Poll: Favorite Dragon Age

[RealRT]

They never were good. Uninspired, sucky, unoriginal as all hell. And before people start calling "TROOOOOOOOOOLL! TROLL!", no. I honestly consider Dragon Age: Origins BioWare's most formulaic game, the most paint-by-numbers thing I've seen from them. It's the story that I've seen done by these very developers several times over and I've seen it done better. BG, NWN, KotOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect - they all did the same basic story and Dragon Age did little to spice up the formula. The usual saving grace of those games - the party members - misfire pathetically, with being either annoying or boring, the visuals are marred by being too brown and the music is just_plain_BAD. Inon Zur's soundtrack was PATHETIC. And the second game reuses most of it. Ain't that awesome (no it ain't).

 

[Frankster]

*snip*

Fair enough, I guess I can understand better with that perspective.

Best thing about Inquisition is that it both are perfectly valid.

But I vehemently disagree with this. Allow me to try to explain just why Da3's combat is horrible if you're coming into from a dragon age 1 tactical perspective.

The tactics mode is there in Da3 but to use it extensively is just an exercise in masochism, let alone trying to play the game exclusively through it.
Putting aside the perspective issues that make tactical mode impractical to use, the simple fact that you can't queue orders like in da1/2 and your companions don't listen to even basic orders like "hold ground" for more then a few seconds coupled with the game teleporting characters around making a mockery of any placement you might be doing makes the tactical mode there in name and little else.

Say what you will about Da1 but in that game I could have it set up so that my tank intercepts enemies going for my mages, whilst my assassin goes for enemy squishy targets, my offensive mage focuses on aoe attacks aimed at clustered groups and my healer heals and buffs as situation requires. I could set all that up with a minimum of fuss.

I could also do that in Da2, only the respawning enemies would fuck up my plans due to enemies spawning behind my healer, forcing me to scramble my positions.

In da3? Ha! Literally the only thing you could do is "go after my target" or "go after x's target", that+use of potions and abilities (and not even under specific conditions, you can only dictate their frequency) is about the extent of the tactical pre battle planning you can do in Da3.

/nerdrant

 

[Jak2364]

Well, so far DA2 has been the only one I've managed to actually completely replay so I'm leaning towards that one, but I think Inquisition is my favorite since I've had the most fun overall with that one. They've all had the same problem of having slow points but DA2's "slow point", the repetitive environments, was somehow more tolerable to me. Origins I liked the least, it was just way too slow for me and there wasn't a whole lot there that I actually enjoyed. And while I hated that decisions in DA2 didn't really matter, I still enjoyed the character interactions and combat much more than Origins. Inquisition was great up until the end of my first playthrough and it feels really slow second playthrough, once you realize that not much that you do in each of the environments actually has an impact on the main story, it makes me want to just rush everything.

 

[ecoho]

honestly id rank DA:O last out of the three but that's mostly because the combat was very meh. Don't get me wrong I loved the origin story I got for every character but I think it was when I hit the deep roads that it really got tedious to fight the same fight with different looking enemies. This may be because at a certain point you can break the game as a mage or really any class with a good set up. Its also not good when the Xpac awakening was better then the original game....

Now dragon age 2 with all its flaws has a great combat system or at least a very enjoyable one, even if I had to use a game pad. the story wasn't great but the characters were if you took the time to really talk to them(except anders fuck anders)

Personally to me DA:I has the best of both worlds, just enough rpg elements to make you think but not too much to make it a math problem, great characters, and a fluent combat system that's actually fun to play tactically.

All that said though its like picking your favorite Ice cream, they're all good but some are just a bit better

 

[AntiChri5]

*snip*

Fair enough, I guess I can understand better with that perspective.

Best thing about Inquisition is that it both are perfectly valid.

But I vehemently disagree with this. Allow me to try to explain just why Da3's combat is horrible if you're coming into from a dragon age 1 tactical perspective.

