Nope. The left thumbstick lets you move the area of the spell and lets you rotate the camera as well. It’s about a 1 or 2 on the clumsiness scale.
Then I’m confused. What entails following the spell “properly”?
Ok, thanks. I misunderstood the differences then.
No worries. I nuked myself with a fireball and a Tempest or two before I figured it out. I didn’t read the instruction book.
Consoles got an instruction book?
Yep. 37 pages worth (including credits).
I’m jealous.
I still haven’t read it. I probably should. I found out that hitting right and left bumper selects your whole party on accident.
Let’s say you’re in a corridor, and you want to drop tempest on the goons in the next area. With a little luck, you can probably vaguely hit the area, and that’s about it. The doorways, your character, other characters, and somehow the floor contrive to wholly obstruct your view, even when it would/should be blatantly obvious and visible.
Plus, even with firndly-fire damage turned off (console mode easy), I STILL somehow get frozen by Morrigan repeatedly. She actually seems to deliberately target me over other characters, even when doing so makes no sense. Freeze and knockdown do work regardless. But regardless, the Artifical Stupidity can’t think at all, and so absolutely WILL follow enemies into hazards.
I avoided posting in this thread because I was afraid of reading spoilers but I’ve just finished the game.
I loved it! There was one point where I desperately wanted to create a new character but I managed to play through it. There were several points where I had to think about my decisions for a while before deciding on an option.
My main character was a tank and my usual party was me, Leliana, Wynne and Morrigan. I didn’t spec Morrigan all that well and my AOE options were severely lacking. Cone of Cold is completely overpowered though, heh. Wynne started off pretty poorly but by the end-game she was an awesome healer. Leliana was originally in my party just to pick locks but I came to love her bard skills. The final skill in the bard tree is a fantastic for AOE crowd control.
Morrigan:
I romanced Morrigan but then she refuses to sleep with you when you get over 90 disposition (she prefers flings, apparently). Then, after I thought she had turned over a new leaf, she gives me that end-game proposition, which I refuse, and she turns in to a complete bitch. I half expected her to turn up right at the end and I’d be forced to kill her. In my next play through Morrigan can go to hell…
Landsmeet:
I completely messed this up. I thought I was doing well, completing all the side-quests, but I might have rushed the game a bit at this point. I failed to get enough support and the vote went against Alistair. We fought and it took me a good 2-3 mins to decide Loghain’s fate. What would best serve my mission to defeat the blight? I opted not to kill him but then Alistair forced me to change my mind. I would have happily executed Anora there and then. All in all I regretted the whole affair. I thought it was great drama though, enjoyed it thoroughly.
Alistair:
I can’t help but feel I dropped the ball. I pandered to him too much when I should have been toughening him up, readying him to rule. I didn’t realise the meeting with his sister was supposed to be such a turning point and missed the big opportunity. His whining did piss me off at points but he was never a permanent member of my party, other then the end after Morrigan went off in a strop. He will be a permanent member of my party next time.
Human Noble Origin and Howe:
I loved the origin story, it really made want to find and kill Howe in the most painful way possible. I saved my family sword and shield for when I met him, I made sure I got the final hit. Bastard didn’t suffer enough though… I was a little annoyed that I seemed to give up on my search for my brother, seeing him again at the end made me smile (well, it would have, if I wasn’t dead).
Sorry for all the spoiler boxes. I really enjoyed the story of the game and would hate to be responsible for spoiling it for someone.
Hm. I haven’t had many occasions that it comes up. Usually, I lure the dude out or just have everyone pile in and whoop that person’s ass.
I guess what I’m saying is that when it happens and when I realize it, I go around it.
This is a game which can be unnecessary frustrating at times, like what smiling bandit has pointed out. Your party AI just rush into traps and for my case (PC).
What is worse is the cheapskate setup of some fights. The famous ‘teleport you right into the center of the ambush and then pin you down with fireballs’. The worse thing with those figths is that usually the enemy wins initiative and cast their fireballs and other spells of doom before you can issue your own command.
That, and the enemy AI is bad and gives a MMO feel. Ooh, the guy in the same room is being hit by an archer but I am not going to care because I’m not near enough! NWN at least has a shout. Granted, without ‘the stupid AI’ some fights will be near impossible. It is also annoying that the enemy doesn’t care about friendly fire at all when it comes to their spells.
This is still a great game, but not without its bad moments. Some spells have to be nerfed, the problem is it would make party spell-casters weaker; but I am okay with spell-casters being controllers other than weapons of mass destruction.
