Just completed Dragon Age: Origins

[ArchAngel]

When I am looking at it from today viewpoint it was not a good game but back then when I played it just after it released it was pretty fun. It had well done full voice overs, it was cinematic and story was kind of fun. Combat although not the level of IE games was still better than NWN1 and NWN2 (I include UI and camera into this as well).
And really, there was nothing else to play at the time and a big drought since BG2, ToEE, Bloodlines and Kotor games. I learned about KotC year later.

Also ME shared many similar cinematic stuff like DAO but its shooty corridor combat and way less character customization made it a worse game overall.

 

[Falksi]

Surprised to see so much hate for it. The characters were brilliant; the replayability very high; as I said early I personally loved the tactical combat; the story was deep; the music amazing; the world rich etc.I personally would call it a masterpiece. First play through was definitely the worst one though. Upping the difficulty and playing as a bladed rogue or mage made it a far better experience than my first run through as a warrior on normal. The warrior build is dull, and the ranged rogue not much better.
I don't usually replay games much, but have this one 5 times now, and found playthroughs 2, 3 & 4 awesome.

 

[Somberlain]

Nice alt you got there. It would be a shame if something happened to it.

 

[Jazz_]

I have never touched any Dragon Age game, what's the best in the series?

 

[kris]

Seems people posting about it being so horrible either dont have much context to why it was well received or just try to be a bit to edgy.

sure, even back then it had a couple of posters who came with backlash posts about how horrible it was, but overall most felt it was a perfectly adequate game and now these same see it as the last game from "old bioware".

this game came in a period with basically nothing else of note. in a time when classic RPGs had more or less vanished. DAO then came and it had several of those things that most people wanted. Even if many things were watered down. The game had; c&c that actually mattered; A mostly grounded setting; different cultures that mattered; bioware "classic" combat; and of course origins that actually had an impact on even the story.

Back in the day most people just got complained about the deep roads or combat in general. Yes, combat hardly was great, but few expected anything more from Bioware. Few would pick up any of their games for their combat mechanics!

 

[Mark Richard]

I were surprised by how fuckin ugly it were compared to Witcher that came out two years earlier, how shit Denerim were as a city when compared to Britain, Athkatla or Vizima, an how clumsily forced into plot you were as a Grey Warden. Other than that it were alright.

At least Denerim felt like a city.
This is directly aimed at Bethesda.

I don't follow. Denerim is like an MMO hub, the acres of space populated only by a handful of residents who stand rooted to the spot all day. It's a cardboard city. In Elder Scrolls games the NPCs are killable, have routines, and actually live in one of the surrounding houses. The Witcher games have some basic day/night routines, bustling streets with NPCs that react to your presence or weather, and all the houses can be entered. The city of Novigrad is impeccably designed to look lived in right down to the gutters which have varying conditions depending on the area of the city.

When it comes to the details, Bioware does the absolute minimum.

 

[Morality Games]

The combat is terrible for many reasons. The sameness of enemies (darkspawn/undead/humans on repeat). The way mages are ridiculously OP while warriors are completely underwhelming. Unlike a more balanced system like AD&D for example, here mages get damage+cc in same spells (cone of cold, fireball, snowflake, earthfist, etc), much of cc is irresistible (cone of cold, combo cc spell), massive nukes (entropic death/mana clash), no spell limitations (e.g. spells per day), so the end result is 0 challenge.

Conversely, warriors are completely shafted. Defense determines chance of avoidance, which is the only real defensive mechanism in DA:O, and only rogues can effectively invest into it. Warriors can only invest into armor, which is fairly useless. My main character had around 40 armor by the end of the game, and everyone above trash mobs would still be going through him like butter. So rogues end up being better tanks than warriors. Likewise, for 2 handers, it's very hard to hit a lot of things regularly outside of when Perfect Striking ability is off the CD.

I mean, mages almost always roll everyone else in most editions of most RPGs. Shadowrun is probably the worst (referring to tabletop).

Pretty consistent with the spirit of Baldur's Gate, really.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

As I say on all conversations about this game, DA:O is a pretty terrible game that still manages to provide enough sense of fun to keep playing it. It's average and pretty generic with nothing outstanding but nothing overly hideous. I could write acres about what's crap about it but I don't feel strongly enough about it to bother. I quite liked Awakenings and thought that was an incline game generally. As has been said repeatedly on this thread, there was fuck all about back then and DA:O was a worthy participation award winner.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

I mean, mages almost always roll everyone else in most editions of most RPGs. Shadowrun is probably the worst (referring to tabletop).

