Dragon Age 2 - Here be spoilers.

[FatuousTwat]

My big problem is that we already have a Mass Effect. We don't need another one, especially when there are so few games like DA1 coming out (zero).



Edit: I've played ME1 and 2 several times, and enjoy them.

[Ingmar]

Paelos:

Nah, it is mostly mouse and action bar, my sense is that a gamepad would be worse than using a mouse (but I haven't tried).

[Paelos]

That's my biggest concern. An example was that port of Fable they did to the PC that just sucked. Awful awful consoly controls.

I won't spend $60 on DA2, but $30 may be in my range when it goes on sale in the Fall after lake season.

[ajax34i]

To me, it all sounds desperate, as in "we're gonna get fired if the scores are this low."  Maybe they don't care about the Internet and they just want to fool Riccitiello.

[Merusk]

To me, it all sounds desperate, as in "we're gonna get fired if the scores are this low."  Maybe they don't care about the Internet and they just want to fool Riccitiello.

They were bought by EA. Being fired was always going to be the final outcome as soon as the first signature hit that contract.

That's my biggest concern. An example was that port of Fable they did to the PC that just sucked. Awful awful consoly controls.

I won't spend $60 on DA2, but $30 may be in my range when it goes on sale in the Fall after lake season.

The controls aren't consoly in anything but the lack of a 3/4 view.  Sure, some folks are complaining about wsad not having a strafe mode but I never noticed because I use pause & click to move for positioning.  The only time I was using WSAD was in the between-fight runarounds.  If you fight live-action it almost plays like WoW with CD management and targeting of mobs enemies.

[Ingmar]

I miss the 3/4 view less than I thought I would, too. In retrospect I rarely zoomed DA:O out to full overhead very often, but I thought not having the option would be more bothersome than it turns out to be, the fact that area effects now have a circle to show you where they'll hit helps with that a lot.

[Merusk]

Well, that and you can pick an enemy to target the spell as the center of the effect.

[Paelos]

I didn't use tactical view much for combat in DA:O anyway because shit could shoot at you outside your view range. It would have been fine otherwise.

[Tannhauser]

Well you can set tactics to do some pretty cool stuff.  You can play Hawke and the other three will go to town.  The cross-class combos are hella fun but sometimes I wonder if some are bugged. 

The camera can annoy me though.  Placing AoE's can sometimes be aggravating. 

The writing and the combat are the standout features.  But yeah, a lot of the game is kinda meh due to the cut corners.  It's not fair to give the game a 0 because it's not Baldur's Gate. 

[Ingmar]

I did discover one odd thing, the game difficulty is not tied to your save games apparently, it is just a global options setting. I think I played the second half of the game on hard without realizing it, because I had started up a second character and set it to hard to play later.

[kildorn]

I really do not get the metacritic drama over DA2.

It's not an amazing game. It's a good game. Like, objectively, it's a good game in it's own right. The writing is solid, the combat is okay, the characters are well done, and copy and paste or no on the areas, the environments are well done.

It's at worst, a 7/10. The fact that it came out of the gate with a 3/10 user rating is just screaming "some people lack perspective", and that bioware would even attempt to wade into that screams "bioware employs some idiots who are both terrible at shilling, and value their metacritic rating far too much"

But even gaming mailing lists that are usually quite civil about games they like or dislike are completely polarized on DRAGON AGE 2 IS THE WORST GAME TO EVER BE CREATED. SPORE WAS A BETTER GAME! crap.

[rk47]

Just made a STR & CON mage. I'm planning to create a Plate wearing - Blood Mage. See how it works. :)

[amiable]

Just made a STR & CON mage. I'm planning to create a Plate wearing - Blood Mage. See how it works. :)

What weapon are you planning on weilding?  Mages can only use staves, which unfortunately have a magic requirement....

Another complaint I have about this game is that they really shaft bloodmages (and all off-spec builds) with the dual attribute requirements for armor.  You really are railroads into attribute build for every class (at least if you want to war something beyond your starting equipment)

[Tebonas]

So, I got the game box, and luckily the Signature Edition stuff is indeed just a serial number that works with the Steam version.

Since I didn't play around with that particual build yet, are Sword and Board Warriors viable in the later game or are they completely missing the AOEs to deal with multiple waves of enemies?

[caladein]

What weapon are you planning on weilding?  Mages can only use staves, which unfortunately have a magic requirement....

There are a handful of physical damage/+attack staves that I can only assume you actually hit people with.

[Sjofn]

The physical staves also pew pew. I am not a big fan of the dual stat requirements on some shit either, that's something I wouldn't hesitate to mod right the hell out if someone created such a beast. It especailly irks me on a rogue though, needing 40 cunning to unlock/disarm anything you come across is annoying to hit if you wanted to put points in anything besides dex (which of course you need to wield anything decent) as well. Like, you know, con.

[Merusk]

Yeah that was a huge nuisance.  Varric was my lockpicker.  As such, he took a LOT of dirt naps in tough fights because he lacked the HP to make it to the next potion or heal CD.

[tmp]

Since I didn't play around with that particual build yet, are Sword and Board Warriors viable in the later game or are they completely missing the AOEs to deal with multiple waves of enemies?

They get handful of AoE abilities, plus their auto-attack is actually AoE as well (just smaller arc than the 2hand weapons)

One nice combination is to have weapon + shield warrior with upgraded shield slam (which is 100% guaranteed to put "stagger" effect on handful of enemies) and have a mage with upgraded lighting attack (which deals something like 600% damage to staggered targets)  If you spend a second before with said mage dropping the walking bomb on one of these guys you can wipe entire wave in literally 3 hits. And if that's not enough to kill them all there's force mage talent which upgraded deals 900% damage to staggered enemies and is also AoE...

