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Dragon Age II |OT| The Revenge of Shit Mountain
- Thread starter EviLore
- Start date
Angelus Errare
Banned
FINALBOSS said:
:lol...awesome
BoboBrazil
Member
Well some guys on here said that
you have to fight your party members in the fade, but I didn't I think my team was Anders, Merrill, and Verric. I didn't complete the sword finding thing and I don't think I've even met Sebastian so apparently I missed out on those things???
Count of Monte Sawed-Off
un33dab@dpu$$y
BoboBrazil said:
Maybe it depends on who you take and what you say. I took Anders, Verric and Isabela and had to fight the latter two. I know you don't have to fight Anders because he becomes Justice and can't be swayed. I dunno, maybe I'll try different combos if I ever play the game again.
Oh and one thing that really annoyed the hell out of me. Maybe it's a bug, but I could never figure out those floor trap rooms with the saws and the spears. Whenever I walked on the floor I got hurt even if there weren't saws going back and forth. In fact it seemed the best time to walk on the floor was when the saws were actually moving. In the end I just kept ramming the area with the traps and I would eventualy get through.
Count of Monte Sawed-Off said:
Whaaaaaaaat you can take people with you? In my game I was sent alone. It was still easy beating the two bosses anyway...
Is Sebastian bugged for anybody else? No matter the frienship/rivalry points he gains his progression bar remains at its neutral position.
Count of Monte Sawed-Off
un33dab@dpu$$y
_tetsuo_ said:Qunari mage just one shotted my entire party 2 times in a row
Those bastards had a better percentage of killing me than anything else in the entire game. Search them out and put them down quickly.
Zeliard said:
I did play on Normal. I found the game to be a cakewalk towards the end. Me as a Rogue with fully upgraded Twin Fangs, Backstab, and Assassination was able to make short work of nearly anything. There were times when I almost felt too strong.
I pause a ton though...sometimes every 3 seconds on weaker enemies. Its basically kill-pause-issue command-unpause constantly with every character other than the tank. The Steam counters says I put in 33 hours which isnt too far off from the in game 31.5 hours.
I admit that at the end, I was ready for it to be over so maybe I was rushing it.
Lostconfused
Member
That pretty much applies to any other caster mob such as Arcane/Frost/whatever Horrors and various flavors of mages like apostates, blood and mercenary or whatever.Count of Monte Sawed-Off said:
You do spend a lot of time fighting on Hard. Sometimes 10 or 15 minutes depending on the encounter, sometimes restarting it several times as well depending on how stupidly unbalanced it is.Salaadin said:
GillianSeed79
Member
So is it safe to just sell all of the items marked as junk? I tend to hoard stuff in RPG's, but if there's no other use for this stuff, I'd like to get rid of it.
Also, I'm about 13 1/2 hours in and haven't hit the Deep Roads in Act 1 yet. I tend to play slow and be OCD about everything, so I'm sure I'll hit a final playtime of more than 40 hours. Story wise, I kind of miss the pacing and constant external threat from DA:O, but overall it hasn't been too bad. I'm quite enjoying it actually. The characters are kind of bland in the first few hours, but I just met Merrill last night and she's great.
Also, I'm about 13 1/2 hours in and haven't hit the Deep Roads in Act 1 yet. I tend to play slow and be OCD about everything, so I'm sure I'll hit a final playtime of more than 40 hours. Story wise, I kind of miss the pacing and constant external threat from DA:O, but overall it hasn't been too bad. I'm quite enjoying it actually. The characters are kind of bland in the first few hours, but I just met Merrill last night and she's great.
Count of Monte Sawed-Off
un33dab@dpu$$y
Lostconfused said:
I didn't have nearly as much problems with those as I did the Qunari mages. I do like to take out mages first, but if I neglected your average blood mage for a few seconds it wasn't a big deal. Neglect those qunari bastards and you could be fucked.
Well there were a couple of arcane horrors that tore me apart, but they were part of a special encounter in the third act.
GillianSeed79 said:
Yeah, you can sell any of that stuff. I hung on to it at first just to be safe, but none of the junk items were ever used. Sell away, not that you'll get much for them though.
Lostconfused
Member
They are all the same. They use different models but their behavior and abilities are exactly the same.Count of Monte Sawed-Off said:
Basileus777
Member
Dead said:
I think shuffling your party around causes it. The game mistakenly thinks you've removed them from your party after they asked to come along and gives them rivalry points.
