I just bought this game and am absolutely loving it on PC. However, I just can't understand the combat.

Is there any way to stop my entire party from doing anything unless I tell them to do so through the tactical view?

It seems like the second a fight is triggered everyone does there own thing, and while it usually ends with me winning, its kind of boring because I most of the time don't even need to control anyone. Im playing on normal, by the way. I want to be able to plan attacks through the tactical menu. Is this possible? I disabled AI behaviour, but that didn't really fix my issue. I want to turn it into a Divinity-like system.

thanks in advance

I'm not sure there's any real way to solve this. The AI appears to do whatever it wants most of the time and frequently refuses to follow orders given in the tactical view. It's one of the main reasons why I was put off DA:I. I realised at a certain point that I was spending most of my time abusing broken abilities or cheesing the enemy AI to win battles because managing my own party AI was so incredibly tedious.

damn, thats a shame. the game is so good otherwise. all they needed to do was put the radial wheel like in Mass Effect. At least in those games, you had control of your party members. Its just pure chaos whenever a fight starts in DA

I mean, you can tell them not to use any abilities if you want. And I think if you tell them to follow the character you're controlling they won't run off on their own? I honestly can't remember.

Bruh, three words: final fantasy twelve.

On normal you basically use the tactical view to set up good combat scenarios (then let the AI do its own thing afterward) unless you're fighting something huge.

You just outlined the main reason why I hate this game's combat. Tried it with a mouse and with a controller. Either way I just feel like they should have scrapped the party stuff all together and just made it an action game.

Also if you're looking for a Divinity like system (I'm assuming you mean Original Sin specifically) Dragon Age isn't the series for you combat wise. Original Sin is turn based where as Dragon Age is much more like Icewind Dale or Baldur's Gate where you can pause and outline your next move, but the combat will always be real time. If that's what you're looking for then just put it on easy and experience the story.

In practice, IWD and BG fall closer to turn-based, in my opinion. DA:I feels closer to MMO combat - which would be all well and good (although perhaps not entirely to my taste) if they didn't try to shoehorn a party system in and/or the AI was even remotely responsive.

You won't ever be able to tell them what to do turn by turn. The system is just too action oriented and not built for that. You can customize the behavior setup thing to tell them when to do certain things on their own, but no matter what you will have automated ai. You can try to pause every time someone takes an action to tell them what action to do next like some of the hardcore pausing players (like myself) used to do in older crpg's, but I found that to be very unfun and it ruined my enjoyment of the game. The tactics menu and combat just doesn't work well with that approach. It's not very friendly and doesn't feel as good as origins did in that style of gameplay. It wasn't til I decided to treat it like an action game where I occasionally tell my companions to do something else that the game actually became fun. You just kinda have to bite the bullet and play it the way they want you to play it. If you absolutely must have a turn based rpg then you're playing the wrong game sadly.