I think I'm just gonna use heal + upgrade most of the time, then if my parties in some deep shit just activate healing aura. It's not worth losing the goodness of elemental spells unless you really need it. Force magic just seemed kind of worthless aside from trash mobs and blood magic seems counter productive.Lostconfused said:
-
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
Basileus777
Member
corkscrewblow said:
Yeah, I haven't found the mage specializations to be that great. Elemental + arcane spell tree are awesome, with primal being good too if your worried about friendly fire.
indigo-cyclops
Member
DevelopmentArrested said:
45 hours? Damn, I thought I was hearing 20 or so. Any insights as to why it may have taken you longer?
Mister_Bubbles
Member
Lostconfused said:
Well, you were complaining about not having anything else to do, lol
Lostconfused
Member
I don't have anything else to do because the rest of the party takes care of it already.Mister_Bubbles said:Well, you were complaining about not having anything else to do, lol
Mister_Bubbles
Member
Lostconfused said:
Make little games up for yourself. Like... enemy tag time trials. When the battle starts, as well as healing, run around and tag every enemy in the fight with your staff during each wave, then work on getting your Personal Best time down! ¬_¬
Edit: Then imagine little 'achievement unlocked' bubbles at the bottom of your screen for extra satisfaction!
PaddyOCanager
Member
I'm 21 hours in and liking it overall so far (PC version). I'm a little disappointed with the story/setting - I never played DAO so a lot of these names and places don't mean a thing to me. I find myself tuning out in the middle of conversations sometimes because I don't know wtf the characters are talking about. Also, I've only seen one unique dungeon and it was pretty similar to one of the standard/sidequest dungeons. Pretty underwhelming....
I was also pretty mad when the only character I liked,
. However, it turned out for the best because afterward I finally found a party I liked rolling with in battle: FemHawke Rogue, Isabela, Fenris and Merill. I like the banter between them too.
The dialogue options are awesome in this game - it's truly satisfying watching my choices affect Hawke's personality. The combat is engaging, and the overall package has me addicted despite my complaints.
I was also pretty mad when the only character I liked,
Bethany, died
The dialogue options are awesome in this game - it's truly satisfying watching my choices affect Hawke's personality. The combat is engaging, and the overall package has me addicted despite my complaints.
TheUsual said:
I really almost did. I think they did a great job with the default Male Hawke... but I just couldn't let myself use a default face. I couldn't in ME and I couldn't in this one.
I will say that I'm actually pretty happy with the Hawke I made, although he's seems to be the only redhead in his entire family.
Does DA2 mark every quest for you and list the ones you dont have as rumors? I only ask because I think that I wrapped up all of the quests last night since my Journal lists nothing but the Main Quest now. Is it safe to say I can do that without missing anything?
As far as companions go, I got
Anyone missing?
As far as companions go, I got
Bella, Merril, Varric, Aveline, Anders, Beth, and Fenris
Hadoken said:
At Dragon Age Nexus there's a mod that allows you to use default Hawke's beard and hair; However, I've tried it in the demo and I had a really hard time to adjust the non-preset models' jaw to fit the beard (it doesn't help that the moment you select a beard the game blocks jaw/mouth customization). :/ In the end my Hawke's jaw stuck out below the beard a little.
I want Toolset so I won't be bounded by those stupid sliders in CC
Lostconfused
Member
Combat in this game is still awful. Or at least it seems awful, maybe one day I'll figure out how to enjoy it despite it self.
HadesGigas
Member
Jerk 2.0 said:
There's got to be an incest mod by now, right?
Fimbulvetr
Member
gdt5016 said:
Deep Road are considered a maze now? There was very little to it, it was just long and boring is all.
A split path here or there that never amounted to much unless you were doing all the DR sidequests at once, but otherwise shit just dragged.
Square Triangle said:
The game's intro area is a mountain that literally looks like a giant, dried out dump.
Luckily, you never see it after the intro.
PaddyOCanager
Member
Hadoken said:
Here is my femHawke, I liked her better than the original version:
Three hours in and loving this so much more than the first. Story is great so far, especially liked the first appearance of
and the stuff with
.
I enjoy the combat quite a bit. Has a nice solid feel to the hits and was surprised (pleasantly) with how much "action" there is to it. I beat the first ogre by avoiding his attacks, counter attacking and then moving away.
The menus and stuff are so much easier to navigate and I like the fact that it feels very much like Mass Effect.
Can't wait to sink some more time into it.
