-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Dragon Age II |OT| The Revenge of Shit Mountain
- Thread starter EviLore
- Start date
HadesGigas
Member
Atilac said:
Seems like in your mind a lot of things would probably have goatse, yes.
Wow. These DLC items are really fucking with this game. I mean, I had the Blood Dragon Armor and all that jazz in DA:O, but that had some fairly high stats, to the point that Alistair was like level 14 or so before he could wear it. Now, I walk into my house and open a chest and not only do I suddenly and randomly gain two levels (I know it was a DLC item thing) but I find a ton of equipment that is vastly better than what I have and that I can immediately equip.
Way to balance, Bioware.
And on that point, I HATE the new way of doing resistances. I mean +308 to cold resistance? +136 to fire resistance? What the hell does that even mean anymore? In DA:O it made sense! Adding 20 to fire resistance meant you took 20 percent less damage from fire! Now these numbers are so insane that they make no sense to me beyond bigger numbers being better.
I just imagine a bunch of guys at the Bioware office being like "The Social Network":
"You know what's better than 30 points in a resistance?"
"No, what?"
"300 points in a resistance!"
Given the extremely mixed reaction to DA2 I've been reading here and elsewhere, I'm betting Bioware is either really embarrassed they put that in or thinking it's more hilarious than ever.
Way to balance, Bioware.
And on that point, I HATE the new way of doing resistances. I mean +308 to cold resistance? +136 to fire resistance? What the hell does that even mean anymore? In DA:O it made sense! Adding 20 to fire resistance meant you took 20 percent less damage from fire! Now these numbers are so insane that they make no sense to me beyond bigger numbers being better.
I just imagine a bunch of guys at the Bioware office being like "The Social Network":
"You know what's better than 30 points in a resistance?"
"No, what?"
"300 points in a resistance!"
EmCeeGramr said:
OH BIOWARE YOU CARDS this is up there with the hilarious scathing commentary in ME2 where some NERD is all "i don't want visceral combat and intelligent moral choices (like the ones in Mass Effect 2) i want to use items and travel around an open world i'm so dumb and stupid"
Given the extremely mixed reaction to DA2 I've been reading here and elsewhere, I'm betting Bioware is either really embarrassed they put that in or thinking it's more hilarious than ever.
canadian crowe
Member
How long isthe Exhiled Prince Dlc? I did
. Is there more to it?
the Duty quest but he hasn't joined my party
Needs moar Hawke customization sharing. Here's a shot of my FemHawke-
http://i55.tinypic.com/eguyb9.jpg (Edit: Big pic)
Also, I'm about 13 hours in and I've yet to
. I'm going side-quest BANANAS. I've also really come to grips with the new battle system. My only real complaint is one that a lot people are making.. the mid-fight enemy spawns really makes positioning pointless. I've adjusted the way I play but it IS pretty annoying to have to micromanage your tank. That said, I'm actually excited about the idea of playing as a tank myself in my second play through, which is something I never liked doing in Origins.
http://i55.tinypic.com/eguyb9.jpg (Edit: Big pic)
Also, I'm about 13 hours in and I've yet to
go on the expedition
Rahxephon91
Banned
Anyone you know how to make the preset Hawke?
TeK-DeLorean
Neo Member
GOD THIS.hamchan said:
I can totally see this as an idea for a DLC episode sadly..
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
I'm actually happy they made elves look less generic fantasy and more like horrible human alien hybrids.
I hope they make the Asari hideous aliens in ME3.
mercenar1e
Member
seems to me that this game should be called Dragon Age SimCity.. I'm pretty much fixing EVERYTHING that is wrong with the damn place lol.. and so far i haven't seen any major decisions carry over from Dragon Age Origins besides a sentence here and there
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
mercenar1e said:
Except there's no option to unleash a giant tornado on the city and wreck all their shit.
mercenar1e
Member
ThoseDeafMutes said:
prob has something to do with that mirror.. but yeah dragon age simcity
HadesGigas
Member
gdt5016 said:
He's Hylian, there are several races in LoZ series with pointed ears. The most "elf" like one being the Kokiri with their agelessness and living in the woods.
