Dragon Age is BORING!

I installed DA, played about 3 hours worth, and was like ... I find it utterly boring, combat wise overly difficult (I do not like this party controlling crap)... I'm so happy I did not pay for it. Installed my buddies copy and was just turned off... It seemed like a massive world, but not very "role playish" (if that's a word lol)...

I do however really like BioWare. I LOVE the Mass Effect series with a passion - already have ME2 pre-ordered... I just wish Dell.com had the CE version of it.. (using my credit account, too poor lol). The new Star Wars MMO looks decent as well.. But I play WoW - and soon to be Star Trek Online as well..

Anyhow I was just wondering if anyone else felt the same way with Dragon Age or not. Oh another thing that kind of peaved me off with it was the DLC stuff. I don't mind the extra quests/zones - but paying for actual gear? No thanks! Just seems to me BioWare is going to milk the hell out of both DA and ME2..

 

I've had it since it came out, and played it about 3 times. The battle system totally turns me off from it.

 

I agree, i hate the battle system completely, and it seems that half the game is just cutscene after cutscene.

 

Thank God I'm not alone. I got so frustrated fighting. All my party members would be dead and with me being a mage I'd be dead once they died. I just couldn't micro manage each party member.

Plus it seemed like I'd play a bit, then a cut scene would happen, play another 5 minutes, another cut scene. Complete that quest, then talk to the NPC another cut scene lol.

I can't for the life of me figure out how this got such rave reviews...

 

Tbh i had the same issue the first... erm... 6 (?) hours, after that i got sucked into the gameplay though.

 

I may re try it in the future and see how it goes again. I just wished you could jump lol.

 

Basically the first hours of the game are about learning the story, characters etc Hence why some people (including me) might find it boring. After the slaughtering starts things get fun

 

It's fun after the intro. I played on easy, about no micromanaging except manually using pots during boss fights

 

Gets a bit easier after you get a healer

 

I personally love Dragon Age and I find it very "roleplayish." I think its Bioware's best since Baldur's Gate I and II.
I'm guessing you haven't played Baldur's Gate? If you did, did you like it?

 

I recommend viewing it more as a strategy game than a normal RPG. You do have to take an hour or so to setup some tactics for your team to follow and you do have to micromanage if you want a very specific action (your archer to kill their archer, your tank to get aggro from multiple targets very quickly, a specific buff on a specific character etc....)

I have been very fond of it so far. I didn't care for it when I was playing as a rogue but now that I am a tanking warrior I find it a lot of fun. I don't think a mage is the best choice for a first playthrough though. Try going again as a warrior type or maybe a ranged rogue?

 

well for one thing its a real classical rpg. its tactical in nature and you should really play it from the farthest perspective so you can give multiple orders to your party.
if you leave them on their default tactics chances are you will die.
baldurs gate was the closest thing to pen n paper rpg's back then and this is its modern equivalent. and in many ways dragon age is easier cause you have the health bar regenrate after a fight.
had some difficulty changing my mindset back to those days and combat can be tough if you dont get the facts i just stated.
but im now enjoying it for what it is.

 

I found the game very interesting. I think it's the only game I've played since a long time that gave me a challenge not like some games where you just have to run and shoot things to win. Perhaps it's because I like strategy games ?

 

To be honest you dont really need to manage the other characters at all, with some "boss" fights as exception, use tactics (hotkey N i think it was ? forgot ) and setup all the characters the way you want and you are set to go.

 

If u think Dragon Age is difficult on Normal, mayhap RPGs are not really ur strongsuit!

 

read: "I am bored with Dragon Age: Origins". Quite a difference

 

Or even Neverwinter Nights 2? It sounds to me like this just isn't the OP's genre.

 

what is weird, is how much the game costs...

 

Meh, for the amount of time you get out of it, it's not bad. Just think, a single night out costs 2-3x that easily.

 

Well Dragon Age strikes me a bit as kind of a turn based RPG, where you have to issue orders to each f your party members. The main differences is that party members are free to move(as well as enemies) and that it's not an explicit "turn based" type of thing like say Final Fantasy(although it does follow somewhat of a similar scheme like KotOR did).