Flemeth
uncle and trying to get into the city
I enjoy the combat quite a bit. Has a nice solid feel to the hits and was surprised (pleasantly) with how much "action" there is to it. I beat the first ogre by avoiding his attacks, counter attacking and then moving away.
The menus and stuff are so much easier to navigate and I like the fact that it feels very much like Mass Effect.
Can't wait to sink some more time into it.
Guerrillas in the Mist
Member
Just finished my second playthrough of DA:O, just 2 hours before DA2 unlocks on Steam. I kinda wish I did this with Mass Effect when ME2 came out. Hopefully going into the sequel with the first game fresh in my mind will help enhance the experience, even if it means going through Shit Mountain again.
Lostconfused said:
Conversely, I think the combat is the only ultimately enjoyable part, and the conversation banter. NPC's make interesting little stories but the facial animation kills any delivery they might have when their eyebrows FURROW and it looks like a french fry. It's so weird.
Fimbulvetr
Member
Coxswain said:
Holy crap. How do those twigs hold up her massive hands?
I just use the hair and blood smear. The default beard is funky as hell.Mr_Zombie said:At Dragon Age Nexus there's a mod that allows you to use default Hawke's beard and hair; However, I've tried it in the demo and I had a really hard time to adjust the non-preset models' jaw to fit the beard (it doesn't help that the moment you select a beard the game blocks jaw/mouth customization). :/ In the end my Hawke's jaw stuck out below the beard a little.
I want Toolset so I won't be bounded by those stupid sliders in CC
water_wendi
Water is not wet!
Coxswain said:
lastplayed
Member
Hadoken said:
I don't like the default faces at all. Just about anything was better.
Pretty sure that's supposed to just be a regular human. The elves look just as fucked up, but typically in high-fidelity.
Honestly, I get that they wanted to have a reasonably big population of non-talky people around and didn't want the performance to go in the shitter, but surely it could have been an option on the PC to replace them with, I dunno, random generated humans from DAO or something. I mean I guess they do still mostly fade into the background unless you go looking for them, but once you notice it's hard to forget.
No wonder Kirkwall isn't taking in any more Ferelden refugees; they still aren't rid of the ones who ran away from other games ten years ago!
(You could probably make fun of this all night)
Honestly, I get that they wanted to have a reasonably big population of non-talky people around and didn't want the performance to go in the shitter, but surely it could have been an option on the PC to replace them with, I dunno, random generated humans from DAO or something. I mean I guess they do still mostly fade into the background unless you go looking for them, but once you notice it's hard to forget.
No wonder Kirkwall isn't taking in any more Ferelden refugees; they still aren't rid of the ones who ran away from other games ten years ago!
(You could probably make fun of this all night)
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
Coxswain said:Sure was nice of Bioware to remind us how far character models have come since Morrowind:
Ickman3400
Banned
ThoseDeafMutes said:
Problem with that theory is the first game was PC lead and the characters still looked atrocious.
lastplayed
Member
Ickman3400 said:
Er.. they looked better than the image above.
In the first game, characters looked bad in the way that WRPG character generators always make random characters look bad. They had lumpy faces, their hair never seemed to fit, and there were like maybe a dozen body/clothing types outside of story-central NPCs. They still had reasonably detailed models and textures, in line with the rest of the game.Ickman3400 said:
They didn't look like they were from 2002, in a game that was known for having exceptionally ugly character models even at the time.
(Mind you to be fair the actual models used for characters that actually do or say anything are decent looking and generally a small step up from the first Dragon Age if you're talking about random NPCs, and a big step up if you're talking about central characters, but the imposter-type models all around the city really are hilariously bad looking.)
Lostconfused
Member
I have no idea how you manage it when its so incredibly bad.Gvaz said:
Coxswain said:Sure was nice of Bioware to remind us how far character models have come since Morrowind:
DAMN.
that's just lazy.
The game looks like it's a budget sequel, a cheap cash-in. WHY BIOWARE? ALL THESE MILLIONS AND YOU....ah whatever.
Did you pick a boring character/low difficulty? I'm finding it a lot more challenging/active/tactical/fun than the first game, despite a couple of really annoying issues I have with it, and it's been improving as I get further into the first act, rather than starting to wear thin with me.Lostconfused said:
After reading the last few pages I'm not sure what to think. Well, I'm sure what to think of the dialogue wheel and the ME1 cut/paste jobs, but I'm no longer sure about the combat.