Pretty consistent with the spirit of Baldur's Gate, really.

Not really. Yes, mages eventually get to be ridiculously powerful in D&D, but it's never as OP as in DA:O, for various reasons. First off, mages in D&D start off extremely weak. Do you actually remember starting as a level 1 mage in BG? You had a single magic missile, and were basically using slings for the beginning part of the game and being carried by your party members. In DA:O, mages are OP from the beginning. In D&D, a mage has to memorize spells, which automatically limits how many spells (especially powerful ones) they can cast. In DA:O, you are only limited by mana and cooldowns, but considering how many different OP spells there are, cooldowns don't matter, and mana is plentiful so not an issue either. CC was limited in D&D, and could be resisted/saved against. DA:O, many cc spells are irresistible, and there are so many, you can just spam them until one works. Finally, BG games had powerful enemy mages, so even if your mage was strong, they would run up against equally strong foes. In DA:O, most enemies by far are non-magic variety, and the few mages barely cast anything against player mages. I think I saw one enemy in the entire game cast that spell shield on themselves.

 

[donkeymong]

I mean, mages almost always roll everyone else in most editions of most RPGs. Shadowrun is probably the worst (referring to tabletop).

Pretty consistent with the spirit of Baldur's Gate, really.

Not really. Yes, mages eventually get to be ridiculously powerful in D&D, but it's never as OP as in DA:O, for various reasons. First off, mages in D&D start off extremely weak. Do you actually remember starting as a level 1 mage in BG? You had a single magic missile, and were basically using slings for the beginning part of the game and being carried by your party members. In DA:O, mages are OP from the beginning. In D&D, a mage has to memorize spells, which automatically limits how many spells (especially powerful ones) they can cast. In DA:O, you are only limited by mana and cooldowns, but considering how many different OP spells there are, cooldowns don't matter, and mana is plentiful so not an issue either. CC was limited in D&D, and could be resisted/saved against. DA:O, many cc spells are irresistible, and there are so many, you can just spam them until one works. Finally, BG games had powerful enemy mages, so even if your mage was strong, they would run up against equally strong foes. In DA:O, most enemies by far are non-magic variety, and the few mages barely cast anything against player mages. I think I saw one enemy in the entire game cast that spell shield on themselves.

What? Did you even play the game? Darkspawn mages used Curse of Mortality, Shapeshifting, Fireball, Crushing Prison, Stinging Swarm and Walking bomb.
Just a few out of many examples. And who can forget Gaxkang?

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

What? Did you even play the game? Darkspawn mages used Curse of Mortality, Shapeshifting, Fireball, Crushing Prison, Stinging Swarm and Walking bomb.
Just a few out of many examples. And who can forget Gaxkang?

You misunderstood my post, although, to be fair, I could've stated it in a clearer way. What I meant by "mages barely cast anything against player mages" was that mages in DA:O don't provide much of a challenge for player character's mage. Sure they cast spells, but all of those spells are only effective against warriors/rogues, not against mages. What is that "Curse of Mortality, Shapeshifting, Fireball, Crushing Prison, Stinging Swarm and Walking bomb" going to do against a player mage before he casts say Mana Clash and one shots the enemy? In D&D (eg BG games), enemy mages had much more sophisticated spell casting for mage duels, like casting spell shields, spell breaches, etc).

 

[oldmanpaco]

And who can forget Gaxkang?

Everyone. Literally everyone.

 

[deama]

I liked DA2 more cause the story was more personal + better combat.

 

[donkeymong]

What? Did you even play the game? Darkspawn mages used Curse of Mortality, Shapeshifting, Fireball, Crushing Prison, Stinging Swarm and Walking bomb.
Just a few out of many examples. And who can forget Gaxkang?

You misunderstood my post, although, to be fair, I could've stated it in a clearer way. What I meant by "mages barely cast anything against player mages" was that mages in DA:O don't provide much of a challenge for player character's mage. Sure they cast spells, but all of those spells are only effective against warriors/rogues, not against mages. What is that "Curse of Mortality, Shapeshifting, Fireball, Crushing Prison, Stinging Swarm and Walking bomb" going to do against a player mage before he casts say Mana Clash and one shots the enemy? In D&D (eg BG games), enemy mages had much more sophisticated spell casting for mage duels, like casting spell shields, spell breaches, etc).

