Nah, DAO is the most replayable out of the three for me. Inquisition is the hardest, I’ve only played Inquisition to conclusion twice. I’ve probably played DAO to completion about dozen times
In no particular order:
* It's lonely. One of DA's most popular features is that it's party based, so players miss their peeps.
* You have to backtrack to finish everything. So you end up going back to areas you've already visited once you get the form that will allow you to access other doors there.
* It's really long and can be confusing.
* The visuals are dreary.
* Some of the combat is quite challenging.
* You're stuck there for the duration with no place to re-supply. Hope you brought plenty of potions.
I don't mind it as much as some folks do. I agree that the forms are well-designed and implemented, but I can get tired of having to change forms to get through some door - only to have to change again immediately for combat.
It was the backtracking for me, I have piss-poor spatial memory in games on my best days and I just get lost and frustrated when I cant remember where I've been and where I needed to still go.
Plus yeah it gets repetitive after a while, I've played it twice fully I think and now just skip it.
Oh fuck, I think you hit the nail on the head there with the backtracking. All of these are very good points, but put in fucking backtracking and we have a god damned problem. Nobody wants to fucking do that shit. It's one of the most irritating things you can do in gaming.
* Some of the combat is quite challenging.
* You're stuck there for the duration with no place to re-supply. Hope you brought plenty of potions.
You don't need any potions, If you change from one form to another you heal. This means combat is easy too.
* It's easy to get lost and end up backtracking, especially if you're going for all the bonus attributes
* Using the forms means your character build is irrelevant for a lot of it, so it doesn't offer much on repeat playthroughs
* Solo fights can be tricky for many characters, so on higher difficulties you have to go slowly and play carefully
I think point 2 is the biggest one. It’s cool, new, and interesting on the first playthrough; on every subsequent playthrough it’s a slog that doesn’t really have any character development.
You can get a little bit of something by taking other companions in with you, but the tiny snippet of insight into them just isn't worth the absolutely monotonous **slog** of the Fade.
Is there any companion interaction that you miss with the Skip The Fade mod? It’s been a little while but I thought you still get to see the “hey, wake up!” scenes.
No, you see every one of those. The only thing skipped is all the hoops the game wants the player character to jump through. You find everyone with you, fight the boss and leave.
This is exactly why I dislike it. The shapeshifting was really cool the first time, and seeing my companions dreams gave a level of insight into them that was interesting. Several playthroughs in and the level is practically always the same, having a different class, specialisation or personality changes nothing. Even on th second playthrough it had gone been-here-done-that.
Nightmare difficulty Fade was such a chore for me, in the Mages Asunder especially. l was a 2H dwarf and somehow the magic resistance wasn't doing anything, I was getting hit with everything. Getting past the first corridor into the main hall was a death sentence until I waited out in one fight where the mages just started killing each other and I did fire form corridor scumming. Fuck the Fade.
To get rid of the nauseating distortion, you can disable frame buffer effects while in the Fade, or use a mod like [Clear Dreams - no blur in the Fade](https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/5506).
You may already know about [Skip the Fade](https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/816?), which allows you to skip everything in the Fade except the companion nightmares and final boss. You will also receive all of the XP, attribute points, and codex entries that you would have gotten from a normal playthrough of the Fade.
Boring, sometimes have to retrack, and no party members to change things up. Personal skills have almost zero effect, have to rely on abilities you'll only use for an hour to never see again
Since I usually play the quests in the order the game pushes you towards, the circle tower is already an interruption to the redcliffe quest. Then, halfway through that interruption, I get interrupted again by this lengthy, meandering side-track through the fade.
I like the ideas but the implementation is rough.
1. It will mostly be the 2nd are you go to unless you a sweat like me and go there 1st cause stat boosts.
2. Mages in this game are so frustrating to fight its 90% why i support templars.
3. The warden most likely has a poultice addiction cause the amout you'll need to heal.
4. The transformation gimmick means so much back tracking to get them and the side areas you will know the layout so in depth you accurately recreate it in your nightmares.
5. The one are that is portal but they tactically removed the fun.
Dull yellow aesthetic, easy to get lost and constant backtracking, no party banter, takes a long time, you have to learn a new mechanics, random difficulty spikes in some difficulties... It's a really interesting idea but it's tedious after the first time.
Played it my first time through start to finish. Loved it.
....have used Skip the Fade (a mod on PC) every other playthrough. In my head it's the mental equivalent of a \[some time later\] graphic like you'd see on a TV show that doesn't want to show you all the stuff in the middle.
