What does DA:I in space mean, and why is it so horrible?

I play RPGs since I was born the only possible way that is to play for me: I go, clear an area, never go back to it for anything, ever. Ok, so some games forces me to go back and forth (and this is completely retarded, companies must understand games are awful, playing them is PAIN, not enjoyment, and thus you don't want to revisit anything at all, you just want to get done with the shit and never look back),

- Fetch quests, literally 98% in the game are fetch quest. This is not even so much the problem because all rpgs have them. However in DAI they were all uninspired. "Go fetch my husbands ring templars stole it* *walks a few feet gets ring* "You found my ring, kthanxbai" *mission complete*. That's lazy, there's no other word for it.
- Locations that were pretty but otherwise empty
- Terrible combat (worst in the DA franchise). Played like an MMO. No matter what class you played. This was made worse by the fact almost all of the classes were broken.
- Shallow characters, with shallow banter revolving around sexual acts, looks or fashion or otherwise engaging in petty highschool arguements (looking at you Dorian/Viv). With the exception of characters like Solas or Cassandra. Can't forget Varric, I probably wouldn't have played the game for as long as I did if not for him.
- Subpar main story and cookie cutter villain.
- True ending released as dlc.
- Poor balancing, especially when it comes to difficulty. It seems the idea to make the game harder was to turn archers into tanks and give mages god tier barriers. Nightmare mode was actually more of a chore than a challenge. If you were say a reaver, it just meant spamming the same dragon rage button for longer just to kill 1 mage/archer.
- Terrible AI. While many games have bad AI few are as frustrating as DAIs. Ranged characters who charge tanks. I once spent around 15 minutes closing a fade rift because those frost demons actually hopped outside of the vacinity and had I followed, it would have reset the fade rift lol. Closing fade rifts just became a game of waiting because of those demons. I'd usually just stand at the rift and press X repeatedly to disrupt the thing until the squad could kill the demon.

To this day I only went through the story once, a first for a Bioware game. I installed Trespasser but never actually got around to playing the game to that point. It got to a point where I just couldn't tolerate the combat. By the time of Trespasser better games were also out. Also winning a few awards doesn't mean much. If I remember correctly DAI didn't have much competition around the time it came out. It was a bit of a dry spell for wrpgs then. Fallout 4 wasn't even out yet, neither was Witcher 3.  Still I don't think it was that successful, it was nowhere to be seen in NPDs top 10 sales literally 2 months after it came out, strange for a game that launched on around 5 platforms, and EA never disclosed it's sales which is very telling.

Going a bit OT, but what was your problem? I'm not all that great with DAI melee characters myself, but that's because my way-below-min-spec rig has wildly oscillating frame rates.Anyway, it's OK to occasionally miss wDragon Age never had that kind of ruleset symmetry. It's a respectable argument, but DAI is a bit late to be making it. ME has a related problem with Shepard being awesome, which got worse as the series went on and looms to be persisting in ME:A, regrettably.

I'd prefer running that timer by in-game missions completed myself. OTOH, I'm not sure my preferred approach wouldn't annoy even more players than the RT clock does.

And as someone who came up on JRPGs, going back to early locations and steamrolling everyone is always fun.

Besides,  shooter gameplay changes everything.

Interesting analysis. Thanks. Note that most melee rogues would try to be flanking anyway, though (unless you're using that weird Trespasser item and tanking). S&B Warriors would likely have the most problems. 

Come to think of it, my first melee character was S&B. I thought I got better since then, but maybe that wasn't it.

-snip