John Harker said:
I don't really care about the fact it's such a small scope, that's just because I can't remember what the first game was about, though. Really found it a slog to get through. I do agree though, at six hours in I feel like I'm just running trivial errands and the like.
I think your comment about the lack of a cohesive feel to Kirkwall is along the same lines as mine. I don't mind the look of each individual area though I do agree they are too samey as places to have fights. If it was one seamless world, this would, imo, solve the problem. They would be able to have nice open areas to wander through. It definitely doesn't feel like a "real" city. Any chance of feeling that goes out the window every time I have to exit to the map and choose my destination.
I might end up 180ing on the game if the actual meat of the quests doesn't hold my attention, so far the stuff I'm doing (Gamlen stuff, Avelline stuff) is interesting enough for me to overlook the fact that the "city" I'm in is more like a dungeon with artificial warp points.
Zeliard said:
I agree with what you say about it not being imaginative in the ways you detailed. I do really like the way it looks on the map though and think that it would have been cool to be able to walk through it as an open world. Lowtown with a Venice look to it, Darktown could have been constantly shadowed by the massive cliff it's under and the views of the bay would have made walking around Hightown nice.
GOD DAMN IT!! I hit the bug in Fenris' Act II companion quest (Bitter Pill). I ented the
without him, couldn't leave went to the end and
. Tried going back with Fenris, but it won't let me complete. I have to revert to a save losing an hour of game time. Honestly so disgusted right now I'm going to have to give this game a break for a while.
Been staying out of this thread, as I like to avoid inadvertent spoilering and know as little as possible before playing RPGs.
cave
killed Hadriana
Been staying out of this thread, as I like to avoid inadvertent spoilering and know as little as possible before playing RPGs.
stryker1138
Member
Alright, this is going to sound pathetic and maybe a little stupid, but when I completed
I called my
to tell her I loved her. Not even kidding. As heavy-handed as all the family relationship stuff has been so far, I responded pretty strongly to that one quest. For that alone, this game was probably worth it.
Edit: I forgot to mention that I thought the dude was the same guy that I let off the hook a little earlier, so I basically thought I'd been Uncle Ben'd. Doesn't change the fact that an incident with my fake family reminded me to appreciate my real family though.
"All That Remains"
mom
Edit: I forgot to mention that I thought the dude was the same guy that I let off the hook a little earlier, so I basically thought I'd been Uncle Ben'd. Doesn't change the fact that an incident with my fake family reminded me to appreciate my real family though.
Holy fucking shit at the Abandoned Thaig in Act 2.
Everything is going fine fighting some fodder enemies in this assumingly unmarked quest. But then I get to the center room and I swear, every demon type all of a sudden wants a Hawke sandwich. After about what, Wave 3/4, my party just got absolutely overwhelmed. I really hope the reward for this nonsense is decent.
Everything is going fine fighting some fodder enemies in this assumingly unmarked quest. But then I get to the center room and I swear, every demon type all of a sudden wants a Hawke sandwich. After about what, Wave 3/4, my party just got absolutely overwhelmed. I really hope the reward for this nonsense is decent.
Count of Monte Sawed-Off said:
The enemy mages are at least weak to physical attacks and don't have much health, so they can be removed from the equation quickly enough, along with the archers. The enemies I find more frustrating to fight are the ones who generally aren't tough for any particular reason other than having huge health bars, and where status-changing effects don't always work, so it's more a matter of whittling their health down while hoping your pots and healing spells cool down in timely fashion.
Durante said:
First thing I do in every battle on Nightmare is take my entire party and move them to a location where I can try to sort of funnel the mobs through one section at a time and own them, taking into account the possible locations where others will spawn in.
One thing I like doing is using Merrill's Ensnare ability to pull a bunch of mobs together, moving her out of the way if I have to and then unleashing an AOE spell with my other mage.
fizzelopeguss
Banned
Count of Monte Sawed-Off
un33dab@dpu$$y
_tetsuo_ said:
Definitely. Some bosses use something similar, but the qunari mages are the only regular enemies that do this. Human/elven mages do not.
DodgyGeezerFella
Member
fizzelopeguss said:
Glad to see i wasnt the only 1 who thought "WTF"
lastplayed
Member
fizzelopeguss said:
Runs in the family.
