Origins by a mile. There’s just so much thought put into the overall story and the gameplay really harkens back to bioware’s heyday of crpgs. Mages are a blast to use and there’s still some strategy in the combat.
DA2 was rushed in every sense of the word and it’s blatantly apparent. The whole story takes place in one city, there are like 3 unique dungeon maps that are reused over and over again, and the gameplay was changed to basically be an arpg i.e. hold down M1 and you win.
Inquisition was like they tried to return to form but EA said fill every pixel of the map with fetch quests and herbs to gather. What should’ve been like a 25 hour story driven game becomes a 90 hour slog fest.
I’d honestly just say play origins, then watch a story summary on YouTube for the other two.
Thanks. Sad to hear that. I’ve played and liked Origins, but quickly soured when playing 2. I was hoping that maybe 3 would be worthwhile… Maybe with some mods to reduce grinding, if they exist?
So there’s a mechanic in the base game where to start quests you have to wait X hours in real life. And to unlock those quests to start the timer, you need “power” which is gathered from doing side quests or clearing a repeatable encounter. Combine this with all of the grinding stuff like gathering herbs and unlocking fast travel spots everything is a drag.
There are mods to reduce or even remove those requirements I listed so it’s up to you how “cheaty” you want to get. I essentially removed the timer, doubled my power and XP gain, and removed the harvesting animation (honestly the best mod). Even then, after only doing main story quests, what I felt were important side quests, and like half of the companions quests, and only the final dlc to see the true ending, it still took me 55 hours…
Best I can say is start it up and when the game dumps you into the first map, only do the main story quests and then move onto the next zone. Because each map honestly probably has its own 55 hours of picking up rocks and killing bandits.
Would you say seeing your choices reverberate through the story by importing your saves makes it worthwhile, or no?
I’ve played and really enjoyed Origins, but haven’t (yet) taken on the other two. With the size of my backlog I’d be happy to leave the other two unplayed as I was satisfied at the end of Origins, but the fact that you can import saves and have your decisions matter does interest me.
It is pretty cool seeing stuff you did in the old games relate to what is going on now in the game… But I feel like they didn’t expand on it enough for it to be solely the reason to play the next two games. The biggest highlight is morrigan and leliana, who both have a big role in 3. Alistair kinda pops up every now and then, and the rest are non-existent in the other games besides passing mentions. Same situation for your companions in DA2, one is returning companion in DAI, others are like oh remember them?
I would say the biggest decider on whether or not it’s worth is if you performed the ritual with morrigan. However, the result of that is kind of just swept under the rug since it seems like they were predicting they were gonna use that in the next DA game. But since the original DA4 got scrapped and there’s no real save import for veil guard and I’m sure the choices they allow you to make to are only the huge ones like morrigans ritual, it seems kind of pointless. To me, games like this shine when they remember the small details, a minor npc you thought was cool and randomly pops up again later on.
Ultimately my advice is the same as above; watch a YouTube summary, or if you’re feeling really frisky, read the DA wiki on the people you’re interested in.
Thanks for the super thorough reply, I really appreciate it! I did do the ritual, I think I got the “ring ending” for Morrigan as I entered the portal with her in the Witch Hunt DLC.
I agree with you on the appeal of these long series of games with save-import being the continuity, so it’s a shame to hear it’s not more elaborate than that. I know Welonz did a full Dragon Age series playthrough last year so I might just watch that some day. If Veilguard turns out to be incredible (doubtful) I’ll take your advice and just watch story recaps I think.
I mean… all these glitches really seem tame compared to skyrim on launch. Talk about a dumpster fire but it’s one of the best selling games of the century.
Yeah, this Ubislop will be forgotten, we will poke fun at its glitches. If they had tried to capture people’s imaginations (but fell just short enough like Skyrim) we’d probably be talking about this game for years to come. Star Wars: Outlaws is just an overhyped cash grab.
Yeah, especially since the game has a true ending that’s easy to give up on if you’re bad at finding conches. Can be intimidating, as I watch someone quietly quit at the final boss.
Honestly, the true ending is nothing to write home about. Sea of Stars is probably one of my favourite JRPG ever, but the entire last arc and both endings were a huge letdown.
They should have swapped a couple of the conch rewards, so you get a flimsy hammer at 60 and the true ending at 48. Pushing your players into an extra 5 hours of searching just kills the game’s pacing
I ended up just getting them for my wife, the funny thing is it took me like 20 minutes to get 20 once you know all the harder ones (like oasis). But yeah, I agree. Optional bosses made sense at least.
I am going to bang on so many apartment doors until the old lady that lives inside doddles over to answer and when I hear the key rattling in that lock I will flying kick that door off the hinges, blasting her unconscious, so thar I can take everything out of her wallet and her safe.
What was that? Is she a suspect? …Suspect in what? Hey did you see my cool apartment? I can afford a new sofa now!
I tend to go back to one of the beta versions from time to time so it’s interesting to see the final one - it’s both extremely familiar and pretty different at the same time. It might not be as good of a product as Terraria but I always had a soft spot for this game.
I doubt I can provide any tips for this version but I hope you have fun with it.
Funny that you say that. I opened the comments to mention how the final version never felt right to me. One aspect is that the final door is open from the beginning of the game. In my first (early access) playthroughs, the final door stayed closed until the story opened it.
I even played without frackin universe and it was still open on a new playthrough. I really hope it was my files and not a game change. Frackin universe build paths also got way worse and unnecessarily complicated over time, but that’s a different story.
I have much more good to say than bad about the game, but it felt better when I played back in 2016 for the first time and in 2018 with the mod.
I can’t say much about the final version since I didn’t play much of it yet but I do remember some fun ideas being lost during the development. I also remember not vibing much with the new lore & introduction but that could possibly change whenever I take some time to finally experience the game.
I guess I could ask since you’ve mentioned Frackin’ Universe. I’ve seen some mods trying to bring various parts of the old features back, do you know if any of them managed a decent mix of old and new vision of the project?
FU was the only mod I played with, and it worked as early as 2018 I think. It was a huge overhaul on massive features and build paths. I suggest a look if you enjoy the vanilla game.
I think the final door being open is because you opened it on an earlier playthrough, since characters share the same universe (unless you delete the universe save file)
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