Dragon Age

[pocoGRANDE]

 

Wait... they don't teach you that? I don't recall ever having any problems with it.

 

In terms of mages: You could have two. One for healing and one for attacking. The attacker can even be a backup healer when shit hits the fan.

 

to be more specific, it was the fact that you can switch between characters on that radial menu that really made the system click for me. i may have just missed that particular instruction but once i realized it everything just sort of fell into place.

 

and yeah, my mage has healing and physical spells but a backup healer does sound very useful. we'll see how it goes.

 

here's a quick gameplay question: do you have to worry about leveling up characters you don't use? am i gonna be forced to use one of them at some point, only to discover that they suck? i've been trying to give them all a bit of an opportunity, but my core team is very effective.

[Waldorf and Statler]

all party members level up alongside you, even if you don't use them. They did this because, without giving away spoilers, you WILL be forced to play with others besides your main party.

[deanb]

Hooray. I beat the Circle of Mages part of the main quest line. That kinda what made me stop first time around. Man I love DA:O, one of my greatest gaming regrets is not beating it when it was in it's prime. I'd say my prime annoyance is a proper lack of quest markers, so I've got 3 letters to hand out but I don't know who I have left and I've wandered all over Denerim (that I've access to) and Ogrimmar (that I have access to) so I'm just assuming the dude left is in either the Deep Roads, or the Elven Alienage/Keep. 

[Waldorf and Statler]

Really? The Mages mission made you stop? 90% of the people I know who quit stopped because of the overly-long dwarves mission

[Mercurial]

I hate every single quest in Dragon Age, but I've beaten it several times. 

[Saturnine Tenshi]

The dwarf missions were some of my favorites. x:

[deanb]

I'd not gotten to the dwarves mission in my first run. The dwarves I found decent enough, though yeah kinda dragged on in the various stages. Even more annoying that you get so much loot, having to go back n sell./test a bunch  lest you be unable to pick up some sweet gear at the end.

 

The mages tower was an issue because when you're in the fade it takes a while of going back and forth between realms, bunching into barriers, until you eventually start acquiring the specific powers to pass the barriers, so you're left with a lack of progression and no seeming advance for a fair chunk of that segment. Kinda drains you. Especially as you can't go back either unlike 99% of quests, so you'd have to jump to a much earlier save.

 

One issue I'd say that was continuous throughout, more with the side-quests, is the lack of proper quest updates. You'll have a mission like distribute a letter to three folks in blah town, bluh town, and bleh forest. And it won't update with "you've given a letter to mark in blah town, still got bob n john in the other two spots". Lack of proper quest markers too. I know breaks immersion blah de blah, but these are big places, and even quests with quest markers they only pop up once you're in the same area as them so it's a case of wandering around huge cities and forests till you're in the right section or store. Doubly annoying that a lot of quests don't even tell you where they are in the quest text.

[TheMightyEthan]

Dragon Age 2 was a lot better with the quest markers.

[Mr. GOH!]

Dragon Age 2 was shittier at everything else, though.

[TheMightyEthan]

Not everything else.  The combat was basically the same.

[Mr. GOH!]

Now you're just trolling, Ethan.

[Waldorf and Statler]

I liked the characters better, except for a lack of Morrigan and Leliana.

[TheMightyEthan]

Was there something different about the combat?  I played DA:O on 360 and DA2 on PC, so if the PC version of DA:O had some bells and whistles that the console version didn't I would have missed them.

[deanb]

It had a top-down view that was lacking in the console version, as well as hot bar bells and whistles.

[Waldorf and Statler]

Combat was less Knights of the Old Republic, more Mass Effect. In DAO you chose commands and actions for every party member and had that strategic real time combat ala MMO's. In DA2 you COULD play by pausing the screen and choosing commands but combat was real time. aka you had to mash buttons to attack.

[TheMightyEthan]

Was the console version of DA2 that different?  Because playing the PC version of DA2 was basically exactly the same as playing the console version of DA:O.  IE there was an auto-attack, so if you selected a target your character would keep attacking them until they died, you could switch to different characters to issue commands if you wanted but otherwise they used the tactics you had set up, etc.

[Waldorf and Statler]

Huh. I guess it was.

[TheMightyEthan]

Glad I switched to PC then.  I really like that KotOR-style combat.

[Waldorf and Statler]

yeah. I missed it a lot for this game on consoles.

[Mr. GOH!]

I like what Bioware's saying about DA3, but I refuse to get hyped because tDA2 was so terrible. I mean, the whole copy-and-pasted dungeon issue took everyone by surprise. I recall Bioware saying that players would get out of Kirkwall to explore, implying that exploration mattered. Instead, you get something like seven medium-sized locations reused over and over and over.

 

I can't help but wonder where EA/Bioware are cutting corners on DA3 and what central feature to RPGs will be turned to utter shit. 

 

Edit: Ethan, combat for DA2 on PC was quite different than combat on DA:O PC. More deliberately paced, positioning mattered a bit more, very few fucking stupid regenerating waves of trash mobs, and none of the stupid ARPG button mashing. The idea was to have tactical squad based combat a la Baldur's Gate (without the stupid fucking AD&D rules) rather than ME-style combat where your squadmates are essentially just extra special attacks and powers.

 

Why in god's name did you get DA:O for 360? Why do that to yourself?

Edited September 1, 2013 by Mr. GOH!

[TheMightyEthan]

Because at the time it came out I did most of my gaming on 360.  My computer was quite dated and I didn't have a PS3.

 

Also, I only got into RPGs around the time KotOR came out, and I played that on Xbox, so I don't have these memories of the old Baldur's Gate games that I want Bioware to go back to.  I loved the combat in KotOr, Dragon Age: Origins on 360 and Dragon Age 2 on PC both played like that, so I was happy.  I am glad I didn't get DA2 on 360, since apparently they turned it into an action RPG.