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Note: i am aware of the existence of a topic called Dragon age 2, however that's an old OP well before the game came out, and there' s an ongoing discussion there, without much structure. If the moderators find that this thread should not overleap with that, please dont close this but move it to blogs.
The goal of this topic: 1.) I would like to share my experience, criticism, reaction to some criticism i've read 2.) I invite you to do the same 3.) I m eager to answer any question, if you're not sure what to do at some point, or what's good for what, a FAQ kind of thing 4.) i would like to have some questions of my own, as i am not an experienced RPG player, i would especially like to explain the usefulness of 2 classtypes, you'll see it below. 5.) Have some opinion polls
Be aware that spoilers might lie ahead, i will structure it in a way so you can dodge them and adress just an issue. Let me start by saying the game is awesome, and i love it, and i am shocked by the amount of criticism it gets. It is not perfect, but definetly very enjoyable and addictive.
Poll: How did you rate DA2??Good, but dissapointing, i was expecting more (273) 59% One of the best games i have ever played (84) 18% Biggest waste of my time since watching BitbyBit.Prime play (68) 15% Not that good, but i wasnt expecting it to be any better (36) 8% 461 total votes Your vote: How did you rate DA2?? (Vote): One of the best games i have ever played (Vote): Good, but dissapointing, i was expecting more (Vote): Not that good, but i wasnt expecting it to be any better (Vote): Biggest waste of my time since watching BitbyBit.Prime play
I love the framework it uses to tell the story, the tale in a tale technique, with Varric, one of the most awesome characters i've met in my gamer experience. Especially love the part when you play a part, then Cassandra interrupts and says this couldnt be true, so Varric retells it, and you replay it.
I love the battles, one of my problems in DA Origins was that mages simply stood and fired in a nice and solid line. Now they dance around and hit the ground and all that good stuff.
I love the world it creates, a huge and very detailed one, maybe not as much as the first one, but that would be a tall order to be honest. The characters still chat among each other which is really really cool and finally the main character has voice.
Cons: The threat generation in some cases looks really random/ makes no sense. + Show Spoiler +Right after taunt is used, some enemies just don’t react at all to it. Plus there are cases where an enemy just does not give up. I had this fight vs some dragon, where I started out with it biting my tank a couple of time, then trying to hit my mage, but didn’t manage, and from there he targeted exclusively my melee rouge, so the battle ended up with my rogue running around for 10 minutes till my 2 mages and tank took him down slowly. That is both boring and stupid. It is not written for mages. + Show Spoiler +I’m always mage at first, I love that class overall, and I believe in DA Origins it fit perfectly, as the fade was on of the best elements of the game, and if you were not a mage, you spent there less time, and you had to send someone else in at one point. However here it’s clear this wasn’t meant for mages, but they couldn’t just exclude them or write a whole different line. The city you spend most of the time in this game is under Templar control. It is crawling with Templars. And there you are, at one point your brother is raging about how dangerous is to be here as you’re a mage, but you can walk up to some of your Templar contacts for some quests or info. You can stand with a blood mage apostate, with an abomination refugee Warden apostate and your main character as an apostate in front of the Templar Commander and exchange info, help each other out and stuff like that. WTF. You kill templars on regular basis, everyone knows from the start you’re an apostate, many hire you, knowing your skills, including the Viscount of the city. You end up as a respected and very well known citizen with a stable and publicly known estate. And you have 0 problems. Once I was attacked by a templar squad after I slaughtered already 2 squads with its Lieutenants and all, as well as some other random templars, so even the Templar order knows, but they don’t give a fuck. Also the time in the fade is non existent compared to the DA origins mage storyline. Simplifications.[+ Show Spoiler +Yes, there are things which are simplified, and tbh in some cases it’s for the better. But I did not like that they took away the option to influence your comrades’ gear. I can understand they want to wear their own cloths, but why take away the possibility of giving boots, gloves, hats for them, they don’t even show. Or they could have an option where you can check a box to show their normal self no matter what they have on them or something. This way you can decide their weapons, which is an obvious choice most of the times, and you don’t have to worry about fatigue and item sets or anything really. The junk is now called and showed as junk and can be solved with 1 click. I can understand this had its beauty in Origins that you weren’t sure if something is valuable or not, do you need to keep it for later or not, thus struggling endlessly with limited backpack capacity. This goes away in this game, but I’m not sure I mind it actually, it was interesting but still, annoying. You are told when and where to talk to your companions, and you can’t start a conversation at any other time then the game tells you to, this is bad imo. Limited place. Yes, it is a different game and the world is still pretty damn big, but not nearly as big and diverse as it was in Origins. I miss the world map, travels, ambushes and whatnot. It also made more sense to travel to some forbidden and forgotten forest to look up the Dalish then taking a walk outside of the city. Female dominance. + Show Spoiler +I’m ok with women getting more and more role, as strong characters or leaders and whatnot, but this has gone too far imo. I was kinda annoyed that in Origins the strongest general/bodyguard of Loghain was a women with a 2m long greatsword. Also Loghain’s daughter, Flemeth, Morrigan, the keeper in the Dalish storyline etc. very strong and dominant characters. The trend of strong female characters continues, but now, the one and only tank in the game (shield and sword warrior) is a women as well. Not an amazon, not a descendent of some strange race, not a barbarian but a nobel-women who decided to be a guard. It looks wrong, and I could actually deal with that, but it’s rather awkward that the best mage and the best rouge also happens to be a women. (at least as far as I understand this game). Good thing I didn’t go for a female character, 4 girls going on town on some ogres and whatnot sounds wrong. But even so, 3 of them is quite many, and they speak so much it’s crazy. I guess Bioware got that right at least. The 3 male characters: Fenris, the least useful class imo, non-tank warrior. If you need tank go for someone with a shield, if you need DPS get a rouge or a mage, but that’s just me. Anders, my biggest problem with him is you can’t really have a friendship with him, unless you go gay for him, which I just refuse, even though he’s really keen of me doing that. And beside this subjective thing, his healing is not nearly as useful as in the previous game, and got noting else to match Merril’s imba bloodmagic. And Varric who is indeed awesome, and I use him a lot, but at the end of the day if I have to decided between him and Isabella I must pick the latter, as she’s the best dps in the game so far. Ranged rogue just don’t seem strong enough for me, as their dps is lower, obviously because they are less threatened, but melee rogues can go for backstabs a lot easier. A twinfangs vs a frozen opponent from backstab position is insane or an explosive strike after completing the chain of backstab. The reward system:+ Show Spoiler + Probably the most annoying thing. I get 200 exp for picking up a mushroom, 10 thugs ambush me, it gains me like 120. And the loot some enemies drop is ridicuolus. Once a mature dragon dropeed me 36 silvers, what the hell. Many times a strong foe is slain, doesnt give anything then a couple of silvers, if you kill like 15 normal enemis, proably 2 have loot on them. It's not like i need money taht badly, but c'mon at least, for the sake of it, give some item. Items sell dirt cheap, so one does not earn much from them, but still better then that. Also it is quite ridiculous that some chests require 30 cunning, when you have 20 at most. And probably one of the toughest fight so far i could win on Hard, dropped me a useless hat EDIT: Romance
On March 15 2011 04:43 Rashid wrote:lulz + Show Spoiler +Seriously, everone beside those who are not an option at all are jumping at you, regardless of gender. I made no move on Anders yet at one point 2 out of 3 answers were heart, and the 3rd broken hearth, wtf. I got Heart option with Fenris as well quickly, even though he looks like a straight cold hearthed warrior. Merril who looked like will be the one who's taugh to get well, at first i struggled so hard to get a +5 approve at one time, then i help her out in her quest and next thing i know she's in my mention waiting to get laid already oO Criticism “they took out strategy from the game” Meaning it’s too easy. + Show Spoiler +Well, stop playing at casual then ffs, this game is really really hard, I might not be an RPG expert but I played my fair share, and got to say I was shitting bricks at many points even though I’m playing just on Hard. Hell, sometimes it almost felt like playing Zerg in sc2. At 2 or 3 points I had to lower the difficulty level because I just couldn’t win the battle. Yes, at Normal I tear trough it and I could see this game not being challenging on Normal, but there are 2 more difficulty levels. Even random raids and ambushes can kill you off or injure at least a member if you are not focused. Most of your good DPS characters are so low on HP, an elite rouge, not even a boss, can cause about 80% health damage from one backstab to them, which is borderline crazy. Maybe with non-mage characters it is easier, idk. The healing basically got removed from the game, the cooldown on it and the amount of points you have to spend on it, and the fact that group healing and normal healing are down 2 different paths heavily discourages that kind of play. In DA one of my favorite combo was Tank plus 3 mages. My tank never ever dies I had like 3 ways to heal it or 4, plus potions, and while it tanked, the mages released a storm of fire, lighting, flame and shit, which killed everything. They also removed the shatter mechanism which made the said combo so good, and now it encourages inter class play. Also they could convince me here on using different parties at different quests. In origins the only two combos I relied on with my main mage were 1 tank 3 mage and sometimes 1tank 2 mage 1 rouge. I don’t think I ever needed Sten, maybe at one dragon fight cuz I had a good sword for that, and I wouldn’t have used Oghren much either, but he was too cool to ignore him. Now I don’t have any like that. I thought Fenris will end up like that but I have to use him as well.
The story is weak/bad. + Show Spoiler +Well it is not. Dragon Age Origins had the most generic story possible. There's a traitor and a dark force which need to be assessed. The hero gathers allies, punishes the traitor, slays the evil. However all the little twists, the detailed companion storylines, quests sending you from one city to another, being able to influence everything you want, including being able to kill or at least abandon all your companions, but the dog. It was more then enough to me, definetly i'm happier with this then say, you have a huge big ass "iamyourfather" "dumbledoreiskilledbysnape" surprise somewhere towards the end, and mediocre for the rest. I have not finished DA2 yet, but it seems really the same, even more interesting with Flemeth acting in the background, wanting hellknows what, i hope i will find it out, im excited.
I have this questions, if you read trough my post you noticed i said a couple of times, that ranged rouges and shieldless tanks are not good imo. But i ve read some comments where people were claiming for example Fenris is too imba. If there are experienced games here, who use these classes in their main team, feel free to teach me why they are good. Two handed warrior feels weak to be a tank, how do you prevent it not getting raped by surround of many enemies, how can it tank a very strong boss, not being tossed around by knockback effects. The ranged rouge, what justifies bringing him, when the melee has a lot better dps, and even more so with his backstabs which are a lote more frequent then the archer can give, and while being harder to target down, it's also harder to save, as the tank can take away the melee rouges opponent with a taunt or charging there, and aoe disables from mages also are more usefully casted then on the middle of the battle then at the back where the archer and a random enemy is fighting.
Also vote for the strongest combo, i obviously can't include all the possibilities:
Poll: Strongest party setup?Twohanded warrior, rouge, mage, mage (39) 30% Tank-meele rouge-mage-mage (33) 25% Other, please specify (17) 13% Twohanded warrior, rouge, rouge, mage (16) 12% tank, ranged rouge, mage, mage (12) 9% tank, twohanded warrior, meele rouge, mage (9) 7% Tank, twohanded warrior, ranged rouge, mage (3) 2% tank-ranged rouge, mage, mage (1) 1% 130 total votes Your vote: Strongest party setup? (Vote): Tank-meele rouge-mage-mage (Vote): Twohanded warrior, rouge, rouge, mage (Vote): Twohanded warrior, rouge, mage, mage (Vote): Tank, twohanded warrior, ranged rouge, mage (Vote): tank, ranged rouge, mage, mage (Vote): tank, twohanded warrior, meele rouge, mage (Vote): Other, please specify (Vote): tank-ranged rouge, mage, mage
Some more
Poll: Who is the most useful companion?Anders (65) 38% Avelin (37) 21% Varric (25) 14% Fenris (17) 10% Isabella (14) 8% Merril (11) 6% your brother/sister (4) 2% 173 total votes Your vote: Who is the most useful companion? (Vote): Avelin (Vote): Merril (Vote): Isabella (Vote): Varric (Vote): Anders (Vote): Fenris (Vote): your brother/sister
Poll: Which companion you like the mostVarric (77) 37% Isabella (51) 25% Merril (49) 24% Fenris (10) 5% Avelin (8) 4% your brother/sister (8) 4% Anders (5) 2% 208 total votes Your vote: Which companion you like the most (Vote): Avelin (Vote): Merril (Vote): Isabella (Vote): Anders (Vote): Fenris (Vote): Varric (Vote): your brother/sister
FAQ Is Merril's blood magic buffed by items such as ring of the ruin, or the talisman of the Saneshaad? to these effects stack? + Show Spoiler +Yes, it is like normal blood magic, items help, and they stack. Pretty imba.
In the fade, my companions abandoned me! + Show Spoiler +Dont worry, you did not lose them, though you might want to think twice about going in there as the rivalry points given there remain, as far as i could tell
I can t solve the barrel puzzle in the Fade + Show Spoiler +They are rather simple, you have to get all the small barrels on top and all the big ones bottom, and in the other room you have to have the 4 real barrels next to each other and on top of each other (so 2 columns of 2 next to each other)
How can i boost my companion's gear? I cant give them anything + Show Spoiler +Yes, but you can find a couple of upgrades for their armor at certain quests or shops. In shops they appear at the gem like icon On March 14 2011 21:07 EchOne wrote: Here are the companion armor upgrade locations and backpack locations if you want to add them to the FAQ (courtesy of the Bioware forums):
Bethany: Heirloom Amell Protective Sigils - Final room in the Birthright quest - Act 1
Carver: Fereldan Girded Plating - Final room in the Birthright quest - Act 1
Anders: Lyrium Weave - Mage Shop (Gallows) - Act 2 Armor Struts - Lirene's Fereldan Imports Shop (Lowtown) - Act 2 Spirit Essance - Dissent Quest, Gallows Dungeon - Act 2 Sigil of the Mage Underground - Best Served Cold Quest - Act 3
Aveline: Underpadding, Guardsmen Pattern - Armor Merchant (Low Town) - Act 1 Flex Chain, Guardsmen Pattern - Raiders on the Cliff Quest, located on the body of Fell Orden - Act 2 Impact Padding, Guardsmen Pattern - Armor Merchant Shop (Low Town) - Act 2 Deflecting Joints, Guardsmen Pattern - Favour and Fault Quest, Located on the body of Javen - Act 3
Fenris: Lyrium Scales - Shady Merchandise Shop (Docks) - Act 2 Tevinter Spirit Symbol - Robes by Jean Luc Shop (Hightown) - Act 2 Reinforced Straps - A Bitter Pill Quest, Abandoned Slaver Den - Act 2 Enchanted Resin - Mine Massacre Quest, On the body of the Dragon - Act 3
Isabela: Lambswool Insoles - To Catch a Thief Quest, in a chest in the Lost-End Foundry - Act 2 Rigid Boning - Apparel Shop (Low Town) - Act 2 Supportive Corselet - Robes by Jean luc Shop (Hightown) - Act 2 Boiled Leather Plates - A Murder of Crows Quest - Act 3
Merrill: Silver-Threaded Dalish Embroidery - Sundermount, at the very top of the path, though mountain passage - Act 2 Carved Ironwood Buttons - Ilen's Crafts Shop (Sundermount) - Act 2 Samite Lining - Robes by Jean Luc Shop (Hightown) - Act 2 Halla Horn Buckles - A new Path Quest, on the body of the Pride Demon - Act 3
Varric: Inscribed Leather Harness - Apparel Shop (Low Town) - Act 1 Silverite-Reinforced Buckles - Family Matter quest, Bartrand's Estate - Act 2 Coat Lining with concealed Pockets - Shady Merchandise Shop (Docks) - Act 2 Drakeskin Leg Straps - Finding Nathaniel Quest - Act 3
Sebastian Enchanted Articulation - Armor Shop (Gallows) - Act 2 Mail Undertunic - Repentance Quest, Harriman Estate - Act 2 Reinforced Bracers - Olaf's Armory Shop (Hightown) - Act 2 Protection of the Faith - Best Served Cold quest, Hightown (Night), on the body of A Templar Lieutenant - Act 3
Backpacks It goes up to 100 and you can only buy 2 upgrades in Act 1 (Robes by Jean Luc and Apparel Shop in Lowtown), 2 in Act 2 (Robes by Jean Luc and Mage Goods) and 1 in Act 3 (Robes by Jean Luc). .
EDIT:sorry for misspelling rogue, autocorrect made me lazy, and since rouge is a world too i did not notce
Can anyone help me out with this? I m searching for spindleweed like a madman in act 3 but i cant find for my life depends on it. I googled it and one said that there should be 1 in Lowtown, but i couldnt find, and i also read a comment that the information is inaccurate
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Doesn't Dragon Age 2 use Securom? Read that somewhere...makes me hesitant to buy it.
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On March 14 2011 20:32 lbmaian wrote: Doesn't Dragon Age 2 use Securom? Read that somewhere...makes me hesitant to buy it. I don't know, probably. DA:O also uses a bunch of other BS I've had trouble with though... like old DirectX 9 files which I had to manually download (which seems kinda strange considering it's a newish game?), plus nvidia PhysX stuff, which seems dumb? (since I don't have physx or nvidia card)
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I've just finished what could be considered "Act 2" I guess, and I'm having a blast. I usually run with Hawke (Weapon and Shield tank), Isabela, Varric, and either Anders or Merrill. And yes, I'm playing on casual because I want to play it through at least once for the story before I start focusing on strategies, etc. I've just reached level 19 and have been completing all possible side quests before advancing the main story.
One thing I'm not quite sure I understand, though, is why you listed the "Female dominance" as a con of this game. In DA:O, we learned about the Chantry and how all the clergy were women. We had Morrigan, Leliana, and Wynne as strong party members, with Flemeth, Anora, Ser Cauthry (Loghain's bodyguard), Keeper Marethari, and innumerable Revered Mothers throughout the game as well. I don't see what's wrong with having lots of strong female characters or even female combatants. I mean, I can understand if you didn't make your main character a female because I play my characters as an extension of myself. It would feel really weird to me, being male, to play a female character in such an involved RPG as this.
As for the game not being written for mages, it would make a pretty boring game if you were constantly fighting off Templars simply because you chose to play a mage. It would be even worse if the Templars captured you right at the beginning of the game, so the only solution here is "plot-induced stupidity" on the part of the Templar.
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I'm finding it was great game overall, better than Origins (Origins was a big disappointment for me) but somewhat lacking in the big picture especially with what I've come to expect from BioWare. However it exceeded my expectations as I was expecting something worse than Origins (I know general consensus is that it is worse).