TeK-DeLorean
Neo Member
God so many missed opportunities... =(Ceebs said:
On the upside I'm loving Rogue combat this time around, jumping around and backstabbing trying not to get hit is pretty fun. Got my ass kicked on hard mode and reloaded like 10 times before shamefully going back to normal but I enjoyed every minute of it.
Rahxephon91
Banned
That sucks. I just wanted to change her hair.Grisby said:
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
Rahxephon91 said:
Grr, same thing happens in Mass Effect. I just want to modify the default a bit but it won't let you.
I think it's because they don't make the default faces in the face creator, they custom make them.
HadesGigas
Member
Grisby said:
That must be it...
~15 hours in and finally got past the "first" year that ends with the Deep Roads...I assumed the Deep Roads were the beginning of the game, but side quest after side quest and new companion after new companion kept popping up, and before I knew it, more than 13 hours had already gone by...lol
How many "years" are there?
How many "years" are there?
Basileus777
Member
X-Frame said:
I don't think he joins until after the first time skip.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
X-Frame said:
That's a bug/shitty design.
Probably what happened is that you probably entered the sewer before the game "saw" that you completed the quest. You have to load a save from before that to finish it.
firehawk12 said:
Yeah, I figured that so I loaded an earlier save. Sat back on my ass with Varric and picked them off this time because I suspected it was my superspeed entrance into the sewer that did it. Why'd they have to put the sewer there .. or at least move the enemies to another spot.
Deadly Cyclone
Pride of Iowa State
13.5 hours in and I just got done with
. Am I half way through? Just curious how long the game is. I got about 15 new side quests, so if it takes me as long as before I have another 6 hours of side quests (which is cool).
EDIT: Guy above me answered my question. So possibly about a 27 hour playthrough? I am doing every quest I find.
the Deep Roads
EDIT: Guy above me answered my question. So possibly about a 27 hour playthrough? I am doing every quest I find.
I've managed to get a couple hours in with the game in between studying for mid-terms. There's definitely some annoying stuff, and definitely some stuff that's just absolutely godawful, but on the whole I'm pleasantly surprised so far. I imagined it would be like DAO, where I played because I managed to wring a bit of fun out of the combat system, and everything else was either too boring to remember or too infuriatingly stupid to forget. Instead, I'm actually legitimately (most of the time) enjoying the game.
Which, to be fair, doesn't mean that there isn't still stuff in the game so awful that it burns your brain. Pretty much anything that was stupid in the demo is stupid in the full game, compounded by the fact that it's the first glimpse of the game that you get. Any any time Merrill talks I just start instinctively biting down on the base of my tongue, because choking to death on my own blood starts to look like an attractive option compared to the embarrassing shit she spews constantly.
Still, when the game isn't going out of its way to be stupid, I find the writing is several steps up the ladder compared to the first game. To be fair, a lot of it isn't so much that they're particularly great pieces of writing as it is that they're just ideas you don't really see in video game stories.
- Hawke's grown on me. I was rolling my eyes a lot in the demo, and I still do, but I'm finding that even if the jokes are bad (and they are usually bad), I like that 'wisecracker' is one of the base personality types. I'll admit I'm easily pandered to in that regard, but I like the option to play a character who doesn't take everything super seriously. I like her voice actor, too; I definitely think having a voiced PC is worth whatever tradeoffs there might be.
- I also like the family. I really, really didn't think I would considering how awful they all are in the demo, but I find it pretty fun. You don't play many games where your character actually even has a family, and fewer still where those family members play regular, significant roles in the story. It's all kind of low-key, actual family semi-drama so far, and I think it helps the whole thing feel kind of grounded.
- Similarly, I like that your party members have their own homes, and actual lives outside of following you around all day. It's kind of just a meaningless atmosphere thing, but it's a good idea. And it does offer the advantages of A) Letting those characters actually do stuff without you and advance their lives during timeskips, and B) Letting them give quests/sidequests that don't start with, "Hey, there's this thing from my past..."