Lostconfused
Member
Maybe the visual effects are different but all mages have an AoE ability that can one shot your party._tetsuo_ said:
Fuck, on Hard some of these encounters are way harder since mages aren't as good as healers anymore plus the cooldown times on potion don't help either.
This game loves throwing in archers all around the perimeter as a second wave, even adding a third wave of some encounters too. And now assassins/hunters are annoying as hell too, can even give tanks a hard time. Dragons seem way harder to keep the attention on the tank now too, even when just focusing on spamming taunt they like to turn their attention on my other party. =(
This game loves throwing in archers all around the perimeter as a second wave, even adding a third wave of some encounters too. And now assassins/hunters are annoying as hell too, can even give tanks a hard time. Dragons seem way harder to keep the attention on the tank now too, even when just focusing on spamming taunt they like to turn their attention on my other party. =(
Basileus777
Member
Those spiders with the ranged attack that can stun you are such a pain on nightmare. If they hit my rogues or mages once, they can keep chaining it and make it impossible to escape.
Completed my first playthrough, on nightmare, and I thought I'd share my non-spoiler thoughts on the game. Bland and mediocre would be the words I would use to reflect on the game.
Combat & Encounters: An exercise in frustration and an exercise in patience. Frustration, since the mid-battle spawns can frequently seem unfair on nightmare. More often than not, all carefully laid tactical plans go awry due to spawns of rogues and mages, which can cause wipes because of the longish cooldowns on crowd-control spells. It's also an exercise in patience, since wiping constantly is the only way to know the number and composition of the waves. After this, most fights became exercises in tedium where I completely stopped dps on the mobs while my cooldowns were refreshing, since I didn't want to trigger the next wave unprepared.
Was as pleasurable as a root canal, truth be told. The number of spawns in a battle seem at odds with the high amount of downtime for any class. The combat system would have been much better if the game was balanced around shorter cooldowns on abilities ( so that I'm just not whittling away the health of mobs with autoattacks ) and fights with no respawns, but consisting of enemies that are significant threats on their own. The fodder enemies seem a misguided attempt to artificially pad up the length of the game.
Side quests: They were about as appealing as grinding away in an mmorpg. Every single side quest has some combat component to it. Hoping to smooth-talk your way out of battles ? You're out of luck most of the time, since choosing pacifist options still leads to unavoidable fights. At this point, I'd go on record and say WoW has more involving quests, and that's a decidedly low benchmark. Companion sidequests had a bit more effort put into them; Aveline's, in particular, was a funny concept marred by having to murder 50+ mobs for the shallowest of excuses.
Story: A narrated story with time skips - an interesting concept, but one that Bioware has been unable to execute well. Seeing as the entire game is Varric's retelling of Hawke's story, it makes no sense why the game was designed the way it was. If I were a narrator, I would not go into detail on how Hawke scrounged up 50g, or how Hawke undertook tons of meaningless sidequests. These are the things I would summarize. Inexplicably, Varric goes into great detail how Hawke grinded the sidequests away, while summarizing the events that happened after the grind was done. ' Show, don't tell' applies to Varric's narration for the potentially interesting story bits.
Bioware should have designed the side quests and story for the entire game based on what a narrator would focus on. Grind-heavy quests with little to no emotional stakes make poor choices for a narrator to talk about. Bioware could have done so much more if the side quests had political/social/emotional context to it, which would make sense as to why Varric is narrating those quests, and also why we are then playing those quests. As it stands, Bioware designed the sidequest stories as if they were a part of a typical story, and not a narrated one.
The main story that's in the game is spread too thin, and lacks any hook for Hawke for the most part. One of my wishes for DA2 was an atypical (non-epic) and interesting story. Bioware certainly made an atypical story, but forgot to make it interesting. And also, Bioware, it's hardly a personal story either. A personal story could have been one where Hawke wrests political control through juggling with the various factions around Kirkwall in an intelligent manner. Instead, the story seems to exist as an excuse to see more enemies hilariously exploding into their constituent parts from a single arrow.
Writing: Uneven at best, and that's putting it mildly. Companions frequently spout awkward dialog, which seems to be written for more contemporary times, and not the medieval time period that DA2 is set in. The writing is also illogical a lot of times, due to how it disregards events from the previous game, and from previous acts as well. There is a lot of corny melodrama which wouldn't seem out of place in a poorly-written and poorly-translated JRPG. Don't even get me started on the romance writing.
