Part of it being the first actual RPG I ever played, and I think i was just at the right age when playing it to be like really affected by the storytelling. Also, despite the fact that the later games ruined most of it, I really like the setting and general lore that DA:O sets up! I know calling it my favorite game is... controversial, especially in these nerdy RPG spaces lol. But I just like it a lot!
Welp. Lol I guess this proves my point in a way, since I never even noticed the ceiling I don't really find it important.
I'm in the same camp as you with DAO being one of my favorite games of all time. But I enjoyed it for the story, for the companions, and for origins, not for combat. Combat was super tedious unless you were playing a mage and at least had cool spells at your disposal. But I also really loved DA2, which I know is rare, and absolutely hated Inquisition, which is also rare heh.
I think the good thing DAO and all dragon age games did was the over-the-shoulder camera. BG3 camera feels very restricting when you are trying to zoom into your character and the cut off from the sky makes me dizzy. I tend to want to push further to see whats there in the sky. It might not be a tactical gimmick but more the feeling of the option given which only goes half-way. If the option to view the characters from the back is there, then why not go all the way and add WASD controls and a full camera view.
Agree with you both about DA:O. Love that game, and do not at all agree it was shallow in any way. Very interesting story, very interesting characters. I am very strongly in favor of classes and hate classless systems, so the game being weak on classes was my only complaint. However, I disagree on combat. I found DA:O combat to be the perfect iteration of RTwP combat, and thoroughly enjoyed how it worked in that game. Very engaging, dynamic, and easy to handle. Also, I did enjoy DA2 as well, but also DA:I, so the DA franchise now is my favorite overall franchise for modern, party-based cRPGs.
The class system wasn't bad, you could pick a class and 2 subclasses, there were tons of customization there. The only thing it lacked were multiclasses.
There are faster combat MOD to install to make it more fast paced. And there are item mods and class mods to enhance the game quite a bit and give it more flavor. The story is kind of a cliche tho, and would not make it by todays standards.
Ill go on a limb and say that BG3 combat is also kind of tedious. There is always a best move per turn, and it seems to always (for my mage) to be Hex - scorching ray. So i would say that there is more or equal to do in combat any given time in DAO given the real time combat.