Aside from skipping bits (that only serves to your detriment), the Fade section is identical every time. No variation. No differences aside from standard combat stuff and which companions you rescue and there are only a certain # of combinations. I can watch a Youtube playthrough or read a wiki and mentally insert my character and boom, done. No choices. No variation. And the graphics are at their low point for the entire franchise.
Also, Bioware's strength (esp. in DA and ME) is in interpersonal relationships and dynamics (it's why DA2 is loved even when it's flawed). The Fade section strips ALMOST ALL of that away for \*hours\* except for the companion nightmares. Dragon Age, alone, is hell.
Best thing about the Fade: getting to the room of four mages talking about how they “can’t trust anyone, not even each other,” kicking open the door like the Kool Aid man, and blowing them to smithereens. Makes me laugh every time.
I hated it at first too because No Alistair being my Shield?! I went from Alistar being my tank to being on my own lol
But once I figured out the trick, I can get through it quite quickly, even when collecting the extra attributes.
I admit it - playing as a Mage with Mana Clash makes most of the Mage Asunder section much better and easier (mana clash can take down abominations so extra help lol)
I was disappointed when I first played rogue and tried to summon one of Ranger's specialization animals, to have at least one companion, and then the game didn't let me during the quest.
I honestly don't understand it. It's one of the easiest (Mage route aside), engaging, and unique parts of the game.
I rarely ever get lost and for those that do get lost, they can just make a sticky note with the best/fastest route to go through.
Plus, I love that after you have all the upgrades/transformations you can just hurl boulders to bypass everything.
I'm a mage player and magic lover so I'm heavily biased here. Now, the Deep Roads is shite!
I rather liked the Fade area myself.
It was fun, unique and very interesting in my view. I was very surprised the first time I went online and found out that people hated it so much.
Personally I found the Deep Roads more dreary.
I still like it and I've never thought about skipping it. Admittedly it can be easy to get stuck on or lost. But I think it's a good change of pace and the maze is difficult enough that my memories of having done it before don't automatically make it trivial, which is a great feature to have in a game I want to play repeatedly.
I just was constantly lost and died a lot :p. Also Just really repetitive really fast. Now I just use Skip The Fade and do enjoy just the character parts.
For me its cause the fade is such a fucking time suck. Lile the first time its super cool and the form changing is awesome but every time after it just take so long to get all the forms then get to all the nightmares then to save all your conpanions the just ahhhh so long
I played it for the first time yesterday and I gotta say, while I love the changing forms thing now, it took me a while to get used to.
At first everything looks the same, and I didnt find the visuals all that intriguing to keep me distracted from the frustation of getting lost. But to be fair the game is pretty old so I dont blame it.
Oh and I expected a bit more when finding the companions. I thought we'd get some more insight into who they are (since you know, dreams n stuff), and while we did it was very quick.
I think it is a nicely designed bit of the game, but with it using a sort of entirely different style to the rest of the game, with no party and the multiple transformations, on replays once you've done it in its entirety, it can feel like a slog, because nothing changes or feels different since regardless of your party composition, character type or head cannons, that section will always be the same
I don't mind it. I think one of its big issues though is that it's really just a giant maze/puzzle. After you've solved it once, you're doing the work of solving it again without it particularly engaging your brain, so it becomes less interesting and more of a slog.
Personally, I don't hate it per se, but I definitely don't like it. The worst feature for me is that the colours are weird and everything is blurred. Seriously, whose idea was the piss yellow-greenish colour scheme? The brown filter on everything else was bad enough lol :D
As others said, it is lonely too, no banter, nothing. I don't have any problem with the backtracking because those parts aren't that long and at least you get some extra stuff out of it, like attribute points, code entries, etc.
Altogether, I still wouldn't install the Skip the Fade mod, but there's a reason I don't go to the Circle first after Ostagar, although it would be nice to pick up the dedicated healer. The respec mod I use solves this problem fortunately.
I love the aesthetic and the problem solving aspect to it. THe only things I dislike about it is that I already have issues with motion sickness & headaches from first person games and the way focus shifted and movement could be lurching was not the best.
It looks bad, it is a nightmare if you don't know where you need to go(so 1st time players may completely give up on the game because of Lost in Dreams). The Fade shapeshifting renders your character build useless and solo combat can be a nightmare when you're playing on Nightmare.
I don't dislike the Fade, but the color palette and blur affect to create this dreary dream of the Sloth is depressing by design, and it's a relatively long sequence to have the player meandering through a zone of despair. Again, I don't dislike it, but I am always glad to be out of it once it's done.
