For a bit of context, if you cruise the more shallow waters of RPG discussions you will see DAO being lauded as the last good hardcore rpg before the decline. The obsession with this game goes so far that it is sacrosanct on more casual sites and insulting it draws a reaction akin to insulting a Troika game here.
So I decided to see what the buzz is all about. I bought the game and started a run, and dropped it after two hours. Years later I decided to give it a second try and dropped it again after 1 hour. Now years later again I am on my third try with the game and I actually completed it!
Now discussions on why DAO is shit are plentyfull here, and I totally agree with them. Its a step down from the old games and quite boring at parts. As such I will focus on what DAO did right for me and allowed me to get to the ending.
The structure was quite pleasant. You get backstabbed and betrayed, and now you have nothing but a useless title. You need to venture towards four factions (Mages, Elves, Humans, Dwarves) and call for their help with your title. They will deny you since they are in their own conflict and send you to resolve that before they follow you against the archdemon. The neat thing here is that you can choose to resolve each of those conflicts usually in two ways, and the final army that joins you differes depending on your solutions. When you then call the armies at the finale of the game there are gameplay consequences to your choices. That was pretty cool
The structure of the factions themselves is also enjoyable. Every faction starts you in their hub town where all the merchants are and where most quests start. You run around, trade stuff and accept every quests and hear some dialogue and worldbuilding of various quality levels. Then you venture into one big dungeon that is attached to each hub town.
Those dungeons vary wildly in quality. Sometimes there are interesting riddles, enemy encounter design where at least an ounce of thought has went into, compelling sidestories and generally a fun experience. That was the elves and the magicians sidequest for me.
Sometimes its just hours and hours of retarded hallways where the game throws uncountable hordes of braindead enemies at you without ever changing up the enemy types. That was the dwarves. Had I started with that area I would have quit the game a third time and this time for good.
But the game leaves you the opportunity to tackle those areas in any order. This adds a lot of enjoyablity to the system, which is otherwise quite formulaic. However this advantage comes with the cancer of level scaling. There were some harsh immersion breaks for me when in the final fight of the game I was oneshotting mooks which had quadruple the health in the last army recruitment dungeon.
Mages are fun. Apart from having the most interesting lore and storyline they also have the most varied skillsets and bring the bit of tactical depth to the game that it has. I used three mages on my run, the MC, Morrigan and Brynne. All of them played very differently from each other, my MC was an Enchantment type Magician coupled with Ice spells he used a mixture of healing, control and damage. Morrigan was a pure debuffer who also used lightning spells while Brynne was a pure buff character with earth magic. Mage vs Bossfights are very fun in DAO, better than in the Infnity Engine games in fact (although it is the only thing where DAO is better than them). In BG and IWD bossfights often boil down to you having a buffed up party that can shred the boss in second if his magical defenses are down. So your mages just spam countermagic hoping to make that happen while the boss tries to oneshot your dudes. In DAO its a tug and pull, with the boss being tanky enough to survive a few minutes and throw some challenge on you that isnt save or suck.
With this I am at the end of positive things to say about this game. I didnt particularily care for the characters or story, I have read much better in other games. Combat against trash mob, itemisation and C&C was generally shit. Dialogue was never above average. And from a technical standpoint its a piece of shit, crashes constantly. It crashed on me during the victory celebration lol, good thing I spam F5 all the time.
But overall the game surprised me. It isnt awfull to the point of being unplayable like some other modern rpgs.
Id give it a 5/10 after finishing it, more than I would have given it before. About the same quality level as Pillars of Eternity which I never finished to this day, but less dragged out so you can actually get through it.
So I decided to see what the buzz is all about. I bought the game and started a run, and dropped it after two hours. Years later I decided to give it a second try and dropped it again after 1 hour. Now years later again I am on my third try with the game and I actually completed it!
Now discussions on why DAO is shit are plentyfull here, and I totally agree with them. Its a step down from the old games and quite boring at parts. As such I will focus on what DAO did right for me and allowed me to get to the ending.
The structure was quite pleasant. You get backstabbed and betrayed, and now you have nothing but a useless title. You need to venture towards four factions (Mages, Elves, Humans, Dwarves) and call for their help with your title. They will deny you since they are in their own conflict and send you to resolve that before they follow you against the archdemon. The neat thing here is that you can choose to resolve each of those conflicts usually in two ways, and the final army that joins you differes depending on your solutions. When you then call the armies at the finale of the game there are gameplay consequences to your choices. That was pretty cool
The structure of the factions themselves is also enjoyable. Every faction starts you in their hub town where all the merchants are and where most quests start. You run around, trade stuff and accept every quests and hear some dialogue and worldbuilding of various quality levels. Then you venture into one big dungeon that is attached to each hub town.
Those dungeons vary wildly in quality. Sometimes there are interesting riddles, enemy encounter design where at least an ounce of thought has went into, compelling sidestories and generally a fun experience. That was the elves and the magicians sidequest for me.
Sometimes its just hours and hours of retarded hallways where the game throws uncountable hordes of braindead enemies at you without ever changing up the enemy types. That was the dwarves. Had I started with that area I would have quit the game a third time and this time for good.
But the game leaves you the opportunity to tackle those areas in any order. This adds a lot of enjoyablity to the system, which is otherwise quite formulaic. However this advantage comes with the cancer of level scaling. There were some harsh immersion breaks for me when in the final fight of the game I was oneshotting mooks which had quadruple the health in the last army recruitment dungeon.
Mages are fun. Apart from having the most interesting lore and storyline they also have the most varied skillsets and bring the bit of tactical depth to the game that it has. I used three mages on my run, the MC, Morrigan and Brynne. All of them played very differently from each other, my MC was an Enchantment type Magician coupled with Ice spells he used a mixture of healing, control and damage. Morrigan was a pure debuffer who also used lightning spells while Brynne was a pure buff character with earth magic. Mage vs Bossfights are very fun in DAO, better than in the Infnity Engine games in fact (although it is the only thing where DAO is better than them). In BG and IWD bossfights often boil down to you having a buffed up party that can shred the boss in second if his magical defenses are down. So your mages just spam countermagic hoping to make that happen while the boss tries to oneshot your dudes. In DAO its a tug and pull, with the boss being tanky enough to survive a few minutes and throw some challenge on you that isnt save or suck.
With this I am at the end of positive things to say about this game. I didnt particularily care for the characters or story, I have read much better in other games. Combat against trash mob, itemisation and C&C was generally shit. Dialogue was never above average. And from a technical standpoint its a piece of shit, crashes constantly. It crashed on me during the victory celebration lol, good thing I spam F5 all the time.
But overall the game surprised me. It isnt awfull to the point of being unplayable like some other modern rpgs.
Id give it a 5/10 after finishing it, more than I would have given it before. About the same quality level as Pillars of Eternity which I never finished to this day, but less dragged out so you can actually get through it.
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