Why Dragon Age Origins is underrated on rpgcodex?
I think it was the only example how modern AAA cRPG should have been made.
It had content that you can miss on first playthrought because of origin or chooses.
- tactical combat: enemies have access to same abilities as your party, no hordes of weak enemies
- dialogue options affect what will happen with current quest and story. Stats also affect dialogue, like strength and persuasion allows you to intimidate some NPCs.
What makes Divinity a better RPG when you can spam 1 in every conversation and it will always ends with fight ? All dialogue "options" are just questions to read more lore. And it forces you to complete every area in specific order by level. It's more like UFO Xcom games, with a lot of lore reading.
I think the problem is that although DAO does get a lot of RPG things right (and I personally like the lore, the atmosphere, the art design and the music), somehow the combat (the thing you're spending most of your time doing) is just boring at the end of the day, and the build system doesn't grab you. Hard to put my finger on just why, but I think it's that it has a generic feel that's a bit derived from the kind of MMO genericness that was popular at the time.
I would say it's a better game overall than DOS, and a better RPG, but DOSs combat was quirky enough to be interesting. (DOS2 is overrated though, I think.)