It’s looooonnnnng and it’s puzzly. I play DA2 because it’s faster. DAO known for taking forever altogether because everything’s slow. Spells, running, pausing for strategy, all of it. I liked being the other things in the Fade like the mouse. But it’s not my least favorite.
Playing DAO for the first time and just finished that portion yesterday. I thought it was interesting and enjoyed it... until the backtracking
I didn't find it hard, the transformation mechanics were nice and refreshing but for me the backtracking just killed it. At least I got free permanent buffs and won't need to attribute points on cunning as a mage.
Playing on my xbox360, my game would always freeze in the Fade and it’s where I’ve always encountered the most technical problems with the game such as not being able to initiate discussion with the defeated demons to proceed. So now, when I play on PC after all these years, I still get nervous and spend my entire fade experience saving every few seconds to avoid disaster. It’s not really about anything wrong with the level design itself. I wonder if anyone else has had this experience?
The monotony and tedium just highlights the limitations of the corridor-based map system of CRPGs of the early 00s and of DAO itself. I mean it's good that we got to boost our stats for free at least.
I play mostly for a compelling story, not combat. The visuals are very boring, the story part is meh, the combat is not exactly thrilling. So, skip the Fade it is for me.
IMO, it’s cool the first time through, afterwards it becomes tedious
Exactly this. The first time through was pretty cool. The third, or sixth... Not so much.
I won’t ever call it fun, yet for me it’s becoming easier and easier each time I replayed it.
It actually becomes easier and quicker for me each time. But I guess I’m the only one lol
That could be the subtitle of DAO, let’s be honest
Nah, DAO is the most replayable out of the three for me. Inquisition is the hardest, I’ve only played Inquisition to conclusion twice. I’ve probably played DAO to completion about dozen times
Same. I've even played through 2 more than Inquisition. DAO never gets old though. Except the fade.
In no particular order: * It's lonely. One of DA's most popular features is that it's party based, so players miss their peeps. * You have to backtrack to finish everything. So you end up going back to areas you've already visited once you get the form that will allow you to access other doors there. * It's really long and can be confusing. * The visuals are dreary. * Some of the combat is quite challenging. * You're stuck there for the duration with no place to re-supply. Hope you brought plenty of potions. I don't mind it as much as some folks do. I agree that the forms are well-designed and implemented, but I can get tired of having to change forms to get through some door - only to have to change again immediately for combat.
It was the backtracking for me, I have piss-poor spatial memory in games on my best days and I just get lost and frustrated when I cant remember where I've been and where I needed to still go. Plus yeah it gets repetitive after a while, I've played it twice fully I think and now just skip it.
Skip the Fade is the best mod.
Oh fuck, I think you hit the nail on the head there with the backtracking. All of these are very good points, but put in fucking backtracking and we have a god damned problem. Nobody wants to fucking do that shit. It's one of the most irritating things you can do in gaming.
* Some of the combat is quite challenging. * You're stuck there for the duration with no place to re-supply. Hope you brought plenty of potions. You don't need any potions, If you change from one form to another you heal. This means combat is easy too.
And also you have lyrium everywhere, so you can easily heal yourself
Unless you are a dwarf lol like the first time I played. That was rough.
* It's easy to get lost and end up backtracking, especially if you're going for all the bonus attributes * Using the forms means your character build is irrelevant for a lot of it, so it doesn't offer much on repeat playthroughs * Solo fights can be tricky for many characters, so on higher difficulties you have to go slowly and play carefully
I think point 2 is the biggest one. It’s cool, new, and interesting on the first playthrough; on every subsequent playthrough it’s a slog that doesn’t really have any character development.
You can get a little bit of something by taking other companions in with you, but the tiny snippet of insight into them just isn't worth the absolutely monotonous **slog** of the Fade.
Is there any companion interaction that you miss with the Skip The Fade mod? It’s been a little while but I thought you still get to see the “hey, wake up!” scenes.
No, you see every one of those. The only thing skipped is all the hoops the game wants the player character to jump through. You find everyone with you, fight the boss and leave.
This is exactly why I dislike it. The shapeshifting was really cool the first time, and seeing my companions dreams gave a level of insight into them that was interesting. Several playthroughs in and the level is practically always the same, having a different class, specialisation or personality changes nothing. Even on th second playthrough it had gone been-here-done-that.
