Sir Garbageman
Member
eek5 said:
Haven't stopped by a potion shop in a while, Mythal's favor revives a downed ally? Had no idea.
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Dragon Age II |OT| The Revenge of Shit Mountain
- Thread starter EviLore
- Start date
Haven't stopped by a potion shop in a while, Mythal's favor revives a downed ally? Had no idea.
Reluctant-Hero
Member
When do you unlock the Lifeward potion? Which reagents does it require? I don't want to miss out in it as I plan to run a Merrill, Isabella & Aveline party.eek5 said:
Ickman3400
Banned
I've started a 2nd playthrough as a dagger rogue with assassin spec this time and I'm loving it so much more than a 2H warrior. My hits actually do damage, and I attack so much faster. The moves are pretty useful so far too.
Makes me wish I did my 1st playthrough as one.
Makes me wish I did my 1st playthrough as one.
Reluctant-Hero
Member
Nice, thanks for the tip. One more thing, does each potion type have it's own individual cooldown in battle? Or are all potions on a global 30 sec cooldown?eek5 said:
Just finished the game with about 36 hours on the clock and having completed roughly 98% of the side quests (the only side-quests I had left were glitched quests). And... uh... hm. I can't say that the game was bad by any meaning of the word, but I refuse to believe that this is anywhere near BioWare's best effort. To me, the game seems like the epitome of lazy game making through and through.
My two biggest complaints with the game are the copy-paste dungeons and the "wave after wave of enemies" approach to combat. Yeah, Mass Effect was absolutely horrendous with this too. Although, while there was a sloppy in-universe answer to Mass Effect's samey dungeons (the galaxy most likely has the same building contractor for these space bunkers and frigates), it gets pretty silly when it seems like every evil gang was renting out the same warehouse, or that every "different" path in the sewers led to the same mountain path. But the game tells us that these locations are completely different! If you're going to stick with one central location for your game, you had damn well better make it interesting. With Kirkwall, it was just warehouse, mansion, beach, mountain cave. That's it for the span of 30+ hours.
While I appreciate the changes that was made to the combat, the fact that you'll usually have to fight waves and waves of enemies that either fall from the sky or spawn right in front of/directly behind you really only serves to drag out encounters much further beyond the "oh wow, I'm fighting!" wow factor. It's one thing to get through a particularly interesting set of enemies. It's another thing entirely to be forced to fight the same squad again and have to mash the attack button even more. I thought that while BioWare did try to make their boss battles a lot more interesting than they were in DA:O, they still kinda flounder by having these bosses just be massive damage sponges (that typically get stuck in level geometry or their AI glitches out) that summon more waves of reinforcements.
The characters... eh. Some of them grew on me, like Aveline, Varric, Merrill, and Fenris. The others I really could not have cared less about, honestly. Some characters late in the game did so much massive *head-desk* moments that I don't know if this was a success for BioWare in making characters that I actually kinda hated.
Story... I see what they were trying to go with by adding a "slice of life/making your living/political intrigue" kind of story. It was just told in a rather... haphazard fashion. I mean, having the main story be utterly nonexistent until the tail end of Act 2 roughly 25 hours in was an "interesting" choice, as was having almost the entirety of Act 1 be nothing by side-quests. In terms of the "main plot",
Coming off of ME2, DA2 is strange to me. Yeah, both simplify their gameplay in order to better appeal to the main stream, but ME2's changes were for the most part improvements. DA2 makes as many improvements as it does break some things. Story-wise, both games may have the same issue of having a weak underlying plot, but at the very least, ME2 interweaved what Shepard was doing with "Stop the Collectors." I can definitely understand why some one would quit DA2 in the middle because there's no real goal outside of "get rich or die trying" until literally 20 hours into the game. In summary, DA2 was an okay game for me, but I still leave slightly disappointed.
My two biggest complaints with the game are the copy-paste dungeons and the "wave after wave of enemies" approach to combat. Yeah, Mass Effect was absolutely horrendous with this too. Although, while there was a sloppy in-universe answer to Mass Effect's samey dungeons (the galaxy most likely has the same building contractor for these space bunkers and frigates), it gets pretty silly when it seems like every evil gang was renting out the same warehouse, or that every "different" path in the sewers led to the same mountain path. But the game tells us that these locations are completely different! If you're going to stick with one central location for your game, you had damn well better make it interesting. With Kirkwall, it was just warehouse, mansion, beach, mountain cave. That's it for the span of 30+ hours.
