I honestly didn't like this game. Hated switching between characters so much. Not sure if it was me or the AI, but AI controlled guys just felt stupid.

I bought it for the 360, and I was lucky enough to get full store credit, and I bought something else. Lol Gamestop

I heard that it is a good game, but I couldn't get into it.

There appears to be a lot of depth. Programming the tactics is like a whole new level of involvement, though.

The first time I had a Circle Mage along I immediately saw what his spells did and turned on Flame Aura for a nice damage bonus. That type of thing is fun. There's a bit of discovery and utility when you get a new person. But I'm not interested in pouring over what this character does when their enemy is >= 75% health vs. < 50% health. I'm glad I didn't get in to it with that Mage because he was only along with the party for 10 minutes.

Personally I think it's one of the best RPGs released in recent years but I'ma fan of old-school, BG-style RPGs which had gone out of fashion but are currently experiencing a resurgence.

Your enjoyment of the game will largely depend on whether you like combat in which you control several characters. I feel there's a lot more tactical depth in DA:O than something like Skyrim or WoW, but you have to get used to the concept of pausing, issuing your party members commands, and then playing. Don't just control your main character, take direct control of your party.

I would always set up the AI tactics so that my Warriors would be the most automated characters of my party as their abilities are mostly direct damage. Mage's spells should be used more selectively, so the automated tactics I'd establish would be to heal themselves and friendlies when health drops low.

There's stuff to enjoy outside of combat though. The main plot is generic but there are plenty of side-quests. Most of all the the writing is generally very good and quite funny. Conversations with NPCs are central to the game.

I agree with you on the conversations with NPC's. I have laughed out loud several times at some of the dialogue options.

"Maybe we should have that dog put down."
...
"Maybe we should have you put down."

It's worth keeping Alistair and Morrigan in your party just to hear them snipe at each other.

It's best to turn tactics off completely except maybe for using health pots and completely control what your party does. This is especially true for higher difficulties.

think I bought this in the last sale and played about 2 hours.
idk if the start is terrible but it turned me off and I didnt try to go further.
I feel Im done with this style of rpg (I used to play these party rpgs a lot but I lost interest).
2h is certainly too short to judge but have so many games to play its hard to spend 10h+ just to see if u get hooked.

I'm playing through DAO for a second time, just started off with a dwarf noble. I am loving it, but I love these kinds of tactical RPGs. The cool thing about DAO is that your origin story effects how the various factions treat you and when you go back to your starting faction you get a unique story for it. I only beat it once so I am looking forward to seeing how much is different.

It's a different type of game than sky rims hack and slash but If you are looking for a deep RPG with a great story not much tops DAO.

You also don't really get into the game till you make it out of your origin story.

Although to be fair I think if someone is not enjoying the game during the origins, he won't enjoy it later either.

Ya prolly not. The combat doesn't change at all it's just that the story becomes a little less linear as the world opens up.

Well you get your permanent companions post-Ostagar and more abilities as you level up, so your combat options increase significantly after the first few hours.

Picked up this game for free on Origin, looking forward to getting into it. I think it's free until the 14th if anyone was looking into trying it out.

Someone tell me if the third one is any good please :P

It's getting really good reviews across the board. I am pretty pumped to pick up inquisition PS4

Metacritic user score 5.7

Way too many 0's to take seriously.

The professional reviews that didn't get sweetheart embargo dates look to be significantly less favorable as well.

EDIT: And even the positive reviews can basically be summarized as "There's no challenge to the combat, but it's an open world with crafting so that makes it good somehow!"

Not taking any of the Metacritic user reviews, positive or negative, seriously given that the game only came out today. They can't possibly have finished it.

Well all the critics were playing on Normal difficulty. I think anyone who has any experience with tactical RPGs would go for Nightmare.

Impression I've got from critic's reviews is that the game is indeed massive with loads to do. But a lot of that stuff consists of fetch quests and gathering. Dialogue and NPCs are apparently well written although the main storyline is generic.

Thoughts on combat seem to be mixed but nearly every review I've read says the tactical camera is bad because it doesn't zoom out far enough. BW forum posters confirm that it's a pain in the arse to use when trying to micromanage your party. It sounds like BW want people to play this as an action-RPG instead of a tactical game.

I almost always play on normal...

To each their own but judging from the reviews, the combat isn't too challenging on Normal in DAI, which would probably make it boring. According to a number of players though, you're fighting the camera as much as the enemy on higher difficulties.

I bought yesterday after hearing some good reviews initially. However, I'm not impressed so far. The controls are terrible and as mentioned, you are constantly fighting the camera because you can't zoom out far enough to see even half the battlefield.

The battles are way more similar to DA2 than DA:O, which was a huge disappointment for me. Everyone seems to love the "open world" feeling of the game, but I personally hate it. If turning the combat into an action game wasn't enough, now you have to constantly be pressing WASD to run and now you must jump around the open world as well. Sorry, but I wasn't looking forward to jumping to higher places to unlock treasure chests in my RPGs.

Also, if you see some elfroot on the ground, you can't just click it to have your character run over and pick it up. You have to physically use WASD to maneuver your character all the way to the corner of the map, then click on the elfroot, which rewards you with a 1.5 second scene of you bending down and picking it up. You have to be almost on top of something to loot it. This gets annoying extremely quickly (only 2 hours played) when you are in a house and have to run to every corner to pick up items and then have to wait >1 second while you get this stupid scene of bending over. It adds so much "busy work" to the game and not one ounce of fun.

The above problem is also the same in battles. If you are using a mage and click your hotkey on an enemy to use a spell, NOTHING WILL HAPPEN if you aren't in range. I don't think I've ever played a game where the character wouldn't take a few steps forward to get in range and then cast the spell for you. This is also true if your bowman is out of range and you are trying to auto attack, etc.

None of these problems are major themselves, but it has caused me nothing but frustration as I try to remap all the buttons that make no sense and still nothing feels natural.

The graphics are amazing and the world looks great, but none of these things have drawn me in like a good storyline or fun combat would have. I was just replaying a bit of DA:O last week and remembering the feeling of play that game for the first time (or even the 4th time) just makes me more disappointed in DA:I. I couldn't stop playing DA:O for the entire first week I played it. I was so f'n hooked. I've played DA:I twice for 1 hour each time. I had more time to keep playing, but I chose to save my game and turn it off. How much does that tell you?

I will definitely keep playing it, but don't be in a rush to buy it.

Yeah I'm going to hold off on buying in the hopes they patch some of these problems. No click-to-move, no auto-attack without holding down the MB, no camera panning with the mouse? Hard to understand why BW would remove controls that have worked well and been standard for years.

Well the reason probably is new controls are good for consoles, but surely it wouldn't have been impossible to create two sets of controls?

Particular as they managed to do so in the previous two games.