What's a bit "difficult" for me is that you can't issue multiple successive orders to your party like you could in KotOR(or if you can I've never found out how) so you're always stuck going back to pause and issuing another set of orders every few seconds. With KotOR you could at least stage the next 2-4 moves and adapt if necessary.

As for the actual story, well I agree that it took me a few hours to get into it. The first few times I played it with my bf I found it kinda boring(mind you we only played for max an hour at a time), but after we got through the intro stuff it got a lot more fun.

 

I though it was great right from the start, I only lost interest during the whole wood elf part.

 

I love the combat actually, since I used to play WoW a lot, it reminded me of that and obviously older titles that I never gotten around to play. I played Mass Effect on 360 and spent a good chunk of time on it, but never got to finish it. Did you play on PC or 360? I'm really interested in ME2 but not sure if I want to play it w/o ME but at this point, no interest in playing ME. Opinion OP?

 

Wow, I was glued to it for eight hours yesterday. Some of the conversation scenes got boring, so I would click through those as I got the jist of what was being said. But overall, the rest of the game is pretty frickin awesome IMO!

It has always been billed as the successor to BG, etc, etc, so if you didn't know how those games played out, then sorry. If you did and don't think this plays the same way, or did and expected something different, then not sorry.

The other minor annoyance to gameplay as has been pointed out is the inability to string actions together, such as a succession of different spells. But the overall quality of the game gets me past this aspect.

 

I agree with the people who said that the intro was kinda boring--even the second time through when you know what you're doing. Once that was through I thought it was a pretty cool RPG, (though the moral ambivalence of plot decisions really bothered me. It's fine when games let you choose between right and wrong options, but I wish later events would reflect that. It feels to much like you're playing god with the story and not really a character yourself. Haha, just had to get that off my chest).

 

I would use a standard party like mage/rogue/2 tanks and save the oddball combinations till later. Highly recommend spending some time in the tactics section to tune up your party. For an idea of where to start your mage does not have to be a healer but should have heal on it and that should be at the top of list. I use 50% health trigger and then all the party hits smallest health pot at 25% health in case you mage runs dry on mana. Make sure they are all turning on their sustained buffs after that and order their attacks as you want to see them come up after the buffs. People do different things but that is a general start that will work and you can tune it to suit your own style as you go along. Properly setup your lackies should be working pretty well on their own without much intervention on your part. A little bit of hassle in tactics up front will give you payback throughout your entire play experience.

 

I have it for XBox 360. I should have bought it for pc. the package still isnt open yet. Im debating if I want to keep it and try it or return it. At the very least maybe I will download a pc demo and see how it is before I crack open the package.

 

Maybe enable cheats the first time through? Just to get tha hang of it, and then play it through again without them, just a thought, I do this for games I have trouble with.

 

i had teh same thoughts at first..seriously.. i didnt buy the game

played it for few hours ..uninstalled it..downloaded again a week later..player abit longer to the point where morrigan join ur group n uninstalled again cause i got bored AGAIN!

i dont realy know why but i downloaded it a THIRD time played thru it like MAD n i totaly loved the game! i bought it days later and played it thru 4 times now

one of teh best games i ever played

 

The game is designed for people who like VERY deep plotlines and character development as well as understand RPG character roles and party tactics.

If you are a low-attention-span person, you will likely not enjoy this game.

Much of the strategy part of the game is simply setting up NPC tactics and smarter players will set up combos.

A familiar player will have little trouble with normal long before the nerfs the patches bring to bear. (frankly they did it to please the ritalin generation, but I had the option to return the difficulty by playing on a harder setting... so not really an issue.)

Dragon Age is by far the best game overall to come out this year. It is the deepest and most complete reproduction of table-top RPG ever put on a PC/console. This is its target market and this is where it succeeds.

If you are looking for diablo-ish hack-n-slash, or twitch-jam-the-button=skill games, then please look elsewhere.

FINALLY a game where observing the situation and setting up tactics for a situation are > just charging in...

 

I love RPGs. I'm enjoying "The Witcher" very much. Also my favorite 2 games of all time are Sins of a Solar Empire (more of an RTS I guess) and Mass Effect.

I'll probably reinstall it again if my buddy loans it to me and try it out again as a different class.