- It's a very un-Bioware story, so far, and in a really good way. I haven't been inducted into any super-special order, nobody's declared me the one and only person who can stop the Big Spooky Thing, and there aren't three-to-four Major Epic Missions laid out in front of me. Just working, and mostly toward a (not particularly noble or important) goal. I like the time skips (or skip, since I've only really seen the one). They necessitate a little bit of ham-handed exposition ("Hey, Aveline's a guard now!") and it's a little weird the first time you run into an NPC who Hawke knows and the player doesn't, but it does help with the atmospheric sense that this is kind of just Hawke's life, not a single unbroken chain of major undertakings that raise her from a nobody to the most powerful person ever overnight.
- Outside of Merrill being singlehandedly the worst five or six things Bioware has ever written, ever, in the space of her recruitment quest, I like the companions more than I thought I would. Aveline was kind of boring but I like the Loose Cannon Cop cliche; I started warming to Bethany after the demo area, as mentioned above, Varric is actually just all-around pretty likable and entertaining, and I just got Anders, but he hasn't said anything that's annoyed me yet. It's not an amazing cast or anything, but considering in DAO I liked Sten and the Dog, could grudgingly tolerate Shale, and couldn't stand anybody else, I view it as a pleasant upgrade.
- Not writing, strictly, but outside of Flemeth and Isabela still having some embarrassing (and creepy) sexualization, I like the visual style of most characters a lot more than the first game. Hawke's gone through a greater number of cool looking armour sets in the first 3-4 hours of the game than I ever saw in DAO, and the other party members don't look like random NPCs pulled from the street. Elves finally look like the horrible mutant freaks they always were, and I haven't seen anything else with armour as dumb looking as the Darkspawn, so the general art direction has the stylization I think the franchise was in dire need of, without being nearly as juvenile and stupid looking as I expected.
- I like that the game is set almost entirely in Kirkwall. It's hardly an interesting video game city, but it's pretty good by the franchise's standards (I'd say it's at least on par with Orzammar, which was head and shoulders above every single other town in DAO). More importantly, though, I don't think it actually matters if the city is inherently interesting or not; the effect that the restriction has on the scope and the style of the story does all the heavy lifting in terms of setting it apart. Doing odd jobs around a city appeals to me a lot more than going from one place I don't care about to another on 'epic' quests.
- The little snippets you hear in reference to an imported save from DAO are pretty minor, but always cool when they show up. I think DA2 has done a better job of making me attached to the Warden/Hero/whatever than DAO itself did. I didn't expect [DAO character was a mage]
. It might be a little bit of an eyeroll-worthy coincidence, but I still thought it was pretty cool.
Gameplay-wise, I expected it to actually be pretty good, and I'm not disappointed; playing on Nightmare, Tactics off, and so far it's been a good deal more challenging and a good deal more active and engaging than DAO. The lack of an isometric camera still fucking blows. There's a bug or something that's irritating as fuck, where the mouse stops responding to attack and move commands unless you select a different character and then switch back; it happens upward of 50% of the time when I first select a character, which (the way I play) is usually a couple times every 2-5 seconds of 'real-time' combat. Boss enemies (not boss boss, but the dudes with extra-long health bars) are tedious as hell to fight, because they're not especially dangerous on their own, have shitloads of HP, and chug potions (too quickly to reliably interrupt) to prolong the fight even when they're the last one left and you're chipping away at them.
Those bosses aside though, I like the general balance of combat. I come out of almost every fight by the skin of my teeth, end up with Injuries pretty frequently, I've died a few times and come close a lot more than that. I've restricted myself only to Health Potions that I find along the way (ie: Won't buy any), which means I've usually only got 2-3 on-hand, and I've run out and had to get creative a couple of times already.
I'm not having as much grief with the spawning waves as some people seem to be. It might just be the way I play, but I don't really find it effective or feasible to hold a specific position for any real length of time. My characters are moving around enough (and movement speed is quick enough) that I'm usually set up to deal with the new guys by the time their AI kicks in.
Unless this game totally does a 180 halfway through, I'm pretty confident in saying that I think it's better than DAO, with the slight qualification that between the isometric camera and the lack of interface bugs, I didn't feel as constrained by the interface in the first game. (On the other hand, I prefer the look of the DA2 UI, as 'yellowish pages of a generic fantasy book' is the most tacky and horrible UI motif you can possibly go with, and functionally DA2 does a better job of keeping the important information you need all in one place, by putting the health bars and such in the same region as the skill bar).
