I don’t think that either Origins or Inquisition had particularly interesting combat. (Based on poor reviews, I didn’t play DA2 so I can’t comment on that.) Origins had a better tactical combat option (in the PC version) but playing in tactical mode was tedious and time-consuming, and I ultimately preferred lowering the difficulty so as to turn off friendly fire and play in realtime, letting my companions fend for themselves using the AI.
As an action-based system, I think that Inquisition is generally better, though the fights had a somewhat higher degree of sameness to them: I rarely changed my basic tactics regardless of what I was fighting. A lot of the time, I didn’t even really know what I was fighting. Just more red dots on the radar screen to kill and loot.
If you look at Baldur’s Gate and its sequels, you can see how much tactically richer the combat was. There were perhaps fewer battles, but there was a greater variety of enemies, requiring meaningfully varied tactics to defeat. And, for the most part, bosses weren’t just regular enemies with a million hit points: they could be defeated quickly, but they could also defeat you quickly. Compare fighting Firkraag with fighting any Dragon Age dragon. Most Baldur’s Gate fights were over quickly one way or another, with the occasional battle where neither side got a decisive initial advantage and it turned into a slugfest or running combat that consumed lots of resources. Speaking of which, another difference was the importance of resource management both during and between fights. You couldn’t just unleash your most powerful spells on the first goblin you saw, because you might need them later. In Dragon Age, there’s little point in not using your best stuff first, since the cooldown-based mechanic translates into use early, use often. All of these things lead to a sameness in DA combat resulting in the action being much more interesting than the tactics.
I see combat in DA games as something to add some action sequences in between story and exploration elements, rather than a meaningful challenge in its own right. For that, the action-oriented design works better, and easier fights that don’t require frequent reloading are less immersion-breaking. Overall, my biggest complaint with Dragon Age combat has always been that there is too much of it and so it ends up turning into a tedious grind, especially the boss fights where you have to grind away using the same tactics over and over until you win or lose focus and get killed.
That’s not to say that I wouldn’t appreciate a good tactical combat system in a DA game, but it would look nothing like anything we’ve seen in DA so far.
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