A mini-rant on RPGs to start off the week (FF9 and DA: Origins)

[bartholen_v1legacy]

I should be sleeping as i write this, but turns out being disappointed this badly by two praised RPGs in one day isn?t good for sleep.

Spoiler: First on the chopping block: Final Fantasy 9.

I should say that I enjoy the story in this a lot. The aesthetic is strange, but nowhere near the nonsense of FF10. Amidst all the grim western RPGs of the past few years it feels delightfully upbeat and quirky. The characters and setting have an almost Hayao Miyazaki ?esque feel to them in how colourful and fun they feel, like the king having been turned into a bug. Right from the outset when the princess you?re supposed to be kidnapping asks to be kidnapped herself I felt I was in for something different. I also can?t stop thinking of Vivi as a girl, since it?s clearly a girl?s name, and due to her appearance she could be any gender. It definitely makes her more interesting as a character.

If only I could enjoy the actual game as much.

I don?t know if this port (I?m playing both games on PC) differs much from the original release, but it feels like it?s had a few limbs sawn off and some vital organs removed. Not displaying enemy health numbers, for example. What fucking bass ackwards retard thought that was a good idea? Or how about not signaling when and whom they?re about to attack, making tactical play essentially impossible? Or having any way of discovering weaknesses or strengths of enemies? None of this is present, and there?s no option to turn any of it on or off. It turns the game into essentially trial and error, where the only way to figure out if an enemy is too strong for you is to die to it a few times.

But that?s not the worst of it. In any other JRPG the answer would just be to grind out levels. But here the game limits even that opportunity by having the brilliant idea of not restoring your HP and MP upon saving, but having an entirely different mechanic that uses a rare and expensive resource to do that. And since you have no way of knowing if surrounding enemies are too stron for you, you?re left trying to either luck out with enemy encounters that don?t kill you in 3 hits, or wasting your money on an expensive resource while not knowing if it?s necessary.

Spoiler: Up next for decapitation: Dragon Age Origins

As pros go, I enjoy the roleplaying aspect. I chose to roleplay as a silver-tongued opportunist dwarf rogue (because I?m a total hipster when it comes to RPG builds), and the game gives surprisingly many opportunities to do just that. The writing?s also quite good (for an RPG about saving the world from monsters anyway), though nowhere near Witcher 3 levels, but I?ll probably say that about every RPG for the rest of my life.

And then I get into combat, and I want to bite the faces off of the entire development team.

I?ll fully admit that it?s partly down to my unfamiliarity with old school western RPGs and having been focused on more action oriented fare for essentially my entire life that this game feels so alienating and clunky to me. I started playing on Normal, having heard at time of launch about both the game?s punishing difficulty, but also it having been scaled down in updates. Apparently it wasn?t scaled down that much, and/or I sucked even harder than I thought, because I had to turn down the difficulty to Easy during the final fight against the ogre in Ostagar. I got through it, and proceeded just fine for a while.

Then I got into combat again in the first town and got my ass handed to me once again. I typed ?Am I playing Dragon Age Origins wrong?? into google, and found similar experiences asking the same question. And I was greeted with all responses essentially saying ?Oh, you?re playing it wrong, you?re supposed to do this and this and this and set points into this and have Alistair as tank and Morrigan casting spells and setting this and that tactic etc.?

Oh, silly me, now I understand. I thought this was an RPG. You know, a game about choice. But apparently my choices were wrong. Tell me: if you?re supposed to play with only certain characters in a certain way anyway, WHY GIVE ME OPTIONS IN THE FIRST PLACE, ************?! If I?m required to set characters to use certain tactics to be able to survive to begin with, why don?t those tactics come as a default? And apparently archers are really weak in the vanilla game. Good to know I?m punished for wanting to break convention since I wanted to play as one.

I?m also not fond of the real time combat. For a long time I thought turn based combat systems in JRPGs were simply a remnant of technological limitations, but turns out they also serve to let the player know what the fuck is going on. Trying to be tactical in any way in the 3rd person view is essentially pointless, since the combat from that angle is an incomprehensible clusterfuck of numbers, flailing limbs and spell effects. I don?t even know what I?m supposed to be looking at. The character panels to see who?s low on health? The combat itself to keep an eye on positioning? Or the skill bars to see what skills are on cooldown? What is nature resistance and where is it useful? To what degree am I expected to micromanage every bloody thing my companions do? It feels like trying to play Diablo in 4-player co-op, except I?m the only player and have to pick every action of every character.