[spoiler]I’m really not sure what I want to do here. Anyone have any epilogue info or something that did dot he ritual? On one hand, while Morrigan is practical she’s not entirely evil. I almost trust her enough to actually not do anything bad with the Old-God-Child. On the other hand I’m effectively killing a child and giving a massively powerful being to Morrigan…
I also like playing good characters, but I’m very tired of endings that involve killing yourself. Can anyone y/n whether there’s a non-evil alternative that becomes available other than that? I’m guessing Riorden bites it before the Archdaemon dies so that’s probably not an option.[/spoiler]
The Landsmeet is more about the dialogue in it, the two sidequests that affect it are only a catalyst. The first time I only brought up Ostagar and got lost the vote which broke into battle. This time, with nothing else different, I brought up Howe’s torture and the Elf slave trade and only one person went for Loghain, which skipped straight to the duel instead of the battle royale.
I did a bit of “friendship” in the conversation, but slightly toughened him up. If anything he’d be a puppet king for me if the way my reflection on the conversations is right, now that I think about it.
The cheapest spell, by far, has to be Blood Wound. If someone successfully casts it I might as well restart. It’s effectively Mass Crushing Prison, you cannot heal during it. Well, maybe you can, but good luck having your healer or anyone important like that pass the physical resistance check. And if your physical res character breaks free good luck having just Health Poultices with no long term crowd control to keep him going.
Regarding Alistair at the end:
I went through the first one as a human mage. I understand that if you play a female human noble with a romance on Alistair you can actually become king and queen. And if the Morrigan thing works out like I’m told – she heads off with her God-baby and neither you nor Alistair needs to die – I am confident that by being a cold, calculating, selfish bitch I could become queen of Ferelden. I am testing this theory now on my second playthrough. 
I’ve run through every origin story so far except the Dalish elves. I rather like them. I also like the fact that I can sort of roleplay a certain type of character with impunity and only get punished with companion drama. I actually rather adore Wynne, too. The conversation she has with Alistair if you’re romancing him is priceless.
[spoiler]Well the epilogue is left totally in the air she leaves and there are some sightings of her pregnant lurking about but nothing definitive. You don’t get to find out if the baby becomes a horror or something else.
There’s four endings. 1 Take up Morrigan on her offer. 2. Kill the demon yourself without the ritual. 3. Have Allistar do it. 4. Recruit Logain and have him do it.
I’d say 4 is the best non-evil non-self sacrificing way. Makes up for some of the people he left to die in the darkspawn attack.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]Well, I had Alistair kill himself. I figured everyone was happy that way, I was alive, Alistair didn’t have to be king, and Anora got the throne (which judging by the Epilogue, worked out pretty well). Also, whoever siad Riorden pulled a Roy earlier (just read that spoiler) wasn’t kidding. I saw him jump towards the dragon and said “does this ever end well?” In fact I think the only thing in the epilogue that wasn’t sunshine and roses was Harrowmont dying and Orzammar going into disarray. Now I haven’t played the Dwarf Noble origin yet but from what I saw that’s pretty much par for the course in Dwarfland so I’m not too broken up about it.
The final boss battle was hilariously easy for me, I ended up bringing in the Circle for kicks and the poor thing got absolutely slaughtered. And I was still on hard… so yeah.[/spoiler]
In other news, new DLC has been put up for preview, coming sometime between now and Christmas it looks like.
My personnal bane is the Mark of Whatever (that spell that negates any healing spell cast on the victim) coupled with Crushing Prison, cast on Alistair. Who, incidentally, is the only one in my group who can dispel magic, and who’s programmed to open fights with the old Taunt.
As you can imagine, the above combo generally gives him the life expectancy of a crash test dummy made out of bone china.
My biggest problem is that I was an Arcane Warrior, so I either had to be untargeted or get the hell out of dodge if I ever wanted to use Alistair’s dispell. It was painful and required a lot gambling. Hopefully next run will be better in that regard, granted I’ll probably be playing a Dwarf Noble warrior* so he won’t be tagging along much anyway.
- Maybe - I was thinking of a City Elf or Dalish female, but this runthrough was an Elf mage so I want to experience racism from new eyes.
Oh, and I must say I was a little disappointed with the story, I guess the narrative itself was wrapped up nicely, but I was rather hoping for more resolution with the Black City in the Fade that kind of got relinquished to flavor text background territory. Maybe in an expansion.