Dragon fights were pretty ok. I recall having some hairy fights with them. Do they count as bosses?
I remember the first one being a pretty great fight, so I guess so.
My thought overall was that Inquisition was pretty good though it had some weird MMO vibe to it (with resources etc). But overall I had a great time with it. Crafting seemed a bit of a chore, and loot was a bit overwrought. But some nice personalities and some great environments. Even if that desert was 1000 square miles of … well… fluffiness.
The strength of the Dragon Age games has always been the companions.
I used a mod that removed the animation time for picking up loot and crafting materials, which probably saved me several years of my life.
I still prefer DA Origins overall, as it was amazing at the time. But Inquisition definitely felt like a three-quarter step towards a “return to form” for the series, after the abysmal DA2 with it’s recycled environments and “story” that goes over a cliff in a fiery explosion about three quarters of the way through.
I’ll never forget spending the entire fucking game talking to Anders about controlling his anger and desire for vengeance against the Templars, only to throw his character arc in the garbage and have him blow up the Chantry no matter what because reasons.
And then the leader of the mages turns himself into a blood magic monster because reasons.
Then you fight the leader of the Templars who has a red lyrium doll that turns the giant courtyard statues alive because reasons.
The ending basically happens because three principal characters have lost their minds and done stupid shit to advance the plot. I upgraded my entire PC in anticipation of Dragon Age 2, because I loved Origins so much. I was even enjoying it for a while. But I will never, ever forget the feeling of irritation that washed over me when I realized that the story was over, and it had ended in the dumbest way imaginable.
Yeah. Dragon Age 2 is a discombobulated pile of grabastic shit after Origins (and Expansion). It is probably the most straight up betrayal sequel…in terms of mechanics, combat, controls, story/presentation, choice, everything.
I will fight you on liking DA2 because it’s a focused game with a small scale (only Kirkwall) that had too much asset reuse because of a rushed development time frame.
Assent reuse is the least of DA2’s problems.
We go from a free camera tactical party combat to a locked-to-character camera with combat that auto-completes itself.
We go from hand-crafted enemy encounters to generic re-spawning enemy encounters replete with loads of trash fodder
We go from challenging boss fights to total gimmicky MMO boss bullshit.
We go from old witch living in a modest hut to obnoxious anime grandma dragon bitch…
We go from choices and consequences to…your choices don’t really matter at all. (Fuck you Anders!)
Coming from Origins it is just insulting. I like small scale RPGs but DA2 just sucks. The combat is bad and the choices you make don’t matter.
Enemy respawns floating down from the sky was probably the #1 most annoying aspect of DA2 for me.
I liked DA2 for this reason (small scale).
Having played tons of JRPGs where enemies spawn randomly, the “enemies out of the sky” didn’t bother me much; however, the asset reuse did bug me.
What bothered me most was the crappy last 3rd of the game. The ending was atrocious.
But that shouldn’t make DA2 stick out too much: it’s not like the trilogy is so fantastic. First game was pretty good but had those very small, linear environments (that irked me way back in Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire).
Inquisition started of with promise, but the much larger game areas were filled with lots of dull, repetitive MMO-like content and the war room (or war table or whatever it was called) also looked promising but didn’t change gameplay in any meaningful way that I remember.
Hey, I finally get to agree with rei on something! I enjoyed 2 a lot, probably more than Origins. As mentioned above, the game lives and dies by the companions and I liked the ones in 2 much better, especially Varric.
The best thing about DA2 was Sarcastic Hawke. I dare anybody to disagree.
There was a ton of stuff I hated about DA2, but I also struggle to go back and play Origins for a whole host of other reasons. And overall, I quite liked both games.
Until the story goes to hell, I prefer DA2’s story a ton, and the companions are substantially better (though Morrigan and Alistair remain standout favourites). The combat is more tactical in Origins, but the engine handles user input in this sort of ‘oh, I’ll try, if I get around to it’ sort of way that makes that tactical play more frustrating than fun. And having the main character voiced is a huge step up in immersion in the world.
I would really like to have seen DA2 with a proper development time-frame. I think it would have been pretty wonderful. As it is, like others I find the crazy ending, recycled areas and ‘action!!!’ combat a bit hard to forgive. I could have probably let them get away with one.
(In terms of ‘tone’ of DA2, including enemies dropping down from the sky, the fact the entire game is delivered via the unreliable narrator that is Varric does leave plenty of narrative explanation available!)
I remain forever bemused that people have all these (perfectly valid) problems with DA2, and then ME2, which I think is a worse betrayal of what came before, gets held up as the best game in the series.
Both games have amazing companions, though, I will give them that. Though I think ME2 does win in that respect because even before act 3 I hate what they did to Anders in DA2. There wasn’t equivalent character assassination in ME2.
I’ve never understood quite why ME2 is so highly regarded myself, when it’s always felt much more tightly controlled and along the critical path with little room for deviation than the others (except 3 I guess). Given how highly ME2 is thought of and how poorly Andromeda is though, it’s clear that most people love the ME series for damn near opposite reasons that I do.
But I guess I don’t mind it as much in the DA series, since DA2 is set up to focus around events in that one city, almost like playing a game set in Pratchett’s Night Watch series - oh man, I hope somebody is working on one of those!
I’m under the impression that ME 2 outsold ME by… a lot. This means a lot people who played 2 never played 1 which means there was no strange change. I am one of those players.
I also appear to be in minority that prefers 1 to ME2.
I preferred ME1 to 2 as well. ME2 seemed a step backwards to me.
I can’t really agree with this.
The gameplay shift and general dumbing down between Origins and DA2 is pretty overt and jarring. It is impossible to play it the same way. Where as in both ME1 and ME2 you are…shooting things with a gun.