[POLL] Let's settle this - did you buy Dragon Age: Inquisition?

[Pony King]

I didn't say I didn't like the game, I said I found the encounters unspectacular. This is as opposed to the experience of flinging spells and killing monsters, which was mostly fine.
Specifically I found the placing of enemies, their abilities and their hitpoints (to name a few variables) uninteresting. This isn't uncommon for RPGs in my experience and I don't hold it much against DA:O.

When I asked about difficulty, I wasn't trying to call you a nooblord. instead I wanted to figure out if playing on the hardest difficulty, might change some variables that accentuate whatever might be interesting about fights that barely registered on my radar or if it just makes them last longer through HP bloat.

 

[Grunker]

There isn't much bloat in DA:O diff iirc, it's mostly about damage output i think.

 

[Goat Vomit]

Your grunker mind tricks won't work on me. So basically you defend it by saying it's boring and mediocre but that's okay since there are so few games around? I disagree about spells being fun, that the combat demanded much tactics, that the character progression was enough and that it was mechanically tight though. Maybe you just have low standards?

It's not boring. It's also firmly above average. So no, I didn't say any of those things.

If DA:O didn't have tactical combat and fun spells, which RTwP RPGs, in your mind, did? And don't say Jagged Alliance

Yes, I know that there are very few RTwP RPGs. Again, how does that make DA:O any better?

I really don't have time to write an in-depth analysis and compare games right now but I don't think any RTwP game ever did tactics very well. Regarding spells maybe it's just disappointment since they hyped up how you could combine spells during development and then failed to delver on that, also it has been long since I last played it but I do remember that the spells were basically just watered down versions of DnD spells. That pretty much describes the entire game for me, it's a barebones and less fun BG2. A party limit of four, cooldowns, no multiclassing, shitty attributes, slower and more clunkier gameplay due to HP bloat, long animations and the fact that it was 3D which made camera handling much more of a bother all made it a poor man's infinity engine game in my eyes.

 

[DalekFlay]

They also patched DA:O to make it easier, so it depends on when you played it. I played on hard on day one without knowing any tricks and it was hard as fuck. Now it's super easy.

 

[Grunker]

Yes, I know that there are very few RTwP RPGs. Again, how does that make DA:O any better?.

That wasn't my question, don't move the goalposts. If DA:O isn't tactical, are there, in your mind, any RTwP RPGs that are?

Also, some of your points are well and truly nonsense. "No multiclassing". Multiclassing is a clear D&D exception in RPGs, not a norm.

There are many things I would wish DA:O had that would make it a great RPG. As it standa it's just a decent one.

Listen to yourself: you say it's a "less fun bg2". I agree completely. But then BG2 is possibly my favourite game of all time. DA:O certainly isn't.

EDIT: did you read Vault Dweller 's review? If not go and do it. You can substitute my opinion with that for the most part.

 

[Roguey]

I have a big list of "DA:O fights I found fun on my second run" comparable to the ones I made for IWD, IWD2, and ToEE but fuck it if I'm going to make it presentable.

Of course I have a very specific way of playing where I deliberately avoid degeneracy that's very unlike how a lot of other people play.

 

[sser]

DA:O had a pretty diverse collection of fights. It's one of the reasons I like it so much. (That and the writing is pretty solid from the game's beginning to the end of Loghain's trial, and then it gets a little hamfisted and you can see the EA execs pushing sequel down its throat.)

 

[SuicideBunny]

i hated dao, didn't bother with da2, played inquisition over at a friends and liked it well enough to buy it, and i am actually having fun with it. the plot's retarded, the characters are pretty meh, but there is some alpha protocolish reactivity and the exploration just clicks with me, like being able to get roflstomped by a lvl 14 dragon in the first map, big open areas without linear paths through them, hidden quests that actually require you to read shit and don't show up in the quest log and thus have no quest compass, lots of easter eggs hidden in areas of the map where you aren't supposed to go...
so yeah, i am having fun despite the game not being able to start 2 out of 3 times (i wish that was an exaggeration) and countless other shitty bugs probably brought on by the retarded copy protection, shitty combat, shitty characters, and shitty story.

err.. i mean no. of course i didn't buy it. fuck bioware. :shiftyeyes:

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Slow James]

i hated dao, didn't bother with da2, played inquisition over at a friends and liked it well enough to buy it, and i am actually having fun with it. the plot's retarded, the characters are pretty meh, but there is some alpha protocolish reactivity and the exploration just clicks with me, like being able to get roflstomped by a lvl 14 dragon in the first map, big open areas without linear paths through them, hidden quests that actually require you to read shit and don't show up in the quest log and thus have no quest compass, lots of easter eggs hidden in areas of the map where you aren't supposed to go...
so yeah, i am having fun despite the game not being able to start 2 out of 3 times (i wish that was an exaggeration) and countless other shitty bugs probably brought on by the retarded copy protection, shitty combat, shitty characters, and shitty story.

err.. i mean no. of course i didn't buy it. fuck bioware. :shiftyeyes:

 

[Goat Vomit]

That wasn't my question, don't move the goalposts. If DA:O isn't tactical, are there, in your mind, any RTwP RPGs that are?

