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Just completed Dragon Age: Origins

McPlusle

Savant
Joined
May 11, 2017
Messages
319
I'll go as far to admit that I enjoyed Mass Effect 1 and 2 as third-person shooters, but I haven't been able to take them seriously as a role-playing game developer in over a decade. I never played Dragon Age Origins and I'm honestly scared to because ME1/2 weren't very good as RPGs and Jade Empire and DA2 were trash.
 

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
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Black Goat Woods !@#*%&^
Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I'll go as far to admit that I enjoyed Mass Effect 1 and 2 as third-person shooters, but I haven't been able to take them seriously as a role-playing game developer in over a decade. I never played Dragon Age Origins and I'm honestly scared to because ME1/2 weren't very good as RPGs and Jade Empire and DA2 were trash.
FWIW, DAO is nowhere near as bad as DA2. I'd say "It isn't not worth playing." There are much better games to spend your time on but if you are locked in a room alone with DAO, you might as well.
 

Falksi

Arcane
Joined
Feb 14, 2017
Messages
10,538
Location
Nottingham
DAO is one of those games that is greater than the sum of its parts.


Story is cliche but solid. Evil band of monsters come to murder everybody but the races are too wraped up in petty political nonsense to band together to fight a common enemy. Typical fantasy stuff. The characters are mostly believable and pretty interesting though. Lots of replay value with so many different origins. Ostagar is really boring to play through every time though. Areas like the fade and Deep roads seriously drag on and are the lowest points of the game, but the Fade was interesting for spicing up the gameplay and the idea of it was really interesting even if it wasn't implicated well. The Arl of Redcliffe quest line and the landsmeets were the highlights of the game. Having several options of resolving the situation and having it tie into several other quest lines make these two the most interesting parts of the game by far.

Class balance is horrid. Class balance in single player RPGs is usually the last thing to be expected but it doesn't seem like they even tried. warriors and to a lesser extent rogues are extremely bland, one dimensional and weak compared to mages. They have only a handful of active skills to put on their hot bars compared to mages but a huge chunk of their abilities are passive.

Enemy variety is not great

Enemies mostly consist of hordes of human enemies, undead and the occasional beasts.

Combat is slow paced and tactical which can be a pro or a con depending on your preference.

Music is good and easy to listen too

Sex scenes with underwear on are really lame.

It's one of those games that is average at best when you sit there and analyze all it individual pieces bit by bit but when looking at it holistically its fits together well enough to be called a good game. Especially for it's time 2009 had so many turds and a huge drought of RPGs.

That's a top post. I love DA:O, but that's a fair overview.
Only thing I would sat is that I've always found duel wield rogues very fun, with Warriors being the only boring class. As you say though, that's personal preference.
I think the music & voice acting in DA:O is often underrated too. It does have moments of real magic, and occasionally touches those rare highs that only the best games do.
 

kris

Arcane
Joined
Oct 27, 2004
Messages
8,835
Location
Lulea, Sweden
But BG city is marked clearly on your world map when you exit Candlekeep. I doubt many ppl back in the day needed a guide for the plot-critical path. It's as simple as they come.

You're talking about current gamers so...

xW2jQMe.jpg


:M

The horror of having no quest compass with fat fancy markers blinking above the objective.

:troll:

Its more that modern games dont really have obstacles that you should overcome.

Funny enough Bioware are interesting in this aspect as their games are full of those impassable obstacles that in short teach gamers that ostacles are not there to be overcomed. (except some that can only be opened by quests)
 

Frozen

Arcane
Joined
Jan 1, 2014
Messages
8,303
Where DA:O shines is wide range of variations on story elements that first comes from 6 different origin stories and then has most common places but still gives you kind of unique class based experience.
Its the closest to "modern" 3D voice acted take on old school game like BG.
Also, DA:O had more variations in some of smaller quests then most of "modern" story driven RPGs in any quest.
TW3 is praised today but most of it is A or B with no real repercussions (there are some but scripted)
Best example, blacksmith in Redlciffe- you can find his daughter, you can say you would and lie or do it and then lie to him that she's dead (and then he kills himself)
Similar with Noveria quest line in ME1 involving that Salarian where you have like 4 or 5 ways to do it.
 

Starwars

Arcane
Joined
Jan 31, 2007
Messages
2,829
Location
Sweden
I really liked DA:O on my first playthrough. I thought it was a great... experience, especially at the time it was released. And while one could've wished for bigger consequences at times, I was pretty surprised that my human noble could actually marry Anora near the end. Just a great reactive little thing.

But when I replayed it, eeh... it's one of those games where I got pretty fired up to replay it and then spent the entire game waiting for that one good bit that never comes. I actually really enjoy the origin stories, but after that, the various hubs are just mostly slogs unfortunately. They're just not very fun to play.

Still have kind of a soft spot for the game, mostly because of the purpose it filled when it was released. Too bad that Bioware never took the concept further because I think the gameworld is actually pretty cool, but yeah... everything declined pretty heavily unfortunately.
 

purpleblob

Savant
Joined
May 16, 2014
Messages
564
Location
Sydney
Exactly how I feel about DA:O. I remember enjoying it immensely the first time but I just could not replay that game past Brecilian forest/Orzamma. Don't know where the magic disappeared but it wasn't coming back. I tried to replay it again recently and it was worse this time - couldn't get past Ostagar. I can't even remember what was it that made me think DA:O is a great game the first time.
 

Vorark

Erudite
Joined
Mar 2, 2017
Messages
1,394
That's a top post. I love DA:O, but that's a fair overview.
Only thing I would sat is that I've always found duel wield rogues very fun, with Warriors being the only boring class. As you say though, that's personal preference.

DEX rogues were actually quite good, almost as broken as Arcane Warrior.
 