While I appreciate the changes that was made to the combat, the fact that you'll usually have to fight waves and waves of enemies that either fall from the sky or spawn right in front of/directly behind you really only serves to drag out encounters much further beyond the "oh wow, I'm fighting!" wow factor. It's one thing to get through a particularly interesting set of enemies. It's another thing entirely to be forced to fight the same squad again and have to mash the attack button even more. I thought that while BioWare did try to make their boss battles a lot more interesting than they were in DA:O, they still kinda flounder by having these bosses just be massive damage sponges (that typically get stuck in level geometry or their AI glitches out) that summon more waves of reinforcements.
The characters... eh. Some of them grew on me, like Aveline, Varric, Merrill, and Fenris. The others I really could not have cared less about, honestly. Some characters late in the game did so much massive *head-desk* moments that I don't know if this was a success for BioWare in making characters that I actually kinda hated.
Bravo to Isabella for ditching Hawke and single-handedly contributing to a fucking massacre by the Qunari when she could have just... you know, have Hawke take care of her debt collector like everybody else fucking does. And hats off to Anders for blowing up the Chantry and essentially triggering a global war between mages and templars.
Story... I see what they were trying to go with by adding a "slice of life/making your living/political intrigue" kind of story. It was just told in a rather... haphazard fashion. I mean, having the main story be utterly nonexistent until the tail end of Act 2 roughly 25 hours in was an "interesting" choice, as was having almost the entirety of Act 1 be nothing by side-quests. In terms of the "main plot",
I think BioWare could have done something great with the Templar vs. Mages line if they had written things a bit more tightly. It just seems really strange to have Hawke defend the mages when literally EVERY SINGLE MAGE she helps uses blood magic, turns into an Abomination, and summons more demons. Seriously, Meredith might have been on to something since it seems that every single mage and his mother knows how to do blood magic. DA:O gave the impression that Blood Mage was heavily restricted and very difficult to learn, not just "be mage, slit wrist, summon demons".
Coming off of ME2, DA2 is strange to me. Yeah, both simplify their gameplay in order to better appeal to the main stream, but ME2's changes were for the most part improvements. DA2 makes as many improvements as it does break some things. Story-wise, both games may have the same issue of having a weak underlying plot, but at the very least, ME2 interweaved what Shepard was doing with "Stop the Collectors." I can definitely understand why some one would quit DA2 in the middle because there's no real goal outside of "get rich or die trying" until literally 20 hours into the game. In summary, DA2 was an okay game for me, but I still leave slightly disappointed.
RockPaperShotgun impressions: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/03/14/wit-the-opening-hours-of-dragon-age-ii/#more-53897
bigdaddygamebot
Member
Y2Kev said:
I...wow.
Count of Monte Sawed-Off
un33dab@dpu$$y
I'll say one thing, while I enjoyed the game, this is the first bioware game in forever that I haven't at least had the desire to start a new game after completion of my first runthrough to try out different options (I guess the last one was Neverwinter Nights, but that game truly sucked). At this point I generally don't care for another playthrough, but I'm sure I will do one eventually after some patches. Add in auto-attack Bioware, your excuse why it wasn't in there was bullshit and the game is tedious as fuck without it.
Ickman3400
Banned
Y2Kev said:
Bioware has no shame anymore lol. EA really did contaminate them
Lostconfused
Member
Pretty much everything we have been complaining about. Maybe Bioware will at least listen to them if not the unwashed masses of the fans.Gattsu25 said:
EmCee posted that in the Bioware response to Dragon Age 2 thread.Y2Kev said:
canadian crowe
Member
Count of Monte Sawed-Off said:
I really enjoyed the game too, but I had the opposite reaction and I immediately started my second playthrough. I think I liked that fact that it had a smaller scope and wasn't as overwhelming as other Bioware games.
Maybe I just hate micromanagement, but this is my favorite Bioware game (slightly edges out Mass Effect 1).
MechaX said:
The dungeons are just lazy. I think they could've easily thrown in more variations while still reusing textures/assets very easily but if they can get away with it then whatever.
As for the combat, I really miss the strategic nature of DA:O. Setting traps and using overhead view to plan my attack etc. was a lot of fun. A lot of it is lost in DA2 because the combat is more action oriented but at the same time I don't think they went far enough if that's the direction they went. I remember grinding the shit out of Sacred 2 just because combat was pretty fun even if I was going through the same levels over and over. I think the lack of real loot cheapens battles as well. The battles only take place to slow you down from getting your objective. Because half the loot is "junk" and what isn't junk is junk, even looting isn't very fun. They pretty much used the dungeon design philosophy on armor as well since, outside of the unique armor sets (what are there, like 4 or 5?), everything is pretty much the same.
