I played a "nuke'em first, take damage later" mage in DA:O and had a blast with tactically meaningful combat (even the trash) for a few hours on moderate where I had to be real careful about positioning, using terrain, and putting the tanks between the monsters and the squishies (including me). Eventually I wussed out and switched it down to easy where friendly aoe did no damage to my party and proceeded to drown all fights (even the ones I wasn't really supposed to win) in an elemental storm.
Probably would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't done that (though I enjoyed it plenty), but not sure about that as I was getting
real tired of the sheer length of some of the dungeons (the mage tower was very long, but the dwarf one perhaps stuck out the most to me, but perhaps because I did it later on). I used to not bat an eye at multi-hour dungeons in older RPGs, must be getting more impatient as the years accumulate