Dragon Age impressions

[Gay-Lussac]

Huh? How do you switch party members without camping?

There are 10 spell combos.

finally, thanks

 

[Volourn]

"If you're in a town you can click on one of the buttons at the top of the screen and it will open up the party selection screen."

in a town

i n a t o w n

IN A TOWN

I N A T O W N

 

[HanoverF]

Huh? How do you switch party members without camping?

If you're in a town you can click on one of the buttons at the top of the screen and it will open up the party selection screen.

That button is grayed out like 90% of the time.

 

[Sovard]

So, just finished the game. I intended to post initial impressions, but now I can just say things having taken the whole game into context.

It's about 40-50 hours a playthrough, the "90 hour" game comes from having at least 2 options to resolving major points in the game. The choices aren't exactly clearly good or evil, and in many regards have characteristics of both. In general you are free to choose, but you are still just along for the ride. You are a Grey Warden, and you are there to stop the Blight. You can't go frolicking in the countryside- only make stops from the railroad trip you're on.

The game shows the involvement of a very large team as the quality of writing and encounters varies widely throughout the game. In some cases you can have lore contradicted within minutes of finding out about it; in other cases you can actually care enough about a given story arc to dig for more tidbits.

The game looks fine. However, there are several technical errors I found in which I engaged an ogre in a sync-kill animation and stabbed it to death with my bow in one hand and quiver in the other (screenies of it, too). You also stab with maces, which is just pretty amateurish. Oh yes, and beards are glued to your chest, so when you turn your head they elongate rather comically. Some things seem very amateurish and lazy, which I didn't expect from all the hype over a AAA game they had weeks to polish.

The combat I didn't find very satisfying. Again, the varying levels of quality throughout the game (level scaling as well) meant that most encounters were resolved by select all+focus fire. I started the game on Hard and halfway through I dropped it down to Easy. I was more interested in the story and the combat was just in the way.

My first course of action was to max coercion and talk my way through much of the game. I did not run into a story arc I could resolve without combat, but many times you can intimidate or persuade your way through small conflicts. You have persuasion, intimidation, and attribute checks for dialogue and while all of my "cunning" checks resulted in just extra dialogue; persuasion and intimidation can actually give you ways to complete quests you would otherwise not have.

Back to the technical errors I did have 4 CTDs and some annoying rubberbanding issues wherein kills do not register fast enough, you walk away, and suddenly you're pulled back to the location and a cutscene ensues. Also, enemies are unresponsive at distances (AI sucks in general) and you can pick them off at a distance.

Now for my lowest point of the game. The world map. Travel is a royal pain the ass considering the long load times (possibly my rig). For example, in the Denerim travel map you are going two inches with what appears to be a visible path directly to it. Instead of a direct route you travel 7 inches, stop and load a random encounter, travel another 5, then load up your destination. All while staring at a useless loading screen. Given the Codex filled with lore and story bits in the game, it should show recently unlocked entries on the loading screen rather than have you stare at how to swap weapon sets 30 hours in.

At the end of it I can see myself playing it over once or twice more to get deeper into bits of the story I missed and other choices I could have made. They too have a difference in quality, and some are (gasp) quite interesting. You can shoot down quite a few of the people looking to join, and the only ones forced upon you are for legitimate story reasons (after which you can send them on their way).

 

[Phelot]

That's a nice review. Thanks!

 

[Overweight Manatee]

How long are your load times? I'm curious as to what causes the problems for so many people, they are quite quick on my side. The amount you have to go through can be high at times, but it certainly isn't pissing me off nearly as much as The Witcher did with its (pre patch) 30-45s load times.

 

[circ]

Witcher's load times are insane. I got the EE(?) version, and barely noticed a difference. Load times for DA for me were around 30 seconds to 1 minute, not so bad, but noticable.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

30s-1min for all areas? I'm getting 5s-10s. Sounds ridiculous, what are your system specs?

The only things I can think of that would/should affect loading time are:
Memory size (I have 2 gig, but DA doesn't use too much of it)
Hard Drive speed (Mine aren't nearly the fastest, and yours probably aren't 3x slower then mine)
OS (Windows 7 can on occasion decide to work right with its precacheing of stuff into memory. This would be the first time I've ever seen such a benefit from it though)

 

[circ]

Load times weren't that annoying, probably mostly due to a (most likely) severely fragmented HD. Ok, 30s-1min is stretching it, specially early on, but it was hitting those times when you got to Kracerin something forest.

 

[Volourn]

"It's about 40-50 hours a playthrough"

Impressive. Accoridng to the timer, I've played 14ish hours and I'm still doing the first 'my choice' area (dalish elves). And, that's not counting reloads for being MURDER DEATH KILLED by a mass of skeles.

Then again, I fool around with my characters, inventory, and going back and forth a lot. I'm rushing through like a mad man so I cna brah how 'short' a game is.

And, no, I'm not saying that you did. Heck, for all I know, it might end up being only 40-50 hours for me too. *shrug*

P.S. Load time for me take 10-15 seconds but I swear soemtimes they *feel* longer. L0LZ I just wanna play...

 

[Jaime Lannister]

It's about 40-50 hours a playthrough

Didn't read the rest because of possible spoilers, but I've spent 13 hours and only explored 23% of the world and completed 15% of the game. It depends how fast you take it.

 

[Sovard]

I didn't put any spoilers in.

