Dragon Age Series

[Sabre]

Knowing an ending doesnt put me off playing games. Hell many a game ive read summarys on just so i know what to expect.

 

[Conspiracy_Victim]

Nah, the story is amazing. It's just too short. I loved how you're just Hawke trying to reclaim his place in life and all of these events weave their way around him. It's epic in it's own right, on a small scale. The "big bad" for the end is actually really awesome when it happens, too. You shouldn't have ruined the surprised for yourself. A google search summary is nothing compared to seeing it happen and not knowing it's coming.

Yeah the final battle is actually pretty epic. People and shit comes flying out of the woodwork for both sides. Definitely a test in multitasking.

 

[Mik]

Haven't gotten to the final battle yet...

Spoiler

Just uncovered the plot against Meredith

Am I almost at the end?

But as far as battles go: Hybris was the most fun. Just the fact that there were approximately 50 shades and 15 Rage Demons to fight at the same time, in sort of a small space. He was pretty friggin' hard, so that was a crazy battle.

The high dragon was a lot easier then I was thinking. I had no deaths the entire battle. Anders is a pretty damn good healer in this one.

My favorite part of the game, so far: how the little side quests from act 1 pay HUGE dividends in act 3. I'm already thinking that my next playthrough can go ENTIRELY different with just a few tweaks. I'm not gonna do minor tweaks, though. I'm going to be a female mage who supports the templars 100%. I hope the game is smart enough to call me out for being a hypocrite, but I'm not sure that's gonna happen.

 

[Mik]

Holy shit that entire final sequence just kept getting crazier and crazier.

Looks like

Spoiler

Lilliana

will be an important character in DA3 based on the

Spoiler

siding with the mage

ending.

Time to play my hypocrite character! Hopefully they debug The Exiled Prince achievements by the time I get to them.

 

[Edwin]

Uggggh the Isabela friendship/attack speed glitch is back on my game again, even after I went back 4 hours and thought had fixed it. I would seriously just stop playing if I didn't love this broken-ass game.

 

[Smues]

Last night I finished act 2. Shortly into act 3 I get a companion quest to go visit Merrill at her home in the Alienage. I go, and she's freaking out about...something. It doesn't make any sense to me. Then I talk to her again and they again discuss events that haven't actually happened yet. Wondering if I'm missing something I go online and discover it's another bug and the scene I saw was from the end of a quest I haven't completed yet, and now can't because the game thinks I've done it. Gah!

 

[Mik]

No you can still complete it later. Same thing happened to me and I got to it.

 

[Conspiracy_Victim]

Late in the third act I started running in to a bug where I'd be having a conversation and the scene would repeat with neither myself or the object of the conversation actually there. It would go back to normal after the repeat, but it was curious.

Time to up the difficulty and start my female rogue. Going to go Wolverine (except female so... X-23?) on people.

 

[Smues]

So the high dragon. I would have been able to come in here and say something along the lines of HOLY FUCK WHAT AN EPIC BATTLE, but then I got a pretty major gameplay glitch that took away the epicness. So I get the dragon down to maybe 75%, and that alone took me a long ass time. At some point Aveline dies, so I cast revival and she's back up no biggy. Very shortly after I lose two more party members, so it's just the hero and Aveline while I try to hang on because I can cast revival again. I throw on healing aura in hopes I can keep Aveline alive long enough. And I notice her health is staying up so that's good. And it's still staying up. And it's pretty much staying at 100...and so is her stamina...fuck. I rezz the other two, and the same thing happens, they take damage/use mana/stamina, but it comes back right away as if we were out of combat. And that's exactly what the game appeared to think, as in addition to the rapid healing all three of them liked to break off of combat and just walk around. So at that point my entire party minus the leader is invincible. So we hack away for awhile, and after the 3rd round of smaller dragons I see that they're taking damage again. Well that's good. Until Aveline dies and I rezz her and she's invincible again.

I don't think this happened earlier in the game, so I'm not sure if it's specific to the battle or what, but that's a pretty big fucking bug if I can make people invincible just by resurrecting them.

 

[Vigo]

The ending was a little underwhelming after all the time that was put into playing and seemed like a set up for the next game.

 

[Scroby]

How in the hell do you beat the Qunari boss as a Rouge? It seems I just can't take it straight on because he'll just destory my health. For anyone whose a Rouge what'd you do?

 

[vivisectvi]

Lots of backstab-twinfangs-assassinate combos

 

[Edwin]

Uggggh the Isabela friendship/attack speed glitch is back on my game again, even after I went back 4 hours and thought had fixed it. I would seriously just stop playing if I didn't love this broken-ass game.

Happened again, as it auto-occurs if you have her friendship and she's forcibly removed from the party, like

Spoiler

during To Catch a Thief

. If you haven't bought this game, don't until they patch it, and maybe you'll actually enjoy it the whole way through.

 

[Mik]

Just do what I do and never use Isabella and/or be a bitch to her.