Comparing with BioWare's top efforts (KoTOR and Mass Effect 2 IMO) though, DA2 doesn't come anywhere close to the experience those games offered.
In terms of favourite characters, Fenris is a total gangsta (even though I'm a rival with him) and Varric just has a bucketload of charisma. The Arishok left a pretty powerful impression too + Show Spoiler +and I was very sad when I had to kill him . I'm in Act 3 and so far I really like the dynamic of years passing, characters persisting through those years and storylines reaching fruition. It adds a weight to your decisions.
The romances suck, at least for male Hawke (pretty much because I'm still angry that Aveline isn't an option). Though I'm looking forward to Fenris + FemHawke in my second playthrough. And why is literally everyone bisexual? I wanna bro it up with Fenris and Anders but I don't want them in my pants! It just seems like BioWare got lazy and wanted one playthrough to have all the characters as options for a relationship.
Party Setup:
I ran Act 1 to halfway through Act 2 with Aveline tanking (weapon and shield), me rogue (archer), Anders healing and an interchangeable DPS character.
Halfway through Act 2 however I switched it to Fenris "tanking" (2 handed insane ragemode DPS), Anders healing (he's the one who lets me get away with not having a proper tank as he is just so awesome at heals), me as dual dagger rogue and Merrill as DPS. I'm playing a mixture of Hard and Normal (I play RPGs for the characters and story).
Overall Anders is the one most useful character IMO. His heals are just extraordinary at higher levels.
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Kyrgyz Republic1462 Posts
On March 14 2011 20:57 snotboogie wrote: I found it was great game overall, better than Origins (Origins was a big disappointment for me) but somewhat lacking in the big picture especially with what I've come to expect from BioWare. However it exceeded my expectations as I was expecting something worse than Origins (I know general consensus is that it is worse).
Comparing with BioWare's top efforts (KoTOR and Mass Effect 2 IMO) though, DA2 doesn't come anywhere close to the experience those games offered.
What did you think was so good about ME2 (as in better than DA or DA2) ? I really don't get why people praise that one so much.
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Here are the companion armor upgrade locations and backpack locations if you want to add them to the FAQ (courtesy of the Bioware forums):
Bethany: Heirloom Amell Protective Sigils - Final room in the Birthright quest - Act 1
Carver: Fereldan Girded Plating - Final room in the Birthright quest - Act 1
Anders: Lyrium Weave - Mage Shop (Gallows) - Act 2 Armor Struts - Lirene's Fereldan Imports Shop (Lowtown) - Act 2 Spirit Essance - Dissent Quest, Gallows Dungeon - Act 2 Sigil of the Mage Underground - Best Served Cold Quest - Act 3
Aveline: Underpadding, Guardsmen Pattern - Armor Merchant (Low Town) - Act 1 Flex Chain, Guardsmen Pattern - Raiders on the Cliff Quest, located on the body of Fell Orden - Act 2 Impact Padding, Guardsmen Pattern - Armor Merchant Shop (Low Town) - Act 2 Deflecting Joints, Guardsmen Pattern - Favour and Fault Quest, Located on the body of Javen - Act 3
Fenris: Lyrium Scales - Shady Merchandise Shop (Docks) - Act 2 Tevinter Spirit Symbol - Robes by Jean Luc Shop (Hightown) - Act 2 Reinforced Straps - A Bitter Pill Quest, Abandoned Slaver Den - Act 2 Enchanted Resin - Mine Massacre Quest, On the body of the Dragon - Act 3
Isabela: Lambswool Insoles - To Catch a Thief Quest, in a chest in the Lost-End Foundry - Act 2 Rigid Boning - Apparel Shop (Low Town) - Act 2 Supportive Corselet - Robes by Jean luc Shop (Hightown) - Act 2 Boiled Leather Plates - A Murder of Crows Quest - Act 3
Merrill: Silver-Threaded Dalish Embroidery - Sundermount, at the very top of the path, though mountain passage - Act 2 Carved Ironwood Buttons - Ilen's Crafts Shop (Sundermount) - Act 2 Samite Lining - Robes by Jean Luc Shop (Hightown) - Act 2 Halla Horn Buckles - A new Path Quest, on the body of the Pride Demon - Act 3
Varric: Inscribed Leather Harness - Apparel Shop (Low Town) - Act 1 Silverite-Reinforced Buckles - Family Matter quest, Bartrand's Estate - Act 2 Coat Lining with concealed Pockets - Shady Merchandise Shop (Docks) - Act 2 Drakeskin Leg Straps - Finding Nathaniel Quest - Act 3
Sebastian Enchanted Articulation - Armor Shop (Gallows) - Act 2 Mail Undertunic - Repentance Quest, Harriman Estate - Act 2 Reinforced Bracers - Olaf's Armory Shop (Hightown) - Act 2 Protection of the Faith - Best Served Cold quest, Hightown (Night), on the body of A Templar Lieutenant - Act 3
Backpacks It goes up to 100 and you can only buy 2 upgrades in Act 1 (Robes by Jean Luc and Apparel Shop in Lowtown), 2 in Act 2 (Robes by Jean Luc and Mage Goods) and 1 in Act 3 (Robes by Jean Luc).
I might add a review later.
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On March 14 2011 21:05 Random() wrote:
What did you think was so good about ME2 (as in better than DA or DA2) ? I really don't get why people praise that one so much.
Mostly the immersiveness. I've never played a game where I really felt like I was the character. And what a cool character and cool universe to feel that in. The levels felt just non-gamey enough to bypass my suspension-of-disbelief firewall (I handily ignored the places where there's a lot of cover so you know there's gonna be a fight), and more importantly the characters were just really well fleshed out and the voice acting was superb.
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Kyrgyz Republic1462 Posts
On March 14 2011 21:15 snotboogie wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2011 21:05 Random() wrote:
What did you think was so good about ME2 (as in better than DA or DA2) ? I really don't get why people praise that one so much. Mostly the immersiveness. I've never played a game where I really felt like I was the character. And what a cool character and cool universe to feel that in. The levels felt just non-gamey enough to bypass my suspension-of-disbelief firewall (I handily ignored the places where there's a lot of cover so you know there's gonna be a fight), and more importantly the characters were just really well fleshed out and the voice acting was superb.
Weird. I thought that the first Mass Effect had exactly that feeling that you're talking about, but the second one's structure was way too repetitive to feel "non gamey". A "recruiting" mission then a "loyalty" mission and both generally consist of pointless combat (pointless because you effectively have unlimited health - shoot stuff until your screen goes red - duck behind cover to regen - repeat). Then + Show Spoiler +all of a sudden your crew gets abducted and you get to shoot some more guys. The end. .
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On March 14 2011 20:32 lbmaian wrote: Doesn't Dragon Age 2 use Securom? Read that somewhere...makes me hesitant to buy it.
Dragon Age 2 does NOT use the SecuROM DRM you're worried about. It uses a simple release date check that was written by the same team as that SecuROM. Here's a post from a BioWare tech expert explaining the difference between the two: http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/6194280/29#6490247
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As a big fan of Origins when I read about most of the changes that were going to be made in DA2 I thought I wouldn't like the game, and from what I've played so far I've been wrong!
I've only finished the second act I think + Show Spoiler +I'm on the part after you killed the Qunari and so far the combat has been in my opinion the same as in Origins but a little harder at times. The only real problem I had with the combat, this is in nightmare mode, is that the Qunari mages seem to be too fucking amazing. Sometimes I would just go on fighting and not watch the map for a few seconds and a Seraabas spawned at a hidden location and basicly 1 shots my group.
I see little use for dps warriors in this game aswell since they just 1 shot other party members that are next to them. If you use cleave+whirlwind/mightyblow and you have one other guy in your party close they just insta die because of the high damage. The only times I had to deal with this was when I brought fenris along but it feels so stupid that you need to move all the other melee members from your party to be able to use your skills without killing them.
I like what they did with Archers compared to how they were in Origins, they are not just stuns and a insta kill on the enemy mage but actually quite good overall dps.
The only other I can think of that wasn't all that great is that they re-use alot of the caves for missions but you start at different parts in that cave, this part in particular made the game feel kinda rushed. Also that your companions won't use any gear except for rings/belt/trinkets even thought it's better is quite annoying :/
Overall I'm quite happy with the game so far and I don't understand why people whine about the lenght of this game because I passed my 30 hour mark and from what I remembered when I did everything in Origins it wasn't that much longer, I think it took me ~40 hours to get trought Origins and all it's sidequests on Nightmare.
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Just a hint: Its a Rogue and not a Rouge ...
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On March 14 2011 21:43 Rabiator wrote: Just a hint: Its a Rogue and not a Rouge ... oh f.ck...
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Finished the game yesterday and boy was the ending disappointing. No matter what you choose the ending goes the same way. I also felt like the game was much shorter and easier than origins. Overall I was disappointed in the story and the lack of impact my decisions had in the game world.
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It is also melee, not meele
lol
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On March 14 2011 21:52 iamcup wrote: Finished the game yesterday and boy was the ending disappointing. No matter what you choose the ending goes the same way. I also felt like the game was much shorter and easier than origins. Overall I was disappointed in the story and the lack of impact my decisions had in the game world.
This, very disappointing ending! I also agree with the OP, the rewardsystem was flawed and the game in general contained very little loot.
+ Show Spoiler +The last boss was a cakewalk, I played on normal difficulty and my assassinate struck her for 6000dmg x2 each time. She did zero damage with Anders sustained mode. I did however like the small cameo by Zevhran in the last battle, lol.
+ Show Spoiler +Another thing that kind of bothered me, but no big deal in the end, was when Varric told the seeker that everybody left the champions side "except [romance]" he mentioned Isabela for me. Even though I never used her nor did any romance with her at all. She even left my party during act2 when I asked for the artifact to be brought to the Arishok. While I had Merril's romance fully completed. Very frustrating.
Sorry for all the spoiler tags, not sure what's considered a spoiler, so I'd prefer to be on the safe side
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Is there anyone else that have a bit of problem with the game freezing up some cutscenes? It's almost like my framerate drops to 0 at some parts even thought I run it at max without lag, but when a character turns their head in a cutscene it freezez up. The sound continues and then the video jumps to where the sound is when the lag is over.
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I uninstalled it after the first 10 seconds into the game. I think Bitbybit.prime did way better job at entertaining myself.
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I was playing on Nightmare for about 10 hours and was very close to the end of Act 1, but there were some quests I just couldn't finish as they were just too damn hard for my group, like Wayward Child (Partially due to my Aveline tank not having the best build). My goal has been mainly keeping everyone alive in every battle, which means if any member falls, I would reload. I must have doubled my play time just by solving each battle. Then I decided to screw it and "enjoy" the game for my first play through and downgraded to "Hard". Damn, it's so easy now.
My group consists Hawke (Archer), Verric (Archer), Aveline (Tank), Bethany (Hex/Healer), + Show Spoiler +I fucking lost Bethany, and didn't know you could save her by bringing Anders along, or just not bring her to the Deep Roads at all. Should have Googled earlier but pending replacement...
I wasn't very motivated to play when I first started, as I wasn't too impressed what I was seeing compared to DA:O, but I must say the game kinda grew on me, although it still lacks a kicker. I voted "Good, but disappointing", a decent 7/10.
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On March 14 2011 23:04 Fishball wrote:My group consists Hawke (Archer), Verric (Archer), Aveline (Tank), Bethany (Hex/Healer), + Show Spoiler +I fucking lost Bethany, and didn't know you could save her by bringing Anders along, or just not bring her to the Deep Roads at all. Should have Googled earlier but pending replacement...
+ Show Spoiler +You still loose her if you don't bring her along. The templars will come and get her while you're in the deep roads.
I quite enjoyed the game. I played through it on Normal, skipped all side quests and only did the main story aswell as + Show Spoiler +. Im playing through it again now, doing all the sidequests on Hard difficulty. I played DA:O when it released but never got far in the game. I think I will play DA:O now that I've played DA2, just to wrap things up
My favourite combo is: Hawke (2h warrior), Aveline (Tank), Anders (Healer) and Merrill (DPS).
2H Warrior actually does INSANE damage. Merrill is just sick aswell.
I did this combo on Normal difficulty. Now on hard i replaced my Hawke's 2h with a mage Elementalist pure dps, and took Varric instead of Merrill. The sole reason for choosing Varric is that he's fricking hilarious! Love his conversations with the other partymembers.
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No kidding. Merril is extremely useful with her curses and her good aoe stuff, and I like her character in general as well, it always gives me a laugh to see her interactions with the other party members. Anders is a beast though. I ran 2H Hawke - Anders - Merril - Isabella. Anders was the healer but he could also switch to dps.
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+ 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.
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Merril ftw. That was completely awesome character. Her conversations with Varric are awesome. Romanced her even with my female mage
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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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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Picked this game up yesterday and i really like it:D Not as good as origins but still. 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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I have found that at least on the normal setting you don't really need a tank. Aveline is nice and all, but with the wonky threat mechanics and the generally weak nature of almost all enemies you can totally forgo a tanking character in favor of more DPS.
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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I feel that where DAO would reveive probably 8.5-9.0 from me, this game is a 7.5-8.0. 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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I just finished the game on hard so now i feel able to give my thoughts on the game as well. First I'll say this games good,. but not nearly as good as DAO. This games just much more boring for whatever reason. I think the main reason this games not as exciting is the way side quests are done. In DAO you had the few main quests, and the side quests you just picked up along the way. They never felt like I was doing a checklist or grinding. They just flowed nicely, but in DA2 its alot of fast traveling around the same freaking city. It just feels like a tedious grind most of the time by comparison. Now thats not to say the main storyline is bad, Its not. The main story of DA2 is honestly better then DAO.
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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lulz
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I'll second people who said they didn't enjoy the game as much as DA:O. For me this game did some things better but more things worse than the previous.
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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United States2791 Posts
Add me into the company of people who think 2H Warriors are complete beasts. Tons of damage and still very sturdy. I haven'y played on nightmare yet (where Aveline might be necessary), but I have zero issues with a single sturdy 2H warrior acting as tanky DPS for the group.
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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^ Pretty much my thoughts on the game as well. I think I got really lucky with how I played my campaign out and the decisions I made, because I usually had some of the funnier things happen to me in my first playthrough. When I went through the second time and checked out some of the other ways to do things they weren't anywhere near as interesting... It also helped that I had both of the more interesting party members around at all times. I actually didn't mind Anders terribley, but I really got sick of Aveline. Who is your only tank in the entire game...
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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my favorite party was
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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lol double standards. if you're a mage champion, and side with the templars, the knight commander ignores that you're a mage. really glaring inconsistency.
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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 +
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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Haha... Exactly what I'm thinking
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I've just now killed the stupid rock boss on nightmare. Took me like 5 tries, that thing is a pain in the ass. Before that I was steamrolling nightmare with my 2H warrior, using Varric, Anders and Merril as my group setup. 2H warrior is kind of overpowered though. Even on nightmare most groups of enemies will die in 2 or 3 seconds.
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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+ Show Spoiler +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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The one thing that I really loved in DA:O's combat was the spell-combo system.
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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DA2 is a huge slap in the face to the fans. Capitalism at its finest, though.. hopefully the profits from this quick money grab goes to making KOTR a great game.
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On March 15 2011 04:43 Rashid wrote:lulz
LOL!!!! Yeah Anders definitely has that weird vibe about him. Creepy.
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Anders has been maxed on friend with me since act2, and no, there was no romance involved. Just bash any templar you talk to and it increases very fast.
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On March 15 2011 01:25 Fishball wrote:Show nested quote +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.
Hmm, I was able to activate Anders friendly buff ability without romance by the end of act 2 without using him at all until act 2. I just used him a lot, especially on any quest involving mages/templar and sided with the mages. Also you can talk to a few of the templars around the gallows and the grand cleric in the chantry with Anders around for easy approval (obviously you would want to tell them to be easier on mages in these convos). + Show Spoiler + Preventing Anders from killing the mage in the tranquil solution quest is probably the biggest single contributor to getting a high friendly score with him. I don't remember exactly how I did the convo, but he can be talked down. It could probably be found online somewhere.
Edit:
On March 15 2011 09:15 Zozo wrote: Anders has been maxed on friend with me since act2, and no, there was no romance involved. Just bash any templar you talk to and it increases very fast. Exactly lol. Just go out of your way to talk to any templar you can find and tell them you think they are wrong in front of Anders.
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i beat the game on hard difficulty using mage, mage, mage, ranged rogue. It wasn't that easy because npc rogues can often 1 shot you. yes to beat the high dragon i needed to throw in aveline. but nothing else really requires a tank warrior. 2h warrior is almost always better and i'm using that on my second play through on nightmare. Ranged rogues are also extremely good, i like varric a lot more than isabelle, so i was pretty surprised to read your take on this. you probably are not getting the right abilities to make ranged rogues and 2h warriors insanely strong. my first varric had such high attack speed and crit that most npcs could not get in range of him.
how do you beat bosses without a shield tank like aveline? well it's pretty simple, a lot of the smaller dragons/bosses you can just kite, and other bosses that arn't kiteable require some excellent character movement. you can dodge most attacks simply by moving around the boss. after that its just good healing, potions, poisons, damage combos... etc. The hardest boss other than high dragon would have to be the ancient rock lord in the deep roads.
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+ Show Spoiler +wait... so is there a way to keep bethany in party til the end? someone mentioned bringing anders along with her to the dark roads will do?
i really hated losing bethany
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On March 15 2011 09:55 Doraemon.doraemon wrote: + Show Spoiler +wait... so is there a way to keep bethany in party til the end? someone mentioned bringing anders along with her to the dark roads will do?
i really hated losing bethany
+ Show Spoiler +if you leave bethany at home she gets taken by the circle
if you bring bethany and anders she joins the grey wardens
if you bring bethany without anders she dies
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On March 15 2011 10:00 GGTeMpLaR wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2011 09:55 Doraemon.doraemon wrote: + Show Spoiler +wait... so is there a way to keep bethany in party til the end? someone mentioned bringing anders along with her to the dark roads will do?
i really hated losing bethany + Show Spoiler +if you leave bethany at home she gets taken by the circle
if you bring bethany and anders she joins the grey wardens
if you bring bethany without anders she dies
+ Show Spoiler + grr that really sucks... i want my sister!
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On March 15 2011 10:00 GGTeMpLaR wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2011 09:55 Doraemon.doraemon wrote: + Show Spoiler +wait... so is there a way to keep bethany in party til the end? someone mentioned bringing anders along with her to the dark roads will do?
i really hated losing bethany + Show Spoiler +if you leave bethany at home she gets taken up by the circle
if you bring bethany and anders she joins the grey wardens
if you bring bethany without anders she dies + Show Spoiler +If your sibling joins the Circle/the Templars, it will be able to assist you for the Act 3 final boss. If your sibling becomes a Grey Warden, it will be able to assist you for both the Act 2 and Act 3 final bosses. The Act 2 boss can be fought in single combat so the difference is functionally minute.
