Dragon Age 2 - Here be spoilers.

[Riggswolfe]

I quite enjoyed the demo. I dug the voiced protagonist as ME has totally ruined silent protagonists for me. I enjoyed the brief character interaction we got and the combat seemed much improved over DA:O. I also greatly enjoyed the new artstyle which made it go from Generic Fantasy 101 to well, Dragon Age as it's own thing. I also liked the new skill trees.

Only three things bothered me:

1) The jump from "we're going to this city" to "hey, help me come fight this duel even though we've never talked before". I'm hoping that was just a way of showing us some content a bit further in and not how the game handles it because it was jarring to me.

2) The tactics screen kept randomly changing what I had selected when I'd click on the right drop down.

and

3) This one is extremely shallow but the hottest woman in the whole game so far is my sister? Well...damn.

[Sjofn]

The jump is just for the demo. I thought it was pretty obvious that's not how it really works, as you don't even talk to Varric, but I guess not as I've seen a lot of people fret that it's really that way. But they said in the demo feedback thread somewhere that it's only like that for the demo, they just wanted to you be able to fuck around on a higher character for a little bit.

[Ingmar]

There's a weird bug with selecting things on a couple of the menu screens - tactics, and clicking on character portraits on the level-up screen. Seems like the sort of thing that should be easily fixable though.

[Lantyssa]

3) This one is extremely shallow but the hottest woman in the whole game so far is my sister? Well...damn.

I'm sure there's a mod that will fix that, too!

[tmp]

Maybe darkspawn evolved to explode in a shower of blood for just that reason.

Next step: corrosive blood.

[Mazakiel]

3) This one is extremely shallow but the hottest woman in the whole game so far is my sister? Well...damn.

I'm sure there's a mod that will fix that, too!

It'll be like the Imoen mod all over again.

[Nevermore]

Maybe darkspawn evolved to explode in a shower of blood for just that reason.

It worked for Draconians!

[PalmTrees]

Flemeth must use a ton of hairspray to make her quad-horn hair-do stay in place.

Only played through once with a mage so far, but it still looks like aoe is king. The no friendlyt fire made it feel as if I was playing with some cheesy godmode cheat. Hopefully by the time I get around to playing this it'll have been modded to be a bit more flexible. I'm not interested in the rest of hardest difficulty, just  ff.

And hopefully someone will have gotten rid of pirate lady's fugly chin piercing. Between the huge boobs, cleavage and shirt/no pants outfit she's supposed to be the sexy one, but that piercing ... just go put a plate in your lip already. Although making custom outfits in blender and nifscope was half the fun in New Vegas. Might be as simple as editing her texture file, so many painted on straps and buckles in those outfits.

[Merusk]

3) This one is extremely shallow but the hottest woman in the whole game so far is my sister? Well...damn.

I'm sure there's a mod that will fix that, too!

It'll be like the Imoen mod all over again.

Wow, totally not what I thought she meant.  I figured she meant reskin/ remodels like folks have done in the past for all the 'not hot enough' or 'damnit she's got clothes on' wank-fantasy of teenage boys.

[Sjofn]

The was the clue for me that Lantyssa meant the more depressing option. 

I would totally install a no-lip-piercing mod for Isabella. Hopefully it would also provide pants. That particular kind of piercing has never done it for me, it always makes me think they look like they have a mole or zit or something.

I bet that if there's a way to mod in FF for hard rather than nightmare, that'll go up pretty quickly. I just suspect that because they added SO much AE in (seriously, 2h warriors do it passively), they figured it just wasn't going to be fun to have FF on anything but the cockpunch setting. I would've prefered the graduated FF method they used in DA:O though (none, 50%, 100%), although the suggestion to have it be an entirely different toggle would be ideal (although I assume it's NOT because it makes balancing even more annoying).

[Lantyssa]

Yes, my smiley is the clue as to my meaning.

That type of piercing isn't my favorite, and it doesn't normally bother me, but they made the ball way larger than it should be.  Also being gold makes it stand out for some reason.  I couldn't stop staring at it, in a bad way.  Isabella should be a perfect fit for me.  Pirate lass with piercings, a nice corset, tough as nails but with a soft spot, but... it's like they tried too hard.  Worst piercing choice, balloons for a chest, spectre level badass, and she saves puppies, too!

[Paelos]

2h warriors do it passively

Someone put that on a T-Shirt, stat.

[Nevermore]

Yes, my smiley is the clue as to my meaning.

That type of piercing isn't my favorite, and it doesn't normally bother me, but they made the ball way larger than it should be.  Also being gold makes it stand out for some reason.  I couldn't stop staring at it, in a bad way.  Isabella should be a perfect fit for me.  Pirate lass with piercings, a nice corset, tough as nails but with a soft spot, but... it's like they tried too hard.  Worst piercing choice, balloons for a chest, spectre level badass, and she saves puppies, too!

So in other words, they tried to be subtle. 