What is even the end goal here? I feel like I, as a player, have very little in the moment input on how combat plays out. Is it to get the tactics so precisely right that the characters don?t need my input? To get the game to essentially play itself? At least with turn-based systems like X-COM or Final Fantasy i can tell where things go south. Here it could be any number of things: is it because my rogues aren?t properly positioned for backstabs? Am I not making use of the environment? Is my warrior not drawing enemy aggro to themselves enough? Is my gear too weak? Are there skills that could be more useful? Are my stats allocated wrong? Fuck if I would be able to tell any of these things based on combat thus far.

Well, off to a good start for the week! What are you guys playing right now?

 

[Maximum Bert]

Each to his own, I have played and finished both of the titles you mention and pretty much agree with your points although their flaws did not annoy me as much as yourself perhaps. FFIXs combat is absolutely terrible with the exception of FF1 and 2 I feel it has the worst combat in the entire series but character and story wise its pretty decent. To be honest the combat is what kept me from finishing it a second time.

For Origins there are definitely good skills and bad skills and you wont know which are which until you try em and by then its to late. First time I played I choose a wizard and struggled having to fall back on a few good spells I was lucky enough to acquire. Second playthrough I knew what was good and bad and absolutely smashed the game barely anything presented a challenge in comparison to last time. Many RPGs are like this sure you have the choice but most boil down to the right choice (make the game easier) or the wrong choice (make it harder).

Presently I am playing Stormblood and trying out samurai in pvp. Having some fun although I do not like the changes they made to monk which is my main job I do like the new samurai class so will likely switch.

 

[jedisensei]

Having played thousands upon thousands of hours of Final Fantasy games -- from FF1 to Mystic Quest to FF Tactics to FFXII -- I'm embarrassed that I can't recall for certain off the top of my head, but I cannot remember a single of the SNES or PSX era FFs (excluding FFT) having enemy stats on display. Nor do I recall any that had that enemies "signal" whom they was about to attack (apart from certain bosses, etc).

As for seeing an enemy's strengths/weaknesses, Dagger has the "Scan" White Magic for that.

I don't remember having an issue with HP/MP restoration, either.

And Vivi is most definitely male

Spoiler

as shown when he and Zidane share the "age-old ritual between male friends" of 'tinkling' together under the stars.

 

[Hawki]

What the heck are you doing playing two RPGs at the same time?

Anyway, right now I'm playing Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. According to my save file, I'm about 10% through the game, but even so, I'll ramble off some thoughts:

-I like the framing device of the Prince telling the story, so that any death is 'not how it happened' (but if it didn't happen, either he's telling it wrong and then remembering, or his audience is chiming in with stuff') or snarkily asking whether he'll continue if you pause. So, nice touch there. It kind of reminds me of what little I played of Assassin's Creed, with the storytelling replaced by the animus, both allowing in-universe explanations for death meaning nothing.

-Oh, did I mention Assassin's Creed? I mean, I knew this going in, but the two series clearly share the same DNA with the control scheme. Did manage to get the hang of it quicker than AC1 mind you, but then, it's probably more simple as well.

-The gameplay is fun mostly, but repetitive. There's a hard divide between fighting the sand creatures and the platforming, the latter taking up most of the game. I like the dagger rewind thing, but there's no getting around how these activities start to feel samey. I will say that as someone who played the original Prince of Persia on the Genesis way back in the day, this game has the series's DNA in it. So, fun, but it's getting old. Oh, and fuck that crank puzzle. It's long, it's tedious, it makes no sense in the context of the game, and it amounts to nothing bar the guard getting killed and grinding the game to a halt.

-Dear god the cutscenes haven't aged well. I know, this game was in the early 2000s, but even so, they're borderline laughable now. The in-game cutscenes fare a bit better, but, well, yeah.

Overall, the game has a stamp of 'okay.' Not good, not bad, just okay. I suppose the sands of time will tell how it turns out. Right now though, I prefer the movie this game was based on.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

Were you playing on PC Dragon Age Origins? I seem to think people who dislike the combat were only playing the Console version.

And yes you must play in a certain because frankly a lot of the abilities are either too situational or flat out worthless.