The tactics mode is there in Da3 but to use it extensively is just an exercise in masochism, let alone trying to play the game exclusively through it.
Putting aside the perspective issues that make tactical mode impractical to use, the simple fact that you can't queue orders like in da1/2 and your companions don't listen to even basic orders like "hold ground" for more then a few seconds coupled with the game teleporting characters around making a mockery of any placement you might be doing makes the tactical mode there in name and little else.

Say what you will about Da1 but in that game I could have it set up so that my tank intercepts enemies going for my mages, whilst my assassin goes for enemy squishy targets, my offensive mage focuses on aoe attacks clustering groups and my healer heals and buffs as situation requires. I could set all that up with a minimum of fuss.

I could also do that in Da2, only the respawning enemies would fuck up my plans due to enemies spawning behind my healer, forcing me to scramble my positions.

In da3? Ha! Literally the only thing you could do is "go after my target" or "go after x's target", that+use of potions and abilities (and not even under specific conditions, you can only dictate their frequency) is about the extent of the tactical pre battle planning you can do in Da3.

/nerdrant

But, in Origins, the balance is so utterly pathetic that none of that is even vaguely necessary. Once you figure out which abilities are duds and not worth taking, you are done. There isn't a shred of tactical choice there. I got a character through the entire game, expansion, all DLC's on Nightmare without dying once.

I mean, fucking Mana Clash, man. What the hell.

 

[TristanBelmont]

Inquisition is the best, neither of the others are really all that bad or good. DA 3 just seems to achieve the "Singleplayer MMO" Bioware seems to have been going for with this series.

 

[zerragonoss]

*snip*

Ultimately, it comes down to personal tastes. For me, the Tactical Mode and Companion Tactics are wasted, but they're a great option for those that want to use it. Best thing about Inquisition is that it both are perfectly valid.

Playing tacitly in Inquisition is really just not an option unless you really try a good third the abilities and several specializations either are much weaker or just don't work unless controlled in the action mode. On the other hand that fact makes it a passable action game.

Having said that and, preferring tactical combat, I still like inquisition the best and origins the least. I played both 1 and 2 with the AI off and controlling all my party members, one had the better camera for it but its actual encounter structure and balance made it much worse tacitly to me. 90% of encounter were solved in the first few seconds, than the rest of combat was just a slough to watch what you knew would happen already. Twos extra spawn waves and faster pace at least kept things interesting. Also in one I would have run four mages if that was an option without a second thought two and three included cross class combos and just better abilities in general for non mage classes.

As for story I liked two the best because just found the other two somewhat boring, though I do like the religious questions brought up by the mark and the bad guy in three. I have not finished it though they may go away by the end. I have never actually cared that much about plots in games or plots in general for that matter its just the least important part of a story.

As for characters and dialogue I have to give it to three. No long explanation their since I just don't live in the same world as most people, at least form what I tend to think about characters relative to them.

Finally none one and two don't come anywhere near to Inquisition in the looting and exploration department, I love a good crafting system and loot that can actually affect your character build.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

Haven't looked if it's been mentioned already, but the wording of the poll's a bit off, isn't it? 'Best' and 'worst'. What about 'favourite' and 'least favourite'? Why must it be about an emotive value proclamation? Those tend to end badly...

Favourite: Dragon Age 2 - adore the day/month/year-in-the-life narrative, default'n'witty FemHawke, and the way the companions feel like they actually have their own lives to lead, as opposed to just being RPG Party Members Available For Dungeon Delving.

Least favourite: Inquisition - still not finished it yet, but it generally goes in the opposite direction (dumbed down combat/no Tactics, stripped out RPG elements, [mostly] open-world, Chosen One narrative, eschews 'cinematic' dialogue presentation most of the time, etc) with regards to design choices that I like, so DA:I gets the title of Least Favourite just by default. I think the Inquisitor/Herald is dull as dishwater compared to Jo Wyatt's Hawke, too.

I don't think any of them are bad (or 'worst'), per se, as all three games are flawed, but still generally lovable.

 

[Frankster]

snap

Yeah there was tons of way to break the game Invincible Arcane Warrior would be my own favorite choice if I was trying to do something like what you did.

