Dragon Age - Review at Destructoid

Another review for Dragon Age: Reviews comes from Desctructoid 7.5/10
The reviewer felt that both the world and the lore is intriguing and beautiful. He also thinks the choices in the game are superb as they are not just black and white. He is very critical about the tactics system used in the game, and has a few other complaints as well.
The conclusion sets the tone for the review:

Dragon Age: Origins is a game that once looked set to be the best RPG of the year. It has a great story, high production values, and one of the most immersive worlds ever created in a videogame. Tragically, Origins' considerable high points have been squandered on a frustrating, unbalanced combat system, and a customizable A.I that's just too broken to adequately customize.

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More information.

Nice to see someone criticizing the game.

I just give it a shot and played for a moment. I have to say that it doesn't feel all perfect. The gameplay is very simple as well as character generation, character development and combat. The story starts so that you can easily follow it and characters are done well, making it an awesome adventure game, but it just barely fits to RPG category. The game is even more simplified than KoTOR and all RPG elements are all seen before.

The graphics are okay at the best, no *wow* effect. Even two years old The Witcher looks as good as Dragon Age. And the game runs in 1920x1080 everything maxed out perfectly in my old, but I guess it's because there isn't any fancy effects...

Nothing new here, but I try to give it another shot later...

Feels like a review written by a console kid who doesn't want to bother pausing the game, lowering the difficulty level or just 'think'.

vanedor said:

Feels like a review written by a console kid who doesn't want to bother pausing the game, lowering the difficulty level or just 'think'.

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I know, the funny thing is, as he was describing the bad parts of the game, I was getting more excited about the game. 'Game is too difficult' *good* 'Not enough healing potions' *great* 'Not many items' *great* 'Slow leveling' *awesome*. I mean, it's like he was saying the things I like the most and he was saying they're bad lol.

vanedor said:

Feels like a review written by a console kid who doesn't want to bother pausing the game, lowering the difficulty level or just 'think'.

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My thoughts exactly. The reviewer even states implicitly that he expected it to play like KOTOR which required absolutely no control of teammates and could be played pretty much the whole way through in almost real time without changing control. He then goes on to state that, therefore, Bioware must have been trying to make an RTS. An RTS!!. Clearly this is not the person who has the patience or demeanor to enjoy a truly tactical turn-based type combat.

Complaints like these from reviewers like these only add points for me. Will have to see how it actually plays, but frankly I'm glad to hear its tough and would be incredibly upset if it just was a KOTOR.

I totally agree with you, dagoo7 and wolfing. Most of his complains actually sounded to me as some great news such as herborism being *actually* useful!

dagoo7 said:

I'm glad to hear its tough and would be incredibly upset if it just was a KOTOR.

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I couldn't have said it any better. KotR was incredibly overrated to me, and I've been praying that DA will be nothing similar.

I'm a little nervous about certain things though, such as the small variety of character classes, and especially the fact that your max party size is only 4 people.

I have no doubt that DA is dumbed down compared to the Infinity Engine games, I just hope it's better than Bioware's more recent titles.

While I had some sympathy for the Eurogamer criticisms, I really don't agree with this review at all.

I've only had to reload a handful of times, playing normal difficulty, 12 hours in. (Yes, I played the game for 12 hours yesterday). I use the tactics. They are handy for trash battles. I set the Warrirors to use buffs appropriate to their role, and pop their abilities. I tend to keep full control over the casters, though. My guy is a Primalist Mage with badass AoE, and I have him set to use no AI tactics.

Inferno looks awesome, and is awesomely powerful, btw. Fireball and Chain Lightnight are also awesome.

Wow, sounds like he really got his ass kicked, and he's sore about it. I agree with what's been said earlier. It's hard? Well, good. It requires individual control of party members? Well, good. That's the kind of game I expected.

He makes it sound impossibly hard, actually, though. Example: "no amount of tactics can craft a team capable of dealing with the myriad obstacles constantly thrown at players." I don't think that's a "console kid" thing, since he says the PC version is the best and it shouldn't even have been made for the consoles (silly person). It sounds like he just found the game impossibly difficult.