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On March 15 2011 10:03 EchOne wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2011 10:00 GGTeMpLaR wrote:On March 15 2011 09:55 Doraemon.doraemon wrote: + Show Spoiler +wait... so is there a way to keep bethany in party til the end? someone mentioned bringing anders along with her to the dark roads will do?
i really hated losing bethany + Show Spoiler +if you leave bethany at home she gets taken up by the circle
if you bring bethany and anders she joins the grey wardens
if you bring bethany without anders she dies + Show Spoiler +If your sibling joins the Circle/the Templars, it will be able to assist you for the Act 3 final boss. If your sibling becomes a Grey Warden, it will be able to assist you for both the Act 2 and Act 3 final bosses. The Act 2 boss can be fought in single combat so the difference is functionally minute. + Show Spoiler +Well with gray wardens i dont think you get the problem of going against the group your sibling is in.
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Warning: Off topic of Dragon Age 2, but on Bioware. Ignore if you just want to discuss the game.
+ Show Spoiler +http://www.capsulecomputers.com.au/2011/03/bioware-caught-red-handed/ So Dragon Age 2 is finally out and is being met with mixed reviews. The most common argument around is that it isn’t as good as Origins but it isn’t terrible. Fair enough. Worse things could certainly be said, so you would imagine that Bioware could take the criticism with dignity. Unfortunately, Bioware has proven itself unable to act like a professional company.
Bioware has been caught red handed writing a misleading review for Dragon Age 2 on Metacritic. The review has since been pulled once they were found out, though the introduction blerb was saved in the cache. How did they get found out exactly? Read on.
A user on Reddit (popular global forum), GatoFiasco, was reading the top user review and noticed something about it that didn’t quite fit. It sounded almost patronizing, calling the game flawless and stating that any negative reaction to the game is merely a conflict of personal preference. So GatoFiasco decided to check out the user who posted this review, Avanost (who has since deleted their Metacritic profile) and discovered that their only review was the Dragon Age 2 review. Interesting. GatoFiasco then googled the name, Avanost, and found their profile on Plurk, revealing a name, Chris Hoban. Taking this search with a grain of salt, he realized this could just be another person on the internet with the username of Avanost and so he wasn’t expecting anything to come of it. However, a simple google search of Chris Hoban reveals that he is, in fact, an applications engineer at Bioware.
As I have pointed out, Bioware has since removed the review and Chris’s profile from Metacritic at an effort of damage control. So what does this all mean? Obviously the company wants their game to sell well, regardless of its actual value since the employees of Bioware need to put food on the table. Nobody is going to say the product that they are selling is bad. That’s not even what we are saying, Dragon Age 2 isn’t bad, but it isn’t the immaculate gift from God that this review made it out to be. This show of deceit, however, puts Bioware in a tainted light, the same kind of light that Eidos has been known to revel in with the firing of Jeff Gertsmann, a former reviewer for Gamespot who refused to give Kane and Lynch a favorable review against the wishes of Eidos. It is unknown if Bioware is the host of any other tom foolery similar to this. In all honesty, I wouldn’t doubt it. With this cute, little stunt many fans have lost their trust in Bioware and I’m a little inclined to side with them. Deception such as this cannot be tolerated. Bioware, I hope this is the only time this has happened and that this employee is punished appropriately.
Let this be a lesson to you, do some research before you buy a game and don’t base your opinion off of one review. Second source: http://www.gamertell.com/gaming/comment/bioware-employee-accused-of-manipulating-dragon-age-2-metacritic-scores/
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Vatican City State1650 Posts
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Has anybody tried to complete the game in Nightmare without heal? I'm currently using a warrior tank 1H/shield (myself) + Fenris + Isabela + Bethany (I'm just before the Deep Roads) but I just spoiled myself + Show Spoiler +that I won't be able to keep her . The problem is : Merrill does not seem to be able to heal and I don't like Anders. So, possible to complete the game based purely on crowd controls (with a few potions if needed but I don't like to abuse them) ?
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i dont think the game is doable in general on nightmare, without absusing the environment and the ai really hard. even on hard i found the first hours crazy, but it got better after level 6 or so.
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On March 15 2011 16:46 Merany wrote:Has anybody tried to complete the game in Nightmare without heal? I'm currently using a warrior tank 1H/shield (myself) + Fenris + Isabela + Bethany (I'm just before the Deep Roads) but I just spoiled myself that I + Show Spoiler +won't be able to keep her . The problem is : Merrill does not seem to be able to heal and I don't like Anders. So, possible to complete the game based purely on crowd controls (with a few potions if needed but I don't like to abuse them) ?
There is a mod available that opens up a healing tree for Merrill if you want to choose that. I haven't had nightmare on for long, the assassins/rogues are frustrating enough on hard.
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/307/index/6492984/1
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If you weren't using Fenris you were doing it wrong. As a mage I quickly realised that the greatest skill in the game was the vortex ability that stacked every enemy in the room on top of each other in the middle, where you could conveniently brittle everybody and let Fenris go to town. Unfortunately, by being a mage, there is just no possible way to avoid an intense rivalry with the man. Dude's a fucking psycho.
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This game just doesn't stand a chance is you compare it to BG I, II and even Icewind Dale. It's not only the gameplay part, I prefer the atmosphere of the Forgotten Realms. Anyone who played those games got the same feelings?
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On March 15 2011 17:04 Airship wrote: If you weren't using Fenris you were doing it wrong. As a mage I quickly realised that the greatest skill in the game was the vortex ability that stacked every enemy in the room on top of each other in the middle, where you could conveniently brittle everybody and let Fenris go to town. Unfortunately, by being a mage, there is just no possible way to avoid an intense rivalry with the man. Dude's a fucking psycho. control spells + 2 handed weapon warrior = alot of aoe dmg for very little taken. Fenris is pretty hard to get friendly he clashes with alot of people but a rivalry isn't a bad thing, i think they still gain their loyalty as long as you hit rivalry or friendship and it locks in.
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On March 15 2011 04:43 Rashid wrote:lulz i have put this in the OP, lol
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Your initial poll is pretty bias. Can we please have a choice that isn't " good but disappointing " or " best game ever " ? I mean, I thought it was just a solid game but I have no option and I'm sure most people with a similar opinion are just compromising and using "good but disappointing" which is making your poll pretty bias. Calling any game " the best game ever " is going really far in this day an age.
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Merrill makes my life everytime she talks. I'm a completely straight female but I was having a hard time not romancing her because her adorable levels were off the charts. But in the end I couldn't resist Fenris voice (even if he is a complete dick and to add to that I'm a mage)
Game isn't as good as DAO but its still a fantastic game. One of my favorte for sure. I hopped on the internet after 24 hours of playing it almost nonstop to find a bunch of hate and I was so very confused.
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i just beat the game on hard (xcept for the high dragon and that crazy rock you only have to fight if u choose to but gives 12000 xp fairly early in the game) and I never met isabella.
i feel like playing again just so i can play with her. Ive been rushing thru the game. at some point i found a 110 gold staff for my main mage but i was short on cash to buy it and it wasnt there for me to buy once i got enough money. I also never created a rune with my high dragon loot.
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i liked the game was fun, but the fact they want you to "buy" quests in the game that was just released upset me. also they still made it very hard to control a melee character effectively, although 5x better than Dragon Age 1 it is still sluggish and the AI is stupid as all get out. i think "Never Winter Nights"a game that's much older had way way better AI than this game something game designers should think about when creating a game... do not go backwards in time...
The only saving factor for a melee character is the 2 handed warrior which does great damage and with a healer behind him nigh unstoppable in this game. but again even the 2 handed warrior is trumped by the mage class =(.
All in all i was very disappointed in this game, i would recommend this as a rental and not a buyer there is no re-playability to this game aside from Alignment.. the story doesn't really change to much no matter what alignment you end up becoming(not saying it doesnt...) just not a lot.
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On March 15 2011 17:58 Synk wrote: Your initial poll is pretty bias. Can we please have a choice that isn't " good but disappointing " or " best game ever " ? I mean, I thought it was just a solid game but I have no option and I'm sure most people with a similar opinion are just compromising and using "good but disappointing" which is making your poll pretty bias. Calling any game " the best game ever " is going really far in this day an age. one of the best =/= the best game ever If you really liked the game vote that, i voted that myself, even though i enumarated many flaws, but so far i havent played a game that did not have flaws. BTW i cant edit the poll.
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yeah, i hate that you need an insane amount of cunning to open up chests - frikin annoying!
but overall i liked the game. played through it twice, first time as warrior, second as mage - and ive gotta say, it was damn easy as a mage. so, i expect a challenge(like warrior) when i go for the 3. run as rouge.
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On March 15 2011 19:35 Nazarid wrote: but again even the 2 handed warrior is trumped by the mage class =(
Lol, I don't know what game you've been playing, but in DA2 2h warrior is ALOT stronger then mage.
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On March 15 2011 17:00 unoriginalname wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2011 16:46 Merany wrote:Has anybody tried to complete the game in Nightmare without heal? I'm currently using a warrior tank 1H/shield (myself) + Fenris + Isabela + Bethany (I'm just before the Deep Roads) but I just spoiled myself that I + Show Spoiler +won't be able to keep her . The problem is : Merrill does not seem to be able to heal and I don't like Anders. So, possible to complete the game based purely on crowd controls (with a few potions if needed but I don't like to abuse them) ? There is a mod available that opens up a healing tree for Merrill if you want to choose that. I haven't had nightmare on for long, the assassins/rogues are frustrating enough on hard. http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/307/index/6492984/1
Seriously, the game is doable in Nightmare without abusing AI or environment, you just have to think carefully about your placement and the enemies to focus (I don’t consider hiding behind pillars to deal with ranged enemies abusing environment). Obviously, you have to reload a lot but that’s the whole point of playing in nightmare. The only fight I had real problem with is a quest where you have to spy on a conversation and the enemies include 2 assassins’ captains but with heavy focus under hast and a bit of luck, I managed to defeat them. The thing that makes me consider playing without heal is that compared to DA:O, the cooldown is so long that I use the spell one or two times per fight and I feel I could do without it (plus, I don’t like Anders^^). On the other hand, I don’t want to start the Deep Roads and have to reload everything because there is an enemy I just cannot defeat without heal, which is the reason for my question in the first place I will try to do as many sidequests as possible with me as a warrior + Fenris + Isabela + Merrill or Varric, to see how it feels.
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I thought about trying DA2 but I haven't even continued playing DA1 more than a day like almost a year ago lol.
Anyway after looking over at the http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dragon-age-ii I figured the user Reviews speak for themselves oO
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Can anyone help me out with this? I m searching for spindleweed like a madman in act 3 but i cant find for my life depends on it. I googled it and one said that there should be 1 in Lowtown, but i couldnt find, and i also read a comment that the information is inaccurate
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On March 15 2011 08:41 Dandel Ion wrote: tl;dr mages suck now.
Yeah i cant really understand how people have voted the best party having 2 mages, while they do not suck exactly i do not think a second mage adds anything another class could not do better. Rogues have insane singletarget DPS and 2H warriors chew thorough mobs like no tomorrow. I might try something like 2 ranged rogues + 2 warriors next playthrough.
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United States2791 Posts
On March 16 2011 01:54 DND_Enkil wrote:Yeah i cant really understand how people have voted the best party having 2 mages, while they do not suck exactly i do not think a second mage adds anything another class could not do better. Rogues have insane singletarget DPS and 2H warriors chew thorough mobs like no tomorrow. I might try something like 2 ranged rogues + 2 warriors next playthrough.
Some of this may be the difficulty you/they are playing at. I liked playing on normal to get through the story a few times but I could have used 4 grandmothers and had little difficulty.
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nah u need 2 mages, because Merrill cant heal, but is the funniest companion in da2.
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On March 16 2011 02:11 Corvi wrote: nah u need 2 mages, because Merrill cant heal, but is the funniest companion in da2.
For the longest time when I was playing on Nightmare almost up to the end of Act 1, I had one Mage, who was my sister and had no healing abilities invested in. I have two Archers in my group, including myself. Potions and micro is all I need.
In short, you don't need any Mages.
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On March 16 2011 02:25 Fishball wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2011 02:11 Corvi wrote: nah u need 2 mages, because Merrill cant heal, but is the funniest companion in da2. For the longest time when I was playing on Nightmare almost up to the end of Act 1, I had one Mage, who was my sister and had no healing abilities invested in. I have two Archers in my group, including myself. Potions and micro is all I need. In short, you don't need any Mages. Uhh, I think the catch here is that you need Merril since she's really funny, so if you're a mage or is using Anders, having two mages is a "must"...
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Well having at least one mage is pretty important because all the cross combos for 2H are from Brittle, not Disorient. I think the best party would involve 2 2H warriors, a rogue, and a mage that Brittles.
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okay i just beat DA 2 and I have to say it felt more like 3 DLC's packaged into a game then shipped...there is no clear bad guy for the WHOLE game...at least in Origins (My favorite RPG ever to the point where i learned elvish and have the pen and paper version)you had a reason to fight but in DA2 its just "do this!", why? because Hawke did it now...okay now this and for 10 hours there was no bad guy...what the hell is that about in Origins you had the blight AND Loghain to deal with all while trying to get allys against the blight...DA 2 just had a poorly formed story and i can't help but feel like they did this just to make future DLC "feel better" and if you make a game with DLC in mind then something has clearly gone wrong and the fact that in Origins we had like 6 origin stories to choose from and in DA 2 we had 1 and only 1 city that was needlessly big it had about as many important buildings as denerim but was way bigger for the sake of being bigger
P.S. the only reason I beat it was because I wanted to see what happened to Merrill
TL:DR...the story had no damn bad guy for WAYYYY too long and thus no motivation to keep playing and find out the story and why can't i be a Dalish???
not at all a bad game but NOWHERE near what bioware can do if they actually try
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AoE is almost useless in Nightmare, as there is friendly fire. I totally forgot about it at first, so I was quite amused when my grand plan of setting a mob off with "Living Bomb" or whatever that skill is called, and kill it as quick as possible with my dual archers, instantly killed my tank from full health and two other members that were too close.
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this HighDragon is killing me for the 15th time at least, so frustrating, and i can't find that spindleweed i need arrrhrr
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the ending was disappointing and strange. given how much of a rush job this game was (and i think you can tell by the innumerable content recycling present throughout), i would have expected more of a fallout 3 type ending, explaining how your choices affected the world of the future. what's the point of having all these different choices and approaches to victory if it doesn't impact the outcome in a meaningful manner? also, there is specifically an achievement for playing through the game twice. this feels like a huge wasted opportunity: i expected some exposition on the exploits of the champion of kirkwall. it feels like the game is designed with this in mind and for them to not do it feels cheap.
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This is really funny/sad
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United States2791 Posts
On March 16 2011 03:31 floor exercise wrote: This is really funny/sad
My feelings on this are "meh". To me it offsets the pointless "0/10" and "1/10" reviews. I just don't put stock in random reviews anymore.
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for everyone who says that they cant use anders on nightmare due to the cooldown on heal, "ur doin it rong."
you need to cast your heal and group heals in panacea and then stance dance into vengeance, spamming martyr. your heal comes back in 4 cooldowns. you can literally use anders as purely a healer, ignoring his other DPS capabilities, by spamming martyr and stance dancing. martyr gives you mana too, and the health lost from it you regain with the group heal.
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BioWare sold their souls to EA! I beg that "Star Wars: The Old Republic" don't fails so much
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On March 16 2011 03:40 BloodNinja wrote:My feelings on this are "meh". To me it offsets the pointless "0/10" and "1/10" reviews. I just don't put stock in random reviews anymore. You missed the point (If you even read it)...the top review according to his searches is actually written by an BioWare Employee which is indeed funny/sad...
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On March 16 2011 03:45 annul wrote: for everyone who says that they cant use anders on nightmare due to the cooldown on heal, "ur doin it rong."
you need to cast your heal and group heals in panacea and then stance dance into vengeance, spamming martyr. your heal comes back in 4 cooldowns. you can literally use anders as purely a healer, ignoring his other DPS capabilities, by spamming martyr and stance dancing. martyr gives you mana too, and the health lost from it you regain with the group heal.
wow definetly been doing it wrong....didn't think of this at all lol. Pretty much makes your party unstoppable past lvl 10 on any difficulty :X
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It was apparently done due to a bug in EA's ban system and he does have access to his stuff again. It might just be that EA let him have his games back because of all of the outrage though, not sure. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if that was the case.
short write up on it: link(pcgamer)
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If you read that thread, you'd see that it was an error. He wasn't meant to be blocked from playing the games, just from posting.
Anyway, I love this game so far. I preordered the signature edition (free upgrade if preordered before January something), so I got Sebastian. So my party consists of me (2-hand DPS/Tank warrior), Isabella (DPS), Sebastian (DPS archer), and Anders (DPS/Healer). Although my warrior doesn't tank as well as a shield warrior does, Bravery and Reaver skills really boost his DPS when he's tanking.
I was kind of torn between Sebastian and Varric, I like Varric's special skill tree better than Sebastian's, but with the better bows you can buy and find, Sebastian ended up having a DPS just below Isabella's, and much higher than Varric's.
Still haven't beaten Act 2, but I've been doing every single thing I can find so far, and haven't been able to play that much anyway.
I am excited to see how the story unfolds further, with the Arishok (kinda know what's going to happen there) and Flemeth (especially).
And lastly, Morrigan > Isabella/Merril.
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United States2791 Posts
On March 16 2011 04:03 ChaseR wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2011 03:40 BloodNinja wrote:On March 16 2011 03:31 floor exercise wrote: This is really funny/sad My feelings on this are "meh". To me it offsets the pointless "0/10" and "1/10" reviews. I just don't put stock in random reviews anymore. You missed the point (If you even read it)...the top review according to his searches is actually written by an BioWare Employee which is indeed funny/sad... No, I read it completely nor is it not the first time I have read it. Its also not breaking news as other companies have done, still do, and will continue to do the same for other games, products, whatever. Its a "random" user review with an agenda (which many of them appear to have). This one was to tow to company line by a Bioware employee. Others take the opposite path and do everything to turn people away from the game. Maybe I am in a minority of people who ignore random user reviews.
Edit- Now what I considered funny recently-ish was that one of the local sport franchise owners in my area has paid staff members posting on the local fan message boards just to say good things about him.