Which, to be fair, doesn't mean that there isn't still stuff in the game so awful that it burns your brain. Pretty much anything that was stupid in the demo is stupid in the full game, compounded by the fact that it's the first glimpse of the game that you get. Any any time Merrill talks I just start instinctively biting down on the base of my tongue, because choking to death on my own blood starts to look like an attractive option compared to the embarrassing shit she spews constantly.
Still, when the game isn't going out of its way to be stupid, I find the writing is several steps up the ladder compared to the first game. To be fair, a lot of it isn't so much that they're particularly great pieces of writing as it is that they're just ideas you don't really see in video game stories.
- Hawke's grown on me. I was rolling my eyes a lot in the demo, and I still do, but I'm finding that even if the jokes are bad (and they are usually bad), I like that 'wisecracker' is one of the base personality types. I'll admit I'm easily pandered to in that regard, but I like the option to play a character who doesn't take everything super seriously. I like her voice actor, too; I definitely think having a voiced PC is worth whatever tradeoffs there might be.
- I also like the family. I really, really didn't think I would considering how awful they all are in the demo, but I find it pretty fun. You don't play many games where your character actually even has a family, and fewer still where those family members play regular, significant roles in the story. It's all kind of low-key, actual family semi-drama so far, and I think it helps the whole thing feel kind of grounded.
- Similarly, I like that your party members have their own homes, and actual lives outside of following you around all day. It's kind of just a meaningless atmosphere thing, but it's a good idea. And it does offer the advantages of A) Letting those characters actually do stuff without you and advance their lives during timeskips, and B) Letting them give quests/sidequests that don't start with, "Hey, there's this thing from my past..."
- It's a very un-Bioware story, so far, and in a really good way. I haven't been inducted into any super-special order, nobody's declared me the one and only person who can stop the Big Spooky Thing, and there aren't three-to-four Major Epic Missions laid out in front of me. Just working, and mostly toward a (not particularly noble or important) goal. I like the time skips (or skip, since I've only really seen the one). They necessitate a little bit of ham-handed exposition ("Hey, Aveline's a guard now!") and it's a little weird the first time you run into an NPC who Hawke knows and the player doesn't, but it does help with the atmospheric sense that this is kind of just Hawke's life, not a single unbroken chain of major undertakings that raise her from a nobody to the most powerful person ever overnight.
- Outside of Merrill being singlehandedly the worst five or six things Bioware has ever written, ever, in the space of her recruitment quest, I like the companions more than I thought I would. Aveline was kind of boring but I like the Loose Cannon Cop cliche; I started warming to Bethany after the demo area, as mentioned above, Varric is actually just all-around pretty likable and entertaining, and I just got Anders, but he hasn't said anything that's annoyed me yet. It's not an amazing cast or anything, but considering in DAO I liked Sten and the Dog, could grudgingly tolerate Shale, and couldn't stand anybody else, I view it as a pleasant upgrade.
- Not writing, strictly, but outside of Flemeth and Isabela still having some embarrassing (and creepy) sexualization, I like the visual style of most characters a lot more than the first game. Hawke's gone through a greater number of cool looking armour sets in the first 3-4 hours of the game than I ever saw in DAO, and the other party members don't look like random NPCs pulled from the street. Elves finally look like the horrible mutant freaks they always were, and I haven't seen anything else with armour as dumb looking as the Darkspawn, so the general art direction has the stylization I think the franchise was in dire need of, without being nearly as juvenile and stupid looking as I expected.
- I like that the game is set almost entirely in Kirkwall. It's hardly an interesting video game city, but it's pretty good by the franchise's standards (I'd say it's at least on par with Orzammar, which was head and shoulders above every single other town in DAO). More importantly, though, I don't think it actually matters if the city is inherently interesting or not; the effect that the restriction has on the scope and the style of the story does all the heavy lifting in terms of setting it apart. Doing odd jobs around a city appeals to me a lot more than going from one place I don't care about to another on 'epic' quests.