Also alot of the Older Final Fantasy's until 10 and 12 never showed how much health enemies have.

 

[votemarvel]

In regard to Origins tactics, you have to adjust them to how you want to play. The same tactics for an archer will not work if you are playing as a sword and shield warrior.

A good choice if you want to play as an archer is to assign one of your team as your defender, if anything is attacking you then make them target it.

Plus the tactics system will follow priorities in order, so I've found that having healing/defense at the top of each list to be a very good idea or your team will fight until they drop.

 

[Lufia Erim]

I just finished Persona 5. Stellar game, my only complaint is that the game is way too easy on hard mode ( first playthrough). I guess I'm spoiled since i am a big SMT fan and completed most of the games that came out in NA. This game is nowhere near SMT nocturn, strange journey and Persona Q level of difficulty. Other than that, easily my favorite Jrpg of this generation.

 

[oRevanchisto]

In a real game about choice there are WRONG choices. Picking a Dwarf Rogue and the spending all your points into "Willpower" and "Herbalism" skills is going to result in you getting your ass kicked. DA: Origins is a real RPG where stat builds matter and you can't just press "A" all day long to cheese through a fight. Party composition, stat builds, positioning, tactics these are all things that matter. Git Gud.

 

[Ironman126]

Were you playing on PC Dragon Age Origins? I seem to think people who dislike the combat were only playing the Console version.

And yes you must play in a certain because frankly a lot of the abilities are either too situational or flat out worthless.

Riddle me this, Batman. What absolute lunatic would look at a game like Dragon Age: Origins and say "Yeah, that'd work great on a gamepad?" No part of that sounds like any fun. Hell, I used a mouse and keyboard and I wasn't thrilled with the combat.

Also, there was only ever one character to be played in DA:O and that was the elementalist mage. Tack on Blood Magic and a little healing (because why not) and it was GG. Rogues were viable, but mages actually got shit done. The only problem was the fact the mage origin is the worst goddamn one in the game.

In a real game about choice there are WRONG choices. Picking a Dwarf Rogue and the spending all your points into "Willpower" and "Herbalism" skills is going to result in you getting your ass kicked. DA: Origins is a real RPG where stat builds matter and you can't just press "A" all day long to cheese through a fight. Party composition, stat builds, positioning, tactics these are all things that matter. Git Gud.

This is true, but the fact is that not all good builds are created equal. The elemental mages had an obvious and measurable advantage over, say, a hex mage and dual-wielding, backstabby rogues beat ranged rogues every time. I think the point is that there were too few viable options. D&D 5E does the same thing. There's a million different builds, but only around three per class that are actually useful.

Video games are hard to balance between stat-obsessed munchkins and filthy casuals. For all its many flaws, I think Dragon Age 2 made a serious improvement when it streamlined the class builds. It put more emphasis on the "Game" part of Roleplaying Game.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

In a real game about choice there are WRONG choices. Picking a Dwarf Rogue and the spending all your points into "Willpower" and "Herbalism" skills is going to result in you getting your ass kicked. DA: Origins is a real RPG where stat builds matter and you can't just press "A" all day long to cheese through a fight. Party composition, stat builds, positioning, tactics these are all things that matter. Git Gud.

Oh, thanks for the super constructive criticism. I know about old school RPGs enough to not dump points into strength and constitution with a rogue. Most of the responses I found while searching online essentially repeated the same points: have Alistair on tank, Morrigan as DPS and heal, and micromanage when necessary. When everything except that is the wrong choice, what choice is there really to begin with? And how am I supposed to figure out what the weak link in my playstyle is when combat is, as mentioned, completely incomprehensible?

What serves to make the game more off putting is the amount of skills each character has in the beginning. It would be fine if it was 2 or 3, but it's more in the region of 5-6. Since I barely know what each one even does, let alone which ones are useful and in what situations (for example, Crippling Shot and Pinning Shot seem to do jack shit, but how was I supposed to know that ahead of time?), trying to set tactics is like trying to do a math test I didn't study for in a language I don't speak.

 

[sXeth]

I can't think of any FF (or the various quasi-brethren Square pumped out on the NES/SNES that showed enemy health and so on without using whatever the Scan spell/ability was. Or an equipped trinket of some sort. Final Fantasy 9 (and 4) do have locked jobs (classes) to each character, so it might not be available at all times. As compared to most of the rest of the series letting you juggle Jobs (up until 5) and abilities (most of the rest) relatively freely between characters.