D
Deleted member 17706
Unconfirmed Member
Gattsu25 said:
At 7 hours in, I couldn't agree with John more. Everything is so disjointed.
The best part is that this is coming from John Walker, who gave Dragon Age: Origins a 94 in his review for PC Gamer and calls it one of his favorite RPGs ever.
So I just started playing Dragon Age 2 after a 100+ hour run through Dragon Age: Origins and it's expansions, only to find out that no one can use one handed swords but tanks. Tanks?!? So my bad ass rogue from Origins is a wimpy dagger user because Bioware thought it was cool to take away options. So much gear and no flexibility. <sigh> It's such a small thing in the great grand scheme of things, but it annoys me to the point that I'm not all that inclined to play right now.
Also, after playing or a couple hours, I want the old backstab back. The new one is totally lame and really throws off my rhythm. It was fine in the demo with limited use, but now that I'm playing the final game I want to simply run up behind a fool and backstab the crap out of them.
I find that missing the good/bad dialog options with persuasion sucks, too. It's pretty easy to tell that the first game was simply better thought out and more epic. Not saying this game is bad, but the first one was better in my opinion. Maybe my opinion will change as I go on, but I'm not happy.
Also, after playing or a couple hours, I want the old backstab back. The new one is totally lame and really throws off my rhythm. It was fine in the demo with limited use, but now that I'm playing the final game I want to simply run up behind a fool and backstab the crap out of them.
I find that missing the good/bad dialog options with persuasion sucks, too. It's pretty easy to tell that the first game was simply better thought out and more epic. Not saying this game is bad, but the first one was better in my opinion. Maybe my opinion will change as I go on, but I'm not happy.
Lostconfused
Member
Sarcastic Hawke is the best Hawke "I was wondering when you were going to come back and bite me in the ass"
RPGCrazied
Member
I just got this game tonight. I like it, but a few things bother me.
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1.) How come the textures sometimes look awful when its up close? It's not so bad when not zoomed up on it. Mostly NPC and player's clothes. (I'm playing 1920x1080, High Graphics, DirectX 11 & max AA and AF.
2.) Do items like weapons and armor not change your appearance? I got a leather armor in the start area and I still look the same.
3.) The camera. Please tell me you can turn that feature off where it like pivots the camera down all the time? I'm constantly trying to change the camera or I'll be looking at the ground.
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1.) How come the textures sometimes look awful when its up close? It's not so bad when not zoomed up on it. Mostly NPC and player's clothes. (I'm playing 1920x1080, High Graphics, DirectX 11 & max AA and AF.
2.) Do items like weapons and armor not change your appearance? I got a leather armor in the start area and I still look the same.
3.) The camera. Please tell me you can turn that feature off where it like pivots the camera down all the time? I'm constantly trying to change the camera or I'll be looking at the ground.
_tetsuo_ said:
I think the idea that swords are only for tanks is silly at best. So no one ever used swords offensively? It's flat out lazy design. One of the best parts of the first game was equipping your guys with different weapons and armor. How is that technology is getting better yet we keep going backwards as far as options go? I just don't understand the industry.
PaddyOCanager
Member
Just beat the game, 36 hours and I did every side quest I had available. The game was enjoyable, but ultimately disappointing. I liked the combat, but everything else - the characters, storyline, quests, etc - were forgettable imo. I didn't feel I made a single meaningful choice the entire time because of this. I'm going to start my male mage playthrough, maybe things will click better the second time around.
RPGCrazied
Member
http://social.bioware.com/page/da2-patches
Whoa, just found out there is an HD texture pack! Is it worth the 1gig download? I have an Radeon HD 5770, and a AMD Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2. 6gigs of DDR3 1333hz
New computer and I love it.
Whoa, just found out there is an HD texture pack! Is it worth the 1gig download? I have an Radeon HD 5770, and a AMD Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2. 6gigs of DDR3 1333hz
New computer and I love it.
RPGCrazied
Member
Nirolak said:
Oh, I'll get it I guess. So it doesn't help with clothes/armor textures? So far the environment textures look fine.
Thanks eek5.
sucks about the camera though.Re: Act 1
Yes, I know I'm playing in hard difficulty, but it's the first enemy I'm having trouble with.
Edit: The battle in normal is a walk in the park. I think that for hard difficulty, one really needs the right party makeup, or it's near impossible.