Edit2-
On March 16 2011 05:58 Tezzick wrote: I was kind of torn between Sebastian and Varric, I like Varric's special skill tree better than Sebastian's, but with the better bows you can buy and find, Sebastian ended up having a DPS just below Isabella's, and much higher than Varric's.
And lastly, Morrigan > Isabella/Merril. If you do another playthrough go ahead and switch Varric for Seb. Varric has some of the best dialogue in the game. I doubt you will notice a big DPS difference either.
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On March 16 2011 05:58 Tezzick wrote:If you read that thread, you'd see that it was an error. He wasn't meant to be blocked from playing the games, just from posting.
He definitely was banned from his game, at least for a time. EA claimed it was an "error" (a rather dubious claim seeing how both the forum staff and EA support previously told him that it was indeed a valid policy), but apparently people are still getting banned and locked out of their games. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/03/15/biowhere-ea-working-on-fixing-game-bans/
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On March 14 2011 21:37 Aflixion wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2011 20:32 lbmaian wrote: Doesn't Dragon Age 2 use Securom? Read that somewhere...makes me hesitant to buy it. Dragon Age 2 does NOT use the SecuROM DRM you're worried about. It uses a simple release date check that was written by the same team as that SecuROM. Here's a post from a BioWare tech expert explaining the difference between the two: http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/6194280/29#6490247
Oh, no, it doesn't use SecuROM disc-check, but it definitely uses SecuROM. For EA or Bioware to say otherwise is dishonest.
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On March 16 2011 09:53 Mindcrime wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2011 21:37 Aflixion wrote:On March 14 2011 20:32 lbmaian wrote: Doesn't Dragon Age 2 use Securom? Read that somewhere...makes me hesitant to buy it. Dragon Age 2 does NOT use the SecuROM DRM you're worried about. It uses a simple release date check that was written by the same team as that SecuROM. Here's a post from a BioWare tech expert explaining the difference between the two: http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/6194280/29#6490247 Oh, no, it doesn't use SecuROM disc-check, but it definitely uses SecuROM. For EA or Bioware to say otherwise is dishonest.
That's exactly what I said. It doesn't use the SecuROM disc-check, it uses a different product from the SecuROM team. What everyone is worried about was the intrusive SecuROM that we've all had problems with, and THAT product is not part of the DRM for this game. The release date check removes itself after it fulfills its purpose and if there are any straggling files, they may be deleted without affecting your access to the game at all.
Out of curiosity, did you read Fernando Melo's posts? He spent quite a while responding to many player concerns about the DRM.
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I thought DA:O was a fairly mediocre game. The strategic, tactical combat so ballyhooed by many people was easy on Nightmare and the tactics system itself had already been done in Final Fantasy XII three years prior. The writing relied heavily on tired fantasy tropes. Strong companion characterization in Alistair and Morrigan was not enough to counterbalance the lack of ambition in the story.
DA2 is a vast improvement in many ways, but unfortunately the lack of ambition carries through. The frame narrative is taut, but cannot completely mask the failures of the writing. What should have been a compelling political battle, rife with intrigue, was instead a cardboard conflict.
That being said, I hope BioWare ignores 90% of what is being said across the vastness of the internet about the game, and folds continued improvements in the vein of DA2 into DA3. I also hope they fire all of their Dragon Age writers and pull in people from the Mass Effect team.
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/6413491/74#6552937
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On March 16 2011 09:59 Aflixion wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2011 09:53 Mindcrime wrote:On March 14 2011 21:37 Aflixion wrote:On March 14 2011 20:32 lbmaian wrote: Doesn't Dragon Age 2 use Securom? Read that somewhere...makes me hesitant to buy it. Dragon Age 2 does NOT use the SecuROM DRM you're worried about. It uses a simple release date check that was written by the same team as that SecuROM. Here's a post from a BioWare tech expert explaining the difference between the two: http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/6194280/29#6490247 Oh, no, it doesn't use SecuROM disc-check, but it definitely uses SecuROM. For EA or Bioware to say otherwise is dishonest. That's exactly what I said. It doesn't use the SecuROM disc-check, it uses a different product from the SecuROM team. What everyone is worried about was the intrusive SecuROM that we've all had problems with, and THAT product is not part of the DRM for this game. The release date check removes itself after it fulfills its purpose and if there are any straggling files, they may be deleted without affecting your access to the game at all. Out of curiosity, did you read Fernando Melo's posts? He spent quite a while responding to many player concerns about the DRM.
My concern is not with the intrusiveness of these files. I would have had no problem if Bioware and EA stated what exactly DA2's DRM was. But they did not do that. They explicitly said "no SecuROM," and then proceeded to use one of SecuROM's several DRM products and then claim "that's not SecuROM that's, uh, Sony DADC release control, yeah."
Then there were also the claims that it didn't install anything and that it would completely remove itself afterward. As if those two claims even make any sense together. What is there to remove if nothing is installed? What we got, however, were SecuROM registry keys and folders full of SecuROM files left on our machines after the activation.
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On March 16 2011 10:08 Mindcrime wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2011 09:59 Aflixion wrote:On March 16 2011 09:53 Mindcrime wrote:On March 14 2011 21:37 Aflixion wrote:On March 14 2011 20:32 lbmaian wrote: Doesn't Dragon Age 2 use Securom? Read that somewhere...makes me hesitant to buy it. Dragon Age 2 does NOT use the SecuROM DRM you're worried about. It uses a simple release date check that was written by the same team as that SecuROM. Here's a post from a BioWare tech expert explaining the difference between the two: http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/6194280/29#6490247 Oh, no, it doesn't use SecuROM disc-check, but it definitely uses SecuROM. For EA or Bioware to say otherwise is dishonest. That's exactly what I said. It doesn't use the SecuROM disc-check, it uses a different product from the SecuROM team. What everyone is worried about was the intrusive SecuROM that we've all had problems with, and THAT product is not part of the DRM for this game. The release date check removes itself after it fulfills its purpose and if there are any straggling files, they may be deleted without affecting your access to the game at all. Out of curiosity, did you read Fernando Melo's posts? He spent quite a while responding to many player concerns about the DRM. My concern is not with the intrusiveness of these files. I would have had no problem if Bioware and EA stated what exactly DA2's DRM was. But they did not do that. They explicitly said "no SecuROM," and then proceeded to use one of SecuROM's several DRM products and then claim "that's not SecuROM that's, uh, Sony DADC release control, yeah." Then there were also the claims that it didn't install anything and that it would completely remove itself afterward. As if those two claims even make any sense together. What is there to remove if nothing is installed? What we got, however, were SecuROM registry keys and folders full of SecuROM files left on our machines after the activation.
I'll give you that. They did kinda screw up by saying "no SecuROM" without explicitly saying "SecuROM disc-check," which is what I interpreted it as.
As for your second point, I personally think they meant nothing permanent would be installed. A program isn't very effective if it can't run at all. And like I pointed out before, you can delete those leftover files safely without impacting your game. Again, Fernando Melo addresses all of these points in that thread on BioWare's forums.
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Started yesterday and im level 8-9 now. Seems quite easy on hard tbh the first fight where i had to load game 3+ times was against the mature dragon on top of sundermount(?). On 3rd or 4th try i noticed that i can just run a circle with the character that has aggro and the dragon won't get single hit in... so stupid
The game seems ok i guess...
Most of the loot is very dissapointing though as others have mentioned already. Why do you need to get "junk" ?! and getting that 283th amulet from the barrel O_O
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Vatican City State1650 Posts
On March 16 2011 10:07 carraway wrote:I thought DA:O was a fairly mediocre game. The strategic, tactical combat so ballyhooed by many people was easy on Nightmare and the tactics system itself had already been done in Final Fantasy XII three years prior. The writing relied heavily on tired fantasy tropes. Strong companion characterization in Alistair and Morrigan was not enough to counterbalance the lack of ambition in the story. DA2 is a vast improvement in many ways, but unfortunately the lack of ambition carries through. The frame narrative is taut, but cannot completely mask the failures of the writing. What should have been a compelling political battle, rife with intrigue, was instead a cardboard conflict. That being said, I hope BioWare ignores 90% of what is being said across the vastness of the internet about the game, and folds continued improvements in the vein of DA2 into DA3. I also hope they fire all of their Dragon Age writers and pull in people from the Mass Effect team. http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/6413491/74#6552937
Are you fucking kidding me? In the second paragraph you praise DA2's story, but then you want to fire all the DA writers? I understand if you'd then recommend hiring some pulitzer prize winners or something, but what the fucking hell - you want, of all things, the fools that wrote the drivel that is the storyline of Mass Effect?
A fucking high school kid could write a better story than the crap in Mass Effect 2.
If anything, they need to fire ME2's writers and bring in DA2's writers in.
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On March 16 2011 18:10 orgolove wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2011 10:07 carraway wrote:I thought DA:O was a fairly mediocre game. The strategic, tactical combat so ballyhooed by many people was easy on Nightmare and the tactics system itself had already been done in Final Fantasy XII three years prior. The writing relied heavily on tired fantasy tropes. Strong companion characterization in Alistair and Morrigan was not enough to counterbalance the lack of ambition in the story. DA2 is a vast improvement in many ways, but unfortunately the lack of ambition carries through. The frame narrative is taut, but cannot completely mask the failures of the writing. What should have been a compelling political battle, rife with intrigue, was instead a cardboard conflict. That being said, I hope BioWare ignores 90% of what is being said across the vastness of the internet about the game, and folds continued improvements in the vein of DA2 into DA3. I also hope they fire all of their Dragon Age writers and pull in people from the Mass Effect team. http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/6413491/74#6552937 Are you fucking kidding me? In the second paragraph you praise DA2's story, but then you want to fire all the DA writers? I understand if you'd then recommend hiring some pulitzer prize winners or something, but what the fucking hell - you want, of all things, the fools that wrote the drivel that is the storyline of Mass Effect? A fucking high school kid could write a better story than the crap in Mass Effect 2. If anything, they need to fire ME2's writers and bring in DA2's writers in.
Its not about the story per-se, its how you write the story. As simple and trivial as ME2's main storyline was, it was written and fleshed out well enough to really make it an immersive experience.
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After finishing the game my main question is.... how did the manage to work out so many good things and so many god awful bullshit into a single game?
Pros:
- Boss fights (could argue its too much like WoW though) - Combat effects / animations - Most of the voice acting. (Varric, fenris specially) - The intrigue factor until the very end (was hoping for a twist that never came)
Cons:
- Level design ( WTF really... you are gonna use the same cave/mansion for the whole game?)
- Itemization
- Aveline (She has no business being in that game. It makes 0 sense for the city guard captain to be running around with a renegade. Not to mention the way she reacts to some decisions you make. At times being a royal pain in the ass and others letting me kill people without giving a fuck)
- Game flow (Not enough main plot quests to keep me going while randomly doing side jobs. And they were barely interesting. Most of them ended with Evil dude saying stuff and forcing you to fight him)
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Agree with doko, also wondering why u get so little exp from killing stuff , and sometimes u get a whole level for some quest? Kinda of annoying
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On March 16 2011 03:45 annul wrote: for everyone who says that they cant use anders on nightmare due to the cooldown on heal, "ur doin it rong."
you need to cast your heal and group heals in panacea and then stance dance into vengeance, spamming martyr. your heal comes back in 4 cooldowns. you can literally use anders as purely a healer, ignoring his other DPS capabilities, by spamming martyr and stance dancing. martyr gives you mana too, and the health lost from it you regain with the group heal.
After tweaking my group I've honestly not had to do anything of that sort and still be perfectly fine in just about every fight.
Boss fights (could argue its too much like WoW though)
That is actually not true. Not only do you get to see a boss fight in WoW more often than every 8 hours, the new(er) ones usually have some mechanic that alters the fight. The only truly good boss fight I've had so far was the rock wraith in the Deep Roads. The rest is largely tank n spank, or if you couldn't beat them that way, run your tank in circles. They really put no effort into their bosses.
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i liked it. Am i a terrible person?
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Well, beat the game. Not impressed, but it didn't blow too hard I guess.
Disappointing things in random order: The ending/story in general. It felt like a bridge story between dao and an expansion or something. The constant reuse of areas and enemies. I wanted to zoom out more and scroll around the screen to see stuff. Pretty short imo Couldn't load DA:O save properly + Show Spoiler +Met Zevran despite killing him in my DA:O run etc. Got a constant console feel with the dialogue options, zooming, etc etc. + Show Spoiler +The fight with the arishok was just not fun. Took a long time, that's all. Itemsystem. + Show Spoiler +I didn't get to kill any potential party members (except anders ) In DA:O i killed like 4 of them I think. Not really a legit complaint i guess. I just liked killing them in Origins^^
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I liked it a lot.
I'm disappointed it wasn't longer, but it was still worth the money.
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I quite enjoyed this game. I wasn't overly impressed by the story, but it was certainly not generic. The combat system revamp was brilliant when compared to DA:O, and some of the battles on nightmare were actually difficult.
The early battles, especially when you don't have access to high level healing spells, threatswitching abilities and cross-class combos could sometimes be difficult (read: two dual wield assassins 1 hitting you instantly). However past midgame most of the battles get so easy that you can just auto attack and win them. Some of the boss battles, however were really fun and challenging. I especially loved the ancient rock wraith one, he had me tearing my hair out.
My favorite party consists of Hawke as a 2h vanguard speced as a reaver/berserker. You can't really use another melee char with this build as your special attack bursts do massage AoE and will always 1 hit any party members in the vicinity. So I take Anders (obviously) with Varrick and Merrill. If you have the Prince DLC, Sebastian can be quite cool but I didn't want to sacrifice Merrill because I like her character.
EDIT: That pic is hilarious LMFAO.
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[QUOTE]On March 15 2011 06:13 BloodNinja wrote: Add me into the company of people who think 2H Warriors are complete beasts. Tons of damage and still very sturdy. I haven'y played on nightmare yet (where Aveline might be necessary), but I have zero issues with a single sturdy 2H warrior acting as tanky DPS for the group. [QUOTE]
Offense is the best ****ing defense, mate! Go 2h vanguard, reaver and you'll be amazed at how sturdy you are.
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I'm playing through on nightmare.
It's hard as balls, and the insane difficulty makes the story much more epic, somehow. Instead of getting some quest to do mundane stuff (eg, retrieve the prisoner) and barely having to try, you struggle through every step, and this greatly increases the immersion of being in a dangerous place, often requiring perfect execution, and this greatly increases the satisfaction when completing quests. I constantly have to respec my tactics mid fight, or turn them off completely, because the AI (while I'm sure is fine on lower difficulties) gets me killed every time. There is no margin for error, and when your tank uses the last of her stamina on the wrong ability, instead of a taunt, you die. When your mage casts a fireball on the fire immune, and then doesn't have enough power to heal, you die. When my archer targets the wrong thing and pulls aggro, I die. When the cooldown is not up on my AOE when i need it, I die. Also, friendly fire makes things a hell of a lot more tactical.
I even have to make sure I choose my quests wisely. I have to do the easy ones first, because I need the experience or I get owned on the harder ones. I've had to back out of a few quests more than once, and go find an easier one. And I scrape EVERYTHING. I make sure to disarm every trap for bonus exp, search every house I can find for a chest, explore every area, because jesus christ do I ever need the cash to afford potions and gear.
I really love the dialogue options. It makes me feel like my own personality can be played through the character. The story is pretty good so far. I've heard comments that there are too many side quests, but I strongly disagree with this sort of thinking. Dragon Age is a franchise that is all about exploration, understanding the world, its struggles, its people, its landscapes, the politics, and powers. That really is the "main" quest. I prefer that sort of RPG compared to any insulated epic storyline.
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I just finished the game. I must say, I did actually enjoy it. While it indeed were missing a few key aspects from DA:O like example more interesting Deep Roads, it worked all in all for me. I felt that the characters were a bit more interesting in DA2 than DA:O. Well except for Merrill, she was just too annoying to handle. I just simply found some of the characters quite dull in DA:O. Alistair, the cast-away royal son and he doesnt even know of it, bleh. A dog? Really? Morrigan (although she ahs some funny and snazzy comments) a witch sent by her mother to help you? No thank you. I found that the characters in DA2 was more fun and polished. My favourite characters from the game is probably Anders and Isabela (No not for her huge breasts) + Show Spoiler + Blowing up the whole motherflippin' chantry?! Well played meser.
Stealing an ancient relic from the Qunari? Awesome.
While I think it's quite dissapointing that you HAD to be a human for this game I dont really think it did that huge of a deal in DA:O. Yea sure you got a different starting area, and it lasted like what? 20 - 30 min?
I also felt that the choices I made in the game did effect the game more in DA2 than in DA:O. Or in an atleast more direct way.
Whilst this new conversation wheel feels a bit...noobish. Not only is it horribly unaccurate (You simply want to turn down an offer and you blatantly shove their proposal up their asses asking them to piss off) but it's also a bit simplified. Atleast in DA:O I could see exactly what I was going to say. And also with the conversation wheel getting your friendship/rivalry with your companions was super easy, didn't even have to think a second what to say.
And yes as probably everyone has already stated. The repeated use of scenery. It didn't bother me that much since many games has used this, whilst I think it's something we shouldnt tolerate now in 2011 in a game, I was able to over-see it. Simply beacuse you werent there for the same reason as in the start. Since I mainly play RPG's for the story and to see my choices affect the world, DA2 was a blast for me in that perspective.
While I wouldn't go and give the game an overkill score like PC gamer did and give it a 94 I would still give it a decent. Probably in the 65-75ish.
Bottomline, I enjoyed the game. Didn't really have sky-high hopes for it so I actually enjoyed it more than I thought I would.
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I don't like how I'm forced to choose between isabela and merrill for a straight relationship as male hawke. I wish aveline was romanceable, that'd at least give the romanceable characters an equal gender ratio.
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Game is cool, IF you play at least hard+ difficulty. On normal every fight is a joke, 0 tactic required. Inscrasing the difficutly will make you use potions, watch bars, dont waste your mana/sta on random stuff and disable the autoplay tactics. That way you fight are more rewarding and tactictal and actually fun. So do yourself a favor and dont play on normal difficulty.
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On March 17 2011 02:43 han_han wrote: I don't like how I'm forced to choose between isabela and merrill for a straight relationship as male hawke. I wish aveline was romanceable, that'd at least give the romanceable characters an equal gender ratio.
Isn't she a romance option? After doing some of her quest it opened up a heart dialogue choice for me and I thought that was the start of romance for her. No idea though, I haven't even finished chapter 1.
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No, she isnt romance option, but you can flirt with her.
BTW Merrill is awesome, how can somebody dislike something that adorable? -_-
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On March 17 2011 03:49 Overpowered wrote: No, she isnt romance option, but you can flirt with her.
