Dragon Age 2 - Here be spoilers.

[Njal]

I'm almost done I think. In general really liking the game.

Likes

Some really good writing for many of the companions
The intermissions with Varric relating the story to the Sister esp the bits where you get to be a pretend kickass overpowered person until she gets Varric to tell what really happened.
I like the overall main plot as things keep getting worse no matter what you do.
Consequences for choices
Despite the less realistic combat I still like the new version it flows well and makes you feel badass without being too overpowered
If you choose a different face it changes your family members faces to be similar

Dislikes

Cut and paste areas. Not too bad but still they could have made things more varied.
Some things you ought to be able to question about but can't
Romance feels very well done the first time but then it's yeah we can't talk about that now

Yeah the darkspawn suck too.

[kildorn]

Re: darkspawn:

I think it's their movement more than the art direction. They went from mean dangerous killers to .. these comically lanky things that wave their arms around while walking. They seriously look like they're trying to do an adult's best impression of a monster under your bed while chasing you around yelling BOOGA BOOGA!

[MuffinMan]

I think they animated the darkspawn after the putty patrol from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

[Sjofn]

I like the overall main plot as things keep getting worse no matter what you do.

God, that needs to be in 20 foot high letters. It's both awesome and depressing. Crapsack world indeed.

[kildorn]

"Our city was destroyed by the darkspawn, where shall we go?" "Let's go well out of our way to take a tiny slave ship looking thing to a city with crying statues of slaves at the front door, and the most depressing murals known to man on every wall!" "Oooh, I bet it's covered in random dead bodies and skeletal corpses, too!"

[Njal]

Oh yeah that reminds me of another thing I don't like. Crappy ships. Bioware really does sucky looking ships. These ones are about 30' long and look like they would sink on a moderate sized lake in a rain shower.

However going to the city your mother was born in where you're supposed to be nobles sounds like a reasonable plan even if it is a depressing shithole.

[Sjofn]

"Our city was destroyed by the darkspawn, where shall we go?" "Let's go well out of our way to take a tiny slave ship looking thing to a city with crying statues of slaves at the front door, and the most depressing murals known to man on every wall!" "Oooh, I bet it's covered in random dead bodies and skeletal corpses, too!"

When your local mine is called the Bone Yard (or whatever, Bone Something), your city might have some issues.

[Bunk]

Sleep or no sleep, I can't imagine how fast some people can play these games. In the two days I've had it, I've probably put in seven or eight hours and I just hit seventh level. I haven't even met half of the companions yet.

I think it might be partly due to the fact that I've spent close to two of those eight hours just staring at the level up screens, deciding what abilities to take.

[Njal]

Well I was off sick for most of Tuesday and all of Wednesday ... actually I really was sick. And yes I played about 20 hours in that time. I'm up to L18 so yes I'm obsessive when I get a game I like.

[Strazos]

I think they animated the darkspawn after the putty patrol from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

Wow, I was JUST thinking of this when Kildorn mentioned it in his post...and then you seemingly read my mind and went back in time to preempt my post. 

[rk47]

They really need to tone down the blood-splosions. And not getting what I expected from dialogue choices, just like Mass Effect.
I'm playing Archer Hawke just to keep things fresh, and they still explode from arrows. 
And weapon swapping is gone. I tried to find it. There must an option inside somehow. But...no...I have to open inventory to swap daggers in just to activate backstab. WHY?

So, Rogue Hawke + 3 Tempest Mages just to zerg past the game. There was very little sense of crisis. It was all 'I'm a poor guy and trying to make it to the top' feel. Not bad. But not really great game it could be. If they're going to solve itemization with DLCs, then Bioware really went the EA route.

[tmp]

And weapon swapping is gone. I tried to find it. There must an option inside somehow. But...no...I have to open inventory to swap daggers in just to activate backstab. WHY?

Probably because they figured with everyone but Hawke being stuck with single weapon style there's no need to bother. That's one less button to make and debug

[Ingmar]

I can count on one hand the number of times I weapon swapped in DA:O, I suspect they left it out because almost nobody used it anyway.

[Fordel]

I tried to used it in DA1, it fucking sucked.

[tmp]

I can count on one hand the number of times I weapon swapped in DA:O, I suspect they left it out because almost nobody used it anyway.