Took me quite a few playthroughs to reach that point in the game though, and by that time I discovered mods which greatly remedied balance issues (I did say "with mods is actually one of the best turn by turn combat rpg experiences you can get"). Actually I should add this as another positive for Da:O, it's the most mod friendly of the 3 games, for Da2 mod content is still lacking and whilst it's still early for the Da3 modding scene seems at best we can only hope for visual mods atm.

Besides if we are going to talk about balance in Da games in general... *cough* Tempest specialization in Da3 killing anything in seconds *cough* Knight Enchanter Specialization all you need to solo anything *cough*

 

[Infernai]

Dragon Age: Origins is probably the one I liked the most of the three. Everything just came together well, the characters were likeable and memorable, my character actually did feel like a badass at the end and it did feel like I'd left a mark on the world (For reference: I played a Dalish elf warrior that shagged Morrigan) who eventually got a proper send-off of sorts at the end of Witch Hunt.

Dragon Age 2 meanwhile was a case of "I respect what you were going for, but you botched the execution". The Combat mechanics were definitely faster paced then 1 and I did enjoy how it worked, but the "Wave after wave of enemies from pouring out from the warp" got annoying as did the constantly repeating environments. I was able to tolerate the companions and I did like some of them (Varric), but the rest were kind of a resounding "Meh" for me. Didn't hate 'em, didn't love 'em although my Hawke did shack up with Merril. Then there's Anders...I think we all know what happened there. The fact that Hawke was largely, in a way, pointless and the story was another thing that pissed me off. All that's accomplished is the mages and templars go to war, no matter how hard you try to stop it. At the end of the day, Dragon Age 2 was a game that just should have been a mini-series or tie-in-comic or something. Aside from the Mage and Templar war, it just didn't add anything meaningful and would have been better as a side-story then a mainstay entry. I can respect it wanted to tell a more personal story...the problem is that this personal story just felt pointless to me and in the end I just didn't view Kirkwall as a home or even a place worth saving.

Inquisition, so far from what i've played, doesn't have the problem of "You're accomplishing nothing" that Dragon Age 2 did. It also has Varric in it, this is a plus. As I was originally a hack-and-slash gamer I am not really against the changes made to combat and mechanics, but I can understand that those who were comfortable with how Origins handled combat would be upset that it's basically coming down to button mashing. Now, I'm not at the end of Dragon age Inquisition yet (Not by a long shot, I've literally only just had the Templars disbanded and reorganized into the Inquisition) but I'm not hating it. I do however acknowledge that it's weaker then Origins in a lot of area's...it's still better then Dragon Age 2 though.

 

[AntiChri5]

snap

Yeah there was tons of way to break the game Invincible Arcane Warrior would be my own favorite choice if I was trying to do something like what you did.

Took me quite a few playthroughs to reach that point in the game though, and by that time I discovered mods which greatly remedied balance issues (I did say "with mods is actually one of the best turn by turn combat rpg experiences you can get"). Actually I should add this as another positive for Da:O, it's the most mod friendly of the 3 games, for Da2 mod content is still lacking and whilst it's still early for the Da3 modding scene seems at best we can only hope for visual mods atm.

Besides if we are going to talk about balance in Da games in general... *cough* Tempest specialization in Da3 killing anything in seconds *cough* Knight Enchanter Specialization all you need to solo anything *cough*

A multiplatform release can't rely on mods that much. As it is, Origins is just broken.

Mana Clash alone, one damn spell, invalidates an entire Warrior specialisation (Templar) and instantly kills 90% of hostile mages you will encounter, with a big enough AoE that you can almost always get all mages on the field with one cast. It might have taken you a couple playthroughs to get to that stage, but not everyone was so lucky. My brother stumbled into the Arcane Warrior/Blood Mage combo the week the game was launched and got bored out of his mind. Of course, this time he stumbled into Knight Enchanter so it's not like Inquisition is perfect.

Inquisition has it's balance issues, but between the ease of healing and certain skills being absurdly OP Origins just can't be called tactical.

 

[Frankster]

Inquisition has it's balance issues, but between the ease of healing and certain skills being absurdly OP Origins just can't be called tactical.