It seems that some people who seem to play similarly to me are enjoying it. So, if you completely ignore the "tactics" feature in every major battle and have no problem micromanaging every move of every character during heated situations, are battles on Nightmare fun or not? As a reference point, I was almost having fun during the last battle on shit mountain in the demo (on Nightmare), if there just had been fewer random enemy spawns it could have been pretty nice.
It seems that some people who seem to play similarly to me are enjoying it. So, if you completely ignore the "tactics" feature in every major battle and have no problem micromanaging every move of every character during heated situations, are battles on Nightmare fun or not? As a reference point, I was almost having fun during the last battle on shit mountain in the demo (on Nightmare), if there just had been fewer random enemy spawns it could have been pretty nice.
It's not lazy. It probably took more work to make that than to just poop something out in the character creator. The reason it exists is to make the game run better on consoles.subversus said:
And people who are saying it's a fluke are just lying. Those NPCs commonly populate corners and side areas. Bioware tries to hide it by putting big hoods over some of their faces though.
Lostconfused
Member
I sad awful not boring. I am playing it on hard.Coxswain said:
Edit: Trying to play it tactically isn't really fun when you are hindered all the time by the game not being designed to be played like that.
That's exactly how I play the game, and clearly I'm having a really good time with it. The biggest point of contention is the waves of enemies that spawn in. They never stop (I mean, you continue to encounter them throughout the game; eventually they stop spawning in any given fight), so if you find that you really, really hate them, they're going to annoy you continually.Durante said:
It never bothered me because my style of play has never really been to try and set up any sort of careful formation; my ranged characters are constantly in motion anyway circling around the central fray, and my melee characters are split between keeping the big central mob busy and disengaging to get a few whacks in on an isolated straggler. When waves come in sometimes I'm forced to fall back a little to a better position because I've been taking enough of a beating to begin with, but (especially once you come to expect them anyway) it's not really like I'm ever just shocked and blindsided by a new group.
What I'm liking about it, that the first game was specifically lacking, is the sense of control you've got over the party; you can't really just set-and-forget your physical fighters, since they've got useful skills that come up just as often as the Mages', and the controls are responsive enough that sometimes even when all your cooldowns are up, you can tilt the game in your favour by switching which character you control and manually controlling them. Apart from your basic kiting and stuff like that, you move fast enough that if you're really quick about it, you can actually bait out enemy attacks and then dodge them. There was a fight early on against one particularly strong enemy that would have killed my whole party inside of 20 seconds had I just set everybody to attack, but I managed to kill him by dodging almost all of his attacks, using another character to flank him so I could hit for real damage, and just generally managing to pull a win out of a situation where statistically I was just overmatched.
Truth be told though, one annoying part (at least in the early game) is that some of the fights against 'boss' enemies (not actual bosses, but just the regular dudes with super huge health bars) can just get tedious as hell, because they're not particularly dangerous offensively, you have to whittle down their health over a long time, and they each have 3-4 potions that heal them for ~60% of their health, so you're pounding away for a while.
Now that I've gained a few levels, I think I've got enough power and diverse enough abilities to keep them from dragging things out and healing forever, but for the first few levels, fighting the 'boss' enemies is definitely not nearly as fun as the combat against ordinary enemy groups.
NPCs who you have conversations with don't look like that. NPCs who actually have spoken lines when you click on them or walk past them (but don't get into a dialogue encounter with) don't look like that. The NPCs that are just there as background noise, making up crowds in the streets and in bars, or the beggars, and stuff like that, do look like that, all the time. You just don't really have a reason to focus on them unless you go looking or your camera angle ends up drifting onto one and giving you the full Goatse treatment.gdt5016 said:
Blue Ninja
Member
I used the default. If it's on the cover, I have trouble making another face for the character. Same with Mass Effect, the majority of my characters use the default John Shepard face.Patryn said:
I just beat the
Ancient Rock Wraith in the Deep Roads... Holy hell, that was a hard battle. Really had to use tactics for that one.
Not sure if this has already been discussed but Sessler's two cents are up: http://www.g4tv.com/videos/51663/Dragon-Age-2-with-Adam-Sessler/ and it's a 3/5. I agree with a lot of his points, especially the lack of an overall narrative.
Really? That fight felt like something out of WoW 4 years ago, but lacking any of the excitement of having other real people working together to pull it off. 20 seconds in and you knew what you had to do. Afterwards it was just the tedious process of whittling down it's health bar.Blue Ninja said:
Lonesome_Raod
Member
I'm really enjoying this but I sold my Lion of Orlais shield to some vendor by mistake and didn't realise for while. Now I can't seem to find it. Do items you sell vanish from vendors list fter a while?
