A mini-rant on RPGs to start off the week (FF9 and DA: Origins)

[CaitSeith]

As several already pointed out, that's pretty much how Final Fantasy games from 4 (and lots of JRPGs back on the day) worked. The Scan spell shows up the weakness and remaining HP of one enemy. Enemies don't tell beforehand their attacks or target (except for some rare exceptions), so you must keep someone ready to heal others right after the enemy attacks. Tents are used on save points and the overworld to recover HP/MP and revive KO'ed party members, and they are relatively expensive at the beginning (usually having 2 to 5 at hand is good enough), but later on you gain much more money per battle.

I recon that even back on the day it wasn't everyone's cup of tea, but that's how classic JRPGs used to be.

OT: Right now I'm playing Let It Die. I tried it long ago; but only up to now decided to get deeper into the game (deeper = past the second floor). I think I'm still playing too conservatively; as I have died only once, unlocked/upgraded lots of equipment, increased most of my weapon mastery past level 10 (at least of the weapons I have found), and unlocked two more types of fighters.

 

[Ironman126]

snip

I played Tanky Human Warrior in all my playthroughs and I still had fun with the combat.

I'm not saying it's impossible to play and enjoy DA:O as a non-mage. It's possible. I've done it myself, with a ranged rogue, no less. But then I discovered godhood and never looked back.

DA:O is, despite Bioware's best efforts, almost a direct copy of D&D 3/3.5. Like D&D, the classes suffer from the old "Linear Fighter, Quadratic Mage" paradigm. Warriors are fine, but mages swiftly become gods.

 

[Jerast]

So many threads about people complaining that easy games are hard lately.

I mean, struggling with DA:Origins on EASY??????

No, this isn't lel git gud elitism. My wife smashed the game on easy playing an archer, and archers (unless mega min maxed with proper attribute builds and great skill builds, which I assure you hers was not) are complete and utter fucking garbage and do almost zero damage until new skill unlocks in the expansion pack awakening. She never character swapped or set up tactics and just played as her archer the whole game and still beat the game pretty easily.

I refuse to believe that anyone has trouble on easymode in origins, it's a complete joke. You can literally just walk your character up to enemies and hit them. Normal can be tricky but again almost any build in the game within fucking reason can work on normal. You only have to minmax your classes stats gear, abilities, class set up and actually play properly on the harder difficulties.

...

I kind of want to ask you to record yourself playing Origins on easymode and showing me how losing on easymode is even possible. To me it's like someone telling me they are finding Phoenix mode on fire emblem too tough.

 

[Dalisclock]

So many threads about people complaining that easy games are hard lately.

I mean, struggling with DA:Origins on EASY??????

No, this isn't lel git gud elitism. My wife smashed the game on easy playing an archer, and archers (unless mega min maxed with proper attribute builds and great skill builds, which I assure you hers was not) are complete and utter fucking garbage and do almost zero damage until new skill unlocks in the expansion pack awakening. She never character swapped or set up tactics and just played as her archer the whole game and still beat the game pretty easily.

I refuse to believe that anyone has trouble on easymode in origins, it's a complete joke. You can literally just walk your character up to enemies and hit them. Normal can be tricky but again almost any build in the game within fucking reason can work on normal. You only have to minmax your classes stats gear, abilities, class set up and actually play properly on the harder difficulties.

...

I kind of want to ask you to record yourself playing Origins on easymode and showing me how losing on easymode is even possible. To me it's like someone telling me they are finding Phoenix mode on fire emblem too tough.

I quit playing DA:O several times(I still haven't finished it) and some of the bosses I have to fight mutiple times because they repeatdly murder me. The most recent attempt to finish the game I got to the deep roads where I died like 10 times to the 3 assholes guarding the front door to the dwarf kingdom. Apparently those guys were a beef gate and I was too low a level and I somehow got past them by cheesing them(I don't remember how).

I don't know, maybe I suck at Dragon Age. Finished the Mass Effect Trilogy with few problems and I'm close to done with my third Dark Souls game(DS1, DS2 and BB), but for some reason, Dragon Age combat feels like much more of a pain. I normally play on the normal setting, but Dragon Age I made an exception and bumped it down because I was getting that frustrated with it.

So, yeah, people can stuggle with it on easy.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

So many threads about people complaining that easy games are hard lately.

I mean, struggling with DA:Origins on EASY??????

No, this isn't lel git gud elitism. My wife smashed the game on easy playing an archer, and archers (unless mega min maxed with proper attribute builds and great skill builds, which I assure you hers was not) are complete and utter fucking garbage and do almost zero damage until new skill unlocks in the expansion pack awakening. She never character swapped or set up tactics and just played as her archer the whole game and still beat the game pretty easily.

I refuse to believe that anyone has trouble on easymode in origins, it's a complete joke. You can literally just walk your character up to enemies and hit them. Normal can be tricky but again almost any build in the game within fucking reason can work on normal. You only have to minmax your classes stats gear, abilities, class set up and actually play properly on the harder difficulties.

...

I kind of want to ask you to record yourself playing Origins on easymode and showing me how losing on easymode is even possible. To me it's like someone telling me they are finding Phoenix mode on fire emblem too tough.

Come on man, we live in a post-Brexit, Trump-as-president world where Saudi Arabia was chosen to lead the UN council of women's rights. Nothing is impossible anymore in this brave new world!

As for your question, yes. Merely swapping out Morrigan and Alistair for Leliana and Sten, just because I wanted to test new party members out, I got absolutely ass rammed seven ways from Saturday by completely normal enemies. Not that I could tell why before swapping back, since, as I keep repeating myself, combat is completely incomprehensible to try to figure out where the weak link lies. When I swapped Morrigan and Alistair back, I barely had to look at the screen anymore. Again: for a game about supposed tacticality, the game is very rigid in how it expects you to play. It assumes the player to already be in the mindset of old school RPGs, and to adhere to the tank-DPS-healer formula and specific tactics. Here's a kicker: I don't even have a bloody healer in my party yet! All Morrigan's got is offensive and debuff spells. Yet still merely swapping one warrior for another, and a mage for a rogue apparently makes all the difference between death in seconds, and leaving the game to play itself. On the easiest difficulty setting!

A couple more points on this game's hostility to new players: Why does the game already throw another two party members at me when I can count the number of fights I've had with my current one with one hand? It only adds to the confusion when the player doesn't have a basic grasp of how combat works with that setup. Why does Morrigan start out with an entire laundry list's worth of spells and debuffs? Surely 3 or 4 would be enough, like an area of effect and single target damage spell, a basic debuff, and some emergency or healing spell. But no, there's an entire hot button bar's worth of spells because... why?