Conversation wheel: What is the point to this ? Minimize reading ? But then a lot of the background information for the companions and the events around the world are tucked away in the codex, which involves reading. Is the wheel meant to make the dialog flow naturally then ? It fails at this as well, since most responses seem to last a sentence or two at most. Alpha Protocol showed how a conversation wheel works, by having full-blown multi-sentence responses that capture the back-and-forth feeling of a conversation. Over here, it feels like I'm digging for information with mildly-different responses that lead to the same conclusion despite the choice I pick. The illusion of choice rears its ugly head again, and it's compounded by the fact that there are 3 choices to pick at most !
Companions: Varric and Aveline stood out. Varric, for his whole unreliable narrator thing, where he always seems to have the perfect quip for every situation, and Aveline, for being the most believable companion, with her awkward nature being captured well by the writing. Anders, and Merrill, though, were stupid nutjobs lacking common sense. A special mention has to be made for Fenris, with his ridiculous looking appearance and angst-driven 'I'm a tortured soul' personality; a likely candidate for a square enix protagonist ?
Overall, I preferred the companions from Origins, though Varric and Aveline deserve to be a part of a better game than this one.
Conclusion Somehow, Bioware has injected the worst parts of Mass Effect 1 (repetitive side quests) and Mass Effect 2 (a largely absent main story, repetitive combat encounters, and illogical writing/retcons) into a franchise that didn't need it. A real pity, since I thought DA:O was Bioware's best effort since BG2. For any experienced CRPG gamer on the fence about purchasing the game, I'd suggest waiting to nab it at bargain prices or waiting for the ultimate edition. Besides, if DA2 is any indication, there are two years before the next one, and a price drop is bound to happen before then.
Combat & Encounters: An exercise in frustration and an exercise in patience. Frustration, since the mid-battle spawns can frequently seem unfair on nightmare. More often than not, all carefully laid tactical plans go awry due to spawns of rogues and mages, which can cause wipes because of the longish cooldowns on crowd-control spells. It's also an exercise in patience, since wiping constantly is the only way to know the number and composition of the waves. After this, most fights became exercises in tedium where I completely stopped dps on the mobs while my cooldowns were refreshing, since I didn't want to trigger the next wave unprepared.
Was as pleasurable as a root canal, truth be told. The number of spawns in a battle seem at odds with the high amount of downtime for any class. The combat system would have been much better if the game was balanced around shorter cooldowns on abilities ( so that I'm just not whittling away the health of mobs with autoattacks ) and fights with no respawns, but consisting of enemies that are significant threats on their own. The fodder enemies seem a misguided attempt to artificially pad up the length of the game.
Side quests: They were about as appealing as grinding away in an mmorpg. Every single side quest has some combat component to it. Hoping to smooth-talk your way out of battles ? You're out of luck most of the time, since choosing pacifist options still leads to unavoidable fights. At this point, I'd go on record and say WoW has more involving quests, and that's a decidedly low benchmark. Companion sidequests had a bit more effort put into them; Aveline's, in particular, was a funny concept marred by having to murder 50+ mobs for the shallowest of excuses.
Story: A narrated story with time skips - an interesting concept, but one that Bioware has been unable to execute well. Seeing as the entire game is Varric's retelling of Hawke's story, it makes no sense why the game was designed the way it was. If I were a narrator, I would not go into detail on how Hawke scrounged up 50g, or how Hawke undertook tons of meaningless sidequests. These are the things I would summarize. Inexplicably, Varric goes into great detail how Hawke grinded the sidequests away, while summarizing the events that happened after the grind was done. ' Show, don't tell' applies to Varric's narration for the potentially interesting story bits.
Bioware should have designed the side quests and story for the entire game based on what a narrator would focus on. Grind-heavy quests with little to no emotional stakes make poor choices for a narrator to talk about. Bioware could have done so much more if the side quests had political/social/emotional context to it, which would make sense as to why Varric is narrating those quests, and also why we are then playing those quests. As it stands, Bioware designed the sidequest stories as if they were a part of a typical story, and not a narrated one.
The main story that's in the game is spread too thin, and lacks any hook for Hawke for the most part. One of my wishes for DA2 was an atypical (non-epic) and interesting story. Bioware certainly made an atypical story, but forgot to make it interesting. And also, Bioware, it's hardly a personal story either. A personal story could have been one where Hawke wrests political control through juggling with the various factions around Kirkwall in an intelligent manner. Instead, the story seems to exist as an excuse to see more enemies hilariously exploding into their constituent parts from a single arrow.
