New account, no games and unsubstantial attacks and then avoiding concrete evidence for the claims -> troll. And everybody falls for it.

Although I must said, well played, not too obvious it seems.

To be honest. It was a Lynch movie (even though he hated it) and therefore not really meant to make any sense ;)

(I am a big Lynch fan by the way)

And thats not a bad thing. I was just saying its like theres a TinyE signal.

My analysis of your post concludes that you're repeating the same thing using different words. You're not saying how these "qualities" and "flaws" are anything more than personal opinion.

Don't know why OP is getting downvoted so much, he's right that games like Dragon age, The Witcher 2 etc. are despised as dumbed down, console-friendly crap by the hardcore rpg crowd at places like rpgcodex.

I did say it, the flaws can be verified and confirmed to be true. You can enjoy these games if you want but should be able to realize that the burden of their objective flaws is too much to label them as classics.

PoE has to be the most hated game at the Codex, to the point where its a synonym of garbage and bad writing.

Also its hilarous how even the OP is hidden due to low ratings. People who willingly click on the thread name to read it have to click again to unhide the OP just because some snowflakes need a confirmation that their disagreement matters.

I also have my doubts that the mods are able (and do) manually low rate comments. I lost only 5 rep points yet all my comments are hidden.

The forum here is a very conformist community, if one steps out of line, one can always expect massive downvotes. That's just how it is, unfortunately.
Haven't played Pillars of eternity myself (my laptop can't run it), but yes, it seems like many regard it as a major disappointment. Since even the game that inspired it, Baldur's Gate 2, had some serious flaws, this doesn't inspire much confidence in its quality.
Personally I really enjoyed Age of decadence. But I guess you already know of that game when you're hanging out at rpgcodex.

And that's RPG Codex. Are they the only standard by which one should judge a game? The hardcore think it's crap, so it's clearly crap?

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General comment:

Personally, I enjoyed DA:O quite a bit. But I'm not hardcore nor a professional critic, so where does that leave my opinion? My playthroughs encountered just a couple problems: there was a savegame issue that could be skirted quite easily once I discovered the workaround, and in some combat circumstances the camera wouldn't quite give me the view I wanted. From my experience, it was technically solid given that this big title gave me only those gripes. Further, the story, characters, and gameplay kept me engaged... which takes some doing since life often gets in the way of me completing longer games like this.

That's what a game should do: function with at most a few bugs, keep the player engaged, and be good enough that it invites people to play more than once. DA:O, among others mentioned, manages to do this.

RPG Codex isnt the only standard to judge but they are the most critical. They dont just throw their thumbs down and say a game is shit without clearly explaining why (some of them do though). For each criticized games you can find valid criticism of flaws that can be confirmed to be true.

You enjoyed DAO but arent a pro/hardcore? Then what other RPGs games did you play then (that came out before DAO that is)? You need to have previous RPG experience to properly criticize DAO.

You named what a game should do to achieve the bare minimum and be called a video game. It needs to go beyond that to be tagged a classic. What does DAO do to stand out from the other RPGs? Absolutely nothing.

Well, been gaming and playing RPGs since a few years after Akalabeth was new - and I played a little bit of that one maybe a year after release. Not really an RPG, but whatever. I think first big RPG I completed was The Bard's Tale, back in 1987. So I've played a variety over the years - certainly nowhere near all of them - but I don't live and breathe RPGs, either. Whether this was my first RPG or my thousandth, either I enjoyed it or I didn't. One need not be a genre fanatic to know whether or not a game was enjoyable.

Like others, waiting to see links to some of these "critical reviews" to get an idea of the gripes. Further, awaiting an explanation of why those negative "critical" reviews count but the scads of positive reviews from other knowledgeable critics (and not just Joe Blow players like me) do not.

I should clarify: that's one example of what a game needs to do for me to like it over the long haul. If i had to define "classic", part of that definition would include the desire to revisit a game years later. For this game, I can see playing it again in the future. Beyond my enjoyment playing it eight years after release, it doesn't feel like a game that will suffer much from being dated back to 2009.

Now, what does DA:O do specifically to differentiate itself? Compared to other "role" playing games I've encountered, distinct origin stories beyond the genre-typical amnesia trope makes for a great start. The ease of immersing oneself in playing that role throughout the game beyond simple game mechanics (for example, other games' 'role playing' is often mostly limited to choosing skills, spells, and stat boosts at level-up) is another. A lot of RPGs get things right mechanically but you don't get much of the feeling of playing a role. Besides, a game need not do something new. It can be enough to do it really well while engaging the player for the duration Plenty of games have brought new things to a genre but still weren't particularly fun or interesting. And plenty of games were more-of-the-same and are still considered among the best.

Dragon Age: Origins and The Witcher 2 were made originally for the PC so I fail to see in what way they are dumbed down, console friendly crap?

When I say that DAO doesnt deserve to be called a classic I didnt mean it was impossible for anyone to enjoy it. Though being a classic requires more than merely being enjoyable. There are hundreds of games that I very much enjoyed and still wouldnt call them classics.

As for the reviews, I said previously that you could easily find them by doing some research. Those "critical" negative reviews hold more weight than the non-critical positive reviews that simply praise it without going into detail.

The origin stories might have been interesting for you but they were nothing new in the RPG genre. Its a plus but hardly sets the game apart.

It seems like you havent even played the most praised RPGs (Planescape, Fallout, Baldurs Gate, Arcanum) which is why you have a high opinion of DAO. Those said games are the main reason why DAO feels bland.

I've played all those games. I enjoyed DA:O, too. I don't particularly care for Bioware's adolescent approach to romance, but I never play the romances in their games, and that alleviates that problem.

The codex has it's own blindspots. For instance, they might criticize the karma system of a game as being nonsensical or incentivizing playing in a way that is actually antithetical to the karma system. That kind of criticism is usually explainable, understandable, and objective. But then they will decide that the game is therefore inferior than a game with a better karma system. And that's where their blindspots lie. Games are more than the sum of their parts. And there are games that on paper really look good, but they just aren't any fun.

It is also true that the codex is unrelentingly negative, mean, ironic, argumentative, insulting... All things that I valued in my younger years until I realized that having the last word and "winning" the argument, hell, even being right, are not really the most important things.

And my input is that their kind of criticism does not enhance enjoyment of games, does not build friendship or even comeraderie among gamers, and in fact fosters animosity and feelings of superiority. Their only value perhaps is in producing a list of their favorite RPGs, which may lead someone to encounter a wonderful have they otherwise would have missed.

But, for all their self regard, the codex's list is not all that different from other such lists.