As much as I expected this game to be good, I have to agree with you. I am utterly confused by those reviewers calling it the "RPG of the decade" and painting it with 9.5 scores. In addition to what you have mentioned, I also noticed a really slow start. It was so boring in the beginning that I lost any desire I had to play it. Dragon Age looks and feel like a year 2000 RPG, and definitely not one of those which were fun. Yes, I thought Mass Effect was nothing special, but in comparison to Dragon Age, Mass Effect is a masterpiece.

As a side note, if you want a fun and engrossing RPG, I think you should try Risen. It is a much better experience, even though it doesn't have those high review scores.

Definetly too much combat, I noticed the same since I'm playing through the Baldur's Gate Series as well (So no one can say BG has less combat than DA that's for sure!).

Combat would be fine....if it was less generic fights and more "RPG", instead you end up in the same "random encounters" in the same "random locations" (you can be on a totally different place on the map and the location is the same.....wuh?

The underground dwarven area bored me to tears (and the political BS as well) but I pushed through. Nowhere near as interesting as the UnderDark.

Currently in Denerim and it's the same random encounters at random locations that look the same like the rest of the game.

The game is definetly worth playing like all BG games but it just goes to show even more that starting with KOTOR their primary focus is consoles no matter what they say.
I've been refering to DA as a V1 release, hopefully the V2 will be alot better but again it will be for consoles so I'm not sure what can be done there. I guess the thing to compare to would be to see what Mass Effect 2 is like compared to 1 (1 was a POS as far as I'm concerned).

I agree with the Risen vote. I started to play that and was suprised how good it was (Have tried to give Gothic 3 tons of chances but no luck), unfortunately DA came out which stopped me from playing Risen. I'm 40+hrs into DA so it should be done soon and then on to Risen! yay! and then I'll re-play witcher (started 6months ago and then got distracted).

American RPG developers who want to develop primarily for consoles should just do so and leave the PC development to foreign developers.

SPOILERS

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I didn't play Dragon Age, the last "RPG" i was angry about was Fallout 3, which was also hyped everywhere. I still refuse to call that game a RPG. It's more like a FPS with RPG elements tacked-on IMO, and the experience cap (which eventually made me stop playing the game and uninstall it) is just ridiculous.

What's very interesting is how these "dumbed-down" games are reviewed. Another recent example is Brütal Legend, a game i was looking forward to very, very much. It got high scores on all relevant review sites, but after playing it for some hours i was just bored, bored, bored. BL is more like an interactive movie with GTA-like and RTS elements tacked on, and the game elements get boring very quickly IMO. There's nothing really challenging in the game, thus i'm not getting any feeling of achieving something (or the satisfaction of beating the game) at all while playing it.

Well it looks like RPG's are the next dying genre, after simulations. JRPG's have been essentially the same game for many years now with small variations (though i enjoyed some of them) , and the western RPG's are similar in this respect. We're now seeing the full effect of "console dumbing-down" and "casual gamer appeal", and i'm afraid it'll get worse over the next years. I believe that we'll have in gaming the situation we're now having in movies. Tons and tons of utter crap that caters to the masses will be released (and will sell very well, which is the real tragedy), with a few diamonds hidden between those cartloads of crap (probably the diamonds will be produced by small independant studios on small budgets and even smaller margins). There's nothing we can do, because "the masses" will still happily buy the crap, thus affirming the "dumbing-down"-strategy.

I totally disagree with you. DA is much better than KOTOR and NWN. KOTOR was "dumbed down" to sell on the consoles. DA can be quite challenging if you play it on "hard" and then there is also "insane". The best part of the game are your party members. They have personality. You can talk to them and even really screw up. The characters are just as good as in BG2. Of course the setting isnt as fancy as in PS:T or as bright an colourful as in BG2. But you have to remember that DA is full 3D, where PS:T and BG2 are only 2D. There are some great first person views in DA where you can experience great atmosphere.

I think DA might not be the new Baldurs Gate but it is much better then everything after BG2, especially NWN.

ooooohh boy this is gonna be fun. Don't have time to respond right now unfortunately tho. 🙁

I did think that Risen was better than Gothic 3, but not as good as Gothic 2. I bought DA: O, but haven't played it yet due to me really enjoying Borderlands so much. Borderlands is like Fallout 3, a FPS with RPG elements. But it's a whole lot more fun.