 

sounds like you are more into sci-fi stuff, could it be the dark fantasy setting that's turning you off?

 

you just proved his point. witcher is more action than rpg. mass effect is pretty much a third person shooter.

 

Agreed, still no mention of Baldur's Gate or NWN, those are the games that precede this one in style.

 

I'm having a hard time getting into Dragon Age: Origins as well. I realize with the whole WoW phenomenon (which I *HATE* with a passion BTW), any RPG I have to take with a grain of salt, considering the fan base WoW created. Yes, this is a single player game, but I'm sure WoW'ers may have garnered an interest in these types of games.

 

Dragon Age is awesome. They really did make a successor to the Baldur's Gate series and I suspect that this is as close to an old-school RPG with modern graphics as we're ever likely to see. I love the combat -- I haven't seen a game that required this much thinking since Baldur's Gate II. Nearly all RPGs made in the past 5 years required the tactical prowess of a slightly above average chimpanzee (and that's at the hardest settings) so it's nice to have a moderately challenging game (I started it on Hard and can probably switch to Nightmare now, but I'm saving that for a future playthrough). The world building is also great; there is a massive amount of detail there.

That said, the game is probably not for everyone for precisely these reasons. You have to enjoy exploration, tactical combat and dialog. They've also made a few annoying decisions (e.g. the lack of a decent action queue), but the game is still fantastic despite these.

 

I can imagine, that game looks like a snorefest.

I remember Baldurs Gate II back in the day, but RPG's are dead to me unless they're a hybrid of some other genre. That hack/slash point/click stuff is old. (imo)

 

Dragon age is the only single player game that atracted me. Usually i get bored of any singple player, and i tried lots and lots and lots of them. If its not multiplayer, i ussualy delete the game after 1 week. But this one kept me nights playing it. I was ill when i started it, so i stood 1 week in bed instead of going to school, so i grabbed my notebook and placed it....on that thing wich supports your keyboard for the desktop, you know...most of them desks have that, it pulls off like a drawerand you keep the keyboard on it (its because english is not my native language and i don't really know how to explain it), so i took that thing and placed my laptop along with the external keyboard and mouse, like a table for me, and placed my 5:1 logitech audio system arround the bed, and i had one of the best gaming experiences ever. I was playing it like 24/24 and finished it 2 times in a week and 2 days i guess (the 2nd time its very easy if you know what will happen and skip all the dialogue)

 

I bought the CE. I pretty much quit playing it halfway through.

I'm a fan of BG, BG2, IWD 1 + 2, NWN2 and ME, but I can't seem to get into DA like I did those games. It was fun for the first 10 hours or so, but ultimately I lost interest. I may finish it one day, but for right now, there are simply other things I want to play - Borderlands, Sacred 2 and I'm messing with AoC since there is an unlimited trial now.

 

I watched the IGN video review, and the battle system is what told me not to get a copy of it.

 

Ha, I'm glad to see this thread... Dragon Age blows and is one of my few true regrets in game purchases... Incredibly boring, way too many conversations, can't do anything except read... and in that regard, I'll grab a good book.

Game is boring, you are right. After all the good reviews and people that said it was the best game ever yaya, I had to try it, but wish I hadn't. Wasted 10 hours I put into it... kept thinking it would get better, just never did. This of course is my own opinion and just that.

 

Sanity check...Did any of you guys that DON'T like DA:O ever play Baldur's Gate series, Icewind Dale series, Neverwinter Nights... and like those games?
Just a curious question.

 

Ya know, this thread kinda reinforces my private belief that games these days have to be twitchy action FPS style to get published. Seems like anythingthat actually has a plot, or story (you know, that you'd have to read... (sigh)...) gets labeled as boring.

My favorites are deep, involved, and primarily turn based systems - I like thought over action, and strategy/tactics over button mashing. Sadly, I am slowly coming to believe that I'm not the demographic that games are made for anymore.

So, I'll stick with playing Civ IV for my strategy, longing for a sequel to X-Com for my tactics, and enjoying the hell out of the occasional RPG like Dragon Age....

...and, soon, I imagine I'll be yelling at all the FPS twitchy types to get the hell off my lawn...