Damn was purge really that great a spell in Da:O vanilla? o0 Considering how much Alistair was a mainstay of my party, surprised I didn't stumble onto that.

Well I got nothing, I didn't experience Da:O the same way you did but ain't gonna discount your experiences just because you didn't play it the way I did.

However I do disagree about a multiplatform release disqualifying it from having its mods count.
Case in point skyrim: it's on console but 9/10ths of the appeal of that game for me (and I imagine the majority of its pc user base) is its mods, and it's kinda the same with Da:O.
Afterwards if you wanna have a console version vs pc version debate, that's a whole other kettle of fish.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I haven't played Inquisition yet and I haven't played Awakening to completion yet so let's sweep those two over to the side so I can say the obvious: I really enjoyed Origins and I really, strongly disliked Dragon Age: Subtitle-not-found. I didn't care too much for Hawke as a character and really wish I had a chance to kill Isabelle...as for Origins, I hated how Shale was a DLC character that you only got for buying the game new but it's better than not having an HK-Style NPC at all. I haven't played any Dragon Age in a few years but I see myself getting Inquisition when I get my PS4...at some point in the next 12 to 18 months...maybe. I know I have Origins and 2 somewhere and I'm really curious to go through another playthrough just for the hell of it. I remember loving how you can be an asshole but not end up being labeled as "evil" which was refreshing...even though I don't recall anything as evil as murdering a small child in front of his mother because I didn't feel like going into The Fade for a lengthy-ish quest to save his stupid soul...and people in my party backed me up for gutting the kid too!

 

[Azahul]

They never were good. Uninspired, sucky, unoriginal as all hell. And before people start calling "TROOOOOOOOOOLL! TROLL!", no. I honestly consider Dragon Age: Origins BioWare's most formulaic game, the most paint-by-numbers thing I've seen from them. It's the story that I've seen done by these very developers several times over and I've seen it done better. BG, NWN, KotOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect - they all did the same basic story and Dragon Age did little to spice up the formula. The usual saving grace of those games - the party members - misfire pathetically, with being either annoying or boring, the visuals are marred by being too brown and the music is just_plain_BAD. Inon Zur's soundtrack was PATHETIC. And the second game reuses most of it. Ain't that awesome (no it ain't).

While I'm not sure I would phrase my opinion quite as strongly as you, I do agree. I ended up playing Dragon Age because my friends and a lot of reviews compared it favourably to Baldur's Gate. By the time the game finished, I was still wondering why it was taking so long to get out of the opening stages. I couldn't believe that a story like "gather allies and fight some orc-analogues" was really being billed as the greatest thing to happen in RPGs for years. There were hardly any characters I found interesting, certainly no events that I was invested it, and I was constantly waiting on the edge of my seat for a shift, change, twist, something that would make me feel like I was playing a story and not the cliff notes taken in a "How to write generic fantasy" lecture. It wasn't like they didn't have opportunities. The civil war that plays out entirely in the background while you're running around the kingdom sounded way more interesting than the story about fighting the Blight, and I was really interested to find out Loghain's true reason for abandoning his king. You can imagine my disappointment when they decided to just play him straight as a racist/nationalistic cretin.

That said, I wouldn't call the game qualitatively bad. Just uninspired, by-the-numbers, and bland. I played it through to the end without complaint, but it couldn't really drag itself out of the bottom of the heap of Bioware's achievements.

As for the other games, they couldn't even live up to Origins' fairly meager legacy.

 

[Asita]

Haven't looked if it's been mentioned already, but the wording of the poll's a bit off, isn't it? 'Best' and 'worst'. What about 'favourite' and 'least favourite'? Why must it be about an emotive value proclamation? Those tend to end badly...

With the context of the question as "how would you rank the Dragon Age Franchise", I'm not sure I see the qualitative difference, and nobody seems to be turning into Abominations yet.

I didn't care too much for Hawke as a character and really wish I had a chance to kill Isabelle...