BTW Merrill is awesome, how can somebody dislike something that adorable? -_-
Erm, she looks weird
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Just finished, 65 hours effetive gameplay I dont know why so many complain about the story/ the ending, i think it was great, though i would have liked an act 4 of some sorts where you find things out about Flemeth, or after Varric finishes his tale, something with Cassandra idk... The only dissapointing thing was that Fenris randomly left me at the start of the mission, then just rejoined the same way. that was pretty damn lame
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I love Merril <3 So incredibly cute - she's like someone I'd adore in RL as well :D
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you guys are very picky for whatever reason there is no game in the same genre that comes close to DA:2 in terms of gameplay.
I just started a new game on nightmare difficulty. I couldn't beat the first ogre when I was a mage but then I restarted as a rogue and it wasn't too hard. Im gonna try beating the game without cheating (changing game difficulty lvl to a lower one) once!
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Anyone else find it funny that grrrr needed to cheat to beat DA2 :p . BW and poker? That shits ezpz but Dragon Age now thats hard!
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mage on nightmare is in itself a nightmare. Oh hi there stab dead T_T
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I'm pretty disappointed with DA2. I loved the first one, I had a blast playing through that game a couple times. The story wasn't amazing by any stretch but it was enjoyable, you knew who your "enemy" was that you were working you way towards. In DA2 that target isn't apparent at all, everything that happens just kind of does. + Show Spoiler +Granted, during the last half of the game its quite apparent that the tensions between the Mages and the Templars are going to come to a head, it just seems kind of... thrown in as a plot device.
Gameplay was solid, only complaint here is just how strong Two Handed Warriors are throughout the entire game. At no point, on no difficulty, does it seem like their damage is toned down or is their survivability. With the proper build you can have a character that does massive AoE damage with very high survivability, even on Nightmare.
I don't worry too much about the companion characters being liked/disliked. Its part of the story to have various characters, sometimes you won't enjoy every single one while you get some entertainment out of others.
My biggest complaint about this game is how damn near the entire game takes place in the same areas. No matter what cave you enter, you're damned sure that you're going to be wadding through the same dungeon layout over and over. That doesn't even count the fact that you spend 80% of the time in the same city, revisiting the same areas and when you do move out you visit the same locations outside of town. I was so happy to go to the Deep Roads finally + Show Spoiler +only to find out its a short lived excursion .
Anyways, I was just really disappointed with the game as a whole. Perhaps after the first game I had unfair expectations for this game but either way, I've beaten it once and I'm trying really hard to find the interest to play through a second time, I've already made/deleted about 6 characters within the first 1-2 hours of playtime.
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Pretty sure the number one thing that makes this game a let down is that the recycle maps so blatantly. It's like they created a game had all the characters and recordings made the models and battle game engine all worked out then 2 weeks before release realized that there was no maps for them to interact on outside of the city.
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On March 18 2011 00:38 semantics wrote: Pretty sure the number one thing that makes this game a let down is that the recycle maps so blatantly. It's like they created a game had all the characters and recordings made the models and battle game engine all worked out then 2 weeks before release realized that there was no maps for them to interact on outside of the city. That (and by that I also mean the encounter design which is more important then maps) although maps play a role in it) and a bad party combat system. I am so sad Bioware decided to stop making D&D cRPGs and created this worse system in DAO and then made it even worse in DA2.
If they actually put so much effort they put into DAO into making Baldur's Gate 3 that game would have owned big time. But with this direction I can see we will never get a game of Baldur's gate quality again, at least not from them.
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I thought the game was pretty bad. All the points have already been mentioned -- recycled environments, incredibly bad character writing, uninspired quests, all of Act 3 and the ending, no choices influencing what happens at all.
But what really made me want to kill the game was Merril and the running back and forth. Especially the character house in Darktown which has a fast travel point on the map, but no travel point back. Good god. And Merril feels like a mentally ill person who should be in intensive care for the rest of her life, not swinging weapons and having access to magic.
Aveline and the dwarf are pretty decent characters, when they're not walking cliches, and sometimes combat can be fun when you AE stuff or one-shot rage demons, but it's a horrid game that is only carried by the name of Bioware.
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On March 18 2011 00:45 -Archangel- wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2011 00:38 semantics wrote: Pretty sure the number one thing that makes this game a let down is that the recycle maps so blatantly. It's like they created a game had all the characters and recordings made the models and battle game engine all worked out then 2 weeks before release realized that there was no maps for them to interact on outside of the city. That (and by that I also mean the encounter design which is more important then maps) although maps play a role in it) and a bad party combat system. I am so sad Bioware decided to stop making D&D cRPGs and created this worse system in DAO and then made it even worse in DA2. If they actually put so much effort they put into DAO into making Baldur's Gate 3 that game would have owned big time. But with this direction I can see we will never get a game of Baldur's gate quality again, at least not from them.
if not them who will? the problem is you need a shitton of great writing for a BG like game to work and the mechanical side is way more demanding.
engine aside cause i personally would totally be happy with BG2 like graphics (even tho drakensang did a very nice job bringing a pen&paper ruleset into 3d) a RPG like BG is a shitton of work.
all the stuff that many people expect from a game today like tons of voice acting and unique looks for evry npc make it way harder to bring as much content and life into a game as we had back then where all we needed for a good character is a well written text that makes stuff happen in our heads.
also afaik the d&d rights are currently locked cause of some lawsuit?
DSA which is the ruleset used in drakensang was picked up recently for some other game. tho the game is a "action rpg" so i doubt it will be very interesting. and drakensang got bought by some shitty company thats making a browser hacknslash out of it.
so even if someone wanted to do it who can? if they dont go a very oldschool route with very few voice acting and a not that shiny graphics almost no one can do it $ wise. then you need great writers which are hard to find and you better have a nice ruleset/world to base it on so you dont have to create evrything from scratch which is a problem since d&d is locked (maybe someone has more info on this?) and almost no one knows DSA outside of germany.
drakensang guys did a good try. but look what happened to it, it will rot as a crappy browsergame :/
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D&D MMO rights are locked because of the lawsuit, the SP/MP game is not.
As for making a BG-like game, it does not need the scope of BG2, BG1 scope will do. It just needs a much more interesting character system (even 4e D&D would be better then DAO one) which can then bring us better encounter designs and the kind of story and storytelling BG1&2 had. It needs a living city and plenty of sidequests that are not c/p from each other or fetch x trinket (like DAO also had).
As for my feelings about DA2, this guy on official forums perfectly mirrors my feelings (it is a very good read for any BG/PTS/Fallout1&2 fans out there: http://social.bioware.com/forum/Dragon-Age-II/Dragon-Age-II-General-Discussion-No-Spoilers-allowed/A-detailed-look-on-DA2-and-CRPG039s-6561302-1.html
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Finished the game on nightmare. - Combat is exciting with a 2 hand warrior except for friendly fire: anyone who unintentionally get close to me will die immediately, which is frustrating. You can at least aim the AoE spells, but with melee hits (esp Mighty Blow) it is all guess work. - Questionable itemization. All those +regen items are useless. Can +7 health really outweight +4% physical damage? Why are more mage items +fire damage? - Game Balance (on nightmare) is a big mess. Cross Class Combo is a good idea but I think it is a little too powerful - to a point where there is no reason to cast a particular spell unless it procs a CCC. CCC often allows you to just destroy all non-elite mobs like cannon fodders. - Some talents are ridiculously broken. Ie: I find stonewall (2 points) to be more effective in mitigation than all the other defensive talents combined. Also the game scales poorly with your talents, allowing you to even 1 shot elites late game with the right CCC. - Reused maps really suck. All the caves and thaigs look the same. Hell, even Kirkwall didn't even change much after 6 years. - Where is the plot? I feel like I am just doing 1 side quest after another. Even the ending of each Act feels like I just happen to walk by and end up having to kill someone/something.
I feel like I just bought 3 DLCs that makes up a prequel and DA2 only begins after it has ended.
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I was using Fenris, Varric (Sabotage, Marksmanship) and Anders with me being a mage. Fenris is pretty damn strong with the AoE on all attacks (AoE Stagger on crit too), charging through the battle with 40+% magic resist.
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Well, after this fiasco I'm gonna try mass effect, which i've never played before. Hopefully ill like it
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mass effect 1 is great biotics are over powered though and there are plenty of glitches still in it but it's def nice to play before doing mass effect 2.
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started playing with 2H warrior, for the 2d try, damn this shit is imba, im tearing trough crap so fast i checked like 3 times already if im at hard or not. maybe i shall put it on nightmare, but i think that woudl be pushing it
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did that quest yesterday :D
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What I find most funny is that even if Hawke was not even in the story, nothing would have changed.
+ Show Spoiler +ACT1: Varric is the only important character, he may not have made it out of the deep roads without hawke but that doesnt matter because thats after the idol is given to his brother.
ACT2: Meredith and the First enchanter. Sure hawke was the one who killed the arishok but if he hadnt been there meredith and the first enchanter would have been able to do it. There may have been more bloodshed but they still would have saved the city.
ACT3: Anders instigates the whole battle between the Mages and the Templars.
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^ woww huge spoilers.. please put spoilers on that post mate!!!
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Glad I did not pay full price for this after reading all the reviews. I have a copy waiting to play, and honestly I will probably just save myself 30-40 hours of lameness and not play it until I am seriously out of quality games to play (not any time soon).
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It is not that bad and I think worth playing at least once, but it just isnt as good as its predecessor. That doesnt mean that this game is complete garbage.
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On March 21 2011 02:49 Overpowered wrote: It is not that bad and I think worth playing at least once, but it just isnt as good as its predecessor. That doesnt mean that this game is complete garbage.
well tbh i do think the game without dragon age wouldve scored way lower reviews and wouldve been bought WAY less.
the game sells based on something it isnt, a successor of DAO.
it would just be a random action rpg some would cared about and most people (esp on PC) wouldve ignored .
its sad that names and marketing are more then the actual game today. look at dragon age2 which (imho undeserved) is quite the success and drakensang ROT which (imho undeserved) was a huge fail even when it sold for only 20$.
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I payed $60 for the DDE of Origins and just found it incredibly stale and stopped playing after about 10-15 hours (I actually tried to play this game twice). However, DA2 is actually fun. Mainly, the only qualms I have with the game is the plot pacing and the plot itself is kind of weak but it can lead to an awesome DA3. Sure, some of the environments are recycled but does that honestly make THAT much of a difference?
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Enemies have animations signifying start of an attack, just learn these animations and you are golden. It become extremely easy if you Pause the game and micro your squad. Also to ^ it would be definitely better if we are given better open areas and/or new areas instead of 'unlocking' parts over and over again. My final assessment of this game is that it is 65% Dragon Age and 35% Devil May Cry.
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Game's awful, i've never played an RPG this boring and unimaginative. It feels rushed, poorly written, huge holes in the story. BioWare must've had awesome ideas to make this game epic, but they ended up taking the first 10% of that and streching it to a full length game. The only selling points in BioWare's latest titles was the writing, the promised 100 tomes of story that goes onto the games, with DA2 that's lost. The game feels like it's made to be a spawning point for at least 5 DLCs, and i don't like getting ripped off like this by gaming companies.
To put the boring part into perspective, i really enjoyed Morrowind.
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The game was far from terrible, but it could've been better.
Combat was more visually appealing and there were some good characters. Voiced Hawke was good and helped saved it from the silent protagonist thing.
But the story, music, and general setting felt much less developed than DAO. Ending was a little weak and much less epic than the first.
Its worth a 7-7.5/10. I don't regret buying the game full price, but I'm expecting something much better for ME3.
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I havent finished the game yet (need moar free time!), currently beginning of Act 2 and I play on Nightmare.
Overall I like the game until now, but there are so many small mistakes/errors/design decisions (and some major ones) which annoy me.
It started with the character creation. I cannot modify the iconic Hawke. And I cannot use the hairstyle the female iconic Hawke has for other appearances. I think DA2 was the game that got me googling & modding the game the fastest. But it was fixable
Then I miss certain small stuff in the UI (from DAO). Different weapon sets. Disabling tactics with one click. It still has that stupid AOE-Locking (and it cannot be disabled) so aiming AOEs is damn difficult (FF on nightmare^^). The change to the "Hold position" command annoys me as well. I like to scout ahead with my rogue (stealth ...), so I can assess the situation. Then some of the mobs seem to be on speed and move ultrafast until they hit melee combat. This seems very strange and feels stupid (they suddenly move slower in melee combat) And I cannot change the armor of my companions. I find a shitton of mage/rogue loot, but have to sell it, because I can give it to no one. I really liked to give Allistair King Cailan's armor. Would seem really strange if my PC would wear that kind of armor. And almost all the upgrades can be found on merchants. If they at least would be accesible via quests it would increase the bonding to the NPCs.
Immersion wise I also have some problems. I dont talk to merchants, I trade with boxes! Also a lot of NPCs in the city arent clickable (not even a "leave me alone"). Same with the "negative space" shit - no it doesnt add to the game if we have reach environments who are empty.
But my major criticism (end of act 1 spoiler): + Show Spoiler +I dont like Anders. I hate him. But I need one healer in my group. Merrill cannot heal, so I played with Bethany until now. They younger sister, sister bonding, but she still needs to be protected from the older sister. So I played through Deep Roads. Oh - Infected. Dead. Reload, leaving her at home this time. Oh - captured by the Templars. They take away my only healer (aside from the retarded Anders).
And they dont use a good way to tell that. I was emotionally involved when my Warden sacrificed herself at the end of DAO. I was angry at Morrigan when she left the group at the eve of battle.
When the templars take Bethany. Nothing. It doesnt make sense. And even then - she's a Circle Mage now. And she cannot leave and adventure? The damn captain of the guard (Aveline) can leave the job & adventure with Hawke. It just doesnt make sense.
Luckily - some genius was able to enable the character again via modding.
So I'd say - at least they give the community the tools to fix most of their problems. Waiting for the DA2 Toolset and what people will be able to do with that.
Oh: Music - just WAY inferior compared to DAO (or ME1).
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I think the game is okay. Definitely feels rushed for sure.
Biggest issues I have are the recycled dungeon maps and the stupid ending which makes no damn sense.
+ Show Spoiler +Orsino doing blood magic? How did Meredith get that sword?
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On March 21 2011 04:50 Zocat wrote:But my major criticism (end of act 1 spoiler): + Show Spoiler +I dont like Anders. I hate him. But I need one healer in my group. Merrill cannot heal, so I played with Bethany until now. They younger sister, sister bonding, but she still needs to be protected from the older sister. So I played through Deep Roads. Oh - Infected. Dead. Reload, leaving her at home this time. Oh - captured by the Templars. They take away my only healer (aside from the retarded Anders).
And they dont use a good way to tell that. I was emotionally involved when my Warden sacrificed herself at the end of DAO. I was angry at Morrigan when she left the group at the eve of battle.
When the templars take Bethany. Nothing. It doesnt make sense. And even then - she's a Circle Mage now. And she cannot leave and adventure? The damn captain of the guard (Aveline) can leave the job & adventure with Hawke. It just doesnt make sense.
Luckily - some genius was able to enable the character again via modding. I also dont like Anders at at all, but mainly because if your a male char it is almost impossible to make this fool your friend with out starting a romance with him, I mean what the hell. What does my friendship with him have to do with me wanting to romance Isabella or some other chick in the game.
end of act 1 spoiler + Show Spoiler + There are actually 3 different things that can happen to your sister, The death to infection and becoming a Circle mage are correct. However, if you take Anders with you to the deep roads with Bethany he will save her from the infection by turning her into a Grey Warden.
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On March 21 2011 05:58 Arkedo wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2011 04:50 Zocat wrote:But my major criticism (end of act 1 spoiler): + Show Spoiler +I dont like Anders. I hate him. But I need one healer in my group. Merrill cannot heal, so I played with Bethany until now. They younger sister, sister bonding, but she still needs to be protected from the older sister. So I played through Deep Roads. Oh - Infected. Dead. Reload, leaving her at home this time. Oh - captured by the Templars. They take away my only healer (aside from the retarded Anders).
And they dont use a good way to tell that. I was emotionally involved when my Warden sacrificed herself at the end of DAO. I was angry at Morrigan when she left the group at the eve of battle.
When the templars take Bethany. Nothing. It doesnt make sense. And even then - she's a Circle Mage now. And she cannot leave and adventure? The damn captain of the guard (Aveline) can leave the job & adventure with Hawke. It just doesnt make sense.
Luckily - some genius was able to enable the character again via modding. I also dont like Anders at at all, but mainly because if your a male char it is almost impossible to make this fool your friend with out starting a romance with him, I mean what the hell. What does my friendship with him have to do with me wanting to romance Isabella or some other chick in the game. end of act 1 spoiler + Show Spoiler + There are actually 3 different things that can happen to your sister, The death to infection and becoming a Circle mage are correct. However, if you take Anders with you to the deep roads with Bethany he will save her from the infection by turning her into a Grey Warden.
+ Show Spoiler +But I read the Grey Warden option doesnt make her available as a character sooner? She would join the endfight just like if she'd become a warden.
Am I wrong (and my sources^^)
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I was super looking forward to this game, I LOVED Da:O
however this game sucked, it just lacked soul
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I enjoyed it, more than DA:O personally...
But that's me.
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I dunno, I really enjoyed this game (so far, not done yet, but really liking it!), as much or more than DA:O.
I honestly don't expect that much from sequels, I take them as an entirely different game nowadays, I've been let down too many times by sequels, so I just... stopped looking at them as sequels I guess
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On March 21 2011 06:46 Zocat wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2011 05:58 Arkedo wrote:On March 21 2011 04:50 Zocat wrote:But my major criticism (end of act 1 spoiler): + Show Spoiler +I dont like Anders. I hate him. But I need one healer in my group. Merrill cannot heal, so I played with Bethany until now. They younger sister, sister bonding, but she still needs to be protected from the older sister. So I played through Deep Roads. Oh - Infected. Dead. Reload, leaving her at home this time. Oh - captured by the Templars. They take away my only healer (aside from the retarded Anders).
And they dont use a good way to tell that. I was emotionally involved when my Warden sacrificed herself at the end of DAO. I was angry at Morrigan when she left the group at the eve of battle.
When the templars take Bethany. Nothing. It doesnt make sense. And even then - she's a Circle Mage now. And she cannot leave and adventure? The damn captain of the guard (Aveline) can leave the job & adventure with Hawke. It just doesnt make sense.
