I have to disagree with that. I think it makes perfect sense in the context of the story,
The temptation to turn to blood magic is always there. It’s always been there, since the first game. When someone has been pushed into desperation with no way out it’s not hard to believe that Orsino, who had just witnessed many of the people closest to him get slaughtered, and who had dealings with that serial killer/necromancer, would turn to blood magic. I think it strengthens the game because it did bring out an emotional response in you. I think that’s the hallmark of a good game.
“ARGH what the fuck is this shit?! I’ll be goddamned if I play this again” is not the emotional reaction the game designers were aiming for, I think. I hope.
[spoiler]
Orsino succumbing and attacking you at the end just made me feel like I made no difference, that even if there’d been no Champion Anders would still have blown up the towers and Orsino still would have turned into fleshgolemdemon. A few more innocent mages would’ve died, but some innocent templars would’ve survived, so that was a wash. Nothing whatsoever accomplished, very epic. Except of course the sparking of the mage-templar war, but I’m not sure where’s the awesomeness in that.
Even the whole Arishok mess I dealt with earlier was sort of my own fault, or at least the fault of somebody in my own team, so defusing that way after it had blown up to the city’s face didn’t feel very heroic.
It might be realistic that you as an individual aren’t able to make any real difference, but I’m not sure if it makes for a good fantasy RPG story.[/spoiler]
Nah, from the original, French version of the game. Not so cunning humour :). He’s the kind of guy who tears up when someone steps on a rake or falls down a manhole. And impales their foot or breaks their neck, respectively.
Anyway, I didn’t mean to offend - to me, “neckbeard” is a term of affection. Like wargamers calling themselves grognards or folks from the SA forums calling themselves goons. If the term pisses you off, replace it with “RPG gamer”.
Just going by the in game DPS stats is a little deceiving, as even the 2-H warrior’s basic attack is area-of-effect (which I think is a very interesting change from DA:O). He’s probably the worst class for taking out the bosses in the game, but can carve through all the crowds of mooks with ease.
Ugh, the act-2 boss fight duel was brutal for my 2-H warrior on Hard. Spent about 10 minutes using up all of my potions to get him down to 50% health, and then he drunk a health pot and healed himself right back up to near full. I had to reload a save to avoid the individual duel. My party made short work of him.
I thought Orsino’s transformation would have been much more effective story-wise had he accomplished something with it to make it seem more like a last ditch sacrifice. But how it plays out in the game, there’s a minor group of like 5 templar in the room that take all of a few seconds for me to take out before I’m left with just Orsino. Orsino does absolutely nothing to further his goal other than get in the way.
Just finished it, and the ending definitely felt a bit rushed. Act 3 really didn’t feel like it was driving to a big, inevitable tragedy. That said, the three act approach was refreshing and kept my interest with the multiple plots.
I’ve played through Act I so far and i’m enjoying it. A lot of the criticism of the game seems to be of the “They changed it, now it sucks” variety, and i’ve never been one for that. I liked how the Dalish have been redone as sort of Irish Traveller stand-ins, as opposed to their lack of a distinct cultural identity in the first game. I haven’t read any spoilers - the comments about the ending are filling me with a foreboding, but as long as it’s better than the shoehorned “you have to sacrifice yourself for no good reason” ending Fallout 3 had before they retconned it, I won’t be too badly disappointed.
I don’t mind the simplified inventory management, but I’d like if the loot table were more aware of the character type i’m playing. When only the main character is capable of using armor, it makes no sense for me to be getting drops of items that only another class type can use - it all just turns into vendor trash anyway. The “multiple waves of enemies leaping in out of nowhere” thing gets old fast like it did in Doom 3, but i’ve only encountered two fights that were genuinely difficult so far so it hasn’t bugged me too much. (The rock wraith was one, and the other was when a group of raiders spawned on top of a group of conspirators in the Docks.)
I will say that at this point in the game the story seems to be lacking direction. Aside from the foreshadowing in the framing scenes with Varric and the Inquisitor, there’s nothing that indicates there even IS a larger plot or anything significant to the main character. There is some very good writing in the subquests though - the one where you have to “rescue” the qunari mage was great, and had a gut-wrenching ending.
Hey, I had that exact thing happen to me with Meeran and his mercenaries deciding I was getting too big + waves of Sharps I had just “eliminated.” I’m wondering now if it is scripted that way. It was a bitch of a fight for my low-level character.