Atlantico

unida e indivisible
Patron
Undisputed Queen of Faggotry Vatnik In My Safe Space
Joined
Sep 7, 2015
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14,485
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Midgard
Make the Codex Great Again!
DA:O suffers mainly from the design-by-committee approach of Bioware. There are glimpses of genius, after all there were plenty of talented people who worked on the game, but the conclusions of the committee were as follows:

1. Since MMOs are popular, make DA:O use familiar MMO tropes in UI and quest design. Do this again for the third game when we make it.
2. According to our residential nerds those George R. R. Martin books are all the rage, so let's copy those as our theme for the game. Then let Gaider just do whatever for the sequels. That will work out.
3. Marketing has determined that romances are remarkably positive for publicity and even people who will never play the game will help spread the word through their indignation of buttsex.
4. We must milk this franchise as much as we possible can, squeeze blood from this rock with DLCs galore. Sell them ingame. Do whatever it takes.
5. Use visuals and music to distract from the inevitably limited content and story we're putting into this, something awesome must happen when people push a button.

Despite this there are really cool things in DA:O and it is certainly better than the sum of its parts. There was plenty of potential and Gaider's fanfiction of Westros wasn't half bad. But potential has to be followed through, otherwise it fizzles out in a lame sequel. And boy did it, fucking DA2.

:codexisfor:

edit: this is obviously the truth and if you disagree.. nah it's just my opinion, my post-mortem of the game.
 
Self-Ejected

Drog Black Tooth

Self-Ejected
Joined
Feb 20, 2008
Messages
2,636
DEX rogues were actually quite good, almost as broken as Arcane Warrior.
Heresy.

The most fun I've ever had in this game was 3 CUN rogues (every single point goes in CUN) and a glass canon Blood Mage (every single point goes in MAG). No tank in the party, and it was on Nightmare. My Mage would open a room with a fireball that knocks everyone out, and then cast Blood Wound to do more heavy damage, while the rogues run in and stab everyone to death with crazy criticals. Yes, this party was a bit fragile, especially the mage, but very fun to play, and as long as you pause at all the correct moments there's no immediate danger. I've crunched my stats back then for this playthru and IIRC this is the setup that deals the most damage, thus making the long dungeon crawls much faster. Sure, Arcane Warrior is more powerful, but that's because it's nigh unkillable, you could just play thru on auto-attack with a party of Arcane Warriors, but then again what's the point?
 

Darkman

Educated
Joined
Jul 6, 2016
Messages
49
I preferred dex rogues to cunning rogues who seemed like 1 trick ponies. Dex focused rogues still had really insane single target damage while simultaneously being really sturdy and almost unhittable with dex increasing dodge chance through the roof.

Of course still nowhere near as powerful or versatile as mages who trade single target damage for the ability to attack from a distance, blow up multiple mobs at once (really important in a game that throws so many enemies at you at once). 1 shot other mages, heal, control hordes of mobs , provide the best weapon dps buffs in the game..etc

Dragon Mage: Origins would have been a more apt name.
 
Self-Ejected

Drog Black Tooth

Self-Ejected
Joined
Feb 20, 2008
Messages
2,636
Yeah p much. I always controlled the mage(s) while warriors and rogues would usually be fine on an AI package. Well, sometimes I'd need to position a rogue behind a tough enemy for backstabs, but that's it.

I used to spend DEX on warriors for the bestest tanking (because the best tanking is evading hits altogether instead of eating damage), CUN on rogues (for criticals and assassin abilities, and it adds to normal damage just the same way as DEX with one of the perks, so yeah it's superior), and MAG for mages. Character building couldn't be anymore straightforward in this game, even though it might seem confusing at first.
 

Vorark

Erudite
Joined
Mar 2, 2017
Messages
1,394
Yeah, Darkman was spot on about the DEX rogue build. I think it was the second easiest class to solo the game on Nightmare, right after Arcane Warrior.
 

Roscoe Scaggs

Novice
Joined
May 31, 2017
Messages
42
DA:O had boring combat and with the DLCs it ends up being a slog, but the world-building was okay. The sequels made no improvements to the combat and required too much investment in the world and its events. A pew-pew game like Mass Effect can get away with it, but a mediocre setting can't carry 30-40 hours of playtime.
 

Dawkinsfan69

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck Bethestard
Joined
Jun 3, 2016
Messages
2,815
Location
inside ur mom ᕦ( ▀̿ Ĺ̯ ▀̿ )ᕤ
I'm playing this game now, about 20 hrs in and I'm so conflicted. Playing on hard mode and I actually like the combat, lore, NPCs, crafting systems, character building, etc... That's all good. I think the quests are well-written. Almost every quest has like 4-5 different choices you can make and different ways to resolve. But there's one HUGE problem:

Waaaaay too many encounters. I think the combat is really good BUT I feel like I'm spending 90% of my time fighting. It's just way too much. I've completed Redcliffe and I'm in the elf forest place right now, and holy shit this forest has like 8 zones and each zone has about 10-20 encounters and they're ALL the same.

It's so fucking annoying because I feel like the devs designed these areas to artificially increase playtime so they could advertise "100+ hours of playtime!!" on the box or something. Some fights are actually challenging and interesting but the majority of fights are blocking a doorway with my 2 melee fighters and spamming fireballs with my mages while I wait for the 10+ enemies to run at me.

Generally I don't mind long 'epic' fights with lots of enemies but when this happens every 30 seconds throughout the entire fucking game it gets so tedious.
 

hivemind

Guest
who is arguing you retard

I was pointing out that this game, which I also enjoy, is fucking ANCIENT and so playing it for the first time in current year(2019) is a bit bizarre

I was also making fun of your name
 

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