansion pack. It was replete with interesting decisions, characters, and a good plot. As The Descent went on, I was hoping for cameos from DAO: Awakening – Ogren and Sigrun would have been a welcome replacement for either of the dwarves forced on us in The Descent – but, no such luck.

At Dh55, this is an optional purchase. For the kind of person who has spent around 100 hours on DA:I, any new Bioware content dulls the pain of absence felt after conquering Thedas, the universe the game is set in. If you're looking for the same fresh highs you got during the original campaign, you'll be ­disappointed.

Let's hope that the final, rumoured expansion pack showcases DA:I's strengths – plot, characterisation, good writing. The Descent is a fun place to try out your high-level combat skills, but little more than that.