EDIT: oh, wow, I just completed a quest - through Dialogue! And story advancement!! And I didn't have to use leet skills to one-shot some monster or head shot a zombie, and there wasn't even decapitation or dismemberment involved!!

...er, sorry, sometimes my sarcasm leaks out when I'm not looking...

 

I haven't started yet, but I loved Baldurs Gate 1 and 2, although I wasn't enamoured with NWN because the story was a bit...meh. Icewind Dale suffered for a similar reason though I completed them.

Im looking forward to see what I make of it, because I'll agree with some of what's been said before, this game is a true RPG, and is about telling a story; a lot of people seem to have entered it expecting the sped up, genre blends we've seen recently.

Hell, Witcher is excellent, and probably one of the best CRPGs in years, BUT, its definately not as hardcore as the older games.

I think some people have expected the wrong sort of game with Dragon Age, it wasn't attempting to be another Oblivion or Mass Effect, but a full on role playing game.

I might even find I dont enjoy it as much now I'm older, but I do love a good story.

One thing that makes me laugh a little is expecting a move queuing system, aka KOTOR. This was added to KoTOR as it was being designed for consoles and to streamline the game/make it easier to use with a control pad, and was not a common feature of classic CRPGs, because quite frankly things are a LOT easier to control with a mouse, pauses etc. Dragon Age is attempting to follow these sorts of games, not the stream lined ones. What did you expect, a console game masquerading as a PC game...again?

DAO was ported to the consoles, but for once consoles were the addon, not the PC version, this game has been designed for the PC from the ground up, with consoles designed after the main game was finished (hell it was originally PC exclusive), the control system and amount of reading required really highlight that, this game is intended for the older generation who enjoy things like books, and watching stories unfold.

PS. I get bored with hack/n/slash games like Diablo...

 

I agree with you, this game is right up your alley, and that's great. The problem I had was, EVERYone was talking about what an amazing game this is, best RPG ever, best story ever conceived, all around amazing game. So, as a gamer for the last 20 years, I had to try something that was that well reviewed, enjoyed, and praised. And, I just didn't like it. That's all. Thought it was boring, same old stuff.

I do LOVE single player games; action games, FPS, sims, strategy racing, and some RPG. Have had fun with Torchlight lately. I just for the life of me can't get into Dragon Age. Don't know why exactly, but agree with the original poster. I'm glad that these games do exist to meet your needs, they just simply weren't mine or the poster here.

 

i hate the witcher. Why? Simply because of the most epic fail camera control i've ever seen in a game, they ruined it totally and thats exactly why i stopped playing it. Other then that, the fighting system seemed interesting and the story captivating, too bad they had to ruin such a game with the camera control, i hope they will never make games anymore, why didn't bioware come up with the ideea of such a game?

 

Fair enough. I tend to view the reviews on all the FPS games being 'new, exciting' and wonderful the same way - they probably ARE for someone who likes the genre, but they don't really meet the needs for my gaming niche.

I guess maybe I was sucked in to the argument here by the 'boring' label - which is a bit subjective, really. One person's boring is another's deep and interesting, after all.

Anyway, after re reading my post above, i do come off pretty harsh - let me state for the record that I don't have anything against the FPS players or games; I just wish there was a little more balance in terms of published titles towards my end of the gaming pool...

 

What? Play it over the shoulder and it's completely fine. Never had an issue with the Camera at all, except one time it bugged and sat on the wrong side of Geralt.
I'm looking forward to seeing the second one!

 

It's all good! I bought it and am happy to support the PC gaming market, so all is ok. Just wasn't my particular cup of tea, but no biggie, glad it was for others and great for you guys! If we all liked the same game it'd be pretty boring ha

 

Were you trying to lump these two games together, because they're not exactly the same genres. Torchlight is actually constant action, which you seem to prefer...so not surprising you find DA boring. Not fair to compare the two though, for excitement sake. Just sayin.

 

Torchlight is great but a totally different genre than DA:O

I am still waiting for the eyefinity bugs to get fixed on DA:O before I play it, but I enjoy the game.

Torchlight already fully supports eyefinity and is a great time killer plus its been on sale for as little as $5.00 no way you can beat that.