None, I never said any RTwP game had all that tactical combat, you did, I merely refuted that claim. The infinity engine games weren't really that tactical nor was DA:O.

Also, some of your points are well and truly nonsense. "No multiclassing". Multiclassing is a clear D&D exception in RPGs, not a norm.

Well spotted, Dr. Watson, this is true. multiclassing is not the norm, this is why BG2 is above it and DA:O floats around at the waterline. Character building is mediocre in DA:O, this was my point. Even compared to other AD&D knockoffs it's very uninteresting.

There are many things I would wish DA:O had that would make it a great RPG. As it standa it's just a decent one.

Replace decent with acceptable effort, C+ would maybe play once, then I agree.

Listen to yourself: you say it's a "less fun bg2". I agree completely. But then BG2 is possibly my favourite game of all time. DA:O certainly isn't.

Maybe this is why I found it dull and you liked it? I don't see BG2 as anything more than a good game, it's not the end-all be-all CRPG.

EDIT: did you read Vault Dweller 's review? If not go and do it. You can substitute my opinion with that for the most part.

No, I will check it out when I got time for it.

Spoiler

 

[DragoFireheart]

Not only have I not bought Dragon Age: Inquisition, I also did not buy Mass Effect 3 or, Dragon Age 2.

Mass Effect 2 was the last Bioware anything I have bought. I hope they crash and burn because their quality is just shit since Dragon Age: Origins.

The only Bioware games I bother going back to is Baldur's Gate Sage honestly.

 

[DalekFlay]

i hated dao, didn't bother with da2, played inquisition over at a friends and liked it well enough to buy it, and i am actually having fun with it.

DA:O you "hated" and you like this offline MMO bullshit?

 

[Zombra]

I was starting to think I wouldn't buy, but then GMG came through with the 25% off voucher that was clearly a mistake on their part, so I went for the deal. So many moral conflicts.

Downloading now, hoping this will be a fun way to spend an antisocial holiday after a busy week of seeing too damn many people.

 

[RK47]

i hated dao, didn't bother with da2, played inquisition over at a friends and liked it well enough to buy it, and i am actually having fun with it.

DA:O you "hated" and you like this offline MMO bullshit?

The dawn came for him after Skyhold (tm)

 

[SuicideBunny]

DA:O you "hated" and you like this offline MMO bullshit?

well, for starters, i don't mind mmos, and i'm eaks/ekas with explorer usually scoring around 95-100%. dao had pretty shitty exploration with long corridor with small branches map design nearly 100% of the time, even in friggin outdoor areas, lots of tedious filler combat, and childish dirty panties or enchantment dwarf jokes in between, dai might have a ton of mmoish materials grind (which i am cheating to bypass ^_^) and stupid shit like mounts, but the combat is less annoying as it's over faster, there is a bigger enemy variety, the maps are big to friggin huge, nonlinear, and have a ton of shit hidden in them, and i like the operations stuff, though that could have been utilized better, for example by using ingame time and making the enemy factions do their own operations as well, plus no dirty panties jokes so far, and all the romance stuff comes with a warning icon so i can't accidentally trigger it because some idiot at bioware thought that it might be a good idea to have the short stub that makes the most sense in a given situations also being the one that leads to you getting reamed in the ass.
it's even shittier than dao as an rpg, though.

 

[DalekFlay]

well, for starters, i don't mind mmos, and i'm eaks/ekas with explorer usually scoring around 95-100%. dao had pretty shitty exploration with long corridor with small branches map design nearly 100% of the time, even in friggin outdoor areas, lots of tedious filler combat, and childish dirty panties or enchantment dwarf jokes in between, dai might have a ton of mmoish materials grind (which i am cheating to bypass ^_^) and stupid shit like mounts, but the combat is less annoying as it's over faster, there is a bigger enemy variety, the maps are big to friggin huge, nonlinear, and have a ton of shit hidden in them, and i like the operations stuff, though that could have been utilized better, for example by using ingame time and making the enemy factions do their own operations as well, plus no dirty panties jokes so far, and all the romance stuff comes with a warning icon so i can't accidentally trigger it because some idiot at bioware thought that it might be a good idea to have the short stub that makes the most sense in a given situations also being the one that leads to you getting reamed in the ass.
it's even shittier than dao as an rpg, though.