I remember that some enemies, like the Mother, used Glyph of Neutralisation. Uldred used Anti magic ward.
And the spells i mentioned were deadly to mages too. I stopped to use Mana Clash because that was basicly a cheat.

 

[prodigydancer]

Surprised to see so much hate for it.

Don't be. DA:O was great in every way but the Codex will never acknowledge that because here RTwP is considered a crime.

 

[Delterius]

One nitpick.

Do you actually remember starting as a level 1 mage in BG? You had a single magic missile, and were basically using slings for the beginning part of the game and being carried by your party members.

Nope. You had one casting of Sleep, which is IWIN against hordes of enemies and you had one casting of Blindness, which basically acts as a Save-or-Die against individually powerful enemies (Tarnesh, Silke, the dwarf mercenary in Beregost). Its only up from there.

What is that "Curse of Mortality, Shapeshifting, Fireball, Crushing Prison, Stinging Swarm and Walking bomb" going to do against a player mage before he casts say Mana Clash and one shots the enemy?

Yep. Its actually kinda funny how the developers once said that it was intended for Mages to be more powerful due to the story. Ok, that makes sense. But cheats buttons like Mana Clash are too easily acquired and a shame to use.

Sea's old module balanced things around and showed the game had some potential, if only the devs had balls.

 

[Skittles]

Surprised to see so much hate for it.

Don't be. DA:O was great in every way but the Codex will never acknowledge that because here RTwP is considered a crime.

It is, but don't be silly. People are praising other RTwP systems in this same thread.

Show me why you think it's "great in every way."

 

[Drew]

In Elder Scrolls games the NPCs are killable, have routines, and actually live in one of the surrounding houses.

I have a slight issue when the central trading city of the entire province has 12 houses, half of which aren't even for families but for one or two people.
You don't even see all of Denerim. You see one district of the city. Yeah it plays like shit but it feels a hell of a lot more like a city.

 

[prodigydancer]

Show me why you think it's "great in every way."

I'm not autistic enough to rationalize every opinion of mine. When a video game is entertaining enough that I can complete it three times without getting bored or irritated, I consider it great. As far as I can remember, I liked everything about DA:O including the Fade and the Deep Roads.

 

[purpleblob]

Surprised to see so much hate for it.

Don't be. DA:O was great in every way but the Codex will never acknowledge that because here RTwP is considered a crime.

Codex generally don't like RTwP but doesn't mean people hate DA:O because it's RTwP. It's just really mediocre game.

Have a look at Codex top 70, there are several RTwP games listed there - PS:T, BG1-2, NWN2/MotB, IWD1-2, KotOR1-2

 

[Frozen]

This is one of those " its RTwP and I realized it after only 70h- omg its shit!" threads.
Origins is a good game, not great but not shit.
OP should have played on nightmare if he thinks combat is easy.

 

[Carrion]

DA:O being RTwP isn't necessarily a deal-breaker. The deal-breaker is that the combat is incredibly formulaic tank-healer-DPS MMO crap with cooldowns where you fight the same three horribly HP-bloated enemy types over and over and over and over again for a hundred hours or so.

 

[prodigydancer]

the combat is incredibly formulaic tank-healer-DPS MMO crap with cooldowns

Dude, Tank-Healer-DPS formula applies to almost every party-based RPG. Cooldowns are also very common (D&D-based games didn't have cooldowns but you could get your spells back on rest so nothing really prevented you from spamming them).

D:OS - the Codex GOTY 2015 - was Tank-Healer-DPS with cooldowns. Oh yeah, it had environmental effects. Well, DA:O had spell combos. One gimmick doesn't change the whole combat system.

 

[the_shadow]

Game has a great 2-3 first hours, then falls appart.

You've got to be kidding. The first few hours are the *worst* parts since it's almost all scripted scenes and blathering from NPCs to set up a rather cookie-cutter story and setting. Once you get to experience some actual gameplay and fiddle around with the variety of spells available to the mage, it becomes an above average game, although probably not quite 'good'. And credit where credit's due, the game offers up a huge number of opportunities to be a complete and utter prick.

Awakened was OK as well, although I don't know what's with the need for 'recent' RPGs to have a watered down Stronghold building subquest.

But I'm not sure how Dragon Age scored more votes than Geneforge 5?

 

[funkadelik]

Just completed Dragon Age: Origins

My condolences.