- The little snippets you hear in reference to an imported save from DAO are pretty minor, but always cool when they show up. I think DA2 has done a better job of making me attached to the Warden/Hero/whatever than DAO itself did. I didn't expect [DAO character was a mage]
Hawke and the Warden to be cousins
Gameplay-wise, I expected it to actually be pretty good, and I'm not disappointed; playing on Nightmare, Tactics off, and so far it's been a good deal more challenging and a good deal more active and engaging than DAO. The lack of an isometric camera still fucking blows. There's a bug or something that's irritating as fuck, where the mouse stops responding to attack and move commands unless you select a different character and then switch back; it happens upward of 50% of the time when I first select a character, which (the way I play) is usually a couple times every 2-5 seconds of 'real-time' combat. Boss enemies (not boss boss, but the dudes with extra-long health bars) are tedious as hell to fight, because they're not especially dangerous on their own, have shitloads of HP, and chug potions (too quickly to reliably interrupt) to prolong the fight even when they're the last one left and you're chipping away at them.
Those bosses aside though, I like the general balance of combat. I come out of almost every fight by the skin of my teeth, end up with Injuries pretty frequently, I've died a few times and come close a lot more than that. I've restricted myself only to Health Potions that I find along the way (ie: Won't buy any), which means I've usually only got 2-3 on-hand, and I've run out and had to get creative a couple of times already.
I'm not having as much grief with the spawning waves as some people seem to be. It might just be the way I play, but I don't really find it effective or feasible to hold a specific position for any real length of time. My characters are moving around enough (and movement speed is quick enough) that I'm usually set up to deal with the new guys by the time their AI kicks in.
Unless this game totally does a 180 halfway through, I'm pretty confident in saying that I think it's better than DAO, with the slight qualification that between the isometric camera and the lack of interface bugs, I didn't feel as constrained by the interface in the first game. (On the other hand, I prefer the look of the DA2 UI, as 'yellowish pages of a generic fantasy book' is the most tacky and horrible UI motif you can possibly go with, and functionally DA2 does a better job of keeping the important information you need all in one place, by putting the health bars and such in the same region as the skill bar).
Deadly Cyclone
Pride of Iowa State
Anyone else think female Hawke's voice actor would be a good Lara Croft?
bigboss370
Member
how many side quests do i have to do before i can go to the deep roads with bertrand? i worked my ass off getting 50 gold and i found the necessary maps....but when i go to him it says he needs time to prepare 
Have you set up tactics to make him do something different if he's surrounded by enemies? A good one is to cast is something like Goad to take the aggro off him or get your tank to aggro any enemies that are surrounding your ranged characters. I've found once you get the tactics set up correctly and everyone is working as a team this kind of thing doesn't happen as often.Zeliard said:
GhostRidah
Member
Having a lot of fun with the game, yea it has many cons but when you just try and sit back and enjoy it its good.
My impressions come from the following perspective:
-PC Gamer
-Beat DA:O four times (including expansion/DLC's) on Nightmare with two additional difficulty mods ('Nightmare Plus' & my own custom mod that added more health to Elites and Bosses); loved every second of it.
-My favorite/preferred class is 'Healing Mage'.
-I'm 5-6 hours into DA:2 on Nightmare difficulty; currently enjoying the game.
I'd like to discuss and here impressions from people who are getting by on Nightmare. Here is how I've been able to survive on Nightmare thus far...
-My typical party-setup: Healer (me, with most of my points in Willpower), Sword&Shield tank (most points in Constitution), 2-Hander (most points into strength), Rogue (most points in Dexterity).
-2 handed warriors do friendly-fire with every swing, so to account for this I position my 2-hander behind the mob of enemies after my tank has acquired hate. You have to micro-manage his/her positioning for the duration of the fight though.
-Commander enemies steal and drink potions themselves, so you have to try to keep them stunned or knocked down to keep them from continuously replinishing thier health.
-You have to take advantage of cross-class combos at every opportunity (brittle, disorient, and stagger provide great bonuses if you have the appropriate class attack during the mobs enfeebled state).
-Mage AOE is still very useful as long as you target them to land on the very cusp of where your companions are standing; if care is taken, you can still encompass large groups of enemies.
-When enemies spawn from thin-air, CTRL-A your party (select all) and run them into a position on the map where there backs are to a wall; now you won't be surrounded and you've given yourself a few more seconds for your cooldown timers to expire on your abilities.