In all fairness, that complaint about Hawke might have been a matter of choice. DA2 took the dialogue wheel a bit further than the Mass Effect franchise did, and the choices you gravitated towards defined some of Hawke's banter outside of the wheel. As a case in point, Merril invites you to visit her at the end of her recruitment quest, if you agree to do so a diplomatic Hawke will simply say "I'd like that, Merril", whereas a sarcastic one will jokingly quip "Of course, but only because you used that 'you kicked my puppy' voice".

 

[Casual Shinji]

Dragon Age: Origins allows way more freedom to role-play, compared to the others. Yes, not having a voiced protagonist might be a bit outdated, but it also means you're not stuck with a monotonous voice spouting oneliners, and it grants the developers more resources to expand the dialoge options.

It looks ugly and it controls ugly, but the breathing room you get within the story more than makes up for that.

Inquisition was way better in terms of looks and gameplay, with tons of shit to sink your teeth in, but none of it felt like it amounted to anything.

Origins I really like, DA2 I really hate, and Inquisition is just... meh.

 

[FateWitch13]

I have always loved Dragon Age 2. Sorry. I love the characters {except Merrill} and even though there is not much exploring, I think it helps you focus on the characters more. The only criticism I have for it is that the story jumps around but even that seems more like what someone would go through in life than some overall arching campaign with one solid goal. I just like Hawke's journey, I guess. I loved Origins but honestly, whenever I try to play it now {and I broke a ps3 playing it to death, practically}, I just go, "oh no I have to go to that stupid town and boost the Arl from ghouls only to have to boost his stupid son from that demon so i can then boost the arl from almost death and...does this game ever end or get fun again after you have played through it at least fifteen times? So far, my only issue with Inquisition {I work a lot so still trying to climb through it} is that the characters just don't seem as interesting. That's probably just me, though.

 

[The Madman]

I've been really enjoying what I've played of Inquisition so far but even so there's no real question that Origins remains my favourite of the series. As a fan of the old Infinity Engine style games its style of semi-turn-based tactical combat really appealed to me as did the group mechanics, and the 'origins' part of DA: Origins I thought was really well done.

Unique introductions based on your race and class combination? Great idea! Even with a voiceless protagonist I felt things like that alongside the dialogue options really helped in giving an otherwise blank-slate character some personality and encouraged roleplaying. Similarly while the story was pretty forgettable the characters and setting that drove it were interesting enough to have kept my attention throughout multiple playthrough. The whole 'opinion meter' thing with gift-giving and all that was dumb as hell but still I got a kick out of interacting with the games companions.

DA2 meanwhile was just a train wreck. Tactical combat was gutted, story was an incoherent mess, all but a handful of the characters I found unlikable, no sense of exploration, copy-paste environments... bleh. As a standalone title or a spinoff I might be more charitable towards DA2 since it really did have some neat ideas, but as a follow-up to Origins it was just thoroughly disappointing as almost none of those neat ideas actually amounted to much.

And DA:I so far I've found fun. The tactics system is still completely gutted and the AI is dumb as a sack of bricks, but I'm enjoying everything else about the game far more than I did DA2 and in some aspects even more than Origins. Not sure it's going to be a game I'll be replaying again years from now but it's certainly been keeping me better entertained than DA2 did.

 

[Danbo Jambo]

Both DA:2 & DA:I drop the ball on so many RPG-ing basics that it's frightening.

Could you perhaps elaborate on that a bit? The most common complaints I recall about DA2 was the shift in combat, the repetitive level design, and certain elements of the plot and characters, and having yet to complete DA:2 or start DA:I, I'm afraid my frame of reference is rather limited without clarification.

There's just very little fun or actual genuine RPG emotion in either. DA:2 was comical at times, with a main character who seemed schizophrenic if you switched between good/bad/wiseguy, and a story that never really got going, or fumbles the ball when it does. The best example I can think of being the buildup to a boss fight, which proves to be one of the most awful/dull/comical fights ever. It's just poor.

DA:I just feels like a MMORPG. Countless boring filler fetch quests and a bizarre chore-like feel just get in the way of any actual interesting RPG aspects happening. It's quiet an insult that some say "15 hours in it gets good" - that's 2 working days for most people, 15 hours working rewards me with far more!