My warrior swapped routinely between 2-hander, dual wield and shield + weapon in DAO. Effectively tripling available amount of crits and stuns.

[Sjofn]

If I was feeling EXTREMELY sassy in DA:O, I would put a few points into archery and weapon swap when we were fighting little things I didn't feel like running towards. That was rare though.

[Fraeg]

wow, I am really pleased to see all the positive posts.    I heard lots of doom and gloom about this, but sounds like I will pick this up this weekend.

[Ingmar]

As always take my posts with a certain amount of Bioware fanboy filter.

[rk47]

I tried to used it in DA1, it fucking sucked.

It worked for rogues in this game I feel, because you cannot do any backstabs and such without melee weapons equipped.
So the logical thing for a rogue before heading into the fray would be to plink away with a bow, then stealth away after drawing aggro, switch to melee and stab away.

Too bad bioware thinks weapon swapping is too complex and should be removed.
And most random encounter is shit. I don't know what they are trying to achieve with hundreds of dead bandits on the streets. I just put the party on hold, waiting for the next spawn to arrive as they just walk into the meat processing machine.

Also :

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/6459941/

Summary: Suspension of Bioware social account means you cannot activate the game.

Welcome to the future of DRM. You don't own your games anymore.

[Paelos]

As always take my posts with a certain amount of Bioware fanboy filter.

For some reason I read that as Bioware fanboy glitter, and I had a good chuckle.

[Fordel]

I tried to used it in DA1, it fucking sucked.

It worked for rogues in this game I feel, because you cannot do any backstabs and such without melee weapons equipped.
So the logical thing for a rogue before heading into the fray would be to plink away with a bow, then stealth away after drawing aggro, switch to melee and stab away.

Yea, that's a pretty shitty way to have a weapon swap feature in my mind. It wasn't fluid at all, but whatever, me and DA1 combat are just not meant to be, since this is the same game that couldn't figure out running and stabbing simultaneously either.

Is THAT fixed in DA2? :P

[Sjofn]

I tried to used it in DA1, it fucking sucked.

It worked for rogues in this game I feel, because you cannot do any backstabs and such without melee weapons equipped.
So the logical thing for a rogue before heading into the fray would be to plink away with a bow, then stealth away after drawing aggro, switch to melee and stab away.

I found the logical thing to be "continue shooting, as my tank would peel the mob off if I actually pulled aggro somehow" on my archer. Archery was pretty busted all around, though, so the SUPER logical thing for me was "don't spec archery."

And Fordel, you should download the demo to see the combat. I think you'll like it a lot better, but I cannot read your actual mind.

[rk47]

I don't know what's busted with the ambush auto critting on AoE Shots as well. But most encounters end up me just pulling the whole group to the ambush point while I one-shot the weak targets.
If I aggro too much, no biggy, just stealth or throw that miasmic flask. Ideally, I would want to switch to daggers at that point, but the stupid interface is too retarded.

Also, I'm getting bored with the gather 50 gold quest. I really can't wait for it to end.

[Strazos]

I haven't gotten too far into the game yet, but if it's a matter of getting a bunch of gold for whatever...they should have just gone the BG2 route and given you plenty of somewhat-epic quests to do that would give you more than enough gold to meet your quota.

[Sjofn]

WAS busted. As in "in DA:O, the game I hardly ever weapon swapped in." Archery is a hoot in DA2.

I just find weapon swapping fiddly and meaningless anyway. I don't have commitment issues, though, I'm totally happy to sink all my points into one kind of thing (like bows) and never flirt with the other thing (stabbin'). If I pull aggro, I anime backflip away, roll my eyes at the backflip, then keep shooting.


EDIT: Also, the point has always been "working your way up from nothing" for DA2. No epic, faceless evil to defeat like a Blight. Shit gets real and things get pretty epic by the end, but the point is you start out as a nobody, doing shitty nobody things to get by. The "non-epic" things I had to do to get the money together didn't bug me in the least ... and some things that start out seeming pretty innocuous will turn out to be pretty important in the next time jump.

[tmp]

Found another spot where they tightened the development budget. Fired the guy who was doing item names and descriptions, apparently.

[Tannhauser]

I'm level 8 and have found a couple of named items, but yeah, typical Bioware, their loot system sucks.  Also, the copy-pasta is bothering me and the map really pisses me off.  I just teleport from spot to spot solving problems like that dude in that old sci-fi show.