[Sjofn]

Yeah that was a huge nuisance.  Varric was my lockpicker.  As such, he took a LOT of dirt naps in tough fights because he lacked the HP to make it to the next potion or heal CD.

Yeah, he was my lockpicker too, partly because I didn't have to worry about upgrading his dex enough to wield a new weapon like I did with Sebastian and Isabella (not that she was a concern for me in my first playthrough, I sort of ignored her).

[K9]

Do a significant number of people actually use metacritic as an aide to decision making?

[Reg]

I sure don't. The opinions I read on forums like F13 and Qt3 are what I use to decide on what I'm going to buy if I have any doubts.

[Paelos]

Do a significant number of people actually use metacritic as an aide to decision making?

I use it to search for bug-related complaints. If it's usual stupidity over stuff this seems to be about, then no.

If the game is buggy, crashes, or a lot of complaints are leveled at how it runs, I'm out.

[Mazakiel]

Just made a STR & CON mage. I'm planning to create a Plate wearing - Blood Mage. See how it works. :)

What weapon are you planning on weilding?  Mages can only use staves, which unfortunately have a magic requirement....

Another complaint I have about this game is that they really shaft bloodmages (and all off-spec builds) with the dual attribute requirements for armor.  You really are railroads into attribute build for every class (at least if you want to war something beyond your starting equipment)

Having to work essentially three stats as you level does make for some tough stretches, but overall blood mages can still work pretty well.  You just need to keep an eye out for the items that provide additional mp for each HP you use to cast spells.  You can find rings as random stuff for sale on vendors, and there's a quest reward necklace as well.  The biggest hurdle I had was that it was a bit of a slow build until you got a few points into the tree to get the two HP regen abilities and hemorrhage.  Once that was done, it was a pretty nice setup. 

[Samprimary]

I really, really, really dislike the terrain and map repetition.

I mean, really. Some repetition is fine. It's an option. Reusing assets is fine. But this game is the same five or six mapsets and one city reused for hundreds of quests. It's absolutely overboard. Everyone who is playing it ends up having memorized literally every point of every reused map where the enemies are going to appear because it's a bit of a clearing.

It's just such a bad sign that they would resort to that.

[Ingmar]

DA:O had a 5 year dev cycle, this one had about 1 year from what I've read. That's basically what it comes down to I think, the art and level design stuff always seems to be the most time-consuming part of these things from what I can tell (once the toolsets and such are in place, anyway), and Bioware has never spread themselves this thin before on different projects and faster release dates on things. I would have laughed at you if you told me 5 years ago that Bioware would ever be able to put out 5 RPGs in 4 years but that's what is happening with ME/DA/ME2/DA2/ME3. All the DLC probably adds up to another game worth of content all told, too.

That the writing is just getting *better* is kind of amazing when I think about that, actually.

[Sjofn]

Speaking of bugs! Isabella and Sebastian are bugging out Hawke in a really nasty way, Isabella moreso than Sebastian (imo). Once their friend passive activates, it doesn't actually give you the bonus ... but it properly subtracts it whenever you take them out of your group. And it stacks. Eventually it gets really ugly. Isabella's is attack speed, so it's a lot more noticable, Sebastian is damage resistance.

Here is a thread about it if you're curious.

[yoh]

So, after one and a half DA2 playthroughs I finally wanted to finish Origins where I got distracted about 40 hours in. I really, really miss the voiced protagonist and snarky douche dialog choices. 

[Samprimary]

Gravitic Ring has a bug with sound, where enemies caught in the center start making an impact sound a billion times a second and i have to take off my headphones before it deafens me.

Which is really, really annoying, because Gravitic Ring is the best skill in the game and opens all my fights.

[tmp]

DA:O had a 5 year dev cycle, this one had about 1 year from what I've read. That's basically what it comes down to I think, the art and level design stuff always seems to be the most time-consuming part of these things from what I can tell (once the toolsets and such are in place, anyway), and Bioware has never spread themselves this thin before on different projects and faster release dates on things.

They had tripled staff for cutscenes in this one compared to DAO. I don't know if it's really the matter of spreading themselves thin, or making certain decisions what to focus on.

I mean, it's to the point where they even gave dwarf females the boot

[Ingmar]

A number of models that were in the first one aren't in this one, there are no genlocks, (blight) wolves, werewolves (although there's no reason there would be), ash wraiths, halla, nugs, probably something I'm forgetting. There is concept art for DA2 versions of female dwarves (and qunari) floating around so maybe the models for those will be done in time for DLC or something.

EDIT: Don't recall any bears or spiky bears either.

[Tarami]

As you progress, it increasingly becomes D-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-ragon Age II.

[rk47]

What weapon are you planning on weilding?  Mages can only use staves, which unfortunately have a magic requirement....

There are a handful of physical damage/+attack staves that I can only assume you actually hit people with.

Damage is a non concern (I think) If I can cast offensive / healing spells right? It looks fine so far. Haste, Offensive, Barrier buffs are excellent.
Might turn her into Spirit Healer (+10 Con passive)  + Force Mage (+100 Fort)

[Ingmar]

Your spells all scale with magic I think, so you'll want a good amount of that on top of the str/con.

[caladein]

Magic increases damage and attack values for mages. For all classes, it increases magic resistance, which absorbs a proportion of damage from magical attacks and determines the duration of hostile magical effects.

[rk47]

That's true. I went attack party buff, weapon enchantment, arcane shield (party defense buff improved), rock armor, heal, haste, barrier and support maintained abilities which does not scale with magic. :)

I'm not doing damage directly, so I think..I should be OK.