One of the hardest rpgs

Would you say this is one of the hardest RPGs or am I just really bad? I have never liked RPGs where you have to pause combat, but I gave this one a try and I am enjoying it. Thing is, I really suck.

I am playing on normal (usually choose normal-hard for rpgs) but on certain fights - not even bosses - I find myself having to reload cause I die so much.

My original party was.

Me - warrior tank
Morrigan - ice mage - CoC saved me so many times
Leliana - archer
Sten - 2h warrior

Once I got Wynne, I dropped Sten because hes sucked so bad and Wynne's healing helped greatly.

I still find myself dying a lot. I am in the ruined temple atm looking for the Urn of Sacred Ashes. The cultists in here are BRUTAL. One room I was swarmed by 10 guys coming out of different doors. I try to focus mages first because their spells, especially lightning, are deadly.

Any tips? I am using combat tactics and pausing to do things like group heal, CoC, and crushing prison.

At least in some regards it's about limiting how many people you're fighting at the same time and trying to obstruct the opponents from getting to your weaker party members as much as possible. Tactics and good positioning are your friends in games like these.

I wouldn't call it partciularly hard honestly. It's difficult but not that complex and I managed to beat it on insane difficulty which I haven't with most cRPGs.

when I first started I wasn't using tactics at all, now I find setting it properly helps quite a bit. I still find myself having to pause a lot and move characters if they get surrounded and stuff.

You should be pausing all the time to assess the situation. With tactics I didn't mean the ingame tactics were characters do shit on their own, that would optimally be part of your own micro management. I meant good strategy in general i.e. what opponents need to die first, when do you use what abilities etc.

what kind of party setup were you using?

I always like doing warriors first in RPGs, but I find my tank is really poor. His survival is OK, but his damage is average and his threat management is not good. I feel like if I was a mage I would be surviving and killing much faster.

I played on normal with me as Dwarf tank, Morrigan, Alistair, and Sten, and it was easy. The trick for these real time with pause RPGs is to spam debuffs on enemies. The tank abilities are very useful, every fight was my tank aggroing all the enemies with his shitload of health, my Morrigan debuffing the shit out of them and healing the tank and disabling the stronger enemies, and Alistair and Sten going in to mop them up. Alistair wasn't even that useful, I just kept him for story reasons. You should have kept Sten, he deals a shitload of melee damage, especially after you do his quest and get his sword.

if you want to just fuck the game, get Shale for a tank and roll mage. pretty much all their spells wreck the shit out of enemies

2h warrior is really bad, i know cuz that was my main but for ai its even worse

archer? nigga plz

I finished on the hardest difficulty with ranger, those animals were welcome off-tanks.

Get mana clash ASAP it will make fights with images esay, also get a rogue with high locpicking u get alto of XP from opening locked stuff.

what do you mean by debuffs? what spells were you using with Morrigan? I always use CoC, winters grasp, mind blast, drain life, and crushing prison in my rotation.

As for Sten I found him really weak he always getting agro and dying.

whats wrong with archer? Also Shale is DLC, i dont have the ultimate edition.

Leliana has basic lock picking but she still cant open most chests. I think the highest exp I saw was 50 for one chest. Why is wasting points on cunning and lockpicking worth it for that petty exp?

Also yeah I heard good things about mana clash. Cant get it for 3 more lvls though on Morrigan.