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Dragon Age II |OT| The Revenge of Shit Mountain
- Thread starter EviLore
- Start date
HadesGigas
Member
Die Squirrel Die said:
Bards are liars.
Fimbulvetr
Member
Hell, why doesn't what's her face just ask Varric to skip to the parts relating to theWanderingWind said:
Templar/Mage
Yeah, I know we wouldn't have much of a game if they did that.
Lostconfused
Member
Because Varric has to explain how they found theFimbulvetr said:
lyrium idol
Saren is Bad
Member
Just finished, questions about the last cutscene:
Who the fuck was that red haired chick at the end, and did I miss the significance of that book?
Lostconfused
Member
Fimbulvetr
Member
Lostconfused said:
Actually all she wanted to know is where Hawke went or anything that might give her a good tip. Unless Varric had a hard time remembering, all he had to do was skip to the ending.
Lostconfused
Member
She opened up the can of worms with that one.Cassandra said:
paranoidfortean
Member
re: ending
Do you feel that? The way the shit just hangs there, thick in the air? That's a shit blizzard. It's coming.
This game just shit in my mouth. But really, I feel duped by how it ended. My choices didn't really matter.
Do you feel that? The way the shit just hangs there, thick in the air? That's a shit blizzard. It's coming.
Xilium
Member
So I finally finished the game and I'm not really understanding the praise it's getting for its "hard/deep political choices" (mostly on various gaming podcast/news sites). Most of the decisions were the stereotypical Bioware paragon/renegade. Regardless of what side you were on, there was almost always a "right" thing to do and a "wrong" thing with the occasional "I don't care/Let someone else deal with it" thrown in there. Except for some of the decisions at the end of Acts II and III (in which you may very well get the same conclusion regardless), I'm not seeing how this games dialog system is a step-up from ME (which is very binary).
Minor spoilers on the game's primary conflict (still relating to dialog/choices):
Final Boss Spoiler:
Also, just the overall focused narrative, map design, the fact that different choice, more often than not, lead to the same conclusions, ect. just makes it seem as though they are moving closer and closer to a JRPG style game (not necessarily bad, just ironic).
Overall, I liked DA:O better because of many of the faults already mentioned throughout this thread. I don't mind the characters, but some of them are just too extreme and have a completely one-track mind. The combat to me was easy except on nightmare (I played on normal. I was on hard originally but just found the fights needlessly long and tedious without actually being any more difficult) and I didn't find myself having to micromanage much beyond party placement. Everything else could just be easily set up in the tactics menu. On the seldom occasions when party members were on the verge of death and spells/potions were on cooldown, you could just take control of that party member and run around in circles until the others finished off the enemy or you could heal.
Minor spoilers on the game's primary conflict (still relating to dialog/choices):
Throughout the entirety of the game, I liked the fact that I was able to play as a neutral character. I would side with the mages when I felt that they were being wrongly oppressed and side with the templars when the mages were clearly in the wrong. That seemed to me the most practical and fair course of action. Unfortunately, like in many games like this, you are forced to choose a side at the very end (and I mean VERY end) which is bad enough already (more games should learn from Fallout:NV and have an independent/neutral option) but the fact that throughout the game it is constantly being hammered on you that this vicious cycle of templar abuse and mage retaliation is the cause of fringe groups on both sides and that the moderates can actually get along and have civil discussions, really makes the choice at the end seem forced.
Final Boss Spoiler:
And for all their shit talking about JRPGs, Bioware seems to love throwing in certain elements of those games. This is the third time that I know that they've used "the man behind the man" trope, typically found in JRPGs and anime for the final boss (ME1 and Jade Empire being the others). This is typically seen as a negative in JRPG reviews but Bioware always seems to get a pass on it.
Overall, I liked DA:O better because of many of the faults already mentioned throughout this thread. I don't mind the characters, but some of them are just too extreme and have a completely one-track mind. The combat to me was easy except on nightmare (I played on normal. I was on hard originally but just found the fights needlessly long and tedious without actually being any more difficult) and I didn't find myself having to micromanage much beyond party placement. Everything else could just be easily set up in the tactics menu. On the seldom occasions when party members were on the verge of death and spells/potions were on cooldown, you could just take control of that party member and run around in circles until the others finished off the enemy or you could heal.
I just finished it. Clocked in around 45 hours and I really enjoyed it.
I agree with some of the complaints here and I feel like the game could have used a few more months in the cooker. When it's all said and done I had a difficult time putting down the controller. I've never played a Bioware game that didn't have that effect on me and DA2 was no different.
I agree with some of the complaints here and I feel like the game could have used a few more months in the cooker. When it's all said and done I had a difficult time putting down the controller. I've never played a Bioware game that didn't have that effect on me and DA2 was no different.
Seriously? FUCK THIS GAME. END OF ACT 2 IS FUCKING BULLSHIT. The boss breaks so many of the game's rules it's fucking ridiculous.
I really don't see how that fight was balanced for duel-wield rogues at all. You can be fifteen feet away and still get hit by his melee attacks. You can't backstab, because he fucking hits you on the way (which I didn't realize was fucking possible). Then the SUPER FUCKING GREAT ANIMATIONS take so long, you get DESTROYED before you get any of them off.
