I can quickly see this thread degenerating into petty squabbles, but given these two games have eaten up a lot of my gaming time recently, I feel I'll put in my two cents worth:
Dragon Age: Inquisition
Pros:
--- Party banter and interaction. Always one of the strongest elements of the DA franchise, they did well again in making you feel part of a band of heroes. Lots of comedic and character depth to be found here. That said, I felt the party was not as strong as the one in DA:O, primarily because too many of the characters were 'heavily entrenched' in a certain sterotype and lacked the overall depth of the characters from DA:O. So while it's done well, I felt it was a step back for the franchise, but I get some of that is subjective. I just didn't find characters such as Iron Bull, Sera, Dorian, Josie, Viv and Varric to be that interesting (I did like Cole, Solas, Cass, Blackwall and Cullen). Oh, and I didn't like what they did with Leliana either, as she was my favourite from the DA:O.
--- World building and lore: I enjoy the lore that has been created for the DA franchise, and I feel that it has interesting elements and dynamics.
--- Franchise consistency: the Keep was well designed and constructed, and you can see that they put a lot of effort into making different variations depending on prior choices and how your game plays out. Stuff like whether Morrigan has a child or not, what happens to Alistair etc.
--- Art direction for the world spaces. Most of them look very nice and added well to atmosphere.
--- Main story: I liked it. While it was relatively simplistic and the villain not very threatening, the sub-plots (does the Maker really exist, what is the veil exactly, if the current belief of Elven/world history is false, then what really happened?) were absolutely amazing, although unfortunately left hanging a bit.
Cons:
--- World Content: while the world spaces are beautiful and well crafted, they are unfortunately almost all empty and devoid of meaningful content. This is especially apparent in the biggest zones, such as Hissing Wastes. Looks beautiful, and those ancient dwarven ruins on those huge mountains were fun, but exploring them is empty and meaningless.
--- Questing: most of it is bland and some are extremely simple fetch-quests with nothing more than 'go here, do/kill this, get xp'. Also doesn't help that there is rarely any interaction with any NPCs (if any exist in the zone to begin with). It shows that almost all the dialogue happens between party characters and the MC, and during the story. Almost no dialogue for any side-quests, they're all delivered through documents. Many of the elements are also very repetitive - the favourite being lovers/family trying to reunite but having failed and died, you find their last note and corpse.
--- Combat: a problem that existed in DA:O as well; if you aren't a mage, combat is boring as heck. There's no strategy involved, it's just timing potion spam/cooldown management (and maxing out your guard) and pressing the attack button. Sure, combos exist, but often there's too much stuff flying around and the controls meant trying to land anything was difficult.
Overall:
The end result was that while I enjoyed DA:I initially, particularly the usual following up on party interactions and exploring the first few zones, I actually struggled to finish the game. I dropped it for a while before returning and basically then rushing through what was left of the main quest in order to finish the game. I ended up lacking any and all motivation to finish the side zones because the combat was boring and I knew there were no real meaningful quests to find out there. My impression was that while it retained good story and world-building elements, it largely failed in terms of game mechanics. I won't be returning to it, even for new story content, and I'll simply 'catch up' reading the latest lore developments in the areas that I'm interested in.
Witcher 3:
Pros:
--- Combat: I love it. It's challenging, especially early in the game, and engaging, especially on higher difficulties. No random button mashing unless you want to spend a lot of time meditating afterwards to restock on potions, or want to horde food items. If you approach it tactically, plan and think ahead, you can win most encounters taking very little damage, even against more powerful foes or when heavily outnumbered.
--- World Building: the world spaces are really well constructed, logical in design, internally consistent, and full of content. Sure, not all of it is that deep, and there is some repetitive stuff in there, but there's a sense that you can uncover a cool powerful monster to fight, a stash of loot, or sad little side-stories by exploring.
--- Main story: I'm not finished yet, but I'm enjoying it so far. I expected it would be more straightforward given the relatively cliche setup this game (find Ciri, gather friends, defeat Wild Hunt) compared to W2, but so far the character interactions and writing are making the ride quite fun.
--- Questing: extremely well done by large RPG standards. Quests are well written, and while some of the quests are quite formulaic (ask about monster, investigate scene, follow tracks, find lair, kill beast), the writing helps keep you from getting too bored. You often get a sense of the loss or tragedy involved in the loss of lives and trying to find closure for loved ones. In that sense this is far superior to the DA:I method of only finding the aftermath through reading notes, it feels more emotional and connecting when you speak to a character in dialogue.
--- Gwent: what a minigame! It's so much fun!
Cons:
--- Franchise consistency: as others have noted, it is a bit underwhelming in terms of impact and references to previous games. In a few spaces there is dialogue referring to past characters, but ultimately, it does feel like more could have been done here, particularly as W2 had such significant consequences depending on your choices.
--- Main story: yes, it's a pro and a con. As noted, the negative aspect of it is that its over-arching content is very cliche and quite predictable. While the first half of it has enough quirks and character dynamics to keep interesting, my suspicion is that this will get harder the closer it gets to the climatic part. So far, I'm not witnessing any real sub-plots either, but that might be because this is set up as the conclusion to a trilogy, where DA:I for example is the latest installment in an ongoing franchise.
Overall:
The end result is that I'm still really, really enjoying Witcher 3 despite being close to the amount of time spent in DA:I. I'm only around half through the main plot but have done a lot of side-quests, as I feel these are really fun and engaging. I love the world that's been created, it's beautiful but also full of content which allows you to go explore knowing you can find stuff and that it's not all empty. I feel the game has pretty much met my expectations, and yes, I do consider it superior to DA:I in most regards, because I feel it succeeds not just in creative elements, but gameplay elements as well.