To be honest though, I would rather spend more time in combat and less time in menus or solving puzzles in my RPG's. When I'm not in the mood for battles, I play an adventure game.

Yahtzee's Zero Punctuation review wasn't particularly favorable, if that's what you're looking for.

Teehee, trousers.

@dosfreak, I'll give you the North American Developer but Bioware is Canadian eh 😉

I also disagree it's a disappointment but I also see where they had to skimp on some things for the consoles...

However, with the Editor tool there are a ton of mods already, have you checked out Dragon Age Nexus yet ?!?

There seems to be many that are attempting to rebalance, recreate much of the game.

Getting any modern game to be like a classic RPG in the vain of BG is nye impossible, the business reality is having to support consoles and this will cause the PC version to be less then it could have been due to limitations inherent in gaming consoles 🙁

Too bad this happens but it is something you either accept/live with or ignore the game/game developer because you don't want to deal with this dumbing down, which I can appreciate 😀

I'd call their games interactive movies.

Thank for all your interesting replies.

I am going to check Risen ASAP.

bugs_bugger (and others):

Good for you if you are enjoying the game, but no, the NPCs are kind of bland to me, with very predictable stereotypical personalities.

And one word of caution: I have heard the PC version is the best of all. Consoles versions are even worse.

Heh, this review made me chuckle. It's pretty hilarious. 😁

eL_PuSHeR wrote:

Thank for all your interesting replies.

the NPCs are kind of bland to me, with very predictable stereotypical personalities.

It is the interaction of the characters which makes them good, not their personalities. They talk to each other some will argue, some agree. Each single character might be rather bland compared to Planescape: Torment. But I don't remember the level of interaction of DA in any other game. I really understand your point of view. But you have to compare DA to other games and if you do so, you will see that DA has strong qualities. Many parts of DA are actually better than any other game I know of.

DA:O has many good things, of course. That doesn't mean I am enjoying it that much.

My gaming interest has been declining over the past few years. It comes down to just having fewer gamer friends with similar interests, and being sick of the usual suspects. Today's genre choices feel like games I played in the late '90s, except there are fewer genres to choose from, and I have to endlessly buy new hardware for the same gameplay and the same problems. This is ignoring the MMO phenomenon because I pretend it doesn't exist.

So consider that you may be just losing interest in gaming before lamenting about how shitty a game may be. 😀 Or something like that. 😁 Sometimes you need to step back and ask yourself what you would have thought of a game if you had no prior experience. That's how the majority of the players are (see unending love for Mass Effect)

My interest in gaming is the same as it ever was.

Yeah, I've always lamented about the more books I read, Movies I watch, games I play that I'll end up being disappointed in the future because there's only so much quality material to go around. Once you experience enough everything is just variations.......would probably be the same experience if you lived a couple hundred years.

We just need to be able to selectively delete our memories so we can enjoy the crap. 😀

DosFreak wrote:

We just need to be able to selectively delete our memories so we can enjoy the crap. 😀

+1

I don't like MMOs.

I deleted Mass Effect after a couple hours of play, I can't remember exactly what was the final straw, but I'm thinking it was the game as a whole.

I think Fallout 3 is awesome. RPG or not, I can role play in it.

Thank goodness we have plenty of games to choose from.

I bought and enjoyed both TES:Oblivion and Fallout 3 a lot more than DA:O

And yes, they are RPGs.

Zero Punctuation Reviews are always quite fun. After listening to them I always need a little time to myself to mentally slow down again 😀

I've played a couple of MMO's but all of them have one thing in common, the never-ending timesync that is the GRIND 😠

However, if you do ever play any MMO, it almost doesn't matter the game, but getting together with a gew peeps you know in your clan/guild on Ventrilo and cracking wise when you all go out raiding 😁

This is what makes any MMO more enjoyable and the grind not so bad, hell I even got my father into the clan and he enjoys playing too, he's retired and is fast approaching 70 😉

As for other RPG's like the TES series and the FO series, both very good games, especially since you have a huge modding community too.