FUCK YOU GAME.
It's fucking bullshit.
I really don't see how that fight was balanced for duel-wield rogues at all. You can be fifteen feet away and still get hit by his melee attacks. You can't backstab, because he fucking hits you on the way (which I didn't realize was fucking possible). Then the SUPER FUCKING GREAT ANIMATIONS take so long, you get DESTROYED before you get any of them off.
FUCK YOU GAME.
It's fucking bullshit.
That fight's not balanced for any class. It's a total piece of shit, and the absolute low-point of the game, gameplay-wise (funnily enough, right around the same point as the high-point of the game story-wise, but that's neither here nor there).
Turn it down to Casual. It doesn't really make it harder; it just makes it take less time. And/or, pick options that lead to a party-wide fight instead of the one-on-one, unless you're so enamored with the story that you need to do it in a duel.
Turn it down to Casual. It doesn't really make it harder; it just makes it take less time. And/or, pick options that lead to a party-wide fight instead of the one-on-one, unless you're so enamored with the story that you need to do it in a duel.
The core gameplay is actually a pretty huge improvement over the first game; it's the content and encounter variety/quality that ranges from "this is actually pretty damn okay" to "sucks so much shit you can hear the slurp". It's like the party-based RPG version of giving you Devil May Cry's combat system and then not letting you fight anything with it except for mindless Dynasty Warriors style hordes.HK-47 said:
Coxswain said:
Yeah, I turned it down to casual.
But I loved such things as: Having him able to hit me when I went to backstab - AFTER I had puffed into smoke!
Rushing in after his weapons stopped swinging to get some hits in and still taking hits and flying across the screen!
Get skewered and watching 75 percent of my health go poof!
Having him heal every time I got close to halfway!
Trying to use assassinate, but having the ULTRA COOL ANIMATION leave plenty of time for me to get hit! Multiple times!
And the most fun of all:
Getting hit. Through a pillar. HALFWAY ACROSS THE SCREEN FROM HIM.
What happened to position playing a part in hit detection?
Yeah I don't know what the fuck they were thinking. Generally the game was pretty good about what-you-see-is-what-you-get in terms of combat, especially compared to DAO, but the Act 2 boss's swipes were a total crapshoot. Sometimes you'd take the hit if you got just close enough to bait him and then started running away immediately after his animation started, and sometimes you could be just a couple steps away and walk away untouched. Add that to knockdown/stunlock, his stupid little skewer move, an absolutely ludicrous amount of HP, and a whole shitwhack of potions to give him even more health and it's just ridiculous bullshit. I can only assume that they designed the version of the fight where you have your whole party with you, and then just copied the same stats over into the duel version, but that's really no excuse, even considering how rushed the rest of the game was.
I ended up doing something really dumb in the early stages of the very, very last boss fight of the game, and I didn't want to reload my save and didn't have revival items, so I ended up soloing pretty much every stage of the final boss with Hawke alone. Killing the last boss, a fight absolutely meant to be taken on with a full party, and featuring three or four major sub-boss summons and dozens of minor ones, along with the last boss itself, with a single character, took me less time than it took to 'duel' the Act 2 boss down until his second potion (both fights on Nightmare, until I just reloaded the Act 2 fight and turned it down to Casual). Absolute bullshit.
I think the only other time you have to deal with such egregious bullshit in terms of hit detection is when you're dealing with the Stone Golems in the Deep Roads, but you fight like four or them in the whole game and they're not hard to begin with.
I ended up doing something really dumb in the early stages of the very, very last boss fight of the game, and I didn't want to reload my save and didn't have revival items, so I ended up soloing pretty much every stage of the final boss with Hawke alone. Killing the last boss, a fight absolutely meant to be taken on with a full party, and featuring three or four major sub-boss summons and dozens of minor ones, along with the last boss itself, with a single character, took me less time than it took to 'duel' the Act 2 boss down until his second potion (both fights on Nightmare, until I just reloaded the Act 2 fight and turned it down to Casual). Absolute bullshit.
I think the only other time you have to deal with such egregious bullshit in terms of hit detection is when you're dealing with the Stone Golems in the Deep Roads, but you fight like four or them in the whole game and they're not hard to begin with.
Wait, so did you duel him one on one or not?
Mages certainly seem best suited for the encounter. I died a clumsy death once (didn't see the skewering attack coming), but he didn't even touch me on the second try. The fight turned into a tedious cat and mouse game.
I watched the CG trailer of that fight afterwards. Quite funny.
Mages certainly seem best suited for the encounter. I died a clumsy death once (didn't see the skewering attack coming), but he didn't even touch me on the second try. The fight turned into a tedious cat and mouse game.
I watched the CG trailer of that fight afterwards. Quite funny.
Patryn said:
You were a rogue?
Yeah, I always have the best bow in my inventory *just in-case* I feel too squishy to go all-out slashing with the dual blades -- especially since a lot of the powers translate to bows as well.