Personally I find MMO gameplay to be the absolute worst time-wasting pointless bullshit, but that's me. I am a total explorefag though, and get what enjoyment I can out of games like this for that reason.

 

[Norfleet]

I didn't say I didn't like the game, I said I found the encounters unspectacular. This is as opposed to the experience of flinging spells and killing monsters, which was mostly fine.

Yeah, I can't say I remember anything memorable about fights in most RPGs, in truth. Most fights are about hitting things until they die, and most are lacking in any particular subtleties.

well, for starters, i don't mind mmos, and i'm eaks/ekas with explorer usually scoring around 95-100%.

I used to score similarly, only I was more of a Killer, but these days, my gameplay preferences have become so distorted that I can no longer fit into the typical Killer/Achiever/Explorer/Socializer model well. Where does "Auction House Guy" and "Gold Farmer" fit?

 

[Grunker]

Of course I have a very specific way of playing where I deliberately avoid degeneracy that's very unlike how a lot of other people play.

I play pretty much the same way. In fact we just had a conversation about that topic in the LoX thread.

 

[Grunker]

Goat Vomit:

1) "no RTwP games have tactical combat." I think that's absurd, so we have the root cause of our disagreement.

2) what RPGs even have multiclassing? You must hate 99% of all RPGs, even most of the D&D ones? What an oddly specific thing to choose as a value-marker for all RPGs.

3) "character building is shit compared to most RPGs". Most Codex faves like PoR barely have character customization at all except for char creation. Most Infinity games are like this as well. Level up screens barely have more interaction than you clicking OK. Contrast to DA:O which has skill points and talents. Like VD outlines in his review, those talents are pretty broad.

4) I'd give it a solid B I guess, at least if we're actually comparing it to other RPGs that actually exist and not some standard of the perfect RPG that doesn't exist.

 

[MrBuzzKill]

I'm never going to buy this as long as it's Origin exclusive.

 

[Zero Credibility]

All this talk and RK47' LP of Inquisition made me give another try to Origins. Never finished the game the first time, got quite far but then lost interest (guess where).

Unfortunately, it's even less impressing now than it used to be when I played it the first time. Good things - the origin stories are a good idea, wish there that there are more stories to pick. And that they are better written. And I actually liked the fade part of the mage tower, probably because it was so different to the rest of the game. But I haven't got very far yet and I'm already feeling bored, that's not good at all.

The combat is clunky at best - far too often my melee fighters get in each other way or behind other characters and instead of going around them just sort of dance in place never attacking the enemy or forget what they were supposed to be doing and just stand there. I'm not a fan of cooldowns, or of everyone getting lots and lots of abilities that you then set to be used automatically. Or of everyone rising from the ground and auto healing after the battle as long as anyone survived. Group therapies around the campfire look as silly as I remember them. Story and writing are... not that great and at times stupid. Darkspawn are really uninspired and boring enemy, and despite supposedly invading are never actually a threat while I dick around.

All in all, when I'm playing this game the combatfag in me wishes I was playing BG2. Or just forget about rtwp and go play Divinity. And the storyfag in me is wishing I was playing MotB or PS:T. This is a game that for me just doesn’t do anything really good or memorable. It's not actually bad, just sort of boring.

 

[Roguey]

It's not surprising that dozens of people talking about a thing makes it seem like everyone's talking about said thing. I think we always go through this.

It boggles my mind how people buy and play RPGs they think they'll probably dislike on release when they're at their absolute worst. In 99% of cases it's better to wait at least a few months/patches, and unless it's doing Skyrim sales, it'll be discounted too (well, retail anyway, Steam's rules are a bit different). DA:O is part of the 1% where they made it even more unstable after the second patch, but I doubt I will turn out the same way.

 

[Commissar Draco]

Was planing to pirate this shit cause it was supposed to be bigger better DAO and after shity ME3 (completed once) and DA2 (uninstalled after the 1 Chapter) but Now I won't even want it for free; Unlike Twichers and Skyrim its bad action game in SJW sauce which no mods gonna fix; thank you Comrade RK-47 for sacrificing your sanity Points and Denuvo for preserving the purity of my HD. Only AAA Developer left worth my shekels is CDRP.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

It's not surprising that dozens of people talking about a thing makes it seem like everyone's talking about said thing. I think we always go through this.

It boggles my mind how people buy and play RPGs they think they'll probably dislike on release when they're at their absolute worst. In 99% of cases it's better to wait at least a few months/patches, and unless it's doing Skyrim sales, it'll be discounted too (well, retail anyway, Steam's rules are a bit different). DA:O is part of the 1% where they made it even more unstable after the second patch, but I doubt I will turn out the same way.

Because if a AAA company didn't have 1st day sales then they'd likely go bankrupt or be disowned by their publisher? Yes, everyone should wait for patches... but some people like the whole support the genre you like thing don't they...