-Through the tactics menu, I've set my entire party to attack a single target at a time (the target of the tank).
-To protect my mages, I have tactics setup for warriors/tanks to 'Pommel Strike' or 'Shield Bash' any mob that attacks my mage(s) with melee attacks.
-As the healer of the group it sucks that I can only do my job once every 40 seconds. To account for this, I usually cast heal when someone loses about 40% of their health, so that by the time their health is really low my heal timer should be about to expire.
I'm obviously still learning the game so I would like to see some of the strategies used by others, but so far...there hasn't been an encounter that I haven't been able to get through.
-PC Gamer
-Beat DA:O four times (including expansion/DLC's) on Nightmare with two additional difficulty mods ('Nightmare Plus' & my own custom mod that added more health to Elites and Bosses); loved every second of it.
-My favorite/preferred class is 'Healing Mage'.
-I'm 5-6 hours into DA:2 on Nightmare difficulty; currently enjoying the game.
I'd like to discuss and here impressions from people who are getting by on Nightmare. Here is how I've been able to survive on Nightmare thus far...
-My typical party-setup: Healer (me, with most of my points in Willpower), Sword&Shield tank (most points in Constitution), 2-Hander (most points into strength), Rogue (most points in Dexterity).
-2 handed warriors do friendly-fire with every swing, so to account for this I position my 2-hander behind the mob of enemies after my tank has acquired hate. You have to micro-manage his/her positioning for the duration of the fight though.
-Commander enemies steal and drink potions themselves, so you have to try to keep them stunned or knocked down to keep them from continuously replinishing thier health.
-You have to take advantage of cross-class combos at every opportunity (brittle, disorient, and stagger provide great bonuses if you have the appropriate class attack during the mobs enfeebled state).
-Mage AOE is still very useful as long as you target them to land on the very cusp of where your companions are standing; if care is taken, you can still encompass large groups of enemies.
-When enemies spawn from thin-air, CTRL-A your party (select all) and run them into a position on the map where there backs are to a wall; now you won't be surrounded and you've given yourself a few more seconds for your cooldown timers to expire on your abilities.
-Through the tactics menu, I've set my entire party to attack a single target at a time (the target of the tank).
-To protect my mages, I have tactics setup for warriors/tanks to 'Pommel Strike' or 'Shield Bash' any mob that attacks my mage(s) with melee attacks.
-As the healer of the group it sucks that I can only do my job once every 40 seconds. To account for this, I usually cast heal when someone loses about 40% of their health, so that by the time their health is really low my heal timer should be about to expire.
I'm obviously still learning the game so I would like to see some of the strategies used by others, but so far...there hasn't been an encounter that I haven't been able to get through.
saunderez said:
The problem is it can be hard to gauge where the newly spawning enemies will come from, and when you have a top-down camera that doesn't let you pull back very far, it's even harder to get a clear view of the entire battlefield.
So when it comes to, say, using abilities tactically, you can only do so much. If I'm using taunt (which has 20 sec cooldown) to aggro some fools with my tank and then a bunch appear out of nowhere and attack my rogue or mage, there isn't much I can do if those characters don't have decent de-aggro abilities (non-upgraded Mind Blast, for example, only works to a point). The option is to try and send my rogue and mage away from those enemies while I wait for taunt or whatever other applicable abilities to cooldown, and I have to hope my rogue and mage don't get persistently stuck in hit-stun/stagger animations.
I don't think it's too much to ask, though, that when characters are set to ranged they always do their best to stay at range, and not get in melee combat with enemies that run up to them.
I mean Varric's smacking people around with Bianca, set at ranged. What's that fool think he's doing?Tanking and such gets easier as you progress and more abilities are unlocked, but due to the way encounters are set up in DA2, tanks are of limited effectiveness in the early going.
Edit: and yes I know the ranged option states that the char will fight back in melee, but that is silly. You've specifically got a ranged option there out of like 6 different ones, so have that one attempt to stay in range at all times. Cautious has the character backing out of melee - that should have gone to ranged as well.
mercenar1e
Member
I cant find Isabela.. help?
canadian crowe
Member
She's inmercenar1e said:
The Hanged Man bar