Writing: Uneven at best, and that's putting it mildly. Companions frequently spout awkward dialog, which seems to be written for more contemporary times, and not the medieval time period that DA2 is set in. The writing is also illogical a lot of times, due to how it disregards events from the previous game, and from previous acts as well. There is a lot of corny melodrama which wouldn't seem out of place in a poorly-written and poorly-translated JRPG. Don't even get me started on the romance writing.
Conversation wheel: What is the point to this ? Minimize reading ? But then a lot of the background information for the companions and the events around the world are tucked away in the codex, which involves reading. Is the wheel meant to make the dialog flow naturally then ? It fails at this as well, since most responses seem to last a sentence or two at most. Alpha Protocol showed how a conversation wheel works, by having full-blown multi-sentence responses that capture the back-and-forth feeling of a conversation. Over here, it feels like I'm digging for information with mildly-different responses that lead to the same conclusion despite the choice I pick. The illusion of choice rears its ugly head again, and it's compounded by the fact that there are 3 choices to pick at most !
Companions: Varric and Aveline stood out. Varric, for his whole unreliable narrator thing, where he always seems to have the perfect quip for every situation, and Aveline, for being the most believable companion, with her awkward nature being captured well by the writing. Anders, and Merrill, though, were stupid nutjobs lacking common sense. A special mention has to be made for Fenris, with his ridiculous looking appearance and angst-driven 'I'm a tortured soul' personality; a likely candidate for a square enix protagonist ?
Overall, I preferred the companions from Origins, though Varric and Aveline deserve to be a part of a better game than this one.
Conclusion Somehow, Bioware has injected the worst parts of Mass Effect 1 (repetitive side quests) and Mass Effect 2 (a largely absent main story, repetitive combat encounters, and illogical writing/retcons) into a franchise that didn't need it. A real pity, since I thought DA:O was Bioware's best effort since BG2. For any experienced CRPG gamer on the fence about purchasing the game, I'd suggest waiting to nab it at bargain prices or waiting for the ultimate edition. Besides, if DA2 is any indication, there are two years before the next one, and a price drop is bound to happen before then.
SenorDingDong
Member
FINALBOSS said:
I believe that would have happened if you
agreed to kill Feynriel if the situation called for it
Deadly said:
On my ending it made sense to some degree,
the idol of craziness basically drove Meredith mad and she was going completely bonkers at the end. They don't go into the details of the idol very well but they did make the effects of owning the thing very clear.
I think in my playthrough Meredith actually dials up the crazies up to 111 years after the expedition, so it's safe to assume at some point Bartrand did sell her the idol.
I think in my playthrough Meredith actually dials up the crazies up to 111 years after the expedition, so it's safe to assume at some point Bartrand did sell her the idol.
I was actually kind of shocked by mine
so many choices I made earlier in the game actually came back and had a pretty large impact in the game world. Now I'm really curious as to how it'll play through had I made different choices.
Not to detour too much but, the pseudo fourth wall breaking moment got a laugh from me
when King Alastair meets Isabela, he mentions that she looks different. Isabela replied with something like "yes...don't we all."
I took it as a reference to both of them getting upgraded models for DA2 vs. their original DA selves.
I took it as a reference to both of them getting upgraded models for DA2 vs. their original DA selves.
Also confronting
Isabela in the hanged man after she turns on you in the fade had a couple great lines.
Count of Monte Sawed-Off
un33dab@dpu$$y
I like big boats and I can not lie.
fizzelopeguss
Banned
zmoney said:
The threesome chick iirc.
The
helped a lot in those mage fights.
That and having a rogue in your party.
Rogues were kind of ridiculous in this game
.
spell resist abilities
That and having a rogue in your party.
Rogues were kind of ridiculous in this game
Isabela was basically a killing machine between her duelist/pirate talents that bolster her defense and a fully buffed backstab.
Pair that up with the rogue power regen talent and things were just disintegrating in front of her. In the last half of the game I'd just cast haste, switch to Isabela, and proceed to turn mages into hamburger.
Pair that up with the rogue power regen talent and things were just disintegrating in front of her. In the last half of the game I'd just cast haste, switch to Isabela, and proceed to turn mages into hamburger.
Basileus777
Member
zmoney said:
She was in the brothel in Denerim and taught you the duelist specialization. She could also have a threesome or even foursome with the PC, Zevran, Alistair, and Leliana.