[Strazos]

Isabella should be a perfect fit for me.  Pirate lass with piercings, a nice corset, tough as nails but with a soft spot,

She would still have square nails.

[Sophismata]

You can turn the persistent blood off in the options. What does R even do? I certainly don't feel required to spam it. What do you mean by tactical zoom? Seems like I can zoom in or out far enough to manage things fine?

There was no option to turn the blood off. 'R' is the attack nearest key, used every time something dies or my character randomly stops attacking after his animation sequence. Tactical zoom is when you zoom back far enough to get an overhead view of the battlefield and helps tremendously with placing effects and AoE's. It is nearly impossible to accurately drop an AoE at the edge of the playing field because of the low camera angle. The tac. zoom was a large selling point for DA 1, linking it to the infinity engine games - I am mildly surprised they removed it from 2.

Also, odds are the demo is not any easier than the end game.

[Ingmar]

Options->Gameplay->Enable Persistent Gore is the setting. (You can also turn off the 'friendly/snarky/bitch' conversation icons there, for people who don't like those.)

EDIT: As for targeting AEs, the things that will be hit by it have their names/healthbars light up when you are placing the target zone, so it shouldn't really be too difficult to aim things. I'm not sure why there's not full zoomed out overhead either, but zoomed out as far as you can now and rotating the camera up a little bit seems to cover it fine for me.

[Sjofn]

2h warriors do it passively

Someone put that on a T-Shirt, stat.

Close your eyes and think of Fereldan, Paelos.

[Sophismata]

Options->Gameplay->Enable Persistent Gore is the setting. (You can also turn off the 'friendly/snarky/bitch' conversation icons there, for people who don't like those.)

Weird. I cannot change any of my options aside from inverting the mouse and using subtitles. Maybe checking file integrity will help. Thank you.

With the targeting, my problem is taking travel time into account for things like fireball, since the original targets aren't always in the new AoE after the (admittedly short) casting and projectile travel time.

[caladein]

They're disabled for the demo although I imagine they'll be on when it launches, much like "hide helmets".  Which let me tell you, is pretty damn welcome.

[FatuousTwat]

To those complaining about huge AMERICAN TEE TEES,

[tmp]

I couldn't stop staring at it, in a bad way.

I found the pair of hindenburgs on her chest effective distraction. For better or worse.

Varric is an unreliable narrator.

That only applies to the exaggerated five minutes in the beginning. Then they change to smaller, DD mode.

[Velorath]

I liked that although the dialog wheel still has the typical good and evil responses, this time around instead of the bland neutral response they seem to have added a smart-ass response instead.

[Riggswolfe]

3) This one is extremely shallow but the hottest woman in the whole game so far is my sister? Well...damn.

I'm sure there's a mod that will fix that, too!

It'll be like the Imoen mod all over again.

Yeah...that mod rul...errr...what? It's not like she was really your sister! Well, maybe half, but being the child of a God doesn't really count does it?

[Sheepherder]

Text in the game suggests it does.

[Paelos]

Seems like the updated the FB game in the recent push. I like it better.

[Pezzle]

I never could bring myself to finish Dragon Age.  Four different games and inevitably at some point my brain would rawrarrrgghhh out and not take it anymore.  The game was enjoyable enough.  Maybe part of it was reaching a point where finishing was just a formality.  That cannot be the only trigger though, I have finished MEII three or four times.  Maybe I can finish this one.  Not encouraged though, the demo just crashed!

[tmp]

DA2 is reported to be shorter (reviews so far indicate it's somewhere between 30-50 hours long and half that if you don't do the side stuff) so that may help with completing it.

[Ingmar]

DA2 is reported to be shorter (reviews so far indicate it's somewhere between 30-50 hours long and half that if you don't do the side stuff) so that may help with completing it.

Shorter than Origins, longer than ME2 is what one of the devs said.

[Strazos]

I've never met anyone who didn't do side quests...

[tmp]

I tend to cherry-pick the side quests based on what fits the character. This way there's still something fresh left for second playthrough... well, if the game is actually interesting enough to warrant one.

[Sjofn]

I don't go obsessively looking for sidequests like some people do (INGMAR) so usually my second or third playthrough is when I decide to be a completionist. Like Mass Effect 2, I didn't even bother looking for the random planet shit until the third time through I think.

[Strazos]

I tend to run around and do everything the first time through, as I usually don't do many second playthroughs.

[Hawkbit]

This seems to be running much better on my PC than PS3.  Is there any reason that DA1 should have been played on the same system as DA2?  Like porting in saves, or anything?

[caladein]

Like porting in saves, or anything?

http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Dragon_Age_II#Save_transfer

At least on PC there should be an equivalent to Masseffectsaves soon enough so if you're coming TO PC, you shouldn't have much of an issue finding a reasonable match.

[Sjofn]

They're kindly providing three different backstories, too, instead of just having a single default like Mass Effect had.