I'm guessing you mean using Tents for the HP/MP at save points, which was another long running convention. They're typically rare or expensive in the early go (inns or healing spring things are usually the go to options). Though like most items in these style of games early rarity falls off and soon enough you're drowning in the things.

One thing in FFIX is to remember to use Zidanes steal as often as possible. Steal's always been a way to get some early items, but in 9 they went pretty heavy in on that (probably to suit the main character being the thief). I do remember a few definite rough difficulty spikes regardless though.

 

[FalloutJack]

Your FF9 experience differs greatly from mine. I blame your port, because I don't recall having any mechanical difficulties on Playstation. Also, about the restoring of health...ummm...that makes no sense. When has a Final Fantasy game EVER restored health upon saving? When has any game been like this, except for a few rare ones? I think these complaints you have are that the exception to the rule is not the rule, because the rule IS the rule and this is how people play them. What you're suppose to DO for the grind is stick by towns with inns. If, after enough combat, that you don't know the characters' limits and the enemies' limits in the area, you've got problems.

 

[Wrex Brogan]

Ehhhh, with Final Fantasy IX, it's less that it's got a few limbs hacked off and more that that was the standard of the series at the time. It wasn't until... fuck, XIII I think that you could actually see enemy HP bars, and XII was when you started being able to see who they were targeting. Even the 'different system to heal HP' thing was standard practice, seen with the Tent/Cottage items or need for an Inn. Can be a little disorientating if you've been playing a lot more modern fair where those aren't the norm.

And Origins... woooo, boy, the combat in Origins. There's a reason I play DA:O on the easiest difficulty, and that's simply so I can get through the combat sections faster. It took a few too many pages out of the nearest DnD handbook when it came to ability design, and if you're a newcomer to the series it can get a bit mental trying to figure out how all the abilities work together. And then when you finally figure it all out, you find out the game is incredibly poorly balanced, with Warriors being the general 'Disappointment' class and mages being a literal 'I Win' button you occasionally press twice when a boss shows up.

At least the stories and characters are nice.

As for me, well, I figured I'd be right proper nutcase and try to play three JRPGs at once. Final Fantasy VII, Megadimension Neptunia VII and I Am Setsuna. It's been a weird experience, since FFVII is an Old School JRPG, Mega-dimension parodies lots of JRPG stuff and I Am Setsuna is desperately trying to invoke the Old School JRPGs. Getting a nice broad spectrum of tone as a result, really.

Also, man, am I thankful the PS4 version of FFVII has a fast-forward option in it. I've strained my time as-is playing 3 JRPGs, but boy did I forget how long it takes to summon things in the older final fantasies.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Dragon Age: Origins is a tactical RPG. And there absolutely are wrong choices in an RPG. DA:Origins isn't a sandbox action game where choices don't matter. They matter a lot. Optimizing your squad and the tactics that they use when they face off different types of enemies is key to success. If it's too difficult for you or you find it too boring, you can always play on easy. You'll miss out on a lot, but you'll be able to breeze through the game.

 

[Kerg3927]

In a real game about choice there are WRONG choices. Picking a Dwarf Rogue and the spending all your points into "Willpower" and "Herbalism" skills is going to result in you getting your ass kicked. DA: Origins is a real RPG where stat builds matter and you can't just press "A" all day long to cheese through a fight. Party composition, stat builds, positioning, tactics these are all things that matter. Git Gud.

Oh, thanks for the super constructive criticism. I know about old school RPGs enough to not dump points into strength and constitution with a rogue. Most of the responses I found while searching online essentially repeated the same points: have Alistair on tank, Morrigan as DPS and heal, and micromanage when necessary. When everything except that is the wrong choice, what choice is there really to begin with? And how am I supposed to figure out what the weak link in my playstyle is when combat is, as mentioned, completely incomprehensible?

What serves to make the game more off putting is the amount of skills each character has in the beginning. It would be fine if it was 2 or 3, but it's more in the region of 5-6. Since I barely know what each one even does, let alone which ones are useful and in what situations (for example, Crippling Shot and Pinning Shot seem to do jack shit, but how was I supposed to know that ahead of time?), trying to set tactics is like trying to do a math test I didn't study for in a language I don't speak.

