I got my copy, the collector’s edition. The box is wooden, and it looks pretty on the outside, but inside it’s just a slim DVD package.
The annoying things are those redeemable items. You have to log on to their new social website and no matter how hard I try, I just couldn’t log in. Created a new account, used a new email address. I be damned if I have to wait for them to fix some errors (or for database connections to be freed up) before I am playing the game. So my first play is without those items. Who cares?
So far I am getting an ‘mm…average’ vibes from the game. The battle music could be better. And they got into the habit of making up unfamiliar titles. Arl? I understand duke, baron and prince just fine.
I am looking forward to the game getting better. I feel it would be.
I guess Arl=Earl?
I’m really hoping it’s awesome, because (not to put too fine a point on it) this is the first game I’ve preordered, or possibly even paid for, for three years. It’s not fair that you US guys get it three days ahead of us in the UK (and staggered releases seem kind of pointless what with piracy and the internet)
Frankly I’ve given up on the unique items. I started playing the Dragon Age flash game planning to get some more, but it became too much of a hassle. Either the items will be overpowered, thereby shortening the length of the game, or they won’t be useful after levelling up a few times, in which case why bother?
Ah, this game is fricking tough. Crazily tough. You have to be a rabid power-gamer to get through it on Normal. All those poisons and traps? They are not optional. You need stealth for this one or else you be plunging into ambushes one after another.
FYI: The main social site is experiences issues right now. you can still unlock all the extra items by going into the game, logging in, and then going to “redeem code”.
I was thinking the same way too, when I managed to get my hands on the items. It’s quite neatly done - they add the items to a NPC merchant so you still have to pay a large amount of money to get them, and they have pretty cool stats.
That said, EA/Bioware coded an entire online shop within DA, pretty much like Xbox Marketplace. Those items are actually products downloaded from the ‘shop’, so I doubt there are any codes to unlock them.
Picked it up this morning and played around with it for an hour before heading to work.
Hard crashed my computer every ~5 minutes of gameplay :(. Verrryyyy frustrating. Looking around the issue might be the ATI Catalyst drivers - apparently iteration 9.9 is not doing the job and you may have to downgrade to 9.7 temporarily until ATI gets a fix done. I’ll have to try it when I get home. Just an FYI for anyone having similar issues. And if you hear of another fix, give me a holler.
Given the above I can’t really make a solid judgement yet, but I’m still hopeful.
I’m playing on a console so I have it a bit easier than the PC folks but Normal has almost wiped my party three times in the first two and a half hours. It makes turning the next corner in a dungeon that much more exciting. I love it!
My computer’s running it fine, though it is running a little hot (and by that, I mean this room becomes ten degrees warmer after playing for a few hours). There are few obviously black and white decisions here, and that point is made clear in the beginning of each origin story. I’ve played through half the noble dwarf one, all of the city elf and magi one, and I’m itching to play through the other ones – though I’m fondest of the elf one.
I rather like that if you start getting up close and personal with what you’re killing (and so far, archery? Rather pathetic) you start looking like you’ve waded through a slaughterhouse. I rather like that there are some people who can’t be reasoned with, some situations you can’t make perfect, and the ‘virtuous’ choice can not only get you into a boatload of trouble, it can get a LOT of people into a boatload of trouble.
What I got the game for – the story – I like. The engine is… is okay, but it’s more like Neverwinter Nights with an option for extreeeeeeemely stripped-down Mass Effect. The graphics are richly colored and the human faces are good but there’s something that seems kind of odd about them, something I can’t put my finger on. But it’s good enough that I’m rather drawn to the idea of staying home from work and playing, and I know I can’t do that because if I’m going to take a day off work it needs to be to finish my mountains of homework (something like 55 pages worth in the next four weeks) or study for the GRE or put my grad school application together (only another 15 pages if I’m very lucky) and I’m just going to spend it being an elf.
Oh, and I’ve made it through the origin stories okay on Normal mode. I got the “didn’t actually die” achievement for it, even. You heal up rather quickly outside of combat and boy do I use my healing poultices. Those things usually pile up in my inventory in every other game I play but you sure need them here.
I’m about two or so hours in and I’m finding it a little better than OK. I’ll post more, but in the meantime, is there a way to make conversations go a little faster? I’ve got the subtitles on, so I can read what a character is saying much faster than they can say it, but I can’t seem to find the right button to make them say the next thing. I have a feeling it might be Escape, but I haven’t tried that yet for fear of ending the conversation entirely.
I got it for the Xbox last night and am loving it so far. I haven’t had the problems others are referring to - I mean it’s tough, but maybe because I’m playing on the console, it’s not impossible or anything like that.
It’s a solid game, but I’m not super overwhelmed by its awesomeness. I mean, I like it and all, but it’s not like I’ve stumbled upon the most amazing game ever.
I’m up to the part with the forest witch and drinking the blood and the seeing-the-dragon-after-I-take-liquid-LSD and what not.
I’m pretty happy with it so far. My one rank each of Coercion, Stealing and Lockpicking have served me well. I like a game that lets me pick pockets.
The blood is absurd. Yes, I know that blood is under pressure and realistically gets everywhere when the body springs a decent leak, but after my party got splattered from head-to-toe during a fight with rats, the effect was not so much gritty realism as comedy. And during the final scene with my father, when he started pooling blood in earnest the second I showed up, and then apparently the blood got sucked back up into his body because it spread out in the exact same manner again at the end of the conversation, I again didn’t feel like they were heightening the drama so much as the absurdity. I don’t know why they didn’t go ahead and have his throat constantly spritzing blood during the conversation. Thank you, Sam Peckinpah.
It’s a standard Bioware rpg staple started by KoTR. 4 ‘stand-alone’ scenarios linked loosely with each other which you can explore in any order, and is actually what NWN 2 should have been. I rather they go for a more stylish presentation of instead of trying to mimic reality.
The texture for the world is bad, especially the indoor environments. Despite it sucking up more CPU power and stuttering, the graphics and effects are worse than Mass Effect. I think it’s a different engine and probably an upgrade from the old NWN one.
Archery in the game is gimped. I hope they will balance it. Alas, enemy archers are often deadly. Then again, you’re always out number at least 1.5 to 1 in any fight.
(and staggered releases seem kind of pointless what with piracy and the internet)