 

[vivisectvi]

Uggggh the Isabela friendship/attack speed glitch is back on my game again, even after I went back 4 hours and thought had fixed it. I would seriously just stop playing if I didn't love this broken-ass game.

Happened again, as it auto-occurs if you have her friendship and she's forcibly removed from the party, like

Spoiler

during To Catch a Thief

. If you haven't bought this game, don't until they patch it, and maybe you'll actually enjoy it the whole way through.

What platform are you playing on dude? This hasn't happened to me on either of my playthroughs.

 

[Edwin]

360, though I've talked to people who've had it happen on PC and PS3, too. The triggers are pretty simple, but because the way the game scripts are written very hard to work around on console. On PC, people have written several mods that let you edit your attack speed back up, or that convert friendship for Isabela into rivalry upon receiving them so you don't get the bug. The bug is easier to quantify with Sebastian, as his +5% to damage resistance turns into -5% resistance with each reload, and you can actually see that stat on the resistances menu.

Mik's right; if you never become her friend, you never have a problem. So I guess that's fine, except not when you've already sunk 20-40 hours into the game.

 

[vivisectvi]

They only seem to be concerned with patching the PC version. Apparently there is another one they are working on right now. Kinda bullshit, IMO.

 

[Edwin]

It's not a huge shock, given the pain-in-the-ass rules both Microsoft and Sony have for patch vetting and release. Bullshit, though, definitely.

 

[Mik]

Just ran in to an interesting scenario on my 2nd playthrough:

I have Fenris leveled through the roof as a damager. I am a mage. I entered the fade in Feynriel's sidequest with Varric, Aveline, and Fenris. The pride demon convinces Fenris to attack me in the fade. He's so strong that he's hitting Scythe right off the bat, killing Varric and myself in one shot. I've tried about 7 times now and I make it about 10 seconds no matter what I try.

Next time I load the game I'm gonna try to strip him of his weapon and see if that helps. Otherwise, I'm gonna have to load a previous save.

 

[Smues]

Just got an e-mail saying that I get a free download of Mass Effect 2 because I bought Dragon Age II. I own it for the 360, but haven't played it yet, nor have I played ME1, which I also own and need to play. But I'm much more into PC gaming lately than console, so I think I'll take advantage of this and download it and then when I FINALLY get around to playing through ME1 I'll play 2 on the PC. Huzzah for free games.

 

[vivisectvi]

I just got that email as well. It's too bad I don't have a PC that can handle ME2.

 

[Mik]

Me too. I don't even have a PC!

 

[Scroby]

I hate you guys.

 

[vivisectvi]

Would it kill them to have this for Mac? Dragon Age is on Mac.

 

[Edwin]

Having finally escaped all the bugs, I beat the game. Good shit. The ending is abrupt, and I thought some of the stuff in the final act was a bit rushed and weird--

Spoiler

the confusing "conspiracy" against Meredith that you're forced to fight against even if you'd like to participate, Orsino being in league with the mage that killed yo mom getting mentioned and never commented on, the fact that the story seems to end with "and everyone just went on their way"

--but overall, a good game. The flaws are obvious, but combat was light years ahead of DA:O. Maybe the inevitable DA3 will put the best of both together.

Oh, and the thing that bothered me most:

Spoiler

not being able to dime Anders out earlier. I mean, I guess you need the insane destruction of the Chantry to drive the endgame, but it was pretty obvious that he was getting into some fucked up shit, and I was dying to warn the Grand Cleric during the "I need these to make a...potion" sidequest. What a colossal asshole (yielding an awesome cutscene, at least).

 

[Mik]

The most depressing thing to me is that you really don't have a choice in the game. They only make you think you do.

Anders does what he does no matter how you play it. You fight all the same people at the end no matter how you play it. That's kinda lame, I think. Hate Merill/Love Merill, her story plays out the same, etc. Slightly frustrating.

 

[Edwin]

The biggest choices that actually have effects pertain to the companions, not the overall story. Just like in the first game, much of your party can get the boot or leave you, including the several different outcomes for Bethany/Carver. Of course, with the exception of the sibling and one character in Act 2, it all happens pretty close to the end of the game. There's definitely a lot less variation in the main plot quests than there was in DA:O.

 

[Smues]

I just finished my 2nd playthrough and think I'm done for awhile. At least until some decent DLC comes out. Overall it was great and I liked the combat/play mechanics a ton more than DA:O. I liked the character development and the general plot. I didn't care for the 3rd act of the plot though nor the bullshit 'hey remember in DA:O where you gets tons of information in the ending all based on choices you made? Yeah well that isn't happening this time!oh hey buy the next one please' ending.

 

[Mik]

It's patch day, apparently. PC patch is out now that fixes over 100 issues, including the ones that plagued Edwin. It's going through the appropriate channels for 360 and PS3 and should be out there in a few days.

 

[vivisectvi]

Any patch notes?