I enjoyed it, but I don’t know if i’d call it a “great” game. I got the impression that the writers couldn’t decide if they wanted to do a story about dwarves, a story about qunari, or a story about templars, and in the end decided they could do all three. There were quite a few Chekov’s guns that were left unfired - the ancient mage-dwarves, Flemeth’s resurrection, the royal succession of Kirkwall (who’s the senior-most person not dead or a fugitive, anyway? Knight-Captain Cullen?) to call it a complete story, and there’s hanging plot threads from the first game left undealt with - Morrigan is still off in magic mirror-land, and the Architect is presumably still tooling around in the Deep Roads somewhere. And what was the Gray Wardens’ motivation for intervening in a war between Marchers and qunari with nary a darkspawn in sight? I’m assuming that some of these threads will eventually get addressed in a DLC, but i’ll be sorely disappointed if Hawke’s story ends with “s/he wandered off into the country and was never seen again”.
I gave up playing Awakening after an annoying bug lost all my items after hours of play and all of the autosaves were from after I entered the bugged area. Will dust it off and play it through (watching out for the bug!) before getting this.
I think rogues are much more fun in DA2. Much of this has to do with combat animations being vastly improved, the cross-class combos the rogue can perform, and some of the “teleportation” mechanics to some of the skills. Definitely felt like rogues (and warriors) have a lot more cool stuff to do in DA2, and they’re much flashier doing it.
It’s very short. I think DA:O took me almost 70 hours to complete, and DA2 took less than 40, and I did every single side quest and companion quest available except for the one involving the Fade. I hate the Fade.
I did absolutely everything I could find and I was done around 31 hours. Though to be honest after Act 1 I turned on subtitles and began to skip through dialogue as fast as I could read it. That probably cut an hour or two off the playtime.
Also I was playing on normal as a Rogue and quickly took advantage of the silly stacking damage bonuses you can do. Harder difficulties I bet make the game much longer just because of the endless waves taking longer to die.
More so, i’d say. Rogues are now the only class that can dual-wield (to the disappointment of my dual-wielding warrior self) and they have several attacks that can easily one-shot most enemies when set up properly. Pair a dual-wielding rogue with a warrior tank and you can run roughshod over just about anything. Stealth isn’t as important as it used to be, though - the backstab attack automatically stealths the character and moves it into position.
I finished the game almost a week ago. Maybe the fact that I didn’t feel the need to give my thoughts immediately tips my hand a bit.
Having perused reviews and opinions for the last week I kind of have to agree with the general consensus which seems to be that DA2 is a good game when taken on it’s own merits… but as a follow up to DA:O it’s disappointing. It feels small and repetitive, and the re-use of dungeons and house interiors is to the point of distraction. I’m actually reminded of the constant re-use of maps for sidequests in the original ME. The story itself is scattershot though I think it was handled well in spite of itself.
Spoilers for the end.
Should have seen the twist with Meredith and the lyrium idol coming from a mile away in hindsight, though it took me surprise at the time. I sided with the mages and I’m disappointed to learn that the ending plays pretty much the same either way. Maybe I’m shortsighted but it seems like you should have fought Meredith in the Mage’s ending and Orcino in the Templar’s with the option of talking Meredith down much like you did earlier with Varric in his sidequest. Orcino resorting to bloodmagic while he still has (very influential) allies just rings false to me.
For the most part I actually really liked the NPC’s. I liked the moral ambiguity in Isabela and Anders, Merril’s innocence and tragic sidestory, Aveline’s strength and forthright attitude, and Varric (standout character in the game) was appropriately charming. Didn’t care much for Fenris, but an otherwise all around strong party.
And I have to say this, even if I had hated everything else in the game, (which I don’t), the best part was the complete overhaul of the crafting system. It’s streamlined yes, but it’s so much more elegant and less cumbersome now. If they carry nothing else over to DA3 I hope they keep the crafting system.
A pet peeve… I downloaded and played the the Witch Hunt DLC for DA:O a few days before diving into DA2, just to get back into the mood, and I was hoping for something more on Morrigan’s story. Nothing other than a vague aside from Flemeth at the beginning. :mad:
The story as it’s unfolding so far (I’m still in Act 1), seems to be setting up for a DA3. Where I suppose you’ll have to side either either Morrigan or Flemeth.
One question: at the end of Witch Hunt, Morrigan says she left somethng for the Warden that she might find of interest. When I picked it up, the game immediately when to the credits. Does anyone know what it was? Or was it meant as a cliffhanger?