Having said that, I'm otherwise really enjoying the game.  As a dual weapon Rogue I'm here and there, slicing and dicing and kicking jugs to freeze enemies.  I can't believe Bioware has me playing and enjoying a twitch toon.  I don't do twitch.  Combat is hella fun and on normal there have been a couple of fairly tough battles. 

The storyline has me interested.  I'm not fighting the archdeamon, I'm fighting my hungry belly!  Kirkwall is OK, but I wish I had a tank to match my...liberated sense of morals.  Everytime time I pause to make a bit of coin Aveline shakes her head and clucks disapprovingly. 

The dialogue tree is more to my liking.  Even though I accidentally flirted with Anders.    I'm snarky all the way down the line and Hawke has some zingers.  New elf girl is cool, but I imagine she spends her nights in her room cutting herself. 

Really looking forward to hitting DA2 hard this weekend.  Deep Roads here I come.

[rk47]

...........I give up. 

I cannot play this game on normal. It's just so boring. Why the need to have 3-4 dozen of spawns for random, meaningless encounters?! Just keep hitting R key pew pew pew.
There is a no sense of reward, the items have almost no characteristics to them and I really am not looking forward to any glorious equipment for my party because 66% of the drops are unusable.

I'm just gonna set it to 'casual' and skip till the end. Maybe hack the game so I can wear different armor classes to see the models. So very disappointed.

[Paelos]

I've unlocked 4 items on the Facebook thingy. I haven't bought the game yet, so I wonder if they are cool.

[Sjofn]

In case people were wondering, the Gibbed save generator works great. In fact, I'd recommend getting it just to create saves mimicking your actual playthroughs, as some of the stuff you can flag doesn't seem to import right (Witch Hunt didn't generate a Finished It save, for example).

[kildorn]

Fordel: running and stabbing isn't fixed, no. It seems more annoying it anything. "BACKSTAB! I hit him so hard he went flying!" ... character, why are you standing there like an idiot, go run after him and stab him now. In addition to the old "running target = move, wind up swing, target moved away and you don't swing"

The up side is, you can cheese the SHIT out of bosses by building a ton of threat and just sidestepping their attacks all night long. Who needs defensive stats and toggles, I have taunt, goad, and a dragon who telegraphs his attacks like it's 1809.

I'm really loving the game, but playing a melee just annoys me. My tank is doing a lot better since I dropped most of her toggles to free up stamina for actually hitting things. I also finally saw the loading screen that fucking explained stamina regen (rogues regen stam by hitting things with autoattacks, warriors regain stam on KILLS (and seemingly only their own kills, which is why tanks are ra..stam starved))

Dear game developers: STOP PUTTING IMPORTANT FUNCTIONAL GAME MECHANIC EXPLANATIONS INTO RANDOM FUCKING LOADING SCREENS. They also explain what stagger, brittle and disorient do besides setting up combos!

[Mazakiel]

All of the stamina/mana regen and effects of stagger/brittle/disorient are detailed in the manual. 

[kildorn]

All of the stamina/mana regen and effects of stagger/brittle/disorient are detailed in the manual. 

What manual, everyone buys digital now, where the manual is off in an outside the game resource.

What the hell happened to tooltips. They put them in for all your stats, how hard is it to say "Stamina is regained by X" when hovering over stamina in the character sheet. Or in the tutorial go "oh, rogues regain stam by doing X" not "hey, play with your powers! This one's a backstab!"

[Paelos]

First thing I do when I load up a game off steam is download the manual pdf and keep it in a file.

Cause I'm a manual dork. 

[tmp]

Fordel: running and stabbing isn't fixed, no. It seems more annoying it anything. "BACKSTAB! I hit him so hard he went flying!" ... character, why are you standing there like an idiot, go run after him and stab him now.

Can be way more irritating if it's you that's getting stabbed -- couple of times now i've been caught into a ridiculous loop of "get hit by rouge, get pushed a step back, spend a second on animation of wriggling on a spot, automatically step back forward, get stabbed again before animation of anything you're trying to do youself plays, rinse, repeat" ... all way to death. For all the supposed instant responsiveness the game is supposed to have now, welp. Never experienced this amount of being out of control in DAO.