Luckily - some genius was able to enable the character again via modding. I also dont like Anders at at all, but mainly because if your a male char it is almost impossible to make this fool your friend with out starting a romance with him, I mean what the hell. What does my friendship with him have to do with me wanting to romance Isabella or some other chick in the game. end of act 1 spoiler + Show Spoiler + There are actually 3 different things that can happen to your sister, The death to infection and becoming a Circle mage are correct. However, if you take Anders with you to the deep roads with Bethany he will save her from the infection by turning her into a Grey Warden. + Show Spoiler +But I read the Grey Warden option doesnt make her available as a character sooner? She would join the endfight just like if she'd become a warden.
Am I wrong (and my sources^^)
I have no Idea i kinda stopped playing when I got to the deep roads. But if any ones know it would be helpful.
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I'm trying to play DA:O again and Awakenings for the first time so that I can get to know Ander's story but I just can't do it. I don't know why people like DA:O over DA2.
I loaded up my save game. It felt like such a grind so I lowered it from Hard to Normal. I remember enjoying playing on Hard but I have no idea why now. After 10 mins, I could not stand it so I lowered it to easy. 10 mins later I just quit. I've had more fun grinding in some crappy MMO. The loading times were horrible too. Everything felt so much slower.
I just think DA2 suffered from alot of bad PR and the criticisms just snowballed. If not for the story, there is no real reason to replay DA:0. Just thinking of the deep roads right now makes me go UGH. I just want to finish awakenings as fast as possible so I can go back to playing DA2.
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On March 21 2011 11:07 kheldorin wrote: I'm trying to play DA:O again and Awakenings for the first time so that I can get to know Ander's story but I just can't do it. I don't know why people like DA:O over DA2. You're kidding..... right?
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On March 21 2011 11:07 kheldorin wrote: I'm trying to play DA:O again and Awakenings for the first time so that I can get to know Ander's story but I just can't do it. I don't know why people like DA:O over DA2.
I loaded up my save game. It felt like such a grind so I lowered it from Hard to Normal. I remember enjoying playing on Hard but I have no idea why now. After 10 mins, I could not stand it so I lowered it to easy. 10 mins later I just quit. I've had more fun grinding in some crappy MMO. The loading times were horrible too. Everything felt so much slower.
I just think DA2 suffered from alot of bad PR and the criticisms just snowballed. If not for the story, there is no real reason to replay DA:0. Just thinking of the deep roads right now makes me go UGH. I just want to finish awakenings as fast as possible so I can go back to playing DA2.
There's plenty of posts going into lots of detail of why ppl preferred the first game. But seriously...you had an issue with the deep roads in the first game but not with the shitty excuse for deep roads in the second? If not for the cool golem boss it might as well have been another dungeon with the same 5 templates used the whole game -_-.
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On March 21 2011 11:38 antelope591 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2011 11:07 kheldorin wrote: I'm trying to play DA:O again and Awakenings for the first time so that I can get to know Ander's story but I just can't do it. I don't know why people like DA:O over DA2.
I loaded up my save game. It felt like such a grind so I lowered it from Hard to Normal. I remember enjoying playing on Hard but I have no idea why now. After 10 mins, I could not stand it so I lowered it to easy. 10 mins later I just quit. I've had more fun grinding in some crappy MMO. The loading times were horrible too. Everything felt so much slower.
I just think DA2 suffered from alot of bad PR and the criticisms just snowballed. If not for the story, there is no real reason to replay DA:0. Just thinking of the deep roads right now makes me go UGH. I just want to finish awakenings as fast as possible so I can go back to playing DA2. There's plenty of posts going into lots of detail of why ppl preferred the first game. But seriously...you had an issue with the deep roads in the first game but not with the shitty excuse for deep roads in the second? If not for the cool golem boss it might as well have been another dungeon with the same 5 templates used the whole game -_-.
But the thing is I've already played DA:O once. So I already saw the scenery. And I already know the story. The novelty of discovering new stuff is gone. So the only thing keeping me going is the combat. Deep roads has the most "trash" mobs. There's no specifc quest for them. There's just alot of them.I just want to get on with the story. Maybe I wouldn't mind so much if it was DA2 combat. But the combat is sooo slow. It doesn't help that I'm playing a 2-handed warrior. The animations are not great either. With DA2 just like ME2, I can definitely see myself replaying it more than twice.
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I always play the mage .... and this was meant to be played as Warrior obviously....
Lack of healers in companions ...
If Skyrim was out, i wouldnt have player this ... seriously
And yeah i played it, did all the quests got all the weapons, all the armours, tried all the spells ... And yet ... i feel like completing the game didn't really do something for me ... final boss was way too easy ... Ch1 boss was a lot harder if you ask me ...
i'd give the game a 5/10
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On March 21 2011 11:58 Ioannis wrote: I always play the mage .... and this was meant to be played as Warrior obviously....
Lack of healers in companions ...
If Skyrim was out, i wouldnt have player this ... seriously
And yeah i played it, did all the quests got all the weapons, all the armours, tried all the spells ... And yet ... i feel like completing the game didn't really do something for me ... final boss was way too easy ... Ch1 boss was a lot harder if you ask me ...
i'd give the game a 5/10
Yeah, that is what I liked about ME2. You don't really need a specific party composiition. A healer isn't an issue for me as a mage I just spend 2 points in heal and that was enough. But I'm gonna play a 2-handed warrior the 2nd time round and I'm still trying to figure out how I can do that without bringing the only tank companion as I already used him in my 1st playthrough. Reading up it seems that in the harder modes, I will need a proper tank.
I thought the High Dragon is C3 is much more difficult than the final boss. The final boss was kinda disappointing. I guess they had to balance for the fact that depending on the playthrough you might not have all your party with you. They should have just scaled the difficulty based on how many party members are left.
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On March 21 2011 12:14 kheldorin wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2011 11:58 Ioannis wrote: I always play the mage .... and this was meant to be played as Warrior obviously....
Lack of healers in companions ...
If Skyrim was out, i wouldnt have player this ... seriously
And yeah i played it, did all the quests got all the weapons, all the armours, tried all the spells ... And yet ... i feel like completing the game didn't really do something for me ... final boss was way too easy ... Ch1 boss was a lot harder if you ask me ...
i'd give the game a 5/10 Yeah, that is what I liked about ME2. You don't really need a specific party composiition. A healer isn't an issue for me as a mage I just spend 2 points in heal and that was enough. But I'm gonna play a 2-handed warrior the 2nd time round and I'm still trying to figure out how I can do that without bringing the only tank companion as I already used him in my 1st playthrough. Reading up it seems that in the harder modes, I will need a proper tank. I thought the High Dragon is C3 is much more difficult than the final boss. The final boss was kinda disappointing. I guess they had to balance for the fact that depending on the playthrough you might not have all your party with you. They should have just scaled the difficulty based on how many party members are left.
You don't need a tank on higher difficulties...you can do most battles even without a healer. The only time you need a tank is if you're doing the bosses without kiting. 2H wars destroy everything with AOE dmg even on nightmare. Just bring a mage for brittle and you're good to go
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Finished the game in normal as a tank warrior. Only died once in one of the final battles with the pride demon and his craploads of shades. Started a mage Nightmare playthrough and only after that I will comment on the gameplay and difficulty of the game. So far what bugs me: -Im fine with the conversation style of Mass Effect. Im not fine with ME1 style area recycling. Sure DAO areas were bland somewhat, but at least its not the same cave over and over. -Characterwise: WHAT THE HELL DID THEY DO TO ANDERS??? Where is the light hearted mage I liked from Awakening? Fenris and Sebastian- not that interesting. -The graphics are too boring in my taste. Nothing took my breath away like some areas of DAO and ME2.
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On March 21 2011 11:07 kheldorin wrote: I'm trying to play DA:O again and Awakenings for the first time so that I can get to know Ander's story but I just can't do it. I don't know why people like DA:O over DA2.
I loaded up my save game. It felt like such a grind so I lowered it from Hard to Normal. I remember enjoying playing on Hard but I have no idea why now. After 10 mins, I could not stand it so I lowered it to easy. 10 mins later I just quit. I've had more fun grinding in some crappy MMO. The loading times were horrible too. Everything felt so much slower.
I just think DA2 suffered from alot of bad PR and the criticisms just snowballed. If not for the story, there is no real reason to replay DA:0. Just thinking of the deep roads right now makes me go UGH. I just want to finish awakenings as fast as possible so I can go back to playing DA2.
Had a similar experience loading up the Baldur's Gate series this weekend. Since DA2 I've been having an itch to play the series again and see if I could put myself in the shoes of these people who absolutely adore the Infinity engine RPG games of the past (the same ones I absolutely adored in my teenage years). I spent about an hour installing the two games, plus their expansions, Baldur's Gate Tutu and the widescreen mod, spent another hour hammering that 'Reroll' button to get decent stats for my Neutral Evil Elf Cleric, got into the game aaaand...bored in about an hour. The combat is just a gigantic headache when you've got to reload four times because some stupid wolf one or two-shots one of your characters in an instant. Level-one balance, and the AD&D system is just so horrifically bad it blows my mind. Sure, its great when you're playing pen & paper and the DM is there to force you to stick to your decisions, but it translates to bad, random, unfair annoying gameplay in a video-game. The combat just feels like busy-work to get to the next magical item, or move on to the next part of the story.
I remember the interface being praised back in the day, but good lord. The number of clicks you've got to make to cast spells is just obnoxious, particularly when you'll spend over half your time just casting heals or magic missiles on cue. If you like thieving, its just an exercise in patience waiting for some NPC to pick a new random location on the map to wander to that just happens to be out of sight of the chest you want to rob. Keeping track of which containers you've scavenged from is also a giant PITA, since they don't disappear once looted, and there are like 20 non-critical homes in Beregost to wander through.
Plus, the main character felt like a paranoid schizophrenic. One minute I can be a bit of a conniving douche, the next minute I'm thrust into a conversation where all of the options are super lovely, happy politeness. The dialogue choices are just totally inconsistent and probably the most annoying part is missing entire quests (Perdue's sword, the ring for that lady at the front of the Friendly Arm etc.) because you've got to pick exactly the right dialogue options. Pick the wrong one (and a completely harmless one at that) and that NPC just runs off or doesn't speak to you again. I did a bunch of googling to remind myself of all the various companions you can get in the game and it quickly dawned on me that it just plain doesn't matter who I pick. Companion involvement is almost non-existent in the series compared to DA2. BG2 had an interesting quest chain for each companion, but then so does DA2. PST had a truly amazing level of companion involvement that was totally awesome (changing your spec through conversation, learning new spells/abilities through dialogues with them etc.), but its not like that system made its way into the other ye-olde Bioware games. The companions in BG1, and 2 to an extent, really don't have a whole lot to say, or even do with the story itself.
Nostalgia is a funny thing. It wasn't a completely wasteful venture, though. It made me appreciate, that much more, the kinds of things that video game developers pay attention to in modern gaming. Primarily, spending a lot of time axing the things that will just plain irritate the player. I'm now in my 2nd playthrough of DA2, just started Act 2 and its really cool to see how the decisions you made in the mini-stories of Act 1 affect how things play out in Act 2 (and presumeably Act 3). Sure, the overall outcome is basically the same, but I have a hard time thinking of a PC RPG where the finale is truly awe-inspiringly different depending on your decisions. What would BG1 be like if you could roleplay your way out of simply going to the Nashkel Mines just because? Where's the option in BG2 that lets you say to hell with Imoen/Irenicus? No matter what your decisions in DAO, you wind-up following the exact same story, but the cool thing is, different decisions in there throw completely different quests at you in DA2 - I'm glad I took the time to play through DAO two times a few weeks ago to see all these different changes in DA2. As for DA2, the combat's just plain great and doesn't feel like a giant headache that's standing in the way of the next part of the story + Show Spoiler +except that godamned Rock Wraith. I set the difficulty down to casual for that because I wasn't going to go through another 20-minute borefest like last time - that fight hates melee more than the entirety of WoW: Cataclysm's raiding
I'm having a lot of fun, and its definitely time to take these old RPGs and put them back on the shelf for a long time. Maybe when I've been stricken with an ailing memory, and I've forgotten enough of the stories of games like BG and PST, it'll be worth slogging through the rest of the game to get at the story once again. Or maybe if someone recreates them with modern game design ideals (get rid of the annoying shit!) in mind.
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On March 22 2011 01:11 Bibdy wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2011 11:07 kheldorin wrote: I'm trying to play DA:O again and Awakenings for the first time so that I can get to know Ander's story but I just can't do it. I don't know why people like DA:O over DA2.
I loaded up my save game. It felt like such a grind so I lowered it from Hard to Normal. I remember enjoying playing on Hard but I have no idea why now. After 10 mins, I could not stand it so I lowered it to easy. 10 mins later I just quit. I've had more fun grinding in some crappy MMO. The loading times were horrible too. Everything felt so much slower.
I just think DA2 suffered from alot of bad PR and the criticisms just snowballed. If not for the story, there is no real reason to replay DA:0. Just thinking of the deep roads right now makes me go UGH. I just want to finish awakenings as fast as possible so I can go back to playing DA2. Had a similar experience loading up the Baldur's Gate series this weekend. Since DA2 I've been having an itch to play the series again and see if I could put myself in the shoes of these people who absolutely adore the Infinity engine RPG games of the past (the same ones I absolutely adored in my teenage years). I spent about an hour installing the two games, plus their expansions, Baldur's Gate Tutu and the widescreen mod, spent another hour hammering that 'Reroll' button to get decent stats for my Neutral Evil Elf Cleric, got into the game aaaand...bored in about an hour. The combat is just a gigantic headache when you've got to reload four times because some stupid wolf one or two-shots one of your characters in an instant. Level-one balance, and the AD&D system is just so horrifically bad it blows my mind. Sure, its great when you're playing pen & paper and the DM is there to force you to stick to your decisions, but it translates to bad, random, unfair annoying gameplay in a video-game. The combat just feels like busy-work to get to the next magical item, or move on to the next part of the story. I remember the interface being praised back in the day, but good lord. The number of clicks you've got to make to cast spells is just obnoxious, particularly when you'll spend over half your time just casting heals or magic missiles on cue. If you like thieving, its just an exercise in patience waiting for some NPC to pick a new random location on the map to wander to that just happens to be out of sight of the chest you want to rob. Keeping track of which containers you've scavenged from is also a giant PITA, since they don't disappear once looted, and there are like 20 non-critical homes in Beregost to wander through. Plus, the main character felt like a paranoid schizophrenic. One minute I can be a bit of a conniving douche, the next minute I'm thrust into a conversation where all of the options are super lovely, happy politeness. The dialogue choices are just totally inconsistent and probably the most annoying part is missing entire quests (Perdue's sword, the ring for that lady at the front of the Friendly Arm etc.) because you've got to pick exactly the right dialogue options. Pick the wrong one (and a completely harmless one at that) and that NPC just runs off or doesn't speak to you again. I did a bunch of googling to remind myself of all the various companions you can get in the game and it quickly dawned on me that it just plain doesn't matter who I pick. Companion involvement is almost non-existent in the series compared to DA2. BG2 had an interesting quest chain for each companion, but then so does DA2. PST had a truly amazing level of companion involvement that was totally awesome (changing your spec through conversation, learning new spells/abilities through dialogues with them etc.), but its not like that system made its way into the other ye-olde Bioware games. The companions in BG1, and 2 to an extent, really don't have a whole lot to say, or even do with the story itself. Nostalgia is a funny thing. It wasn't a completely wasteful venture, though. It made me appreciate, that much more, the kinds of things that video game developers pay attention to in modern gaming. Primarily, spending a lot of time axing the things that will just plain irritate the player. I'm now in my 2nd playthrough of DA2, just started Act 2 and its really cool to see how the decisions you made in the mini-stories of Act 1 affect how things play out in Act 2 (and presumeably Act 3). Sure, the overall outcome is basically the same, but I have a hard time thinking of a PC RPG where the finale is truly awe-inspiringly different depending on your decisions. What would BG1 be like if you could roleplay your way out of simply going to the Nashkel Mines just because? Where's the option in BG2 that lets you say to hell with Imoen/Irenicus? No matter what your decisions in DAO, you wind-up following the exact same story, but the cool thing is, different decisions in there throw completely different quests at you in DA2 - I'm glad I took the time to play through DAO two times a few weeks ago to see all these different changes in DA2. As for DA2, the combat's just plain great and doesn't feel like a giant headache that's standing in the way of the next part of the story + Show Spoiler +except that godamned Rock Wraith. I set the difficulty down to casual for that because I wasn't going to go through another 20-minute borefest like last time - that fight hates melee more than the entirety of WoW: Cataclysm's raiding I'm having a lot of fun, and its definitely time to take these old RPGs and put them back on the shelf for a long time. Maybe when I've been stricken with an ailing memory, and I've forgotten enough of the stories of games like BG and PST, it'll be worth slogging through the rest of the game to get at the story once again. Or maybe if someone recreates them with modern game design ideals (get rid of the annoying shit!) in mind. Good post. I loved Baldur's Gate 2. I still regard it as one of the best RPGs ever created. But like most games, even great games, it hasn't aged well. I've tried to play it a few times over the years, and I tend to stop the moment I have to loot more than four creatures after a large fight. The number of clicks it takes to do anything is just painful. The interface is so archaic that you feel like you're fighting it more often than you're fighting enemies. It's not something that should be recommended to RPG newbies, any more than you'd recommend someone play Ultima IV over Ultima IX, even though the former is the far better game. Viewing the world through rose-tinted lenses of nostalgia is not proof of a better past.
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Rogue Hawke , Merril , Aveline , Fenris - Fatiguing Fog is outrageously OP with Merril droppin Bombs Stones Throw into Fatiguing Fog > Ensare > Walking Bomb > Instant AoE Decimation Fenris is great because his abilities are that of a light templar / reaver and all of his attacks generate stagger making chain lightning outrageously OP after Merril knocks everyone out of the fog where Fenris can start generating this devastating combo in addition to your rogue taking advantage of everything the three put out
As for Fenris Tank just grab barrier on one or two mages and start casting it when his hp starts to drop as he does waaaaaayyy more damage as his HP drops and as his damage goes up he kills more which in turn makes him faster and have even more AoE DPS. The Idea I think is that with a all DPS team you want to CC as much as possible or do so much damage that fights end before they begin.
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I found the DPS warriors, Fenris specifically, to be worthless when your running in Nightmare mode, at least if your trying to tank as normal with Aveline... His attacks are all AOE, and it's VERY difficult to keep him from killing Aveline, you can't target them nearly as well, and he pulls insane agro.
He hits like a truck sure, but that's not useful if he's knocking out my own guys...
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Vatican City State1650 Posts
Everything else aside, after going through the fucking horrific combat animations and spacing out etc in DA:O, I love what they did with the attack/spellcasting animations.
