I've been staring at my PS4 library lately, and I have a ton of games in there including many that I have never played, and am not very excited about any of them. Therefore I decided to return to one of the only games I have truly loved in the past few years and go through the entire story again but this time, as a human warrior tank.
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In my opinion, this is one of the greatest games ever made but at the same time I realize that it wouldn't appeal to just everyone. For one thing, it doesn't really have any precision commands and it is more of a traditional RPG where if you want to level up big time in order to breeze through the next section, that is an option available to you. To people who want tight controls and split-second button presses, this game is almost certainly going to bore them. This is more of a strategic game where character placement and wise choices as far as chains of commands are concerned is what is going to determine if you are going to do well or not.
In that sense I find it to be ALMOST like a turn-based RPG, which is where it all began for all of us that have been involved in this genre for many years.
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As you would expect in traditional RPG tropes, the warrior is meant to be up in the thick of it, absorbing damage with heavy armor that the other characters do not have access to. Dodging isn't really a thing for most of this game and I would say that compared to the other two playthroughs I have done as a mage and a ranger, this one is a lot more simplistic. While I know this will change later, you basically just get up front and start swinging at shit until it ties. You will almost certainly have enough time to run away and use a potion if things get hairy.
The thing that I love the most about DA: I is the fact that if you want it to, this game will play like a traditional turn-based RPG. If you want it to be more real-time, this is also an option although your team mates will not adjust their positions if they are getting whacked by multiple enemies. This is especially true of the mages, who foolishly will just stand there and get worked by anything that is attacking them rather than look for moving to a ranged position and popping off shots from there.
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It wont appeal to everyone, but I enjoy the "turn-based" method of tackling combat
It isn't really a big deal if they die at the starting stages in the game anyway though seeing as how even the first couple of bosses require very little in the way of actual strategy. This will, of course, change later.
Another thing that I really like about this game is that while you do have an inventory system and will find goodies along the way, it isn't such a huge factor that you find yourself in the menus more than you go actually playing the game. I've had issues with many RPG's because of the fact that you are finding so much crap along the way that you end up spending the entire game doing math about DPS rather than exploring and fighting actual enemies.
Dragon Age does a very good job in finding balance for this.
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I normally prefer playing as some sort of ranged player in most RPG's but I have noticed one thing in particular about choosing a warrior for a main. Since they are so tanky, I can put a lot more time into micro-managing the moves of my teammates rather than searching for the perfect position for my own character while the others just AI themselves to death by doing something stupid.
You do, of course, always have the option of switching control to being in command of any of the up-to-4 team mates at any time anyway.
On one hand I find it a bit lazy on my part that I am going back to a game that I have already completed twice rather than firing up one of the dozens of games that I already have in my library. But on the other hand I am glad that someone at some point in the recent past made a game good enough that I would actually go back and put this many hours into it.
If you have played this game and have any favorite stuff you'd like to talk about, I'd be interested to speak to you.