I'm 12 hours into the game, having just defended Redcliffe from the undead horde. So far I've found rather little to enjoy in this game. It's not actively bad, but nothing really grabs my attention or interest much, and the combat bores me to tears.
The constant inventory and equipment management is annoying. Granted, it's nowhere near Diablo levels since you're controlling an entire party instead of a single character, but it still gets annoying. For example, having to separately compare the damage numbers on new weapons instead of them being color coded (as in, green text if the new one is better than what you're currently holding). Then there's the bizarre design choice of controlling inventory size by number of item stacks, not items themselves. So 99 crafting items take up exactly as much space as a single ruby or a jar of poison.
The combat is boring, utterly uninvolving and most of the time completely incomprehensible. I kept getting my ass kicked on normal difficulty despite trying to optimize the tactics, but couldn't figure out what was wrong because the combat is a goddamn chaos of attack animations, numbers flying and enemies swarming everywhere. I still haven't figured out if my debuff attacks as an archer even make any difference after switching to easy. Trying to be tactical with backstabs seems entirely pointless, since the enemies are constantly moving, and the backstab bonus is so piddly it hardly makes any difference. At times my character seems to miss like 5 out of 6 shots, and not having any control over it is frustrating. It's all essentially just debuffing and plinking at the enemy that Alistair has drawn to himself, and letting Morrigan do all the damage. And it has all the impact and satisfaction of folding my shirts.
The writing and characters are mostly fine, but feel awfully bland and verbose. This is a cliche at this point, but after Witcher 3 it's hard for me to get invested in the typical "end of the world" fantasy RPG plot anymore, even if it's better written than most. When Witcher 3 told a small, personal story about a father looking for his daughter excellently for the first 40 hours or so, and then one of an epic, world-spanning conflict just as well, it's completely uninteresting to jump straight into "oh no the world is doomed" right away. Thing is, Witcher 3's world wasn't doomed. It was shitty, but in a "that's how the world works" way. It also had humor, unexpected twists and turns like ending up in a play or meeting a transvestite elf, snappy and concise dialogue, lots of color and personality, lovable characters and villains that felt human. So far none of the characters in DA:O have grabbed me as much as Keira Metz or the Bloody Baron. Alistair feels like a typical do-goody templar, and Morrigan almost cartoonishly cunty and cynical, and neither in an interesting way.
I could go on (like how Morrigan starts out with an entire laundry list of spells instead of something manageable), but I think I've illustrated my point. Is there any moment or setpiece still in waiting that would completely change my opinion if there's not been one up until now? Like I said, I don't hate this game, but find little involvement in it. I do enjoy the storytelling and roleplaying aspect when it pops up, but the ratio of that vs. the slog of combat is too skewed towards the latter for me to keep going at the moment. Perhaps this'll end up in the "shit that's not for me" department.
The constant inventory and equipment management is annoying. Granted, it's nowhere near Diablo levels since you're controlling an entire party instead of a single character, but it still gets annoying. For example, having to separately compare the damage numbers on new weapons instead of them being color coded (as in, green text if the new one is better than what you're currently holding). Then there's the bizarre design choice of controlling inventory size by number of item stacks, not items themselves. So 99 crafting items take up exactly as much space as a single ruby or a jar of poison.
The combat is boring, utterly uninvolving and most of the time completely incomprehensible. I kept getting my ass kicked on normal difficulty despite trying to optimize the tactics, but couldn't figure out what was wrong because the combat is a goddamn chaos of attack animations, numbers flying and enemies swarming everywhere. I still haven't figured out if my debuff attacks as an archer even make any difference after switching to easy. Trying to be tactical with backstabs seems entirely pointless, since the enemies are constantly moving, and the backstab bonus is so piddly it hardly makes any difference. At times my character seems to miss like 5 out of 6 shots, and not having any control over it is frustrating. It's all essentially just debuffing and plinking at the enemy that Alistair has drawn to himself, and letting Morrigan do all the damage. And it has all the impact and satisfaction of folding my shirts.
The writing and characters are mostly fine, but feel awfully bland and verbose. This is a cliche at this point, but after Witcher 3 it's hard for me to get invested in the typical "end of the world" fantasy RPG plot anymore, even if it's better written than most. When Witcher 3 told a small, personal story about a father looking for his daughter excellently for the first 40 hours or so, and then one of an epic, world-spanning conflict just as well, it's completely uninteresting to jump straight into "oh no the world is doomed" right away. Thing is, Witcher 3's world wasn't doomed. It was shitty, but in a "that's how the world works" way. It also had humor, unexpected twists and turns like ending up in a play or meeting a transvestite elf, snappy and concise dialogue, lots of color and personality, lovable characters and villains that felt human. So far none of the characters in DA:O have grabbed me as much as Keira Metz or the Bloody Baron. Alistair feels like a typical do-goody templar, and Morrigan almost cartoonishly cunty and cynical, and neither in an interesting way.
I could go on (like how Morrigan starts out with an entire laundry list of spells instead of something manageable), but I think I've illustrated my point. Is there any moment or setpiece still in waiting that would completely change my opinion if there's not been one up until now? Like I said, I don't hate this game, but find little involvement in it. I do enjoy the storytelling and roleplaying aspect when it pops up, but the ratio of that vs. the slog of combat is too skewed towards the latter for me to keep going at the moment. Perhaps this'll end up in the "shit that's not for me" department.