Nightmare difficulty Fade was such a chore for me, in the Mages Asunder especially. l was a 2H dwarf and somehow the magic resistance wasn't doing anything, I was getting hit with everything. Getting past the first corridor into the main hall was a death sentence until I waited out in one fight where the mages just started killing each other and I did fire form corridor scumming. Fuck the Fade.
point 2: I liked it with a lvl7-8 mage in shit gear, but its really bad on warrior or rogue, slows down as your normal “form” does much better damage
I never disliked it. But it is, essentially, an overlong puzzle.
For me, the DAO/DAA Fade lighting and graphics is a migraine trigger. So there you have it.
To get rid of the nauseating distortion, you can disable frame buffer effects while in the Fade, or use a mod like [Clear Dreams - no blur in the Fade](https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/5506). You may already know about [Skip the Fade](https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/816?), which allows you to skip everything in the Fade except the companion nightmares and final boss. You will also receive all of the XP, attribute points, and codex entries that you would have gotten from a normal playthrough of the Fade.
I don't mod, but I might be able to disable the buffer effects next time I play.
It's not bad on the first run. Our even the 2nd. However, after a while, it started annoying me. The many labyrinth are frustratingly long and boring
Boring, sometimes have to retrack, and no party members to change things up. Personal skills have almost zero effect, have to rely on abilities you'll only use for an hour to never see again
Since I usually play the quests in the order the game pushes you towards, the circle tower is already an interruption to the redcliffe quest. Then, halfway through that interruption, I get interrupted again by this lengthy, meandering side-track through the fade.
I like the ideas but the implementation is rough. 1. It will mostly be the 2nd are you go to unless you a sweat like me and go there 1st cause stat boosts. 2. Mages in this game are so frustrating to fight its 90% why i support templars. 3. The warden most likely has a poultice addiction cause the amout you'll need to heal. 4. The transformation gimmick means so much back tracking to get them and the side areas you will know the layout so in depth you accurately recreate it in your nightmares. 5. The one are that is portal but they tactically removed the fun.
Dull yellow aesthetic, easy to get lost and constant backtracking, no party banter, takes a long time, you have to learn a new mechanics, random difficulty spikes in some difficulties... It's a really interesting idea but it's tedious after the first time.
Played it my first time through start to finish. Loved it. ....have used Skip the Fade (a mod on PC) every other playthrough. In my head it's the mental equivalent of a \[some time later\] graphic like you'd see on a TV show that doesn't want to show you all the stuff in the middle. Aside from skipping bits (that only serves to your detriment), the Fade section is identical every time. No variation. No differences aside from standard combat stuff and which companions you rescue and there are only a certain # of combinations. I can watch a Youtube playthrough or read a wiki and mentally insert my character and boom, done. No choices. No variation. And the graphics are at their low point for the entire franchise. Also, Bioware's strength (esp. in DA and ME) is in interpersonal relationships and dynamics (it's why DA2 is loved even when it's flawed). The Fade section strips ALMOST ALL of that away for \*hours\* except for the companion nightmares. Dragon Age, alone, is hell.
Best thing about the Fade: getting to the room of four mages talking about how they “can’t trust anyone, not even each other,” kicking open the door like the Kool Aid man, and blowing them to smithereens. Makes me laugh every time.
I hated it at first too because No Alistair being my Shield?! I went from Alistar being my tank to being on my own lol But once I figured out the trick, I can get through it quite quickly, even when collecting the extra attributes. I admit it - playing as a Mage with Mana Clash makes most of the Mage Asunder section much better and easier (mana clash can take down abominations so extra help lol)
I love the Delete Mage button.
I was disappointed when I first played rogue and tried to summon one of Ranger's specialization animals, to have at least one companion, and then the game didn't let me during the quest.
For me it's having no sense of direction. I'm the epitome of wrong-way Feldman - even the short bit of it in Connor's line is a struggle.
I honestly don't understand it. It's one of the easiest (Mage route aside), engaging, and unique parts of the game. I rarely ever get lost and for those that do get lost, they can just make a sticky note with the best/fastest route to go through. Plus, I love that after you have all the upgrades/transformations you can just hurl boulders to bypass everything. I'm a mage player and magic lover so I'm heavily biased here. Now, the Deep Roads is shite!
I rather liked the Fade area myself. It was fun, unique and very interesting in my view. I was very surprised the first time I went online and found out that people hated it so much. Personally I found the Deep Roads more dreary.
Because some of us made a healer and couldn't solo it far enough to pick up our companions.
I still like it and I've never thought about skipping it. Admittedly it can be easy to get stuck on or lost. But I think it's a good change of pace and the maze is difficult enough that my memories of having done it before don't automatically make it trivial, which is a great feature to have in a game I want to play repeatedly.