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I played as mage, and the lack of mage specific solutions or quest endings is troubling. Otherwise I really liked Anders (played female, so I don't know how bad is it if he goes homo). Varric's banter and Fenris's arguments with Anders are priceless.
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United States2791 Posts
On March 22 2011 05:40 Obsidian wrote: I found the DPS warriors, Fenris specifically, to be worthless when your running in Nightmare mode, at least if your trying to tank as normal with Aveline... His attacks are all AOE, and it's VERY difficult to keep him from killing Aveline, you can't target them nearly as well, and he pulls insane agro.
He hits like a truck sure, but that's not useful if he's knocking out my own guys...
If you use Fenris as you tank, then you take 3 ranged characters. You let him pull the agro and AOE everything in sight around him.
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On March 22 2011 06:11 orgolove wrote: Everything else aside, after going through the fucking horrific combat animations and spacing out etc in DA:O, I love what they did with the attack/spellcasting animations. I have to agree here - it looks beautiful!
I'm around 10 hours into the game... so far I'm enjoying it, though I really would appreciate a bit more customizability for my not-main-character characters =.= I also don't particularly like the UI for health/mana/stamina and spells. Fun, decent game, could be better.
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"Good, but dissapointing, i was expecting more"
This is actually true.
DA2 is a good game. But we were expecting much more after the first game. And the people were kinda dissappointed.
First game was a rpg game synthesized with a little bit of action combat figures. But the second game is a totally action game synthesized with basic rpg things.
And we didn't have a clue about that was the thing they were creating as a game. We expected much more different things.
But after all, if we look at this game as an independent from the first game. It is good.
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Am i the only one who goes:
Hawke: Templar, Fenris, Varric, Isabella?
totally Anti-Mage. :D
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I bought this game with pre-order.. but thanks to reading all these reviews i basically lost all interest in playing it.. especially since i loved DA1 and don't want that experience ruined for me. Can someone give me some very good reasons why i should play it and finish it? (p.s. i play all games on hardest difficulty, and i read that DA2 on nightmare is a dull grindfest)
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On March 31 2011 03:59 AlexDeLarge wrote: I bought this game with pre-order.. but thanks to reading all these reviews i basically lost all interest in playing it.. especially since i loved DA1 and don't want that experience ruined for me. Can someone give me some very good reasons why i should play it and finish it? (p.s. i play all games on hardest difficulty, and i read that DA2 on nightmare is a dull grindfest)
The game has a ton of hidden elements that are pretty difficult to find.
DA2 is way more emmersive than DA1 to me.
Your actions in DA1 directly affect your game in DA2.
DA2 is pretty awesome to play through because of the timespan of the game, your actions have serious concequences it's not just, Oh hey let me help you kill this guy, and then everything is cool 10 years later, despite your barging into his house and stabbing the guy in the chest a few times in front of his 10 year old kid.
IN DA2 if that happened you would end up facing an extremely pissed off single minded teenager hunting you down in a few years.
The game is so awesome. It's seriously best if you don't go completionist. Just do the quests that your character would do and alter the world greatly.
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On March 14 2011 20:27 Geo.Rion wrote:The story is weak/bad.+ Show Spoiler +Well it is not. Dragon Age Origins had the most generic story possible. There's a traitor and a dark force which need to be assessed. The hero gathers allies, punishes the traitor, slays the evil. However all the little twists, the detailed companion storylines, quests sending you from one city to another, being able to influence everything you want, including being able to kill or at least abandon all your companions, but the dog. It was more then enough to me, definetly i'm happier with this then say, you have a huge big ass "iamyourfather" "dumbledoreiskilledbysnape" surprise somewhere towards the end, and mediocre for the rest. I have not finished DA2 yet, but it seems really the same, even more interesting with Flemeth acting in the background, wanting hellknows what, i hope i will find it out, im excited.
I'd like to just drop my 2 cents on what you said about story here, since I still play these games for just that, the story.
You say the story is not weak and bad, but it is. It just doesn't seem like that because the story isn't that important to you, and that's fine, but this is an RPG and story is an important (albeit somewhat ignored in favor of combat and graphics) part of it. You can certainly enjoy a game even though certain aspects of it are bad but that doesn't mean that those aspects aren't just that, bad.
Now you are completely correct in that Dragon Age Origins has an incredibly generic storyline. Usually I don't mind this, writers can turn some decent stuff into crap by trying to make it completely original, but DAO over does it by far. The major story line is utterly uninspiring.
As far as being able to influence everything I have to say meh. You are certainly able to alter things but I don't find that adds anything to the story in this case. Again I feel this is you caring more about gameplay then the actual quality of the story. Completely linear games tend to have better stories, that's not always the case but it can be agreed that with one path to focus on the writing tends to become better then if you had to write a lot of different paths.
After this you go on to call Star Wars and Harry Potter mediocre with a few good plot twists. This is really the nail in the coffin in my believing you even cared about the story at all. I'm not gonna go into why you wrong here because it is not really relevant to the thread and at this point I doubt you would care.
Now you and I are obviously completely different gamers and it is understandable that we should not see eye to eye on this. What I really want to get at here is that I don't think you should comment on the story at all since it is not why you play this game while for others it actually might be.
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DA2 isn't by any means a horrible game as many have said, but the whole reusing maps every other quest and lack of customizability for non-player characters really pissed me off to no end.
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I can get past the bad quest designs, and the complete disconnect between most of them, but having to run through the exact same areas over and over is really pissing me off. There is literally only a handful of areas which you constantly run through for everything. On top of that, there is little to NO change to the world between these long periods of time.
A good game relative to the RPG market, but this is not something to be proud of if you are Bioware.
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ROFL.
The game is actually great! I feel as if this happens with a lot of games nowadays... people care more about what other think and not about actually playing it themselves... take Final Fantasy XII, it wasn't actually bad of course it wasn't amazing or anything but christ the amount of hate that game got was insane, a lot of people seem to be influenced by others opinions when really this is the internet, and there are a metric tonne of haters who will talk shit about anything that isn't an awe-inspiring jaw-dropping phenomenon.
I have played 10 hours 30 mins right now and I think the game is really good, when you see that image the game looks like an abomination (zing!) but I really find the game to be very good.
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I didn't come here to trash the thread, and I'm pretty sure the game has strong points, but I think what caused all the controversy is that dragon age origins legacy is too big to handle. This DA2 feels to me and many people like a crossover of mass effect 2 and the original dragon age. What would a pretty good game anytime has become a massively hated game because it has "dragon age" in its name, and let's face it, dragon age origins blows, it is a fucking masterpiece.
That's what I see. I won't go further with my opinions on this issue unless explicitely requested.
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United States4714 Posts
I enjoyed DA2 quite a bit. I liked the combat, characters and the dialogue (especially many of the sarcastic choices). In fact I found sarcastic Hawke to have more personality and be more likable than the protagonist in 90% of RPGS. But I can definitely understand why a lot of people dislike it so much.
The game feels like it was released way too early. Repeatedly fighting the same mobs and going through the same 5 environments over and over really limits the fun you can have while playing. The storyline also felt disjointed and didn't have a clear focus or any real epic feel to it.
Overall despite its flaws I think DA2 is a good game but if it had had another 6-12 months in development to add content and polish up the story it could have been great.
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If you take 5 minutes to download the HQ texture pack the game actually looks pretty amazing, everything else you could use to complain about every game in existence.
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On March 31 2011 04:08 PrinceXizor wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2011 03:59 AlexDeLarge wrote: I bought this game with pre-order.. but thanks to reading all these reviews i basically lost all interest in playing it.. especially since i loved DA1 and don't want that experience ruined for me. Can someone give me some very good reasons why i should play it and finish it? (p.s. i play all games on hardest difficulty, and i read that DA2 on nightmare is a dull grindfest) The game has a ton of hidden elements that are pretty difficult to find. DA2 is way more emmersive than DA1 to me. Your actions in DA1 directly affect your game in DA2.DA2 is pretty awesome to play through because of the timespan of the game, your actions have serious concequences it's not just, Oh hey let me help you kill this guy, and then everything is cool 10 years later, despite your barging into his house and stabbing the guy in the chest a few times in front of his 10 year old kid. IN DA2 if that happened you would end up facing an extremely pissed off single minded teenager hunting you down in a few years. The game is so awesome. It's seriously best if you don't go completionist. Just do the quests that your character would do and alter the world greatly.
We apparently played a different DA2. Literally no choice you make bears any consequence. Any big choice that you think might expect the storyline doesn't matter. If you decide to + Show Spoiler +Take your sister with you to the Deep Roads. She dies. If you decide to leave her behind. She dies. Your actions affect nothing beyond a different dialogue to the exact same conclusion.
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On April 10 2011 09:52 Xeteh wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2011 04:08 PrinceXizor wrote:On March 31 2011 03:59 AlexDeLarge wrote: I bought this game with pre-order.. but thanks to reading all these reviews i basically lost all interest in playing it.. especially since i loved DA1 and don't want that experience ruined for me. Can someone give me some very good reasons why i should play it and finish it? (p.s. i play all games on hardest difficulty, and i read that DA2 on nightmare is a dull grindfest) The game has a ton of hidden elements that are pretty difficult to find. DA2 is way more emmersive than DA1 to me. Your actions in DA1 directly affect your game in DA2.DA2 is pretty awesome to play through because of the timespan of the game, your actions have serious concequences it's not just, Oh hey let me help you kill this guy, and then everything is cool 10 years later, despite your barging into his house and stabbing the guy in the chest a few times in front of his 10 year old kid. IN DA2 if that happened you would end up facing an extremely pissed off single minded teenager hunting you down in a few years. The game is so awesome. It's seriously best if you don't go completionist. Just do the quests that your character would do and alter the world greatly. We apparently played a different DA2. Literally no choice you make bears any consequence. Any big choice that you think might expect the storyline doesn't matter. If you decide to + Show Spoiler +Take your sister with you to the Deep Roads. She dies. If you decide to leave her behind. She dies. Your actions affect nothing beyond a different dialogue to the exact same conclusion.
Your spoilers are incorrect. However, I do disagree with his overall sentiment that DA1's actions didn't influence the game as much. I would argue the opposite.
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On April 10 2011 10:26 I_Love_Bacon wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2011 09:52 Xeteh wrote:On March 31 2011 04:08 PrinceXizor wrote:On March 31 2011 03:59 AlexDeLarge wrote: I bought this game with pre-order.. but thanks to reading all these reviews i basically lost all interest in playing it.. especially since i loved DA1 and don't want that experience ruined for me. Can someone give me some very good reasons why i should play it and finish it? (p.s. i play all games on hardest difficulty, and i read that DA2 on nightmare is a dull grindfest) The game has a ton of hidden elements that are pretty difficult to find. DA2 is way more emmersive than DA1 to me. Your actions in DA1 directly affect your game in DA2.DA2 is pretty awesome to play through because of the timespan of the game, your actions have serious concequences it's not just, Oh hey let me help you kill this guy, and then everything is cool 10 years later, despite your barging into his house and stabbing the guy in the chest a few times in front of his 10 year old kid. IN DA2 if that happened you would end up facing an extremely pissed off single minded teenager hunting you down in a few years. The game is so awesome. It's seriously best if you don't go completionist. Just do the quests that your character would do and alter the world greatly. We apparently played a different DA2. Literally no choice you make bears any consequence. Any big choice that you think might expect the storyline doesn't matter. If you decide to + Show Spoiler +Take your sister with you to the Deep Roads. She dies. If you decide to leave her behind. She dies. Your actions affect nothing beyond a different dialogue to the exact same conclusion. Your spoilers are incorrect. However, I do disagree with his overall sentiment that DA1's actions didn't influence the game as much. I would argue the opposite.
I guess + Show Spoiler +saying I shouldn't say dies but either way you lose her. It doesn't change anything, no matter what choice you make you lose that character. Like I said, different dialogue to the exact same conclusion.
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Can't believe people are defending this game, i mean, the con's outweigh the pro's in this game, no point even trying to deny it.
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Dragon age 2 was one of the biggest all-time let downs of any game ever. After playing the first and enjoying it quite a bit. Dragon age 2 fell SO FAR short of the original. I played both of them through on the hardest difficulty and the only reason I completed DA2 was out of a feeling of obligation to beat every game i touch on the hardest difficulty. I was mentally 'done' with the game 20% into it and had to drag it out over a week to complete it.
I hope if they make a 3rd they go back to the original style.
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I agree with starcraft911.
I don't think that DA2 is a "bad" game in the grand scheme of things. If you compared it in a vacuum to most any other RPG on the market, it would look great. However compared to DA1, coupled with what is expected from Bioware and how well ME2 did, this was a HUGE letdown.
This may be the worst game Bioware has made and the design process can be summed up in one word imo: LAZY. Everything about this game just feels lazy once you get past the awesome attack animations.
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On April 10 2011 13:42 On_Slaught wrote: I agree with starcraft911.
I don't think that DA2 is a "bad" game in the grand scheme of things. If you compared it in a vacuum to most any other RPG on the market, it would look great. However compared to DA1, coupled with what is expected from Bioware and how well ME2 did, this was a HUGE letdown.
This may be the worst game Bioware has made and the design process can be summed up in one word imo: LAZY. Everything about this game just feels lazy once you get past the awesome attack animations.
Agree. Though LAZY is somewhat inappropriate in this case. Greedy is more like it. Why else will they leave us hanging in end and that too with same environments over and over throughout game. Also, there were DLCs to 'expand' game from the get go. They need to take a clue from Blizzard or Stardock and release large expansions every couple of year instead of launching an 'sequel' every other year. But funny thing is it was still not bad. Disappointing yeah, but not bad....
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I agree about the DLC. Having DLC available from the start is not only insulting, it is a tell about how Bioware has changed over the years.
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I hate DLC's. The only ones I've ever tried in any game is the ones from DA1, but all they did was make an easy game easier. How can you justify getting free items as "content". That is just bullshit. And even when the DLC was new areas, they were so loaded with good stuff, everything else seemed redundant. I never bothered trying the DLC for DA2. Just left it in my stash all game.
Also I will have to agree that the game seemed lazy. The dungeon layouts (as mentioned like a million times already) were so pathetic, I felt robbed off my money every time I went into a new dungeon. How hard can it be to hire 2 newbie IT students for a few hours work a week where they sit and use the applications they have, to design an infinite amount of different dungeons. Oh right, then they'd have to also change the combat triggers, the looting locations and possibly the monsters too (who am I kidding, there are hardly any new models in DA2 already).
In general I feel that their art team must have been extremely cut down, or severely understaffed. No item icons, hardly any models, reused dungeons etc etc. One of the biggest letdowns for me.
I played most of the game through on nightmare too. Expected it to be a lot like DA1, but alas was I disappointed. Fights could be pretty tough, yes, but mostly it was just 20 minute long fights you had to repeat every time a new "Phase" started, and half your team died due some random spawning enemies. The hardest part of DA2 on nightmare was to not smash your keyboard out of frustration when you've spent an hour and a half doing some shitty encounter, and you die again cause you didn't know an enemy would spawn on top of your healer, right at that moment.
In the beginning, I defended the game to my friends who tried it, but I think I was merely trying to justify my purchase more than anything else. I would rather have waited a year longer, and gotten an actual RPG out of bioware. Oh well, we live and learn. I am going to be very reluctant buying bioware titles in the future before proper reviews from friends and players come out. I simply don't like the way they are heading with their games.
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I finally beat the game and I avoided every discussion and rumors on the net. I have to say this thread delivers on everything that is good and bad about the game. I want to write about some of the more random stuff that hasn't been mentioned. Apologies for the incoming negative comments.
Why release a DLC at launch date when the game was obviously rushed and had numerous bugs that ruined some of the quests? I personally had at least three quests in which the dead mob did not drop the item that would advance the quest. The fact that Bioware wants us to fork out another $7 or so to play a few quests with an optional character is an insult.
What's the deal with the Qunari? They looked as if they were big Arabic/African warriors in DA:0 and in DA2 they grew horns, all have the same Frankenstein face, and look so sad.
The trailer looked way too cool, but I felt it had some heavy spoilers. The Arishok looked amazing in that trailer, and in the game... (see above paragraph)
The big "reveal" of the ending. + Show Spoiler +So they show Leliani as a chantry warrior.. WHOOP DE DOOO.. That was a big omfg moment, right? /sarcasm
Hawke's mom. + Show Spoiler +The Jack D. Ripper storyline and Resident Evil type character was so incredibly random and cheesy.
Male Hawke looks too much like Jesus in the game and looks too much like figure skater Rudy Galindo in the trailer. The voice actor for Hawke doesn't sound correct unless you pick the protagonist answers.
I noticed recycled voice actors from DA0 and it just made the game feel cheap. Anders' voice came from Jowan, and Varric's was from Shale. C'mon hire some new voice actors.
Overall, I just get the impression that Bioware is rushing into this trilogy so that they can launch a DA MMO. The lore is ambitious, but it's so incredibly inconsistent and the material just seems bare.
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I downloaded this and couldn't last more then 2 hours, would not recommend the purchase. I feel ripped off and I didn't even buy it.
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I agree with you broz0rs but that part about the voice actors is an incredibly odd statement.
Edit: Did some research because I'm just watching streams atm.
DA0 Desmond Askew Jowan Greg Ellis Anders Geraldine Blecker Shale
DA2 Adam Howden Anders Brian Bloom Varric Tethras
All from game credits. If they sound the same or similar I guess they are doing their jobs.
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Kind of annoying how on nightmare the hardest things to fight tend to be unnamed templar hunters and assasins, while revenants the hardest non storyline guys of da:a are basically walkovers.
Also anyone who has played lots of bioware and does not honestly say this feels like the laziest game to date for them is lying to themselves. Still a decent game but way under par for them.
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I can't help but feel Bioware is pooling all of their resources to ME3 and SWTOR. DA2 had to be the 3rd wheel this last year or so.
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I was expecting much better gameplay in the sequel than the first dragon age, but it's practically the same. It's not very challenging tactically and some spells are even overpowered/unbalanced. I play at the hardest difficulty btw.
I completed the game for the RPG part though, which was kickass. The story is a little thin, but one thing i've always enjoyed was the large amount of conversation and choices. Man do i miss elder scrolls ^_^
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After playing this for a while, I must say I hate when they make games for both PC and consoles. It's so dumbed down and linear, you follow a narrow path with so little options. Only console games that managed to do well on PC is oblivion and fallout, due to it not restricting you as all other console games do.
I really tried to get into this game but it just feels so bland, meh. 2/10
by the way I love RPG games.
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It has nothing to do with being on a console, it has to do with lazy development and EA rushing the product.
