EPT[RPG] Dragon Age 2 - Page 2
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ProdT
United States170 Posts
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kiykiy
233 Posts
Yeah, guys... don't use bethany as your main healer. I just lost her ='[ Its a good thing I never touched Anders skill tree~ phew. | ||
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Overpowered
Czech Republic764 Posts
 I used Aveline (tank), me (elemental/blood mage DPS), Merrill (Primal/her special tree dps) and Anders (Creation/his special tree as Healer). Basically warrior tank, double mage dps and healer. Easy win  | ||
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Fishball
Canada4788 Posts
On March 15 2011 00:36 kiykiy wrote: + Show Spoiler + Yeah, guys... don't use bethany as your main healer. I just lost her ='[ Its a good thing I never touched Anders skill tree~ phew. I don't really want to use Anders. You can't really build up any friendship with him, unless you want to play for the other team, which isn't exactly too appealing to me. | ||
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ZaaaaaM
Netherlands1828 Posts
Im running hawke (melee rogue), Anders (dps mage), Merill (support) and Aveline (tank), the dissapointing factor for me so far is the loot. Not that many weapon and armor upgrades at all, and i'm all about the epics=) | ||
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Rayeth
United States883 Posts
A dual wielding rogue + Varric + Mage with some healing + More DPS (either mage or 2H warrior) will just rip through most encounters before anyone gets injured or anyone runs out of stamina/mana. There can be some hectic time during large boss fights, but if you make good use of the "run away if your rogue is under attack" strategy, you will be fine. | ||
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Bartuc
Netherlands629 Posts
It's quite a good game, but Bioware has simply set a very high standard for themselves to live up to. | ||
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InToTheWannaB
United States4770 Posts
This games has some very interesting moral choices. I had to step back from the game at points and really take some time to think about who was in the right. What side i was going to take. When a video game storyline is getting you to do that. Its doing a damn good job. There was alot of shades of gray in this game. Very few things were as simple as picking the good/evil option. The characters in the game are a bit forgettable compared to DAO. I think that's another reason the game feels more boring at times. Some of them are down right annoying. Anders is a emo who never shuts up about mages, Fenris is the same way about slaves and his former master. Isabella and Varric are interesting but we don't learn much about them. Merrill and Aveline are the only two i felt I understood, and liked by the end. You just don't come away as connected to this crew as you did to the cast of DAO. As for the gameplay. I enjoyed it alot. The action style fighting on difficulty levels above normal is great. The lack of magic healing and revival spells makes combat much more interesting to me. You really have to babysit all your guys in the fights, and time when u are going to heal well. Being able to dodge AOE attacks is fun too. | ||
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Rashid
191 Posts
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/4v4Kb.png) lulz | ||
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antelope591
Canada820 Posts
Gameplay wise I would rate them about equal. The fast paced gameplay in DA2 is fun but it feels like they took out a lot of the strategic elements of the first. There's less picking and choosing which abilities to use and more using everything at once and waiting for the cooldowns. Positioning is still very important tho and the character controls are a lot smoother which is a plus. I like the new ability trees too...probably the best addition in the game especially the character specific ones of your companions. Actually makes it important which ones you choose instead of just picking mage/rogue/warrior which can fit any role. The bad for me compared to the original...the characters. They couldn't have made a set of more boring companions if they tried. The only ones with any decent personality are Varric and Merril other than that they pale in comparison to their counterparts. To make matters worse the only one they brought back is Anders, prolly the lamest of all characters in both the original/expansion. Anders? Really? Pretty sad. Story wise I felt it's not as bad as some say but too much of a switch from the previous game. As a stand alone game it would've worked well but as part of the Dragon Age world it doesn't imo. You go from an epic story travelling all over the world to a game set in one city where you fast travel across a bunch of locations multiple times. It seems like lazy design more than innovation. Other things I had issues with: not being able to equip your companions except with a minimal amount of character-specific items. No explanation needed really...pretty pathetic for an RPG. The loot is also pretty subpar. In DA:O if you killed a boss or a huge enemy you knew you were getting something good. Here you might kill a dragon and get a bunch of silver. Kind of takes the fun out of it when the rewards aren't there. Also since you can barely equip your companions 90% of loot is useless unless since you might get a ton of mage/rogue loot as a warrior for example. That alone is almost game-breaking design for an RPG -_-. Lastly on a technical note the game seems poorly optimized for PC's at the moment. The performance doesn't match up with the graphical quality FPS wise which is kinda shocking to me for a Bioware game since their games have always been so well optimized in the past. Another example of lazy/rushed design. Still a good game worth playing through at least once imo but not close to the game it could've been if more time and effort was spent. | ||
