Am I the only one who thinks dragon age was bland?

[Inferno_622]

I agree with the OP. Bland is probably the way I would describe the game. Heck, I even played it on console so I had an even worse experience when it came to combat/menus and a lack of mods.

I think part of the problem for me is related the "moral choices" you had to make. I felt that none of them really made any sort of impact to me. I understand that with their doing away of the "morality slider" (dark side/light side - way of open palm/closed fist - that sort of thing) they tried to show us that there was no right and wrong in any given situation. Heck, on one of my playthroughs I

Spoiler

decided to kill the Connor kid from the get-go (my girlfriend wouldn't speak to me for hours! )

and realised that there really isn't much difference from an alternate scenario in which

Spoiler

Isolde is sacrificed to save Connor

When I was first reading previews for the game I thought that removing the good/bad scale was a good idea, because it meant you could make decisions you personally agree with, rather than identifying "Oh, that's the naughty thing to do, I'll do that!" and choosing to do it so you can reach the end of the scale. But in practice, I think removing it broke any sort of replayability for me. The story was too similar no matter what choices you made, and the consequences you see later on are either slight, inconsequential ("Hey, you're playing as an Elf. I'm going to mention you're an Elf before we have our otherwise normal conversation!), or will only truly have an effect in a 'Dragon Age 2.'

Also I found the DLC to be lacking.

 

[Ekonk]

No. Next thread.


(And no, I never played Dragon Age.)

 

[veloper]

Combat and gameplay mechanics in DA was the best thing Bioware ever did since BG2:soa.
Shame the encounters were just too repetive.

Setting and plot are above average for a game, but too much mediocre dialogue drags the whole thing down. Bio need better writers and drop the olde english crap.

The reason I like DA is because the combat clicks with me, while the writing and the loot handout needs the most work.

 

[Hiphophippo]

I thought that outside of the battle at ostragar the game started out pretty slow, yea. Picked up steam though and turned out quite good.

 

[Mokuren]

It was so boring I couldn't bother to continue after I went more or less halfway through it.

Seriously, no matter how much I worked on improving the characters, moving the plot around, trying to make an impact on the setting and stuff, I... It was just plain boring.

I don't know what's up with contemporary RPGs, thinking that "quest" equals to "12 gameplay hours of fights, cutscene, then go to the map and pick another fight". It's not that I don't like fighting, quite the contrary since I love both Icewind dale and its sequel, not to mention other pure dungeon crawling oldies, but Dragon Age doesn't present itself as a dungeon crawl, so it's very disappointing when you realize it actually is but a straight line of encounters.

I didn't hate the characters, some were actually nice (except for Morrigan, who was just a whiny griefer, regardless of whatever she was originally intended to be) and the dialogue and party banter wasn't bad, but the "pick the right answer to win points" minigame was kind of boring, the benefits were hardly worth the trouble and once you figured out which items were meant for who, it got so easy it was even pointless to try.

But the combat. Man, the combat is the most boring thing ever, the game system is built so that there are, like, three valid builds for every class and if you screw up you gotta set the game on easy and hope you're lucky, plus there's so little variation it's not funny, and it boils down to, at best, elemental rock paper and scissors.

I concede, in titles like BG2, 99.9% of the tactics and variation came from spells and magic items (that's old school D&D for you, either you're a caster or you just roll until you drop), but at least you had plenty of choices, some of which worked depending not only on the opponents but also on the party configuration and the tide of the battle. I don't feel like Dragon Age gave anything like this to me, some options were clearly inferior to others and in the end, you just spammed your two special moves over and over and over and over and over.

I believe the real reason for which DA was a hit is that it came out in an absolute void of western CRPGs, I think the last title of its kind was Neverwinter Nights 2, and I believe no other western CRPG came out after Dragon Age, which means it's still the only option for fans of the genre, whether they like it or not.

It's a shame, really. Sometimes I wish there was more space in the industry for something that isn't about testosterone-filled brown supersoldiers in a world painted brown shooting at clearly less macho insectoid enemies.

 

[Eternalsun]

I liked it but i hated the combat

 

[luckshot]

it does give me the feeling of 'bleh' whenever i think about replaying it

 

[Aisaku]

The origin stories were great, most of them could've been great inroductions to a full game. But once you've become a Grey Warden, world's greatest suicidal errand boy I had to really push myself to go thru bland quest to bland quest, just waiting for the game to get back to the sense of purpose the origin story had but no, you just kept being some sort of pest control for the darkspawn whenever you go. And even that feels futile, since you know that:

1. Most of the people you 'save' it's only to leave their homes behind,
still razed by the darkspawn.
2. By joining the Wardens, you're screwed.

So I just called it quits. Maybe in a year or so I'll try it again. Maybe.

Even Mass Effect 1 and 2 seem shorter in comparison, they're a lot more flavorful, intense and rewarding. Conversations feel like real conversations, not just people rambling to a mute telepath. Quests, if few and small, make you feel like you accomplished something. I only hope having the Dragon Age sequel this soon doesn't mean they'll work less on ME 3.