Dragon Age is an utterly bizarre franchise for me, because so far, every game in it has been equally mediocre, but none of them have been uniformly mediocre - that is, their mediocrity is kind of an average of a bunch of really good qualities and a bunch of really shitty qualities - and not a single game in the franchise has been good at anything that any of the others are good at.
+Origins had a great UI that was a joy to play on a purely tactile level
- Unfortunately, it also had the most shallow and shitty combat mechanics in the franchise
+The size of the game world was great, it pretty much all felt hand-crafted, and the content density was spot on.
- Too bad it was unimaginably dull. Medieval Eurohamlet after Eurohamlet, thatched roofs and all, broken up by a bunch of elves in a forest and some dwarves in a cave city. Kill me.
+ Mechanically speaking, it had great reactivity. They gave you a ton of choices to make, and most of them had tangible repercussions.
- Narratively speaking, the reactivity was horrible, because everything was so dry, bland, and stupid that it was impossible to actually care what choice you made, or if you were going to see the results of it.
+ Sten was rad.
- Literally every other cast member ranged from aggressively boring to totally insufferable.
+Dragon Age 2 had the best combat mechanics in the franchise, by far. Characters who weren't Mages were actually not only useful unlike Origins, but were also interesting to play, which is basically diametrically opposed to Origins. Plus you couldn't brute force your way through encounters via chugging infinite potions in lieu of playing tactically.
- The interface was a huge step down from Origins, though. Not being able to zoom out far enough, not being able to tilt the camera high enough, and not being able to detach the camera from a character really hurt it. Plus the actual encounter design and combat variety was basically nonexistent. Waves, waves, waves.
+The premise of the story blows the other two games out of the water, and following a single character through life in a single city over the course of 7-10 years or however long it was is just inherently more interesting than there being a big army of mindless evil things with a boss at the end.
- The third act just sort of abruptl
+The best members of the cast are far and away the best party members in the franchise. Varric was great (and DA2 Varric was a lot better than DAI Varric), and Aveline was awesome; getting to see her develop over the years from a rookie guard, to a captain, to basically the chief of police was a genuinely cool arc that made her seem like an actual character with some agency of her own. Even some of the worse characters in the game are made more interesting by the span of time that the game covers, because it gives them an arc. The Friendship/Rivalry system was also a lot better than any of the other games' relationship mechanics, even if it wasn't spectacular.
- Merrill. I mean there are other characters I didn't like and there were some big flaws in them, but next to Merrill, complaining about anything Fenris did is kind of like saving your hamster from a house fire and leaving your kid inside.
+Inquisition had a pretty great game world. I had a lot of fun firing the game up for 10-15 minutes, going to a map I hadn't explored, and just setting off in some direction to kill stuff for a while.
- The actual content, once you got done with (or tired of) aimless exploration, was really, really thin. You can count the number of fleshed out sidequests in each zone on one hand, easily. And while I personally didn't mind the combat-only Rift stuff, and didn't feel compelled to do any of the shitty collectathon bullshit, they did a really poor job of signposting which parts of the game consisted of meaty content, which parts were just basic gameplay, and which parts were meaningless filler.
+The combat had some genuinely cool mechanics and ideas. The combination of the auto-refilled basic potions and the ability to craft a similarly-limited set of items with different effects was a good compromise between the broken mess of DAO's consumables and the inflexible small stock of DA2's. Guard was a super interesting mechanic that I absolutely loved the concept of. Intra-class balance was kind of shit, but all the classes were viable, and all of them had at least a build or two that was effective and fun to play.
- Most of the good ideas ended up being really half-baked. Guard was super cool as basically a soft healing mechanic, but the maximum you could accumulate was pitifully low, and most of the methods to generate guard were either dependent on you being able to block/counter attacks, or on you being surrounded by a number of enemies. The fights where you really needed to make use of it were often against single enemies who couldn't be blocked (and would deal more damage than the maximum amount of Guard you could accumulate anyway). They obviously have no idea how to design enemies for a game with action-based combat (see: Terrors), their party AI was obviously not up to snuff for a game with that sort of action pacing, and the 'tactical mode' was a total fucking joke.
+I really liked the War Table stuff. Very low-impact, both in terms of the resources required to develop it, and in terms of how much time and effort the player needs to spend on it, but it did a really good job of selling the idea of "the Inquisition" as a narrative thing that exists and is bigger than just a 4-person party.
- The main story stuff felt really abrupt and disjointed. All that shit about Mages and Templars and it's wrapped up in the first two hours? And it's for another story about some ancient evil bugaboo that's awoken to do... something. Fuck off with that.
I think if I were to choose, I'd rather play Inquisition if I was only going to play for a short period of time, and if I was going to play the whole game, I'd probably either start with Origins, get tired of the shitty balance and mechanics, go to DA2, get tired of the copy-pasted quests and encounters, and then get bored and do something else, or I'd reverse the order and get bored of DA2 first, then Origins.
