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enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Nov 2020
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DA:I has dull conquest mechanic where we gather materials repeatedly in same fashion each map. Storywise was good but tedious tasks (not just the table of cooldowns itself) and camera control in tactical mode... aargh Too grindy.
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Oct 2020
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As a fan of Dragon Age II I actually was more disappointed than anything by the story in Inquisition, the entire through line of the series up to this point had been around the conflict between the chantry and mages, something which is diffused offscreen before the game even starts in Inquisition when some Ancient Evil™ comes and derails the most interesting part of the plot. So between that and the showy but hollow combat, it didn't really leave me with a urge to replay it or any sequel that might come.
Edit: Who am I kidding, I'll still be there day 0 for Dragon Age IV. I hope they learn from their mistakes, if they even see them as such.
Last edited by Sozz; 04/11/20 10:44 PM. Reason: because: hypocrite
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Duchess of Gorgombert
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Duchess of Gorgombert
Joined: May 2010
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I love DA:O too, but I actually liked the characters and character stories in Dragon Age II a little more. Yeah I have always been very puzzled with many people's reaction to DA2. I found it to be a really good game. I completely agree about how irritating it was to have the level designs being constantly reused. But we also know why that happened, because EA forced Bioware to rush the game out the door. But other than that issue, the game was very good. I recently replayed that too, and found its biggest problem was with how irritating it was: not the major bits, by which I mean the setting, story, characters were great, the combat theoretically okay; the irritation started with the re-use of areas. In comparison, the belated ending of Divinity 2 did the claustrophobic feeling really well, everything taking place in Aleroth where you felt confined but the city was interesting and varied and the atmosphere changed significantly from one bit to another. Even the ruined and overrun bits had their own charm, something DA2 lacked. The "theoretically okay" combat quickly became incredibly annoying with its notorious three-waves-of-abseiling-goons and the worst thing you could do was to increase the difficulty from easy: it didn't make it harder, just just made the irritation more protracted. But mostly it was the small stuff. The designs and visuals looked ugly and uglier, they were angular and jarring in the same way as Half Life 2, which was like that deliberately, to create unease. But DA2 felt like it was trying to be edgy. The soundtrack was horrible and rather than creating an atmosphere it just pissed me off. I turned off the music and it improved my experience a lot. What I couldn't turn off were minor sound effects, even the weird metallic "neh-eh-eh-eh" you got when opening the menu sometimes felt enough to make me want to throw my computer out the window. In short, a good game marred by terrible presentation.
J'aime le fromage.
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member
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member
Joined: Oct 2020
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DA:O is my favorite game, but I'm biased by the fact that it was the first game I played after taking a 15 year break from gaming! Some fantastic mods out there that vastly improve the graphics and speed up combat (by lowering hit points and increasing damage). The whole Dragon Age trilogy shines for me mostly due to all the character development and writing. Actual gameplay is a mixed bag for all three.
Divinity Original Sin 1 is my favorite RPG for gameplay . . . absolutely love the tactical combat and beautifully crafted encounters and quest design was top notch. I'm one of the minority who feels that Larian dropped the ball on DoS2 and that it is inferior to DoS1 in virtually every way. DoS2 combat was a mind numbing bore compared to DoS1. . . and the story and quests of DoS1 (while very generic and often corny) were much better written, structured, and tied together than DoS2. I could go on.
So far Baldur's Gate 3 is promising to have the gameplay quality of DoS1 and the storytelling, cutscenes, and character writing of Dragon Age . . . . pretty much a perfect combination, for me anyway!
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member
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member
Joined: Oct 2015
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I replay DA:O quite a lot. I often just play through each of the origin stories instead of completing the full game. Mini origin runs.
I've never made it through Dragon Age 2. I just get frustrated with it at some point and just stop playing.
I've now played through DA:I two times. There is a lot of tedium but it's tedium I don't mind. I get the exact same feeling from Mass Effect: Andromeda. It's not great but it keeps me occupied and I can find some enjoyment in it.
Last edited by vyvexthorne; 05/11/20 06:40 AM.
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addict
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addict
Joined: Oct 2020
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The incredible irony is this new BG3 is being compared to either DOS2 or DAO...but not the previous games, BG1 and BG2...quite sad really.
Last edited by mr_planescapist; 05/11/20 07:35 AM.
