Dragon Age IIFollow

It loaded fine for me earlier, but now I get the same XML error. Huh.

ETA: It was this comic earlier.

Edited, Aug 17th 2010 1:45pm by Majivo

Okay, I'm now some 30-40% into the game (DA:O) and so far it's been pretty interesting. There are some things about the game that's starting to annoy me by now, though.

Min/max level in this game is crazy. I find myself having to pick and choose between train loads of gear every other level. Will the bonus on this weapon outweigh the raw DPS, will the fatigue on this gear outweigh the protection, etc. Perhaps it's all part of single player roleplaying games, but it's bothersome and gets old after the first dozen times. I preferred Mass Effect (yes, I'm comparing the two because both are BioWare roleplaying games) where you just put on a suit and went to town.

Companions you can't use. Really, I've been using the same four people since the beginning, despite having picked up three others along the road (and I apparently get one more). And because I didn't go to the Circle first, I ended up specializing Morrigan into a healer, because that's what we lacked. I had to download and install a mod so I could respec without restarting the game after finding out that Wynne is the healer companion. Ace.

It's a personal thing, because I hated it in Mass Effect as well. I picked characters based on their comments during exploration, not their usefulness in a given scenario. I have no idea if running around with a Warrior and two Rogues is better than a Warrior, a dog and a Mage in certain scenarios, so I just put together a team of versatility and never switch around. Basically Morrigan, Alistair and Lel-something. Sometimes I change around Lel and the dog because the voice actor on Lel is horrible (hate her accent), but the dog feels so useless when I already have an AOE stun in the group (Morrigan).

Basically I need a tank (since I'm not one), a healer and a DPS, preferably ranged. This leaves me with Leliana (archer), Morrigan (healer), Alistair (templar tank) and, well, me, the melee DPS guy.

Speaking of DPS, it's pretty painful in this game. I'm running around in barely any armor because if I wear the cool stuff (like Juggernaut), my fatigue level means I get to use one attack and then I'm auto-attacking for 3 minutes.

And holy sh*t the micro-management in this game is crazy. I had to max out combat tactics on each character just to get enough variables for a random fight. Morrigan heals, but also restores stamina/mana, stuns and snares, but every spell needs a different trigger.

I think I preferred Mass Effect where you just told your companions what guns to use and what abilities to cycle through at will.

And a fun bit. After doing some questing in the Dalish camp, I came across some tombstones that summoned some kind of boss (part of the Juggernaut gear thing). Those things wiped the ground with my party, literally. So I enabled developer console, added some 20 levels to my characters and even after getting 3/4 Juggernaut pieces, my tank still took a royal beating.

It's kind of silly the way there's no hand-holding in the game with regards to progression. I went from the starting area to the nearest area (Dalish camp) and I get smashed to hell by enemies apparently much more difficult than what I am otherwise fighting in that area.

Let me finish off this massive pile of bile with a small comment on the controls:

Pain.

Really, right-clicking to attack? And if you miss the target, because your character is moving all over the place while auto-attacking, and right-click the ground, he runs to that position? Tab doesn't select the nearest target, so I have to click every new target. And left-click does nothing for the camera, which means there's no free-view while running, which is annoying.

I thought it was a 3rd person shooter like Mass Effect, but it's more of a Diablo/Neverwinter Nights clone, really. Zooming out and moving your characters around like they're in Fallout or Diablo is kinda... neat, though a massive waste of graphics. And what's with the blood spatter? My group killed a wolf and every single one of them were dripping with blood from head to toe. Christ almighty.

Still, the story is enough to keep me captivated, so it's probably not as bad as I make it sound. I'm just sad that the controls feel so clunky and stupid. It's like the guys at BioWare haven't played any MMO out there and as such don't realize that Tab-selecting is the way of the future in anything 3rd person related.

Would be nice if you didn't have to target anything at all, even.

Edited, Aug 18th 2010 5:00pm by Mazra

Yea, I'm in the Dalish camp right now and last time I played was actually when I got raped by the tombstone guy. I think I'm going to finish up the part of the quest I'm on now then go somewhere else for a while.

Agreed. There might be some subtle clues where to go if you read any of the stuff, but i skipped almost all of it.

its not just levels though, its gear and abilities. Dalish camp gives some of the better gear, overall, from the 4 areas. Its harder to go into with fresh gear, and very little abilities.

Without a tank, my healer gets mauled. Without a healer, everyone gets mauled. Tank, healer, DPS setup is cookie cutter way to go. Sure, I could probably do it with an atypical group, but this is my first time through the game.