I've been playing this for a couple of hours; taking my time and trying to immerse myself as much as possible. So far...color me impressed. I put it on Nightmare difficulty, and already I'm seeing reasons to pause and contemplate my actions. I wasn't a big fan of the last few Bioware titles, but this one has already grabbed me. I hope to garner some more impressions tonight, if my woman doesn't make me take her to bed.

For the first fifteen hours or so, players don't have to worry about it, but once the game ramps up the difficulty, allied characters gladly march into death, helped along by the fact that the A.I is pure garbage. Suddenly, players find themselves bogged down in endless and pedantic micromanagement as they blindly experiment with different tactics in a vain bid to keep allies alive. The pre-set tactics provided for players that don't like micromanagement are worthless, and require constant tweaking.

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I'm not a fan of party combat, tb or rt w/pause, I put up with them in rpgs but it's not what I play these games for.

While DA's difficulty options do clearly state that if I intend to play it real time while only controlling one char I should set it on easy, which I have and has been working so far, the reviewer says this only happens during the first 15 hours or so.

If you're eventually forced to take control of every party member successively, picking their actions during combat in order to survive then this will be a valid flaw for people like me who dislike this sort of combat and would just rather be able to get it over with as quickly as possible.

And I never needed to micromanage in nwn2's higher difficulties for instance, despite the fact that it wasn't trying to appeal to as wide an audience as DA is.

Now this is probably because I'm doing something wrong with the Tactics system as I haven't bothered customizing it but I'm also finding that even when set to "scrapper+aggressive" my melee npcs will kill one enemy and stand still, ignoring a foe that's right next to them attacking me, I have to select them and tell them to attack.
And the reviewer does complain that the Tactics system isn't working as it should and the AI is garbage.

It's great that you guys enjoy micromanaging a party for combat and choosing every action, but that's not the only way to do combat in the game and if this way is broken it's a valid complaint. Just one that doesn't affect you.

Where does he say he played it on "easy"? If he played it on "normal", isn't it exactly as promised? This is supposed to a Baldur's Gate spiritual successor and some of the mage battles in BG2 were pretty tough.

Pretty much every criticism he had made me more excited.

KapitanUnterhosen said:

Now this is probably because I'm doing something wrong with the Tactics system as I haven't bothered customizing it but I'm also finding that even when set to "scrapper+aggressive" my melee npcs will kill one enemy and stand still, ignoring a foe that's right next to them attacking me, I have to select them and tell them to attack.
And the reviewer does complain that the Tactics system isn't working as it should and the AI is garbage.

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Well, I have never had an npc standing idle after killing his/her target, and I have been using mostly default AI. Perhaps check your setting again ?

I give them a year to fix it up, then i might play it. Could be a game worth waiting for (no, i dont consider games finished just because it's out in the stores).

He doesn't specify whether he played it on easy or normal, but given how the game explicitly states in the difficulty settings for normal that you will have to do some amount of pausing during combat I assume he had the common sense to not complain about something that can be changed in the options.

Well, I have never had an npc standing idle after killing his/her target, and I have been using mostly default AI. Perhaps check your setting again ?

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I had it all on default until this started happening, after that I tried switching to scrapper+aggressive, with the original values for the presets.

I give them a year to fix it up, then i might play it.

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What is it you need them to fix? What's so broken about the game that makes it not worth playing now?

KapitanUnterhosen said:

What is it you need them to fix? What's so broken about the game that makes it not worth playing now?

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It's not very common that a game is balanced perfectly and bug free at release, such things takes a lot of time and input from players. It seems to have good mod support too, which could possibile also fix things that arent perfect. It's a waste playing a game that is perhaps good now but most probably much much better in a year (or so).

Few games have problems as severe as the witcher's excessive loading times or bloodlines' society of leopold bug, nearly all games have bugs and nearly all games still have bugs after they've been getting patches for well over a year.

They're just minor and happen to a minority of users. Most games certainly don't become "much better" after having a few minor bugfixes that only happen to a tiny% of people with possibly pirated copies or unstable systems.

DA doesn't seem to need mods like a bethesda game, unless a nude Morrigan mod makes it much better.

Honestly, holding back from a game for a year because of the -possibility- of running into bugs(are people even complaining about DA being buggy?) despite knowing that even after a year you'll still -possibly- run into bugs, now *that's* a waste.