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Duchess of Gorgombert
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Duchess of Gorgombert
Joined: May 2010
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I replay DA:O quite a lot. I often just play through each of the origin stories instead of completing the full game. Mini origin runs.
I've never made it through Dragon Age 2. I just get frustrated with it at some point and just stop playing.
I've now played through DA:I two times. There is a lot of tedium but it's tedium I don't mind. I get the exact same feeling from Mass Effect: Andromeda. It's not great but it keeps me occupied and I can find some enjoyment in it. DA2 was much more tolerable by turning the difficulty down to easy: normal/hard just makes it more tedious; and by turning off the music as the soundtrack is awful. Inquisition I liked but it did suffer from the same thing as ME did from ME2 onwards, it was a bit too actiony and having to go through the various boss' shields and biotics and what-not was a tedious grind. Andromeda was okay, it just lacked some polish and it was obvious it'd been abandoned before it'd even launched. Oranges is still the best of the Dragon Ages though; and ME the best of the Mass Effects. God I feel like an old fart saying "the first and least accessible one was the best".
J'aime le fromage.
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addict
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addict
Joined: Oct 2020
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DA2 was much more tolerable by turning the difficulty down to easy: normal/hard just makes it more tedious I think I did that with Inquisition; as much as I hated the transition to action in 2, it's Inquisition that made me truly frustrated. Especially that I heard they'd brought back "tactical" view... only for it to be possibly the poorest port from console I've ever seen, the controls dreadful and the combat MMO-like. I loved the combat in DA:O, it reminded me of BG2.
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Jul 2014
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I think DA:O is a great game and I recently fired it up for rerun, but it's just really dated now IMO. It's passable, but I find it funny how one can claim it has better control, camera and just about any technical aspect than 2020 games, including BG3.
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addict
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addict
Joined: Oct 2020
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As someone who does not have any form of nostalgic value in DA:O and installed/started playing it less than a week ago (thanks again, Abits!) - the graphics are fine, really. I was pleasantly surprised.
The combat however... Oh god, I am not sure whenever I just suck at it in general or if it is my severe distaste for real-time action in solo-player games showing but MAN... I played on the normal/standard difficulty, and I died so many times just trying to clear out the 3 bandit camps that I nearly lost it. ; _ ; And I don't even wanna talk about how long it took me to survive the night outside the haunted kid's castle. , _ ,
The entire thing about pausing live-action and being able to select ONE ability at the time when paused is driving me insane. I am at a point where I have to quick-save after pretty much every single encounter or dialog. XD (but that is not entirely due to difficulty, I am also having weird crashes, probably due to the game's age)
And regarding the camera management... Please no , _ , The scrolled-in option is making me motion sick and the scrolled-out option is clunky when out of combat. I personally absolutely adore the turn-based combat and camera angle in Xcom, DOS2 and BG3. Turnbased combat has really turned out to be something I am much better at than live-action . _ . I couldn't even finish The Witcher, Mirror's Edge or FF XV because I just can't handle the live action combat - I absolutely hate it. >.< So I ended up just watching the entire stories on YouTube instead. That sounds frustrating. Have you considered playing on easy? There's no shame in it. Yes, I had to make a new game with an easier difficulty. The difference was huuuuuuge. O.o From being way too hard (for me) to being way too easy. X'D But I'll finish the story on my easy game, and then try again on the normal difficulty. Might just be a getting-used-to issue 
Hoot hoot, stranger! Fairly new to CRPGs, but I tried my best to provide some feedback regardless! <3 Read it here: My Open Letter to Larian
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Mar 2020
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I think DA:O is a great game and I recently fired it up for rerun, but it's just really dated now IMO. It's passable, but I find it funny how one can claim it has better control, camera and just about any technical aspect than 2020 games, including BG3. Really really disagree. Dao controls are grrat
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apprentice
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OP
apprentice
Joined: Mar 2020
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I think DA:O is a great game and I recently fired it up for rerun, but it's just really dated now IMO. It's passable, but I find it funny how one can claim it has better control, camera and just about any technical aspect than 2020 games, including BG3. It has alot better control than BG3. Try running around playing your character instead of click-to-go, and also try to look up at the ceiling or the sky...! right now it would be better not having the option to zoom in over the shoulder, because it is so frustration how limited it is.