Is it just me, or is the Ancient Rock Wraith really really difficult (hard difficulty)? He's wiping my party in a few minutes.
Yes, I know I'm playing in hard difficulty, but it's the first enemy I'm having trouble with.
Edit: The battle in normal is a walk in the park. I think that for hard difficulty, one really needs the right party makeup, or it's near impossible.
MrBelmontvedere
Member
is hard the way to play this game? I started on whatever the default was, and couldn't stomach anything past "Shit Mountain"
RPGCrazied
Member
Oh hell yes. That HD texture pack did wonders to the visuals. It does indeed help with textures on people as well.
Nice job Bioware.
Nice job Bioware.
subversus said:
Well, it's somewhat understandable. :] If the mmo bomb, it's pretty much the end of Bioware at the very least given it's cost and time investment. I don't think Star Wars will bomb, but if I were the Bioware doctors I would focus 90% of my time on that project.
I'm not all that worried for ME3 as I feel they have a stronger team than the Dragon age one.
Neuromancer
Member
I'm surprised this didn't get it's own thread. It's pretty significant I think.Y2Kev said:
Here's the whole story:
http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/g3td7/dragon_age_2_conspiracy_highest_rated_metacritic/
Nose Master
Member
Pretty sure my dog had a stroke. He'll fight if I summon him during battle, but he no longer follows me. He just spawns, then stares off in whatever direction he was facing when he was spawned.
I'm also getting that glitch of enemies dancing in place for a minute before collapsing really frequently now.
EDIT: Also: The skill trees suck. It seems like I have to trip over sustained abilities to get to anything even remotely useful. You can't really have more than one or two of those on without it being a huge detriment.
I'm also getting that glitch of enemies dancing in place for a minute before collapsing really frequently now.
EDIT: Also: The skill trees suck. It seems like I have to trip over sustained abilities to get to anything even remotely useful. You can't really have more than one or two of those on without it being a huge detriment.
Lostconfused
Member
They are certainly better at making Mass Effect than the Dragon Age team.kitzkozan said:
Xilium
Member
Nose Master said:
I find that this doesn't happen as often if you summon him out of battle.
That said, I find it incredibly annoying that Bioware still insist on having your summons go away every time you change areas. Especially considering that the dog cost no mana/stamina to summon and there's no real reason to ever not have him out.
Beat it at 44 hours, a quick thumb through the guide indicates I did everything except the final character quest for the person who comes back, because I didn't know that was going to happen and I lost them forever because my Friendship/Rivalry wasn't quite high enough because I hadn't been using them . Also prevented me from getting the last resource I was missing because it's at a location exclusive to that character's quest.
Aside from that, overall the game is a mixed bag. Coming strictly from DA on 360 to DA2 on 360, I'd say that the gameplay is definetely an improvement. Graphically all over the place quality-wise (lots of textures look bad, some effects look pretty good). I still for the most part enjoyed the characters and banter, further proving that's probably the one thing Bioware is still best at. Really the only two massive bummers for me are:
-There's barely any sense of overall story or plot until very late in the game. I'm all for not necessarily having the world on my shoulders nonstop in an RPG, but there's no real sense of where the fuck the game is going until pretty late. Then the last few hours get crazy, then it ends. The pacing is way fucking off. It feels like an expansion pack where they padded it like crazy, but they did it up front early on, whereas I think if it had to be padded with insane sidequests and bullshit it could have been spread out much better, particularly later into the game. Then it finally gets interesting at the very end....then ends. Feels like they should have allowed you to play the first year that you completely skip, cut out most of Act 1, then there should have been another Act added at the end.
-And almost more than that, I hate the repeating levels. Early on I didn't understand why I was blocked in certain levels by weird doors because I could see further on the map; the first couple times I thought I was missing something, or that I would go back there later (ha!). Then I realized that this is straight up Phantasy Star Online for the fucking Dreamcast levels of using the same map and arbitrarily blocking doors to have a slightly different variant. The fact that you spend nearly the whole game repeating the same handful of maps with doors randomly blocked is actually insulting, and really speaks to the fact that this should have just been an expansion pack to lead into the real Dragon Age 2. Branding it as an expansion pack also probably would have eased a lot of the criticism against the game.
Oh, and I enjoy how my signature edition content achievements are broken as well. Good job Bioware.
