Combat in the Dragon Age series

Thanks!  Is DA2 also your favourite game in the series, or does that title go to another?

I voted for DA2 with a tactical camera. I like the animation speed of DA2...makes me feel like a badass, especially with my rogue. But I miss the wide overhead view that DAO gave us.

Boo! I don't see my preferred "needs yet another overhaul" option offered.

They've got this "write incredible characters and lore" thing down pat. I'm still waiting for the gameplay to catch up with the setting. I'm not holding my breath, of course, and take it for what it is.

I don't see any similarity at all between DAI and DAO, though. It's a completely different combat system.

The tac cam is useless, honestly. Does anyone actually use it? I only use it when I don't know if my AOE spell will hit my target. And the game's difficulty doesn't ask for a tac cam, you can go by with the action combat alone.

DAI is an action RPG. Let's embrace it for what it is. It flows better, the environment, enemies, attacks, skills, all work in favor for an action combat.

What I would like is for them to make the combat more challenging. The guy that designed the combat in one of the pre-alpha videos mentioned something about elements influencing in the way you will attack an enemy, making you think before using an attack otherwise it could damage you as well. Idk why they didn't add that. It was a great idea and makes it more complex.

With that said, I think DAI has a slighty better combat than DA2.
DA2 was fun but it was waaaay too fast. The thing was chaotic. They speed DAO combat like 10x.

DAO was slow because it wasn't an action game. You can't ask a tactical game to be fast, it defies its purpose.
It makes no sense because the game demands you to think before you do something otherwise it will beat you.

My favorite method of playing is to simply rush the enemy at close quarters so the only tactics i ever use is to simply give myself and all of my companions defensive and health restoring abilities in order to withstand/fix the damage close range fighting can cause. That's why i like it fast. Get in, do damage, leave.

Origins' complexity with Inquisition's animation speed would be the best experience for me in terms of gameplay. The worst thing about Inquisition's combat was removing detailed tactics slots for party members, I felt.

I never liked DA combat. The kind of combat I like is the kind that relies on my own skill, aim, reflexes, and use of terrain something like Mass Effect 2-3 and similar games in 1st or close 3rd person view where if you hit something or not, where you hit it, etc...is 100% determined by player reflexes and skill. Dodging behind a wall is going to keep you from getting hit and so on.

DAO's is just one long, slow, awkward headache I muuuuuch prefer playing a mage in DA2 compared to DAO. Your movements are more dynamic and you can fight in close quarters instead of just standing still and shooting tiny zaps out of your staff like a potato gun.



In DAI the player is unable to set detailed companion tactics and that's an huge step down for one. I hate having to micromanage the party even for relatively easy fights.

-The suddenly limited number of abilities you can use in a fight is another big negative. You're restricted to 8 which not only leaves you unprepared in some situations but is also boring and limits variety and experimentation on the fly. There was no restriction on the previous games abilities, if you knew the ability you could use it. Even on consoles the radial menu could be brought up to use the ones that weren't hotkeyed.

-The tactical camera respects terrain. You couldn't just move your cursor to a hill or to the other side of some rubble, you had to travel your cursor around as if you were a character walking. Pointless annoying and weird.

-My biggest issue however was the pants-on-head retarded ai. For one thing pressing hold position NEVER made the party hold position, certain other commands I issued to my party were also ignored pretty regularly. The ranged characters (even if they had zero short range abilities) would run right up into melee range and get killed. There was one fight I had that was absolutely ridiculous with this. For the dragon fight in Crestwood there's this broken structure with stairs and a few broken walls and it was the perfect place to put the squishy characters (the mages and Varric) so they could be out of the way and I could move them behind the walls when the dragon used a long range attack (it also stopped them from being sucked forward) it worked fine on whichever character I was controlling, but as soon as I switched to a different character, that one would run down the stairs and over to the dragon and proceed to use their long range attacks at a short range. This of course got them killed over and over again until I finally just let them be dead and finished the battle with Cassandra and my mage who I was controlling manually. In every other DA, I brought a party made of characters I liked and wanted to hear banter and input from. DA:I was the first game where I brought characters that wouldn't die when in melee range.

-The lack of healing magic and extremely restricted healing items. This didn't make combat more difficult or tactical, it just made things more tedious as well as making certain characters useless. They wanted to avoid potion/heal spamming and instead you have barrier/guard spamming. Your warriors needed to be tanks that built up a ton of guard and Vivienne was the only mage who didn't die from Leeroy Jenkins-ing into a dragon or giant's face. I found rogues to be useless because they didn't have barrier or guard so they died very easily. This was limiting and not fun.

I like pressing a button to attack and aim. Not just click on the enemy and sit there watching the character fight.

Overall I prefer DA2's, but there are some aspects of Inquisition's combat that I really like, particularly for the archer, which is much more mobile and ultimately more satisfying as a result. I despised the archer (and mage) in DA:O. 

I would like a different beast, so I vote for rehaul. Either something action-rpg-ish, like Witcher, where you don't personally control your companions (good AI here please). Or a turn-based system like Banner Saga, Shadowrun or X-Com.
But I've only played the Dragon Age games for its story up until now honestly, so I will make do with whatever they conjure up for the next game...

I enjoyed the combat in DAI the most of the 3, but do lament some of the choices they made. Being limited on skills took some of the fun (and variety) out of the classes for me, and the non-existent tactics system was a huge downer. I don't like to switch characters too much when I'm playing, so the more I can automate as far as my companions are concerned, the better.