Just started on Dragon Age. Does it get better?

[Axolotl]

In all the hype for Dragon Age 2 I saw a copy of origins for a fairly low pricem so I bought it.

Now I'm not very far and I've got a few complaints mainly the combat. I have to ask does the combat ever let up? I mean at the moment I just keep killing mob after mob the same repetative encounters and it's ludicrous how many guys I have to fight. The worst part is the combat isn't very good, the AI for the party is horrendous, there's no tactics and none of my uys seem to have any capacity for actually hurting the enemies. Most of the battles seem to boil downto pot luck or just breaking the game. Take the ogre in the tower at the beginning, I spent almost an hour on that and in the end the only way I couldkill it was by abusing the forcecage spell.

Now the non-combat parts are okay sort of WHFRP with the serial numbers filed off but the grind is just overwhelming. Does it actually improve later or what?

 

[The Austin]

Yes. The beginning sucks nuts.

The first 5 hours are utter BALLS compared to the rest of the game.

 

[Cpt_Oblivious]

There are tactics but if you use them to the full the whole thing breaks down to a turn-based RPG. And if you're only at the tower then you only have yourself and 1 party member, you get more as your progress and they have different abilities which do affect your tactics and can be very useful. So play a little more and see how it goes, but if you really hate the combat then stop.

 

[Meggiepants]

The combat never really gets any better. However, I suggest turning down the difficulty to enjoy the game.

For me, the best part of DA is not the combat, but the interactions between characters and how they fit into the story. If you can get over the combat and start picking up some of the various people you will journey with, you'll find it much more appealing.

Also, I enjoyed the combat so much more once I became a rogue. Try a different class, you might like something else better.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

There are tactics you can assign to your party members, but I found for the most part I still had to take control of them myself in order to get through a battle, which got rather arduous. I still haven't finished that game. I got as far as this one Boss fight, but then I got fed up with it.

 

[Brad Shepard]

It gets a lot better, give it time, trust me, I had the same problem.

 

[Axolotl]

There are tactics but if you use them to the full the whole thing breaks down to a turn-based RPG. And if you're only at the tower then you only have yourself and 1 party member, you get more as your progress and they have different abilities which do affect your tactics and can be very useful. So play a little more and see how it goes, but if you really hate the combat then stop.

The problem isn't with the chacters abilities. It's that I can control one at a time and the AI for the other is not only bad but ignores any instructions I try and give it. It's like trying to herd sheep. I thought Baldur's Gate had bad combat but at least then people would do what I told them. If it were turn-based I'd have no problem but it's that god-awful real-time with pause that's ruining the whole game.

 

[SnootyEnglishman]

Dude you've only just started and you've only got you and Alistair with two generic guys following you. Wait for a few hours and you get a total of four members which include yourself. But if your really insisting upon hating the game when you've barely played then just shut up and stop playing.

 

[lacktheknack]

Um, you're playing it wrong?

I got the ogre on my second try... my party does exactly what I ask them to... they do a crap load of damage on the enemy...?

Although yes, it does get better later.

 

[Googenstien]

It gets better when you get more abilities.. even then tho overall the game is very overhyped in the combat aspects.

 

[wkrepelin]

If you're playing on one of the consoles then the answer is sadly no. The console controls are broken and from the sounds of yopur complaints, particularly about companion a.i., you are. I wanteds to love that game.

I bought a special edition as well as the SE guide and the game was stolen (along with a ton of other stuff) during a burglary. I then bought another copy as well as the DLC that wasn't included in the special edition. I played for over 30 hours continually recruiting (I did the mages and the humans and got most of the way through the dwarves) until I finally decided to cut my losses and sell my copy back to gamestop. The story is epic and the graphics are good enough but they destroyed the controls in the port.

Additionally, I made the mistake of playing as a ranger and focusing on archery so every time that I'd switch characters to give specific orders to my party members, because they're pants-on-head-retarded when left to their own devices, my ranger would pull out a dagger an charge the enemy . . . yeah he'd die when he did that.

In the end what I worked out as the only strategy for success was to have my party hold at a point and then I'd run ahead and get the attention of a few enemies and "kyte" them back to my party at which point I'd give the command to move freely and they'd usually be able to take them down but it was so boring and repetative as well as ineffectual during boss battles.

I understand that if you play a different class the odds of success are better but it doesn't change the controls. Also, you can assign behaviors to the party but it never works as smoothly as the gambit system for FFXII. In the end this is a pause and play game like Baulder's Gate that just didn't port well.

It makes me sad. I still really want to play this game but I really need to get the PC version and I'm not sure mine is up to the challenge.

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[AlternatePFG]

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Set your archers mode to ranged in the tactics menu. He should stay completely ranged then.

Personally, I hated the tower part, but after that it got better for me. The only other part of the game I hated was the Fade.

 

[Gralian]

Once you get a healer it goes a lot smoother, and when you get the hang of aggro management. For me i countered the issue by having Alistair tank and my 2h dps warrior offtank, which meant i could handle most groups of mobs. I played on Hard but some parts are absolutely ridiculous in difficulty, especially vs mages. But if you really don't like the DND combat style (like me) then no - it won't get any better, not to any great extent anyway. DND is for the most part luck based as your life is riding on the roll of the dice. Though you are still responsible for healing and keeping aggro off squishy characters. And yes, the first few hours into the game does suck balls. Just struggle through it. I don't think it really improves until you finish the Circle of Mages quest thing as their tower.