. Also prevented me from getting the last resource I was missing because it's at a location exclusive to that character's quest.Aside from that, overall the game is a mixed bag. Coming strictly from DA on 360 to DA2 on 360, I'd say that the gameplay is definetely an improvement. Graphically all over the place quality-wise (lots of textures look bad, some effects look pretty good). I still for the most part enjoyed the characters and banter, further proving that's probably the one thing Bioware is still best at. Really the only two massive bummers for me are:
-There's barely any sense of overall story or plot until very late in the game. I'm all for not necessarily having the world on my shoulders nonstop in an RPG, but there's no real sense of where the fuck the game is going until pretty late. Then the last few hours get crazy, then it ends. The pacing is way fucking off. It feels like an expansion pack where they padded it like crazy, but they did it up front early on, whereas I think if it had to be padded with insane sidequests and bullshit it could have been spread out much better, particularly later into the game. Then it finally gets interesting at the very end....then ends. Feels like they should have allowed you to play the first year that you completely skip, cut out most of Act 1, then there should have been another Act added at the end.
-And almost more than that, I hate the repeating levels. Early on I didn't understand why I was blocked in certain levels by weird doors because I could see further on the map; the first couple times I thought I was missing something, or that I would go back there later (ha!). Then I realized that this is straight up Phantasy Star Online for the fucking Dreamcast levels of using the same map and arbitrarily blocking doors to have a slightly different variant. The fact that you spend nearly the whole game repeating the same handful of maps with doors randomly blocked is actually insulting, and really speaks to the fact that this should have just been an expansion pack to lead into the real Dragon Age 2. Branding it as an expansion pack also probably would have eased a lot of the criticism against the game.
Oh, and I enjoy how my signature edition content achievements are broken as well. Good job Bioware.
HadesGigas
Member
Nose Master said:
Was happening to me too. Impressed that Bioware made a dog more retarded than the one in Fable III.
Xilium said:
The cooldown period makes this extra annoying. I've summoned him and then found myself leaving the area and getting into a fight right away where I couldn't bring him out because of it.
Basileus777
Member
I was looking through the readme for the game and saw this:
Balance
-------
- The warrior's Rally talent does not correctly extend the benefits
of sustained modes to other party members.
- The mage's Horror and Petrify spells say that they have a 100%
chance of applying against "any enemy." Although these spells are
indeed just as likely to apply to a boss-level enemy as a
normal-level enemy, some enemies are immune to certain effects, no
matter the enemy's rank. For example, ogres of any rank cannot be
stunned by any ability and are thus innately immune to Horror.
- The mage's Arcane Wall upgrade indicates that it extends the
benefits of Arcane Shield to other party members. Although this is
true, the upgrade reduces the effectiveness of Arcane Shield in
doing so and applies a reduced version of the effects to other
party members.
- Varric's Embellishment talent refers to a movement speed increase.
The ability does not affect movement speed but does affect attack
speed.
- The secondary penalties applied by status effects like STAGGER,
BRITTLE, and DISORIENT (reductions in enemy defense, for example)
are smaller than described in the codex. However, the cross-class
combo bonuses themselves (extra damage vs. STAGGERED enemies, for
example) work as described.
Notably, Rally is bugged, and the Arcane Wall upgrade doesn't work as advertised and actually makes it less effective for the caster.
Balance
-------
- The warrior's Rally talent does not correctly extend the benefits
of sustained modes to other party members.
- The mage's Horror and Petrify spells say that they have a 100%
chance of applying against "any enemy." Although these spells are
indeed just as likely to apply to a boss-level enemy as a
normal-level enemy, some enemies are immune to certain effects, no
matter the enemy's rank. For example, ogres of any rank cannot be
stunned by any ability and are thus innately immune to Horror.
- The mage's Arcane Wall upgrade indicates that it extends the
benefits of Arcane Shield to other party members. Although this is
true, the upgrade reduces the effectiveness of Arcane Shield in
doing so and applies a reduced version of the effects to other
party members.
- Varric's Embellishment talent refers to a movement speed increase.
The ability does not affect movement speed but does affect attack
speed.
- The secondary penalties applied by status effects like STAGGER,
BRITTLE, and DISORIENT (reductions in enemy defense, for example)
are smaller than described in the codex. However, the cross-class
combo bonuses themselves (extra damage vs. STAGGERED enemies, for
example) work as described.
Notably, Rally is bugged, and the Arcane Wall upgrade doesn't work as advertised and actually makes it less effective for the caster.
TheChewyWaffles
Member
Quite LTTP (a week, I know) but this game feels a lot more Diablo-esque than the last one