Board 8 > Is Dragon Age worth playing?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I'm only a few hours in and it seems ridiculously hard so far. I guess I could just switch it down to easy? Is it worth bothering, or should I just move on to something else?
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If you like fun fantasy storylines, yes. If you're finding it hard, I'm not sure what to tell you. It's a fairly easy game unless you're going into dungeon areas underleveled or without mages or something.
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I found it hard too since I'm not used to that kind of combat. I just got into the habit of saving extremely often.
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i suspect the difficultly depends on your class/stats, similar to kotor
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Also, make sure you pause during combat and take advantage of tactics in that way.
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I am playing through Inquisition right now and Im not impressed.

Origins I recall playing three playthroughs total, I liked it a lot, and I liked the characters and the lore.
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Inquisition has one of the best casts in gaming and the "setpieces" of the main story are nice.

That's it though.
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PC or console?

PC version was significantly more difficult while console had the combat system watered down.
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Dragon Age is much harder if you start as a Rogue because you won't have any of the serious benefits of either Rogue tree at first. I never played a Mage, but Warrior is far more capable early game than Rogue. It will both sponge and deal a lot more damage. All Rogue has to it's name early is a short, no-damage stun.

I would not recommend a Rogue start until you are more familiar with the game.

Unlike the people above, I will concede that DA:O is not all that easy at the beginning. I do believe it gets easier, once you start to develop your party and figure out a grouping that works for you. If you can get past Lothering and into the Mage's Tower, you should be somewhat good to go.

Origins is easiest as a mage. Hands down. Mostly because it's a real challenge to get through the Tower of Ishal without knowing what you're doing. You can kinda fumble your way through it as a mage, but warriors and rogues struggle with the crappy circle mage who usually gets killed and IIRC he can't heal. Then you've got the ogre fight at the end, which is easy if you know the right way to micromanage it, but is extremely challenging otherwise.
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Its a really good game. I consider it one to be played on the highest difficulty if you micro. The gameplay though already felt outdated when the game came out however and I much prefer the more arcade fast paced style of da2.
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If you can get past Lothering and into the Mage's Tower, you should be somewhat good to go.

Lothering is where I am now (PC version). Little groups of bandits are kicking my fucking ass, even as a warrior, I just take so much damage and don't deal nearly enough.
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Make sure you know your party well and what they can do for you. If you're using Morrigan for instance, you generally don't want her using her Shapeshift spells because they're not all that effective. If one of your characters can stun or draw attention to themselves, that's also useful. Keeping an eye on fatigue because of armor, and so on and so forth.
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Also mages are very strong and if you want a challenge and are competent at games like there I suggest your u dont start as one. You can do a ton of really dumb things with almost all mage specs in the game. The magic knight spec (forget what its actually called) is also extremely strong but I think it was patched.
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RyoCaliente posted...

Inquisition has one of the best casts in gaming and the "setpieces" of the main story are nice.

Really? I've recruited half the cast and they feel as dull as dishwater
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Yeah I think inquisitions best character is lelianna and shes from the first game. I guess Cassandra is the best new character but Id still put her behind a lot of the da2 and 1 cast.
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I really like the game. If you like the character interactions and/or the gameplay so far it's definitely worth playing through. It does get a bit easier as you go-- moreso depending on what class composition you're using in your party. Just remember that playing to the strengths is important. Like if you're a mage or a rogue you need Alistar to be drawing the enemies to him you can't just gung ho in.
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Also the only edition that is sold is with the dlc right? Because shale is awesome. I actually prefer Alistar for tanking but there are fights that are made trivial with Shales special properties.
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SmartMuffin posted...

If you can get past Lothering and into the Mage's Tower, you should be somewhat good to go.

Lothering is where I am now (PC version). Little groups of bandits are kicking my fucking ass, even as a warrior, I just take so much damage and don't deal nearly enough.

What kind of warrior are you? Sword and board, DW, or 2H? Because if it's not the former, you might want to get Alistair to be doing that and drawing the heat off you. Also make sure you're using Morrigan effectively. I recommend controlling your mages directly and letting the warriors just use gambits, since they're much easier to set up. But if you do use an AI mage, make sure you take away their stupid spells -- Morrigan starts with a few.

The bandit group at the beginning shouldn't be an issue. For the rest of Lothering, move around the map slowly and you should be able to draw in small packs of enemies without getting overwhelmed. Not getting gangbanged by multiple groups is crucial to success.
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For me it got harder and harder until I learned how to actually battle, but I really liked it
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Hmm, I might just have to bite the bullet and switch to easy. I'm wiping multiple times on literally every enemy group. Eventually I get past but it's not really fun to have to reload 5 times on every single battle.
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TheGoddamnSanta posted...

RyoCaliente posted...

Inquisition has one of the best casts in gaming and the "setpieces" of the main story are nice.

Really? I've recruited half the cast and they feel as dull as dishwater

I found all of them to have personality and interesting enough backstories to be engaging.
KokoroAkechi posted...

Yeah I think inquisitions best character is lelianna and shes from the first game. I guess Cassandra is the best new character but Id still put her behind a lot of the da2 and 1 cast.

...Eesh. Really? Alistair and Morrigan are such stereotypes, Oghren is fart jokes, Sten is ME1 Tali but for Qunari, Zevran is your typical "I fuck anyone" and Wynne is a grandmama. I find all of them be so clichd.

DA2 aren't clichs, but just awful. You have to deal with AnDERRRRRs, that dumb bitch Merrill, emo Fenris, slutBela,... And I LIKE Fenris and Isabela, but a cast with Anders and Merrill can only be the very very very worst cast in all of gaming history.

Spoilered the names just in case for TC.
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DA2 has like the best character in the entire series.
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ugh
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Personally, I tend to go with the easiest or second easiest difficulty for RPGs because the higher difficulties just mean enemies dish out and can endure more damage. The ramifications of that have absolutely no appeal to me.
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I liked it at first, but my opinion of it soured a lot the more I went on.

Like I don't think it's bad or anything, just a bit dull and padded out. I probably wouldn't have reached the point that I started finding it tedious if it was only half as long.
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SmartMuffin posted...

Hmm, I might just have to bite the bullet and switch to easy. I'm wiping multiple times on literally every enemy group. Eventually I get past but it's not really fun to have to reload 5 times on every single battle.

This was me for the longest time until I manually inputted every single action and paused to think strategy for everything.
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pjbasis posted...

SmartMuffin posted...

Hmm, I might just have to bite the bullet and switch to easy. I'm wiping multiple times on literally every enemy group. Eventually I get past but it's not really fun to have to reload 5 times on every single battle.

This was me for the longest time until I manually inputted every single action and paused to think strategy for everything.

I didn't do that, but I did control the mages and focus very heavily on CC. Forcefield and Crushing Prison to victory!
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Well that was probably the biggest difference, just making mages do quick cc or buff/debuff and concentrating damage to take care of problematic enemies quickly
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Oh a big thing about combat, and something I dont recall if they explain, is status chaining. A lot of special attacks either give or benefit from a status and chaining certain attacks in sequence is how you can clear fights easier.

IIrc its not as important in da1 as it is in 2 and 3 (mainly because in 1 you have a lot of cheese builds) but still something you want to do if youre not familiar with the style of game.
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Jesus Christ... I switched to easy and it got... a little easier, but not much. Bandits were dealt with, but then I wiped a couple times on a pack of freaking wolves.

I think I'm done.
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Are you playing without pausing? Because Ive beaten this game like multiple times and thats hard for me to do.
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Among the random map encounters, the wolves are one of the hardest.
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@SaveEstelle
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yeah he's not coming
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