1950

It doesn’t autoresolve in your favor on hard all the time, you need to intervene. The trials in the last DLC can make it even harder too.

1951

To be clear, I’m talking about Hard, not Extreme. I found on Hard I could pretty much just spam all my cooldowns and win with minimal fuss unless the enemy had a big level advantage or expected some sort of active evasion of particular attacks. (So, giants and dragons required at least a little effort. Not much, though. Dragons are mainly just a pile of way too many HP.)

1952

So I guess at some point I will have no option but to choose between the mages and Templars? I think I am pretty much at that stage now. I imagine once I do the shit really hits the fan?

1953

Yes, it influences the story for the rest of the game. Whichever one you fight against, you see less of that type of enemy, the NPCs hanging around your castle change, and the quests are different for a bit.

1954

So I finished DA:I yesterday. I would have to put it third behind DA:O and DA2. In putting it third I don’t think it is a bad game, I just like how the others worked better. I found trying to play DA:I like DA:O was nearly impossible, the game just isn’t designed to let you do that.

Things I liked.

I liked the character interaction. The best part of the game is listening to your other party members talk to each other, and for the most part that gets better as the game goes along. The card game was a nice touch as well.

The combat was okay but often to easy. I played on regular mode and when you reach a point, fairly early in the game, most battles become quite easy.

The game involves crafting and collecting materials. Some of this is fine, some of it is overkill. But you only have to do what you want. You can make good weapons and armor, but you will also find good weapons and armor.

The re-introduction of past games characters. Who isn’t a Varrick fan? I did find it odd at first that they changed some what the appearance of some of them. I was also surprised by one near the end of the story, which left a question that I don’t think is ever answered.

What I Didn’t Like.

I couldn’t control all my party in combat. They tended to ignore certain commands, like hold.

Puzzles, god I hate puzzles. I know Baldurs Gate had them but it was easy to go online and find the answers at some forum. Even with youtube videos I couldn’t figure out at least one of the puzzles in this game which kept me from exploring an area.

Let’s face it, the plot is rather poorly explained. This is not a killer but they could have done better. Also early on there is little explanation on how to do some of the crafting. Given time I figured it out.

Cut scenes. There is a lot of cut scenes in this game. Much of the story exposition is done thru cut scenes but I think if you use them too much you risk losing immersion.

Overall a good game and one I will probably at some point re-play. Not a negative, but I did find it strange that as a male character I had more romanceable men than women. I also liked that old style female armor didn’t exist, except on a certain character who came from the first game. Bioware has obviously been paying attention.

1955

The game is easy even on Hard. Ultimately I ended up turning down the difficulty all the way just to spend less time in combat. Well, easy except for a few of the encounters in the DLC, anyway.

1956

I need to switch to easy mode so I’ll finally get around to finishing this on the PS4. I would really like to see how everything plays out one of these days.

1957

The grand ball or whatever at the Empress’ palace is one of the high points in CRPGs of the past 10 years. The rest, ehh, not so much.

1958

I play every game on normal. This one could have easily been played on hard.

I think there were several cool scenes in this game. The Grand Ball at Empress Celine’s was one. The card game at Skyhold was another. The scene after the destruction of Haven when the people sing that song.

And as I said above, the best part of any Dragon Age game is the banter between the characters in your party. The Iron Bull, who was voiced by Freddie Prinze jr., which I find amazing, had some pretty crazy dialogue.

1959

One of the saddest things I’ve read is people not realizing that there was party banter because they rode mounts everywhere, and when you’re mounted there is none. Don’t do this. The mounts barely increase your traversal speed and the sacrifice is enormously not worth it.

1960

I never even considered using a horse in DA. I am not sure why you would unless you thought that was just some wonderful feature you couldn’t live without.

1961

Apparently it was much requested or something. I don’t get it either.

1962

The combat has gone down hill since Origins, but Bioware still nails the other aspects - story, characters, how to extract an emotional reaction. It was a great looking game too.

1963

I didn’t even know we could use mounts.

1964

I think Trespasser is pretty good too. It’s not a Mass Effect Citadel send-off, but it ends the game tolerably well, and it wraps up the story of the Inquisitor in a really effective way, while answering a lot of questions about the lore and setting the scene for the future game.

I really enjoyed Jaws of Hakkon too. Well-made story with some really great background about the Last Inquisitor.

IMO, those two pieces of DLC are better than pretty much everything in the main game, other than the Grand Ball.

Didn’t much like Descent. Adds a bunch of lore that has fairly little connection with the rest of the Dragon Age mythos and ends the story with more questions than answers. Seems like a rule for Dragon Age that any content involving the Deep Roads has to suck.

1965

I agree except I also thought The Descent was better than the main game. It’s really impressive how good those DLCs are. So few hold up that well next to the games they’re for.

1966

Yes-- the song was another high point. Well said. We need more stuff like that in games.

1967

I also rate it 3rd and it was the only DA game I did not finish. Attempted to play it twice, got bored each time at some point. Pretty sure I didn’t put more than 20 hours in each time.

Loved the character banter and characters, liked the art design, presentation. But combat was really dull and at no point did I care what was going on.

And I am probably the odd one but I preferred 2 to the first game, warts and all.

1968

I know people hate the re-use of so many locations in the second game but I enjoyed the game itself.

One thing with these games is that when you make a decision about a character it has meaning.

Something else I forgot to mention was The War Room. I understand what they were trying to do with it, but for the most part it was a tremendous waste of time. I don’t see why most of the areas opened there couldn’t have been introduced by other means.

1969

Oh yeah. Tying that stuff to real-time has to rank as one of the more obnoxious decisions in a single-player CRPG ever.

I enjoyed the more “personal” scope of DA2 as well, though I don’t think they quite managed to pull it off. Especially because, despite the smaller scope, Hawke still ends up pretty much at the power-level of a god, just like the warden and the inquisitor. The contortions they have to go through in DA:I to explain why Hawke and the Warden (if he survived) don’t just go ahead and fix things are pretty absurd. Sure, both of them could defeat Corypheus with one hand tied behind their back if they wanted to, but they won’t because… reasons.