I heard Assassinate is even more effective with bows than DW .. never tried it though.
gdt5016 said:
No, I meant that I didn't fight him and his entourage. The fight was literally just me vs. him. No other
Qunari
X-Frame said:
Oh, I believe it. The DW assassinate has a long wind-up (about 2 seconds) and then another second for the "I'm a badass" pause after the actual attack. Of course, this meant that unless I happened to get him
to charge into a wall and stay in charge mood and then use the skill while he's charging
Patryn said:
I did it with a dual-wield rogue with assassinate. I also pulled out the dog, used a poison, and used one health potion. And ran... a lot.
Side note... can the dog get knocked out or die? I've left him in the middle of a dragon and a bunch of dragonlings and he just kept chipping away at them until I got to that side of the map.
WanderingWind
Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
Patryn said:
You mean Rocky.
Like all bosses except sections of the Highdragon, the Arishok's greatest weakness is that you can easily kite him.
I think the combat in this game is pretty much garbage. The cooldowns are so long, and the skills overlap so much that the game pretty much boils down to popping whatever spell you can at any given time.
I think the combat in this game is pretty much garbage. The cooldowns are so long, and the skills overlap so much that the game pretty much boils down to popping whatever spell you can at any given time.
Rufus said:
Yeah, the first time I saw that trailer was a few hours after I fought him. It was hilarious because the actual in-game battle was nowhere close to being that exciting. For the most part, it was running away from him, having his AI glitch out on the Dog at times, and spamming AoE spells.
His skewering attack is absolute bullshit, though, pretty much guaranteeing a 100% combo since he follows it up each time with an undodgable slice attack unless you were pumping Constitution as a Warrior.
gdt5016 said:
Same here. Finished him in about 5 minutes with my dual wielding rogue. I can see how he'd thrash people, but I had such high Cunning that he missed a lot of the time with regular swings. I was a dualist/assassin, though. The survivability was good enough that the Arishok didn't give me a problem at all.
Xilium
Member
I dueled him as an archer rouge and just kited him the whole time. I would just wait for him to use that charge attack, Miasmic Flask (Sabatoge tree), Pinpoint Strikes (Assassin tree), Assassinate (Assassin tree), normal critical hits, start running when he's loose, rinse & repeat. I would occasionally summon the dog as well to act as a minor distraction (that's all it was good for cause it would die in like 5 hits).
Crazymoogle
Member
Yeah,
is not hard with a party, but in melee...ugh.
I think what made me stop playing for a day was following that up with:
a.
. Great. Wander into the zone and run into this...another twenty minutes down the drain. Those respawns and heat-seeking fireballs are brutal.
b. When following one of the companion quests, you end up in a cave with a Giant Spider. Well, unfortunately the spider has a habit of carefully slashing your hero against the wall so that he falls down, gets up, and falls down repeatedly until dead. There's no save unless you have something to distract it's attention. Lost Hawke 3 times in a row, didn't get a single hit off.
Thanks to Bloody Merrill my odds have notably improved since, though.
Arishok
I think what made me stop playing for a day was following that up with:
a.
High Dragon
b. When following one of the companion quests, you end up in a cave with a Giant Spider. Well, unfortunately the spider has a habit of carefully slashing your hero against the wall so that he falls down, gets up, and falls down repeatedly until dead. There's no save unless you have something to distract it's attention. Lost Hawke 3 times in a row, didn't get a single hit off.
Thanks to Bloody Merrill my odds have notably improved since, though.
HadesGigas
Member
Crazymoogle said:
Just happened to me, the monstrous spider is like as wide as the room you're fighting in.
subversus said:
Maybe I was just unlucky.
It didn't help that I came into that fight with no grenades, poisons, or buff potions.
Oh, and I don't have evade.
Maybe I just got really unlucky. I think if I had a bow, it would have been a long and annoying, but not hard, fight.
I've just totally built my rogue to do heavy damage quickly, and not really worry about getting hit. My fortitude is crap as is my constitution. I've basically just put all my points into Dex and Con. So when I got hit, I generally got hit multiple times, and lost about half my health.
And it's not like I totally suck. I mean, I finished Golems of Amgarrack on hard, and I basically had to solo the optional Golem Boss pack fight (beat that fight on my first try).
Confidence Man
Member
HK-47 said:
No.
Sir Garbageman
Member
Is the point of no return obvious in Act III as it was in Act II? I've heard how the game ends rather abruptly.
Patryn said:
Assassinate animations takes so long you get hit, you fall, you stay on the ground so long you get hit again. You stand up but he refuses to move for about 1-2 seconds. He gets hit again. Honestly, that battles made me almost smash my keyboard. The game simply wasn't designed for that type of thing yet it's in there. The duel in the first game with
Teyrn Loghain
Sir Garbageman
Member
JoeBoy101 said:
That's what I assumed, thanks.
With regards to the animations it is a little annoying how easy it is for a low health character to get into a stun / knockdown loop until they're KO'd. If you get knocked into a wall, especially by a big enemy like the giant spiders there's a 50 / 50 chance you're gonna end up dead.
Mister_Bubbles
Member
glaurung said:
Salaadin said:
Yep. Pair that with the knowledge that your main aim for the Act is to earn enough gold to go on the expedition, and... well... hmm. Seems fairly obvious