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BloodNinja
United States2791 Posts
My two favorite party setups have been: 2H Warrior, Isabella, Merril, Anders 2H Warrior, Isabella, Varric, Mage Both of these combos just blow through everything so far tho I personally had more sucess with the first one. On March 15 2011 04:35 InToTheWannaB wrote: The characters in the game are a bit forgettable compared to DAO. I think that's another reason the game feels more boring at times. Some of them are down right annoying. Anders is a emo who never shuts up about mages, Fenris is the same way about slaves and his former master. Isabella and Varric are interesting but we don't learn much about them. Merrill and Aveline are the only two i felt I understood, and liked by the end. You just don't come away as connected to this crew as you did to the cast of DAO. I LOVED Varric and Isabella. They have some of the best lines in the game. Some of the conversations between the innocent Merril and the worldly Isabella were also very amusing. | ||
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Twitches
Canada365 Posts
I love that companions have their own housing and the cutscenes when you go to talk to them are miles better than they used to be. In Origins it was kind of lame just having a conversation with what was basically a statue that stood in the same spot.. You always knew where they were going to be in the camp. To be honest I have no idea why people are hating so much on the dialogue wheel. I've been playing Bioware games since BG1 and I really don't think it takes anything away from the game at all. For instance if you were ever in a heated debate in Origins you felt voiceless. In this one it's more immersive when you call someone out because your character actually shows emotion and through out the entire game your decisions impact how your character is voiced. I'm not sure how many people know that if you lean towards one dialogue option (like humorous/charming for example) that the engine begins to make sure that Hawke's tone remains mostly the same throughout the game. Everything feels very organic and I actually think the wheel is a huge improvement. Overall I believe the story was an improvement over Origins.. Especially in terms of RP. What really brought this game down was the lack of choice in companions and the fact that this game was rushed and a lot of things got very old. After the 1st act you've by then seen almost every area in the game... and go figure, you came back to those locations many, many times later. Most of the side quests were alright, but they sometimes felt like a grind as well... With little reward other then experience. There's a lot more to this game that I could comment on.. But that's what I felt the strongest about. I wish Bioware took more time with this game, because the Dragon Age series is a gem that they really need to care for. If they streamline this series it'll be a huge waste. That being said.. for a game that only took 2 years, it's great, but far from what it could have been if there was more time spent on it. Kind of disappointing. | ||
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GGTeMpLaR
United States7226 Posts
Me (Warrior Tank), Varric ranged rogue, Isabella rogue, and Bethany/Anders as mage worked great on normal, granted anything probably works on normal if I gave DA:O a 95/100, DA:II would get an 87-88 Mass Effect would probably be a 90 with ME2 an 87-88 | ||
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Blisse
Canada3710 Posts
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unoriginalname
England380 Posts
On March 14 2011 20:27 Geo.Rion wrote: EDIT:sorry for misspelling rogue, autocorrect made me lazy, and since rouge is a world too i did not notce Don't worry, most games that feature that class have the same problem + Show Spoiler + ![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/rFfe9.jpg) I've put 30 hours into the game so far, but I'm checking everywhere frequently artificially lengthening my game play as the Act restrictions denying side quests once your past them makes me more paranoid in missing any. I missed a companion one that I know of since I never have him in the party but I've just started Act 3 so I don't have a full opinion of the game so far with the exception of what I've seen so far. I'm glad a lot of the community is vocal about their disappointment as this may push BioWare to stop streamlining their game further and give back some of the depth that Dragon Age: Origins offered. One problem with this is "how many people actually cared". Codex entries have