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Mar 2013
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I guess one thing i gotta commend DAO on is that at least one of tis female party members had a nice cheesecake design.
One more issue i just remembered was reading through the background material first and figuring the setting, as in the land, was cool. Ferelden sounded like Celtic Russia / Slavic Scotland set in Argentinia somehow , recently formed nation from loose tribal confederacies and everyone worships Dogs somehow.
And then in the actual game it was ye olde england all over again.
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Duchess of Gorgombert
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Duchess of Gorgombert
Joined: May 2010
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And then in the actual game it was ye olde england all over again. It was pretty much entirely described as such though. Feudal, wet and smells of dog. They even got in a dig at our food. Sigh.
J'aime le fromage.
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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Oct 2020
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Even putting aside the blatant awfulness of the level design, visual design, combat structure design and so on, the story of DA2 is still awful in itself. The narrative-gameplay integration is non-existent. Every character is an unsympathetic cardboard cut-outs. Companions are blatantly designed for the sake of shippers and fetishists. But most importantly: Nothing you do in the game matters. Not only is the game 100% on rails, you're not even the conductor. Your character drives not a single moment of the plot. Nothing important happens because you choose to do something. You're only ever responding two what the real players of the story do.
The game is a clear example of the computer-game-rpg equivalent of a GM who wants to write a book rather than play an rpg. The writers of DA2 wanted to tell a story and the player is a barely tolerated nuisance that they chose to write around rather than include in that story. They should have just made a straight-forward linear action game with one of their real protagonists as the main character rather than pretend that the player character has a place in story.
Optimistically Apocalyptic
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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Oct 2020
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And then in the actual game it was ye olde england all over again. It was pretty much entirely described as such though. Feudal, wet and smells of dog. They even got in a dig at our food. Sigh. If anyone thought the background material sounded more like "Celtic Russia / Slavic Scotland set in Argentinia" (what even) than England then they don't know much about England, to be honest.
Optimistically Apocalyptic
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journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: Feb 2014
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And then in the actual game it was ye olde england all over again. It was pretty much entirely described as such though. Feudal, wet and smells of dog. They even got in a dig at our food. Sigh. How dare they criticise our cuisine, nothing can beat corgi on a stick!
Someone must have spiked her senna pod drink!
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: May 2019
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DA2 was much more tolerable by turning the difficulty down to easy: normal/hard just makes it more tedious; and by turning off the music as the soundtrack is awful. I end up doing this for most RPGs I play. I rarely find a game that has combat that is interesting and fun, so turning it down to easy just makes for a better experience with the game. And the music always gets muted because I am hearing impaired and need every bit of help I can get to hear the things I need to hear in the game. 
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addict
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addict
Joined: Oct 2020
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Even putting aside the blatant awfulness of the level design, visual design, combat structure design and so on, the story of DA2 is still awful in itself. The narrative-gameplay integration is non-existent. Every character is an unsympathetic cardboard cut-outs. Companions are blatantly designed for the sake of shippers and fetishists. But most importantly: Nothing you do in the game matters. Not only is the game 100% on rails, you're not even the conductor. Your character drives not a single moment of the plot. Nothing important happens because you choose to do something. You're only ever responding two what the real players of the story do.
The game is a clear example of the computer-game-rpg equivalent of a GM who wants to write a book rather than play an rpg. The writers of DA2 wanted to tell a story and the player is a barely tolerated nuisance that they chose to write around rather than include in that story. They should have just made a straight-forward linear action game with one of their real protagonists as the main character rather than pretend that the player character has a place in story. I was pleasantly surprised with DA2 (as in: it was way better than I was told it is), but yeah, it does have a lot of problems. I actually didn't hate the story - I'm not much of a fan of "plight of the common man" stories, but it was a nice break from saving the world. Templars vs mages was way overdone over the course of the series, but that's more of Inquisition's problem (that it did the same story again). But yeah, now that I think about it, there was little in terms of player/character agency in DA2. As for characters... I have to agree, with the exception of Varric. Varric is possibly my favourite character from the series. I won't forgive DA2 for what it did to Anders though. I liked him in Awakening and then... yeah. Aveline was ok if bland and Merrill was tolerable if stupid.
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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Oct 2020
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When I'm talking to NPCs in Baldur's Gate 3, I often get these strong Dragon Age: Origins vibes. I love it.
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