It's a classic RPG, in that... you need a tank, you need a healer, and you probably need a rogue to open locks and shit. The number of NPC's available in the game are very limited, especially early. And there's a reason for that. The characters are the backbone of most good Bioware games. Their personalities are developed. You get to know them. You pick favorites. You get to love hanging out with them. You miss them when they are gone.

Anyway, you need a warrior with Threaten and Taunt to tank, or he's not a tank. He won't be able to hold aggro. In the early game, that means Alistair. (Later on there are a couple of other options.) So you either build Alistair as a tank or you play a warrior and fill that role yourself.

You need a mage with the heal spell. In the early game, that's either Morrigan or you. Again, later on there are other options. Etc.

Setting up proper tactics is a core part of the game. As someone said, it's a tactical RPG. If you don't like dealing with tactics and strategy, the game is probably not for you.

 

[DoPo]

Also, there was only ever one character to be played in DA:O and that was the elementalist mage. Tack on Blood Magic and a little healing (because why not) and it was GG. Rogues were viable, but mages actually got shit done.

Ah yes, mages in DA:O, I had something to say about them one time:

Too many people have said it but none have managed to state it properly. Here is how the game is played - you have a party of four people and you generally have the following roles - cannon fodder (warrior), beatstick (warrior), dead weight (rogues), God (mages). As for the party itself, you need:

- a dead weight - to open locks/disable traps. Since these can specialise in ranged or melee, maybe ranged is better, because they tend to survive longer in a fight. However, I've had several experiences with a melee dead weight that manages to use some of the more powerful abilities in the beginning and as such turns (very) briefly into a cannon fodder and a beatstick. Don't take more than one, it's a waste of space.
- beatstick - give them a weapon or two and give them the boring job - grind down the HP of the enemies. God should just stand back and do the actual work - buff/debuff and own the fight.
- cannon fodder - they are there to absorb damage, obviously. They can even turn into HP batteries for God later on (Blood Mages). You definitely need one to take the heat. Also try to keep him alive for a bit but he's not essential for the entire fight. Also, don't play a cannon fodder. Beatsticks and God should focus on finishing the battle, even the dead weight can be a more contributing factor there.
- God - one, preferably you, and maybe two to split the responsibility and double the effectiveness. The responsibility of God is to win. Pure and simple.

There are specialisations for God, that (unless those of lesser classes) actually matter - they are the following:
- Shapeshifter - useless. Worse than the dead weight.
- Spirit Healer - not too bad but one of your party members will already have that. It is still possible to pick it if you are God.
- Blood Mage - you have to get it. Period. You (or one of the other Gods) will absolutely troll the battlefield - the first ability, Blood Magic, will make you cast from HP. Not impressive but can give you extra juice to win a fight. The second ability, Blood Sacrifice, takes HP from those party members that don't need it (i.e., not Gods) and gives it to you. The third is Blood Wound. THIS IS WHY YOU PICKED A BLOOD MAGE. Is that clear? No? OK, here, let me rephrase: DOT and immobilisation for everyone in a huge AOE and neither is broken if the targets are attacked afterwards. Only works on enemies with blood, which means most of them. Oh and there is also Blood Control - pick an enemy and make it an ally. Or deal massive damage if it fails (although there was a bug that didn't deal the damage, IIRC).
- Arcane Warrior - if you want to take over the job of beatsticks and cannon fodder and be better at it. It does take some planning to use effectively but an Arcane Warrior Blood Mage (yes, you can have two specialisations) is probably the most powerful being you'll encounter. And you'll be that being if you're playing God.

As for what you play, you can take the role of the dead weight - it's actually fun and if you're doing the job, chances are you'll be able to considerably outdo the other dead weights. To the point where you're useful to the fight. It makes the whole party more effective because you don't need to drag a true dead weight with you.

Apparently it wasn?t scaled down that much, and/or I sucked even harder than I thought, because I had to turn down the difficulty to Easy during the final fight against the ogre in Ostagar.

Nah, that fight is just bullshit: "Hey, you know what would be great? Pit the player against a giant enemy that has tons of HP and can dish out a lot of damage, do it when the player is barely starting, so they don't have many ways to deal with it and to top it off, have them closed in a small room. It's going to be GREAT!". When I played it, it was a prolonged battle where most of what I did was run around and try to plink away with ranged attacks every once in a while. It would work great accompanied by the Yakety Sax as a soundtrack but the game didn't have that. Instead it was dull, monotonous and boring.

