All you Dragon Age 2 haters are so obnoxious though...
Again, it amazes me how much trollhate DA2 receives and how much absolute slobbering praise DA:O does. Both games were mediocre.
There were plenty of things badly broken with DA2. EXACTLY the same maps reused over and over again, poor badly-timed over-spamming of enemy mobs, combat dumbed down into a button-mashing fest, GFX that had half the FPS of original
yet not only managed to look worse than the
original DAO but somehow even managed to have environmental / floor textures, etc, look consistently worse than even 2002
Neverwinter Nights (the predecessor of NWN2, which in turn was the predecessor of DAO...) Throw in : comically bad cheesy animations (especially the rogue's attacks looking like a Japanese anime gone wrong), dumbed down conversation wheel, nerfed PC quickbar interface, nerfed isometric view, nerfed companion inventory & armor, nerfed class skills, half the length (25-36hrs vs DAO's 50-70hrs), companions now brainless drones with far less personality & humor than the original, zero toolset, etc. The only quality thing close to the original was Inon Zur's soundtrack (excellent as always).
If you liked DA2 due to the plot or whatever, fine, but don't pretend entirely valid widespread almost universal criticism is "
unfair trollhate". DAO was 5 years in the making and they put a lot of effort into not dumbing down the PC with "lowest common denominator" consolization to the point where it was (and still is) one of the top 5 examples of a cross-platform game done right over the past decade with not only zero PC compromise but a significant PC UI / HUD enhancement optimised for mouse+keyboard beyond just upping GFX textures & shaders on Ultra (a rarity these days). DA2 was a post-EA-acquisition rushed-out brand cash-in. The fact the DA Inquisitions team have openly spoken about "lessons learned" says it all.
DA2 was more fun gameplay wise but the plot was silly and had rushed development problems. DA:O was long and had tons of dialogue but the plot and gameplay was quite boring.
DAO's combat was along the lines of its predecessors (NWN, etc) in the sense of being highly tactical "real-time rounds" typically 5s or so apart that played like a "sped up turn-based strategy". That's the entire point of these games! The only people who thought that was "boring" were those unfamiliar with earlier related games who were instead expecting every new RPG to be an arcadey Diablo-click-fest hack & slash style experience. For those looking for that - try Torchlight.
Everyone likes to compare DA:O to BG2 but I doubt anyone making that comparison actually ever really played BG2 to realize what DA:O lacks.
I've played the lot : Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, Icewind Dale 1 & 2 (all Infinity Engine), NWN 1 & 2 (Aurora Engine), etc. They did an excellent job with DAO preserving the "feel" of old-style isometric RPG's whilst adding more modern "over-the-shoulder" gameplay at the flick of a mouse wheel. The fact they released the full toolset is also what stands it out as more "old school quality" vs "
marketed for a more 'casual' audience". Hopefully, DAI's "blend" will be more like 99% DAO / 1% DA2...