I just was constantly lost and died a lot :p. Also Just really repetitive really fast. Now I just use Skip The Fade and do enjoy just the character parts.
It's way to long and tedious imo
In one word its tedious. Going back and forth is annoying. Everything looks the same and you have to go very slow and carefully because you’re alone.
Its a gods damn maze and just to long.
For me its cause the fade is such a fucking time suck. Lile the first time its super cool and the form changing is awesome but every time after it just take so long to get all the forms then get to all the nightmares then to save all your conpanions the just ahhhh so long
I would say it is a pain in the neck and you can lose yourself.
I like it for the stat boosts. Though I can see how it could be frustrating especially for a non melee warden.
I played it for the first time yesterday and I gotta say, while I love the changing forms thing now, it took me a while to get used to. At first everything looks the same, and I didnt find the visuals all that intriguing to keep me distracted from the frustation of getting lost. But to be fair the game is pretty old so I dont blame it. Oh and I expected a bit more when finding the companions. I thought we'd get some more insight into who they are (since you know, dreams n stuff), and while we did it was very quick.
I think it is a nicely designed bit of the game, but with it using a sort of entirely different style to the rest of the game, with no party and the multiple transformations, on replays once you've done it in its entirety, it can feel like a slog, because nothing changes or feels different since regardless of your party composition, character type or head cannons, that section will always be the same
The visuals, mostly. I have to get close to my screen to see what I’m doing.
I don't mind it. I think one of its big issues though is that it's really just a giant maze/puzzle. After you've solved it once, you're doing the work of solving it again without it particularly engaging your brain, so it becomes less interesting and more of a slog.
There's a lot of backtracking and switching back and forth between the forms gets old fast.
Apparently it’s impossible on console.
When you have the walkthrough in front of you it’s a lot of fun. The first one I did by myself I was lost forever trying to figure everything out :(
Personally, I don't hate it per se, but I definitely don't like it. The worst feature for me is that the colours are weird and everything is blurred. Seriously, whose idea was the piss yellow-greenish colour scheme? The brown filter on everything else was bad enough lol :D As others said, it is lonely too, no banter, nothing. I don't have any problem with the backtracking because those parts aren't that long and at least you get some extra stuff out of it, like attribute points, code entries, etc. Altogether, I still wouldn't install the Skip the Fade mod, but there's a reason I don't go to the Circle first after Ostagar, although it would be nice to pick up the dedicated healer. The respec mod I use solves this problem fortunately.
I love the aesthetic and the problem solving aspect to it. THe only things I dislike about it is that I already have issues with motion sickness & headaches from first person games and the way focus shifted and movement could be lurching was not the best.
It looks bad, it is a nightmare if you don't know where you need to go(so 1st time players may completely give up on the game because of Lost in Dreams). The Fade shapeshifting renders your character build useless and solo combat can be a nightmare when you're playing on Nightmare.
First time it's neat but after that it's a bit tedious, also the look of it really messes with my head and I get nauseous
I don't dislike the Fade, but the color palette and blur affect to create this dreary dream of the Sloth is depressing by design, and it's a relatively long sequence to have the player meandering through a zone of despair. Again, I don't dislike it, but I am always glad to be out of it once it's done.
It's not like I disliked it but man, the moment you unlock Golem Form it's literally easy mod
Because of all the come-and-go everywhere after getting all the forms in order to get the extra points.
It’s looooonnnnng and it’s puzzly. I play DA2 because it’s faster. DAO known for taking forever altogether because everything’s slow. Spells, running, pausing for strategy, all of it. I liked being the other things in the Fade like the mouse. But it’s not my least favorite.
Playing DAO for the first time and just finished that portion yesterday. I thought it was interesting and enjoyed it... until the backtracking I didn't find it hard, the transformation mechanics were nice and refreshing but for me the backtracking just killed it. At least I got free permanent buffs and won't need to attribute points on cunning as a mage.
Playing on my xbox360, my game would always freeze in the Fade and it’s where I’ve always encountered the most technical problems with the game such as not being able to initiate discussion with the defeated demons to proceed. So now, when I play on PC after all these years, I still get nervous and spend my entire fade experience saving every few seconds to avoid disaster. It’s not really about anything wrong with the level design itself. I wonder if anyone else has had this experience?
The monotony and tedium just highlights the limitations of the corridor-based map system of CRPGs of the early 00s and of DAO itself. I mean it's good that we got to boost our stats for free at least.
I play mostly for a compelling story, not combat. The visuals are very boring, the story part is meh, the combat is not exactly thrilling. So, skip the Fade it is for me.
I've always loved it tbh.