I guess the idea was to instill a sense of how big and powerful the enemies are, and also to give you a greater sense of satisfaction when you find an ogre later on and slay it with more ease but...I think it failed.

I?m also not fond of the real time combat. For a long time I thought turn based combat systems in JRPGs were simply a remnant of technological limitations, but turns out they also serve to let the player know what the fuck is going on. Trying to be tactical in any way in the 3rd person view is essentially pointless, since the combat from that angle is an incomprehensible clusterfuck of numbers, flailing limbs and spell effects. I don?t even know what I?m supposed to be looking at. The character panels to see who?s low on health? The combat itself to keep an eye on positioning? Or the skill bars to see what skills are on cooldown? What is nature resistance and where is it useful? To what degree am I expected to micromanage every bloody thing my companions do? It feels like trying to play Diablo in 4-player co-op, except I?m the only player and have to pick every action of every character.

You can pause the combat - it makes managing it much easier. If you are unsure what is happening, then pause and unpause a lot - say, let 2 seconds pass in "real time" and pause afterwards to see what the results are. If 2 seconds are too short, then make it 5 seconds. This will definitely give you a much clearer view of how the combat is progressing. If one of your characters' health is dropping fast, then they are being beaten a lot and may need healing. If the one of the enemies' health is not dropping but it should, then you probably want to tell your guys to focus them. And so on and so forth.

Character tactics work but aren't essential. They do require you to know about the characters and how they behave in combat. For example, you can set them to drink a healing potion if they fall below 70% HP, but a tank is probably going to spend most of the combat injured and can be healed by others, so that's not a good tactic. I'd suggest directly controlling your characters until you get a feel for how you want things to go, then set that as tactics. When faced with a powerful enemy and its minions, you may want to disable the powerful one, deal with the riff raff, then focus your attention back at the big guy. Or instead, you may prefer to nuke the strong target first, then mop up the remains. Or maybe you like neither of these approaches and want to do something else. Whatever the case, once you settle on stuff, you can set your companions tactics. It should be for routine stuff you know you want to do anyway, and it will alleviate the micromanagement. That relies on you knowing what to do.

What is even the end goal here? I feel like I, as a player, have very little in the moment input on how combat plays out. Is it to get the tactics so precisely right that the characters don?t need my input? To get the game to essentially play itself?

If you wish to. I know some people do like crafting that, but I didn't. I just set some generic-ish tactics, stuff like "engage and draw aggro" for fighter and "heal when low" for the others. Essentially all of the most routine tasks that I didn't want to manually go and do. I maintained control of the rest of the actions of the characters - positioning, skill engagements, etc. You can go in either direction - either complete automation, or complete control. But it's not even a binary choice - it's a sliding scale. You could, for example, completely automate one of your characters but control the rest or whatever you want.

So, there isn't an "end goal" as such - you are free to play it how you like it best.

 

[oRevanchisto]

In a real game about choice there are WRONG choices. Picking a Dwarf Rogue and the spending all your points into "Willpower" and "Herbalism" skills is going to result in you getting your ass kicked. DA: Origins is a real RPG where stat builds matter and you can't just press "A" all day long to cheese through a fight. Party composition, stat builds, positioning, tactics these are all things that matter. Git Gud.

Oh, thanks for the super constructive criticism. I know about old school RPGs enough to not dump points into strength and constitution with a rogue. Most of the responses I found while searching online essentially repeated the same points: have Alistair on tank, Morrigan as DPS and heal, and micromanage when necessary. When everything except that is the wrong choice, what choice is there really to begin with? And how am I supposed to figure out what the weak link in my playstyle is when combat is, as mentioned, completely incomprehensible?

What serves to make the game more off putting is the amount of skills each character has in the beginning. It would be fine if it was 2 or 3, but it's more in the region of 5-6. Since I barely know what each one even does, let alone which ones are useful and in what situations (for example, Crippling Shot and Pinning Shot seem to do jack shit, but how was I supposed to know that ahead of time?), trying to set tactics is like trying to do a math test I didn't study for in a language I don't speak.