Origins was the exact same on the PS3 besides the difficulty, which you could make even yourself.
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On April 10 2011 15:00 Zavi_ wrote: I hate DLC's. The only ones I've ever tried in any game is the ones from DA1, but all they did was make an easy game easier. How can you justify getting free items as "content". That is just bullshit. And even when the DLC was new areas, they were so loaded with good stuff, everything else seemed redundant. I never bothered trying the DLC for DA2. Just left it in my stash all game.
Also I will have to agree that the game seemed lazy. The dungeon layouts (as mentioned like a million times already) were so pathetic, I felt robbed off my money every time I went into a new dungeon. How hard can it be to hire 2 newbie IT students for a few hours work a week where they sit and use the applications they have, to design an infinite amount of different dungeons. Oh right, then they'd have to also change the combat triggers, the looting locations and possibly the monsters too (who am I kidding, there are hardly any new models in DA2 already).
In general I feel that their art team must have been extremely cut down, or severely understaffed. No item icons, hardly any models, reused dungeons etc etc. One of the biggest letdowns for me.
I played most of the game through on nightmare too. Expected it to be a lot like DA1, but alas was I disappointed. Fights could be pretty tough, yes, but mostly it was just 20 minute long fights you had to repeat every time a new "Phase" started, and half your team died due some random spawning enemies. The hardest part of DA2 on nightmare was to not smash your keyboard out of frustration when you've spent an hour and a half doing some shitty encounter, and you die again cause you didn't know an enemy would spawn on top of your healer, right at that moment.
In the beginning, I defended the game to my friends who tried it, but I think I was merely trying to justify my purchase more than anything else. I would rather have waited a year longer, and gotten an actual RPG out of bioware. Oh well, we live and learn. I am going to be very reluctant buying bioware titles in the future before proper reviews from friends and players come out. I simply don't like the way they are heading with their games.
Agree with all of the above. The biggest letdown for me personally was that A: I always thought I'd get out of this unimportant indifferent city where you basically are a pretty plain person who does every day jobs. Basically nothing you do has a greater purpose. Next Dragon Age you'll probably be a maid in a home, doing dishes and cleaning the family's clothes.. and B: All the reused shit everywhere. Basically every single dungeon was the same, with a concrete block blocking off an area. They didn't even try to remove the door post, it's just a gray fucking block in the door post -_-* I didn't mind the low difficulty, as I don't enjoy the fights all that much in the first place. It's just a giant time sink imo (plus the frustration RAAAWR). Every fight is basically a tetris fight where they test how long you can keep it up, and it goes on and on and on. I just wanted to go through the content, so I ended playing on Hard.
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First Bioware game i've bought and felt really let down by. Kind of hoping its not a sign of things to come. I think development time was its biggest problem, Dragon Age Origins was in the making for years. DA2 was rushed.
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Bought this game on release, having finished DA:O before it... But had to really drag myself through it. There's so many inconsistencies and randomness in the story, in the game play, in the difficulty levels, in the interface etc. , basically all the criticism in this thread is spot on. Wow I was so let down .
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Overall I felt like it was quite a letdown. The story was kind of random and had nothing to do with the origins/awakenings universe, heck even the place they go to is completely unrelated.
+ Show Spoiler +You fight a total of 2 (?) dragons in the entire game. And the darkspawn make a cameo-like appearance.
The only thing that was a vast improvement over origins was the talent system. I mean in origins you just drown in talents and abilities. Although I felt like the rogue and the warrior never had the energy to actually do anything resembling a rotation.
The itemisation was stupid. Sometimes the game was suggesting items to be upgrades that clearly wasn't. Sometimes two items with exactly the same stats got different 'ratings' and so on. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Game had its moments, but way too much stuff went south compared to the first one.
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I was disappoint.
I'm sort of a hardcore masochist, so I started on Nightmare right out the gate. I loved the hardest difficulty in DA:O, it was very challenging, and required fine tuning and exp padding through exploration and being generally thorough.
I gave up on Nightmare in DA:2 when I solved it. It turns out most melee mobs can't hit you while you run, so it's just a whole lot of kiting. If you're facing archers, run your army behind something and make'em come to you. Quite a let down. Exploration and being generally thorough don't mean anything anymore either.
The game is either impossible on nightmare, or you abuse the AI, no happy medium like in DA:O. If your tank is tanking, and your DPS are doing their thing, and your crowd control is on point, you should defeat any pull. In Nightmare your tank drops like he's made of paper, and everyone else is stunned in a single hit from any mob.
I'm playing hard now, and after Nightmare it's too easy, but those attack animations are so fly, and I do like a good role play. So I like the game, I just wish I felt compelled to beat it on Nightmare.
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I'm surprised you had that response to DA:O's difficulty and then DA2. Both were completely easy to manipulate, the only difference is I didn't feel any character was overpowered in DA2, unlike DA:O. I felt DA:O's difficulty was far easier in basically every aspect.
However, I didn't like how the difficulty was created in DA2. I can only do a fight so many times while getting my team insta-gibbed by rogues who 1 shot any non-tank before loading a previous save and using a different team or coming back later. Or watching 2 or even 3 of my characters being useless in combat if they're fortitude isn't high enough and a mobs basic attack keeps them permanently woozy.
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this game wasnt as i expected, tho not sure exactly what i expected. either or, it was a good few hours...
i didnt play the first, but i understood the story and it was pretty good. Not spectacular or anything, but i forsure got sucked in.
If I, myself was to rate it between 1 to 5
3.7
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I just saw the PC gamer review of DA2 ( http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/03/08/dragon-age-2-review/ ).
They gave it a 94%!!! The same score they gave Portal 2!
I'm glad that my subscription to PC gamer just ran out this month because that magazine is dead to me now. They had the nerve to say this:
"The best RPG combat ever. Not gaming’s best story, but maybe its best storytelling. Darker, sexier, better."
I feel like I just got punched in the gut.
Edit: HILARIOUS review that also talks about hte PCgamer review.
http://www.videogamessuck.com/review437.html
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On April 29 2011 07:49 I_Love_Bacon wrote: I'm surprised you had that response to DA:O's difficulty and then DA2. Both were completely easy to manipulate, the only difference is I didn't feel any character was overpowered in DA2, unlike DA:O. I felt DA:O's difficulty was far easier in basically every aspect.
However, I didn't like how the difficulty was created in DA2. I can only do a fight so many times while getting my team insta-gibbed by rogues who 1 shot any non-tank before loading a previous save and using a different team or coming back later. Or watching 2 or even 3 of my characters being useless in combat if they're fortitude isn't high enough and a mobs basic attack keeps them permanently woozy.
You didn't find rogues overpowered at all?
I picked one as i always go through a game as a mage and a dw character and rogue literally 1 shots any non named, 2 shots a named and a boss you have to wait about as long as your cds coming up a second time before everything dies. Only thing that really took a while was the rock wraith because i didn't have all the damage talents yet and i let anders and varric die to start just to make it easier to beat the encounter.
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On April 30 2011 11:27 bigjenk wrote:Show nested quote +On April 29 2011 07:49 I_Love_Bacon wrote: I'm surprised you had that response to DA:O's difficulty and then DA2. Both were completely easy to manipulate, the only difference is I didn't feel any character was overpowered in DA2, unlike DA:O. I felt DA:O's difficulty was far easier in basically every aspect.
However, I didn't like how the difficulty was created in DA2. I can only do a fight so many times while getting my team insta-gibbed by rogues who 1 shot any non-tank before loading a previous save and using a different team or coming back later. Or watching 2 or even 3 of my characters being useless in combat if they're fortitude isn't high enough and a mobs basic attack keeps them permanently woozy. You didn't find rogues overpowered at all? I picked one as i always go through a game as a mage and a dw character and rogue literally 1 shots any non named, 2 shots a named and a boss you have to wait about as long as your cds coming up a second time before everything dies. Only thing that really took a while was the rock wraith because i didn't have all the damage talents yet and i let anders and varric die to start just to make it easier to beat the encounter.
Any character the main character plays at is stronger than their counterparts because of the additional stats and talent trees. Varric (or sebastian) can 1 shot things as well with arrow of slaying (Can't think of its name in DA2). Even if they can't insta-kill, if you have the upgraded version and brittle the target first and crit it does insaaaane damage, especially if you weaken it w/ curse first too.
I wandered off point slightly. Any character played as the champion is slightly OP in comparison to its counterparts. I'd certainly say the champion rogue is the best class, bu that's nothing like DA:O rogues or your mage being an arcanewarrior/bloodmage as they were beyond OP when compared.
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I have loved DA2 alot, and I think it is most certainly an improvement on the first. I actual couldn't finish DA:O, because I simply didn't like it. It seemed to lack depth compared to other Bioware games, and it definitely was not a throw back to BG or anything like it. It was it's own boring entity. While some people may be upset that DA2 isn't as "hardcore," while probably having skipped through fights on Insane mode, is probably the dumbest thing about people's accusations, and I've seen enough of that.
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Hey guys, I wrapped up the game last month and recently wrote a review of my own for it. I'd link my wordpress so you could look at cleaner formatting, but I really just want to renew some discussion -- not looking for hits.
+ Show Spoiler +It was on a strong platform Bioware constructed Dragon Age: Origins on – a game of meaty action, rich lore, and nail biting drama. So when players start the sequel, the anxiety understandably sets in. The Grey Warden hero of Ferelden is no longer part of the picture, and the combat initially seems so frantic that you might check whether you indeed bought a Bioware RPG, or if you got the latest installment of Dynasty Warriors by mistake. But this is indeed Dragon Age, it even occurs around the events of Origins, only now it’s from the perspective of one called Hawke. On the run from the Darkspawn, the Hawke family of Ferelden refugees (strictly human, mind you) only narrowly escape the onslaught to find safe haven upon the docks of Kirkwall, a city where the entirety of the game takes place. That’s right, one city. Finding themselves as few among many refugees clogging Kirkwall’s harbors -- and after discovering that their one close relative in the city has squandered the last of the family’s small fortune -- it’s up to you to work the lowly Hawke family up the social ladder. Being forced into a year of lowly mercenary work as a way to gain entrance to the city doesn’t sound like fun, so the game fast forwards to when your contract is up, and thus you’re set free upon the streets of Kirkwall to make a name for yourself. You’ll visit upper class residences, slums, docks, shady alleys, and witness all the social strife packaged with them. The Dalish elves occupy a neglected ghetto, and the chantry (much like a church) hosts charities as well as corruption and secrecy. A garrison of foreign tribal warriors called the Qunari create unease amongst Kirkwall’s leaders, and zealous Templar knights patrol the streets for apostates and illegal wielders of magical power. Many of Dragon Age II’s most dramatic scenarios involve these social dilemmas, who you side with, where you’ll comprise, and what you decide is justice. This all leads to how Hawke became the storied champion of Kirkwall, the game’s backdrop. You can customize your appearance like always, but the default character designs are actually pretty damn sexy for once. The architecture, rich emphasis of warm colors on flags and banners, improved lighting, and flying street debris certainly make it prettier than anything Origins could come up with, but as a game dedicated to just one city, Dragon Age II doesn’t make a strong case for itself. The city doesn’t breathe. There’s simply no hustle and bustle to accommodate the personality of a port city -- it’s just a few motionless characters at every block, or some merchants beside small wooden posts. You wouldn’t expect an empty square was the red lantern district of Kirkwall, but perhaps the one or two woman making flirtatious gestures is supposed to give it away. There are several areas of the city structured in loving ways that have every right for additional detail, but lack it. To say it’s lazy is only making half the point here, as the less than stunning showcase of environments in Origins was hardly enough to sway the enjoyment players had interacting with them. And interact with Kirkwall you will, because it’s much more interesting than it looks, to an extent. Kirkwall looks pretty nice at times, there's just not a whole lot going on. While Origins had extensive sub-plots ripe with moral dilemmas for the player to work through, the sequel has Hawke going around town doing bite sized versions of the same concept. The brevity of the side quests in Dragon Age II are likely part of a perhaps obvious plan to make dialogue drama more accessible to players less keen on sifting through lists of long responses. The game instead adopts the dialogue wheel, a function introduced in Bioware’s Mass Effect franchise that was met with great success. What the dialogue wheel does is simplify your dialogue selections into a wheel of summarized phrases that when chosen, Hawke will expand upon with a fully voice acted response. Admirable voice performances across the board, witty lines, and intense decisions make way for some engaging scenarios, particularly ones involving Kirkwall’s inner and volatile cultural differences. You’ll step in between mages and templar, and it’s your call on who is the misunderstood one here. Why is it your call? Well, you’re really good at fighting. And the game is essentially conversations that cause everyone to suddenly remove the weapon from the sheath. These confrontations make up the game’s short lived main story line, and while they are certainly the most exciting, player choice has little effect on changing the most events in any dramatic fashion. The ending especially, cheats the player into pondering a decision that would shape the very future of the city and its values, but instead ends up being one in the same inevitability. In other cases – the optional side work to do around Kirkwall – the aspects of choice revolve more around the now banal and cheap thrills of dialectic RPGs. You can be nasty or nice in how you manner yourself to those offering you work, and the decision to kill someone or not comes to the forefront of conversation at an almost humorous frequency. It’s a streamlined addiction to start -- like a quick Dragon Age fix -- but carries significantly less moral baggage, and the few gold coins as reward reveal little incentive to pursue another. If Kirkwall felt a bit low budget, then the dungeons beneath it and of its surrounding areas win the award for the cheapest aspect of Dragon Age II. You’ll probably notice the recycled environments within the first hour of the game. Why does this cave seem vaguely familiar? Wasn’t this cellar cleared in the last quest? Boy, everyone seems to live in the same mansion here in Kirkwall. Nearly every instance you enter is re-used, populated with the same enemies, but filled with new chests to loot. The sense of adventure is a bit limited, to put it gently. And the mentioned loot doesn’t make it any better, because Dragon Age still can’t seem to figure it out. You’ll pick up 27 blades called “Dirk” and rings called “Ring” in every visit to these eternal environments. The automatic categorization of junk loot is really the only redeeming improvement Dragon Age II decided to make, otherwise you’ll be sifting through generic magical items (half of which only the main character is allowed to wear), and there’s little sense of reward when outfitting your party. Anders is a mage and respected underground healer, he's also a nut case. But then yes, there’s your party, the real highlight of the game and its script, and that is said while admitting the cast is somewhat hit and miss. There are the forgettable siblings of yours, and the game’s grasp of family drama feels rather forced, but there’s also several relationships worth pursuing. There’s Aveline, the head of the city guard who carries herself with a righteous air around her, but deeply wounded by her failures to protect her husband. She’s also playful, especially when trading her values against those of Varric – your snide and charismatic Dwarven partner who knows the ins and outs of living a life of vice. Most delightful is the banter between these kinds of party members as you browse the city and its outskirts, and seeing how one bounces off another is a fun little game to play in and of itself. It’s easy to grow fond of the smart ass in the party like in Origins, but then there’s also Merril, a gentle Elven mage so naïve and lacking of street sense that she comes off as strikingly adorable in the presence of your more hardened followers. Exploring these relationships can reveal love interests, paths towards bonus character attributes, and can also lead to additional side quests that delve deeper into each personality. What’s arguably going to catch fans off guard the most is the game’s Hollywood like makeover of the combat. Dragon Age II is indeed still a game of hearty pause-and-play tactics where targeting and mitigating the presence of the most dangerous foe is the priority, and it remains fun in these aspects. Immediately noticeable, however, are these thick groups of weaklings, and there’s really no other way to describe them. They have nearly no health, hardly hurt you, and go down in one swipe (perhaps two on harder difficulties) -- and yet they add some gratuity to each battle. Perhaps it serves as a way to get your adrenaline pumping before facing the real enemies, slamming the ground with your great sword to see 5 henchmen go flying. And matching this massacre is the more flagrant animations of your fighters; warriors swing their mallets and swords with great ferocity, rogues throw up smoke bombs and kick them into crowds of enemies, and mages twirl every which way – it’s quite the makeover. You're going to face these same demons a lot, and you're going to look like Jet Li doing so. But then there are the real enemies, and this is actually where the combat begins depending on the difficulty setting. While party composition, positioning (mostly for bosses now), and skill management is more important on harder difficulties, -- making sure you can soak damage as well as dish it out – it’s quite easy to just wipe the floor with whatever group you’re using, even on regular settings. And that’s perhaps the flashy charm of the game’s streamlined nature – enjoy the show, and carry on. Crank the challenge up and you’ll certainly get what’s closer to traditional party based tactics, but then some new annoyances pop up along with it. For one, you’ll start to notice the flamboyant attacks of your characters seem a bit cheap and comical, since the stronger enemies don’t seem to take much damage at all from auto-attacks, even if you’ve been piling points into your warrior’s strength all game. And then there’s Dragon Age II’s system of enemy waves, one coming after another at certain moments. When is the battle going to end? You just don’t know. Exciting from one angle, and frustrating at another. One very mentionable problem is that you can’t zoom out to a useful bird’s eye level (even on the PC version). As you’re barely tickling the health bars of the strong melee enemies in the front rows -- after having just annihilated the flock of weak ones -- a powerful mage may spawn in the back of the room. These guys are pretty much the biggest threat in the game, and you’ll die often times simply because you didn’t know they were invited to the party. Bandits still jump you in alleyways, spiders still string down from cavern ceilings, and naughty mages still summon their hell spawn in dark cellars – this is still Dragon Age. How the game manages to stay interesting when the above listed are almost literally the game’s entire cast of enemies is a mystery. Although perhaps this is thanks to the game’s various skill trees offered to each class, and even exclusive ones to specific characters. Rogues can focus on party strengthening auras, a powerful yet fragile stealth approach, or crowd control effects that leave enemies confused. Leveling Fenris, a grim elf warrior that lacks a sense of humor, gives him the basic warrior tree options, as well as his exclusive arcane warrior skills – melee mixed with magic. There are many different ways to approach enemies with these options in mind, even if the enemies may not be as interesting themselves. The trees themselves are really light and simple, but this also makes starting new games and trying new builds a painless affair. In other words, mages may not be the most interesting class to play anymore by default – though they probably still are. Looking at current trends, the new and streamlined approach to RPGs comes as no surprise to Dragon Age II. The traditional experience of party management and moral dilemma is still there, admirably more accessible to newcomers, and somewhat wholesome to veterans. But you’ll sift through intense decisions you’ll forget moments after, through slickly choreographed battles and new adventures, but ones that you’ll learn to approach with little curiosity or excitement. It passes as a Dragon Age fix, but an empty one by many standards set before it. And while it’s reasonable to say Dragon Age II gave its new structure some effort, it was not always of the most earnest kind. 7.0/10
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