 

[Axolotl]

Dude you've only just started and you've only got you and Alistair with two generic guys following you. Wait for a few hours and you get a total of four members which include yourself.

I've got four party members and they're worse than when I had 2. The theif insists on tanking, the fighter needs to be reminded to use his abilities and if I let go of the steering wheel for the mage for even an instant the AI wastes all my mana and best spells on a random mook.

But if your really insisting upon hating the game when you've barely played then just shut up and stop playing.

Yeah that's why I weant out a bought Dragon Age, so I can hate it.

I don't go out of my way to hate things butwhen I'm over 7 hours in and most of that has been fairly bad combat, I'm not happy.

 

[AlternatePFG]

Dude you've only just started and you've only got you and Alistair with two generic guys following you. Wait for a few hours and you get a total of four members which include yourself.

I've got four party members and they're worse than when I had 2. The theif insists on tanking, the fighter needs to be reminded to use his abilities and if I let go of the steering wheel for the mage for even an instant the AI wastes all my mana and best spells on a random mook.

Try using the tactics menu and setup their AI to your liking, it has solutions for all of those problems if you set it up right. If not, you can just switch their general style, from like the default thing, to ranged, cautious, etc.

 

[Gralian]

Dude you've only just started and you've only got you and Alistair with two generic guys following you. Wait for a few hours and you get a total of four members which include yourself.

I've got four party members and they're worse than when I had 2. The theif insists on tanking, the fighter needs to be reminded to use his abilities and if I let go of the steering wheel for the mage for even an instant the AI wastes all my mana and best spells on a random mook.

Try using the tactics menu and setup their AI to your liking, it has solutions for all of those problems if you set it up right. If not, you can just switch their general style, from like the default thing, to ranged, cautious, etc.

I set Leliana to ranged and she ended up standing there frozen on the spot, not moving nor attacking when enemies came in to range. Explain that.

I've seen many examples where the 'tactics' feature is just plain broken.

 

[Hiphophippo]

I'm not sure what system you're playing it on so I can't speak for the combat. However the story REALLY picked up at the Landsmeet once you recruit the other races into your fold. Game's pretty much straight epic from the start of that on.

 

[AlternatePFG]

I'unno. It won't solve everything, and you still have to do some manual controlling. The system is a bit broken, but setting it up still helps alot.

 

[TheRocketeer]

You know, if you had been asking about the plot or characters, then my answer would be, 'Yes! The game livens up quickly after Ostagar.'

But with the problems you're put off by, no, that really doesn't ever change. Classes are extremely unbalanced, and every class only actually has a handful of useful moves to learn. There is NO way to tel beforehand which will make the game a cakewalk and which will get you stomped. The difficulty 'curve' isn't so much a curve as a Jackson Pollock painting; you may have an encounter against a few normal enemies it takes you an hour to finally beat, followed by a boss you steamroll first try, followed by a random pack of wolves on the way back to Denerim that's as lethal as the last five fights put together.

But one of the biggest problems in the game is that you will fight roughly a thousand billion enemies over the course of the game, and about a dozen or so won't be Darkspawn. This would be a pacing issue even if Darkspawn weren't the most boring enemies this side of the Goomba. There's just nothing about them- the way they look, the way they fight, their background, nothing- that's even remotely interesting. I honestly don't know how BioWare managed to make orcs even blander.

And yes, luck has a lot to do with individual encounters. You might get smashed to paste by an encounter, reload, and then wrap things up in a few rounds. And not know what, if anything, went any differently.

All of the above could just be chalked up to bad luck or garbled priorities on the part of BioWare, but one thing that bugged me personally in Dragon Age was the sheer number of 'ambushes:' random or storyline encounters that you can tell are traps from a mile away, even on the occasions when you aren't flat-out told immediately beforehand an ambush is being set for you. Whenever this happens, your only option is to blunder in like a turkey and get cut up. What's worse, it seems like the developers were aware that Dragon Age has way, way too many instances like this, and went with it anyway. That's not so much just a design error as it is pissing in the players' eyes.

Note that there is a lot about DA:O that I really liked, and I don't think it's a bad game by a fair stretch. To me, Dragon Age: Origins is like the Shelby Mustang from Gone in 60 Seconds: it looks awesome, and is seriously cool in a lot of ways, but the damn thing just doesn't work- especially when you're really counting on it.

 

[Instant K4rma]

I actually enjoy the combat system. It reminds me a lot of the KotOR games (though that would make sense, being BioWare and all). I'm not sure what you're talking about with none of the AI being able to hold their own in a fight. My main character is a tanking build, so the damage being dealt to the enemies comes mainly from my party members, who do quite a bit of damage as a matter of fact. Maybe try lowering the difficulty. Setting up tactics in the Tactics menu can help. And the game does get better once you get a healer. Where this game really shines is it's plot and story telling.

I'm sorry that you're not enjoying the game so far, I really am. I've played through Dragon Age a couple times now, and I've had a blast. Maybe the game isn't for you. I'm not saying that to be degrading, don't get me wrong. People have the right to not enjoy games. If this is one of those games for you, so be it. I just feel bad that you had to buy it to figure that out.