It's a classic RPG, in that... you need a tank, you need a healer, and you probably need a rogue to open locks and shit. The number of NPC's available in the game are very limited, especially early. And there's a reason for that. The characters are the backbone of most good Bioware games. Their personalities are developed. You get to know them. You pick favorites. You get to love hanging out with them. You miss them when they are gone.

Anyway, you need a warrior with Threaten and Taunt to tank, or he's not a tank. He won't be able to hold aggro. In the early game, that means Alistair. (Later on there are a couple of other options.) So you either build Alistair as a tank or you play a warrior and fill that role yourself.

You need a mage with the heal spell. In the early game, that's either Morrigan or you. Again, later on there are other options. Etc.

Setting up proper tactics is a core part of the game. As someone said, it's a tactical RPG. If you don't like dealing with tactics and strategy, the game is probably not for you.

This. You're complaining about the game actually being challenging and punishing you for screwing up. You just can't roll with an entire party of Rogues and expect not to die a lot more. Tank, DPS, Healer combo is the Holy Trinity of any classic RPG. And, tactics are the reason so many people still love Origins over its sequels. It allows the player to finely tune exactly how they want their party to behavior so they can master any scenario.

 

[Vanilla ISIS]

I don't play modern JRPGs but regarding your complaints of FF9, every single JRPG I've played operated like that.
You had abilities which showed you the weaknesses of enemies, your only option to heal was to use magic, items or sleep, the enemies didn't signal who they were attacking.
To be honest, those things would make the game a bit too easy for me.

FF9 is already too easy.
All you have to do is give every party member auto regen and you have broken the game.
Once you do that, you'll never have to heal again.
FF9 was the only FF game in which I haven't died once.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

Were you playing on PC Dragon Age Origins? I seem to think people who dislike the combat were only playing the Console version.

And yes you must play in a certain because frankly a lot of the abilities are either too situational or flat out worthless.

Riddle me this, Batman. What absolute lunatic would look at a game like Dragon Age: Origins and say "Yeah, that'd work great on a gamepad?" No part of that sounds like any fun. Hell, I used a mouse and keyboard and I wasn't thrilled with the combat.

Also, there was only ever one character to be played in DA:O and that was the elementalist mage. Tack on Blood Magic and a little healing (because why not) and it was GG. Rogues were viable, but mages actually got shit done. The only problem was the fact the mage origin is the worst goddamn one in the game.

In a real game about choice there are WRONG choices. Picking a Dwarf Rogue and the spending all your points into "Willpower" and "Herbalism" skills is going to result in you getting your ass kicked. DA: Origins is a real RPG where stat builds matter and you can't just press "A" all day long to cheese through a fight. Party composition, stat builds, positioning, tactics these are all things that matter. Git Gud.

This is true, but the fact is that not all good builds are created equal. The elemental mages had an obvious and measurable advantage over, say, a hex mage and dual-wielding, backstabby rogues beat ranged rogues every time. I think the point is that there were too few viable options. D&D 5E does the same thing. There's a million different builds, but only around three per class that are actually useful.

Video games are hard to balance between stat-obsessed munchkins and filthy casuals. For all its many flaws, I think Dragon Age 2 made a serious improvement when it streamlined the class builds. It put more emphasis on the "Game" part of Roleplaying Game.

I played Tanky Human Warrior in all my playthroughs and I still had fun with the combat.

 

[meiam]

On FF9, JRPG challenge isn't supposed to come from the individual fight (at least the normal enemy) its supposed to come from the dungeon and limited resource, you're supposed to have to balance out the resource you have (HP, MP, items) versus exploration. Of course none of that really work because they tend to be way too easy since you usually end up overleveling very quickly if you fight every encounter, also restoring HP/MP before boss is way too easy, with tent being really abundant really quickly (iirc they're only 400 gil). The closest things to challenging in it is trying to steal all the items from bosses since it usually take a very long time and you have to survive during that time. I really can't think of any enemy which could wipe out the party in 3 attack, AoE where really rare, so unless you're severely underlevel (ie your using flee every fight you encounter for a very long time, I did that first time I played trough the game and made it to the end of disc 3 before I really had issues) I don't see where you could be having so much issues. The only place I could see this being an issue is the world map above gizamaluke grotto where you can fight end game enemy, but that's optional and the game clearly tell you about that.