Again, first time playing the game, but I'm curious what your companions actually do in a fight if you don't use tactics or anything.



I prefer to use cheats when I hit a brick wall in my games, yes. Saves me from a lot of hair-pulling due to odd auto-saves. I'm lame like that, but please tell me why anyone is supposed to kick my *** in this game? My *** got kicked, I wiped and had to start over from 40 minutes back. If you meant that he was supposed to kick my *** because I wasn't supposed to gain access to the Juggernaut gear yet, then aha... but the game doesn't exactly say that anywhere. It just places a tombstone on your path and when you interact with it, some dude spawns and it's either win or restart from 40 minutes ago again.

I had no idea I was supposed to save that special treat of hair-pulling for 20 levels later, so I just did it the fast way and he still kicked my ***. Alistair still gets his *** kicked with the Juggernaut gear on, so it really wasn't worth the pain.



I'm used to linear gameplay, not "run around on your own, but don't go here, here or here, or you'll have to restart from 40 minutes ago". That's not an improvement to gameplay, at least not to me. Considering the overall difficulty of the Dalish quests, they could have easily made the game more linear without sacrificing that "free roam" (which is complete placebo here anyway) the critics love so much.



My own. I'm not saying it's BioWare's fault for not making the game the way I thought it would be, but every single video and screenshot I had seen prior to purchasing the game gave the indication that it was a 3rd person game, not a isometric game with Crysis computer requirements.



And they're not any better. This game handles like an isometric game, but wants to be a 3rd person shooter. It's just awkward. Especially since you can't play the game in pure isometric mode. Clunky camera angles cause your characters to sometimes get hidden behind a wall, and when you move the camera around, you completely mess up the minimap and I lost my orientation so fast.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's a piece of crap game. I'm just saying there are some things that annoy me. I could mention just as many things that I like. Human flaw to only focus on the negative bits.

Edit: Come to think of it, if the game had Tab-targeting, I'm sure I'd enjoy it so much more. A lot of the negative parts in my posts stem from frustration, which again stems from me trying to target something in a mass of companions and darkspawn, only to have my character spin around in circles, run around the cluster of people and come to halt on the yellow dot on the ground where I thought I was clicking a target.

After writing my first post, I noticed that the game has auto-targeting once you're engaged in combat. So once the first target is dead, it will automatically switch to a new, which is nice. Now, if only I didn't have to use my mouse to target stuff. I feel like the game is trying to turn me into a keyboard-turner and mouse-clicker. Which is reverse evolution, if anything.

Edited, Aug 18th 2010 8:42pm by Mazra

Yeah those Revenants are a bit tough if you just try and hack and slash faceroll them at first. Like KT said I enjoyed pausing the game for the tough encounters and managing each character individually. It can make a world of difference in the tough fights.

I did like crafting complex tactics to have the other members in the party play well for normal encounters too. Both were fun.

The difficulty scaling in this game is weird sometimes. In the beginning on my first play where I was tank we could barely beat a pack of bandits in the grass field. So I slowed down, used line of site on the archers and pulled the melee over the hill in the middle of the field. Thinking to myself, "Cool I have to use smart pulls!" *Edit oh and it helps a ton if you set your people up and then tell them to "Hold" with the hand command. Otherwise they run in and Leeroy everything.

Later on when I was all buffed up and could just throw down a storm of the century to annihilate hordes of darkspawn I had to turn the game up to harder and specifically resist just aoe nuking every pull hehe.

But yeah those Rev's need you to be geared a bit as tank. You can skip them easily and complete the area. Then come back and "tickle the tombs" so to speak. They are meant to be a "surprise I'm gonna kick your ***" boss encounter. :)





Edited, Aug 18th 2010 12:37pm by Shojindo

My only real issue (playing on the 360) was looting or picking up things on the ground. It was difficult sometimes to position my character exactly right to loot a corpse, and heaven forbid another group member decided to stand on the corpse.

Also, my graphics got wonky a few times, and that bothered me.

Thats the spirit! lol



Indeed it was. Have you only done the dalish part or have you done the entire redcliffe arc?

Heh, Oghren was a major revitalizer of the game for me. His idle dialogue with the ladies can be pretty funny at times.

YOu can't loot the mobs until your spell affect wears off. Like if you freeze them. It's weird but not a real big deal.

In other news enjoy some pretty CGI:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xx0pU-B_yA&feature=player_embedded

Yay, a warrior mage guy or something.

I enjoy playing an offensive Templar in Dragon Age because it gives me spell casts and sweet weaponry at the same time, but the Templar is a bit too defensive to really offer anything compared to the Berserker.