been drastically reduced between games, I was not one of those who read every codex entry nor did I inspect every item. I inspected items that I had attained via a bizarre method or was a named item such as the sword you con from the elf at Ostagar and find out the wielder will then die fighting Darkspawn holding a fork. Little things like that must be a huge effort for what they are, but I miss them nonetheless. I really don't like the User Interface, having the higher Constitution Aveline next to my glass cannon rogue with pumped Dexterity and Cunning makes my HP bar look very very small, which makes it harder to view my health. I don't see the issue with standardising health bars for team mates and keeping the variable ones for the enemies. Speaking of enemy health, even on hard I think they have much too little making abilities such as Brand and Mark of Death useless for anything but boss fights. For combat in general, I despise the enemy waves, coming in and gibbing healers or those assassins that spawn up some stairs that you can't see since the camera no longer allows for a top down view so they appear behind you, one shot KO you and your left wondering where your last save was. This could be solved if they place all mobs down, no spawns, and giving a top down camera. For the scenery, I'm not playing on max so I can't complain about bad textures, but I don't remember NPC's or even main party members having such broken textures in Dragon Age: Origins (especially fingers), the lighting is very pretty though if a little too bright for what before was a Darker fantasy. I think everyone has complained about re-using the same locations again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again so I shall not reiterate that. The dialogue is great between characters and background NPCs, but not towards Hawke, which is disappointing, the fixed dialogue is frustrating as it wants a strict adherence to linearity. In Dragon Age: Origins you could die by touching fires in the fade, by staying at a camp too long in the Brecillian Forest and I have not come across anything similar to this in Dragon Age 2. I also dislike that I cannot join with the Qunari which are much better political system (for non-mages) than any other in Thedas. Come rescue any bro no matter the cost? Want to stop decadence in the nobility and unfairness with the poor people? Want to have superior technology and the safety of not having your next door neighbour one day keeping you trapped in the Fade in endless torment? Why are the Qunari considered bad people? Despite the Orwellian society it actually is the best of the lot. Also... what happened to the puzzles? tl:dr It's okay so far, but I'd rather it was good or felt like it actually matters. | ||
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Fishball
Canada4788 Posts
Haha... Exactly what I'm thinking | ||
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Tarias
Netherlands480 Posts
Overall I like the game, I think the combat improved, but I also think there could have been some more depth in the characters. | ||
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Blisse
Canada3710 Posts
LOL zevran comes in the final fight. SO RANDOM. I liked the story. I don't know about you people, but it was good. Don't bore me with "depth" and "character," it was a good story. I'm not sure how good the time line is alongside origins, but the story was good, and set up something really nice for dragon age 3. I love the connections between origins and 2. great game, and good time killer. There are a million of things they could have fixed and improved on, yet it certainly felt like an improvement over origins in every respect. Everything was more streamlined and easier to follow. I didn't feel the quests were more of a pain than origins. I had more fun playing it than origins, which is really all that matters to me. Hawke's chin texture constantly breaking was getting annoying though. | ||
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Dandel Ion
Austria17960 Posts
And I'm really sad that seems to have been cut down severely. I also didn't feel any need to explore skill paths and combos, since it just feels useless to try a sleep + horror combo, when I could as well just toss an AoE spell in there and simply kill them; since the game seems to be balanced around constant mob reinforcements, not strong-yet-small mobs. Haven't finished the game yet, so I dunno about the bossfights, but AoE definetely seems to be the only reliable way to kill stuff. So it gets a "kill mob -> next group spawns -> ball them together -> kill again" thing that really starts to get stale. By now, I'm just messing around with the forcemage tree, tossing everything around while my party cuts them down. With a 2h-Warrior, ranged Rogue and mage nuker that seems to work out so far, I don't even have to control them at all. (Playing at the difficulty above normal I think, so dunno if that's just terrible, feels like that though) Thinking about just playing a ranged rogue (varric seems to be pretty damn strong, the best DPS/utility in the game as far as I'm concerned), but I wanna finish the game first. tl;dr mages suck now. | ||
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Gentso
United States2218 Posts
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