+Origins had a great UI that was a joy to play on a purely tactile level
- Unfortunately, it also had the most shallow and shitty combat mechanics in the franchise
+The size of the game world was great, it pretty much all felt hand-crafted, and the content density was spot on.
- Too bad it was unimaginably dull. Medieval Eurohamlet after Eurohamlet, thatched roofs and all, broken up by a bunch of elves in a forest and some dwarves in a cave city. Kill me.
+ Mechanically speaking, it had great reactivity. They gave you a ton of choices to make, and most of them had tangible repercussions.
- Narratively speaking, the reactivity was horrible, because everything was so dry, bland, and stupid that it was impossible to actually care what choice you made, or if you were going to see the results of it.
+ Sten was rad.
- Literally every other cast member ranged from aggressively boring to totally insufferable.
+Dragon Age 2 had the best combat mechanics in the franchise, by far. Characters who weren't Mages were actually not only useful unlike Origins, but were also interesting to play, which is basically diametrically opposed to Origins. Plus you couldn't brute force your way through encounters via chugging infinite potions in lieu of playing tactically.
- The interface was a huge step down from Origins, though. Not being able to zoom out far enough, not being able to tilt the camera high enough, and not being able to detach the camera from a character really hurt it. Plus the actual encounter design and combat variety was basically nonexistent. Waves, waves, waves.
+The premise of the story blows the other two games out of the water, and following a single character through life in a single city over the course of 7-10 years or however long it was is just inherently more interesting than there being a big army of mindless evil things with a boss at the end.
- The third act just sort of abruptl
+The best members of the cast are far and away the best party members in the franchise. Varric was great (and DA2 Varric was a lot better than DAI Varric), and Aveline was awesome; getting to see her develop over the years from a rookie guard, to a captain, to basically the chief of police was a genuinely cool arc that made her seem like an actual character with some agency of her own. Even some of the worse characters in the game are made more interesting by the span of time that the game covers, because it gives them an arc. The Friendship/Rivalry system was also a lot better than any of the other games' relationship mechanics, even if it wasn't spectacular.
- Merrill. I mean there are other characters I didn't like and there were some big flaws in them, but next to Merrill, complaining about anything Fenris did is kind of like saving your hamster from a house fire and leaving your kid inside.
+Inquisition had a pretty great game world. I had a lot of fun firing the game up for 10-15 minutes, going to a map I hadn't explored, and just setting off in some direction to kill stuff for a while.
- The actual content, once you got done with (or tired of) aimless exploration, was really, really thin. You can count the number of fleshed out sidequests in each zone on one hand, easily. And while I personally didn't mind the combat-only Rift stuff, and didn't feel compelled to do any of the shitty collectathon bullshit, they did a really poor job of signposting which parts of the game consisted of meaty content, which parts were just basic gameplay, and which parts were meaningless filler.
+The combat had some genuinely cool mechanics and ideas. The combination of the auto-refilled basic potions and the ability to craft a similarly-limited set of items with different effects was a good compromise between the broken mess of DAO's consumables and the inflexible small stock of DA2's. Guard was a super interesting mechanic that I absolutely loved the concept of. Intra-class balance was kind of shit, but all the classes were viable, and all of them had at least a build or two that was effective and fun to play.
- Most of the good ideas ended up being really half-baked. Guard was super cool as basically a soft healing mechanic, but the maximum you could accumulate was pitifully low, and most of the methods to generate guard were either dependent on you being able to block/counter attacks, or on you being surrounded by a number of enemies. The fights where you really needed to make use of it were often against single enemies who couldn't be blocked (and would deal more damage than the maximum amount of Guard you could accumulate anyway). They obviously have no idea how to design enemies for a game with action-based combat (see: Terrors), their party AI was obviously not up to snuff for a game with that sort of action pacing, and the 'tactical mode' was a total fucking joke.
+I really liked the War Table stuff. Very low-impact, both in terms of the resources required to develop it, and in terms of how much time and effort the player needs to spend on it, but it did a really good job of selling the idea of "the Inquisition" as a narrative thing that exists and is bigger than just a 4-person party.
- The main story stuff felt really abrupt and disjointed. All that shit about Mages and Templars and it's wrapped up in the first two hours? And it's for another story about some ancient evil bugaboo that's awoken to do... something. Fuck off with that.
I think if I were to choose, I'd rather play Inquisition if I was only going to play for a short period of time, and if I was going to play the whole game, I'd probably either start with Origins, get tired of the shitty balance and mechanics, go to DA2, get tired of the copy-pasted quests and encounters, and then get bored and do something else, or I'd reverse the order and get bored of DA2 first, then Origins.
.