Also, that timer (%of game completed) is judged by multiple playthroughs as far as I can tell. So you can only complete ~50% of the game on a single character.

Edit: I fired up DA and hit resume to get figures 87% world explored, 38 hours, 43% completion. Also it gives a message saying "Congratulations! You can play DA premium content as it comes out, some of which takes place prior to *major event omitted due to spoiler*!" Interesting. Very interesting considering my ending. Looks like I'm restricted to only Premium content, though. Can't go anywhere else.

 

[Serious_Business]

I've played it for five hours and i must say that the game's combat is on the mass effect scale of boredom. .

This. I've barely played it but I can't see myself going through hours of this shit. Terribly tedious, waste of time, banal shit boring, you're better off reading a novel, etc.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

I've played it for five hours and i must say that the game's combat is on the mass effect scale of boredom. .

This. I've barely played it but I can't see myself going through hours of this shit. Terribly tedious, waste of time, banal shit boring, you're better off reading a novel, etc.

it gets a lot harder after the 8 hour mark

like, unfair at times, and you'll need to glitch the ai, which is a mark of a TROO PC GAME

 

[HanoverF]

More like SLOWding screns, m i rite? The insanely slow map travel is pretty bad. I think there's a severe memory leak that compounds it.
Is there a time limit, or does the Blight just progress based on your advancing the main quest?

 

[Annonchinil]

I only hit the 1st open town.

Gameplay:

-So far I have not had to reload in combat but definitely had to pay attention to come out better. Although I do have a tendency to horde certain items. For example during the Ogre battle I ended up using two minor health potions, but I still head 10+ of them plus around three of the more powerful ones. So in general even if you can win by potion gulping and focus firing there are tactics you can use that make battles easier and more fun.

-The combat itself is different than what Bioware has usually done and in order to manage it effectively I found I had to use a mix of tactics and space bar pausing so as not to be overwhelmed. It is harder to keep track of than the IE games and I had a character die without realizing it.

-The health and stamina/mana regeneration works really well and helps the flow of the game, some of the battles can be long with extra enemies appearing when your reserves are low.

-Playing as a rogue originally I felt my character to be underpowered but now with the right talents he seems to be shaping up much better. Although it does seem like a class where the proper build is more difficult to create. I do think that I made some mistake in talent selection. I was once concerned that his dmg. output was weak but looking at the information screen I realized he once did 70+dmg. in a single strike!

-Character creation and specs are interesting but I would not call them amazing. However compared to games released in recent years its the better system.

-The loot is ok. I really enjoyed the unique item feel in the IE games but this just does not seem to capture that feeling.

Story:

-The game definitely relies on breadth to draw you in as the world is rich in history, I got into the groove of reading Codex entries as soon as I get them.

-I like the main plot-arc so far, in the past five hours more has happened than in most first hours of an rpg. There is a sense that the main plot has progressed and that what I accomplished was useful to it. This is opposed to say, The Witcher, and games that in the beginning have you running task in order to get back to the main path.

-The characters are ok, there seems to be a lot to them, some of it interesting some not. For example Alistar is upset about his Mentor, but he is also a bastard and there is an interesting relationship there.

-The writing ranges from bad to ok. Its really annoying how Morrigan keeps on saying stuff like 'Thee' Either way its much less embarrassing than I though it would be even there are no really stand out moments. If you can handle Witcher writing this has some of its faults, other than being foreign.

 

[Barrow_Bug]

I'm really enjoying GTA: The Lost and Damned at the moment. It seems to be the best RPG on the market.

 

[Murk]

i scrolled my browser to have the first non-sticky thread of GRPGD on the top and counted all the DA threads (didn't even cover the first full page of the subforum) and counted 9 dragon age topics.

Thanks for letting us know that you sat there counting Dragon Age threads.

No worries mate. It caused me to think that maybe people should stop making new threads on the same topic, but then caused me to think that with the exception of Fallout 3 related shenanigans (possibly!) this is probably the most active the codex has ever been.

 

[made]

We're hunting for the "load times getting longer over time" which would likely indicate a leak, and yes, it will take a while to fix most likely. Memory leaks are insidious because it could be anything, because once it's leaked, it's leaked - it could be the act of transitioning, it could be the act of opening doors or pressing tab to highlight objects - it could, literally, be anything. They also take time to fix + test, because if they are fixed incorrectly, the game will often simply crash instead of leaking.

To be clear, there is at least two seperate problems with "slow load times" - AMD phenom CPUs apparently have some inherent issues (see this thread for how to resolve the problem:
Click Here

So much for using the past months to polish and QA the long finished PC version.

 

[Worm]

EDIT: If your load times are getting retarded just exit the game and restart it, this helps me since the game leaks memory all over the place.

I didn't say it was easy, I said it felt well balanced. Hard is decently hard, easy seemed piss easy. I was merely remarking that the endless stream of reviewers who cry that easy isn't easy enough should, as you say, have their fucking teeth knocked out. I remember people crying that the tutorial was too hard on easy. Ridiculous.

Well that's a great memory. Just trust me (and bioware, unless you're playing unpatched for the true experience), the game has retarded fucking difficulty spikes. Additionally, I don't give a shit how hardcore you told me you were, whether you're okay with it or not, encounters should not require this kind of forethought on normal and easy difficulties. I'm glad they fixed easy, though I really think they need to man up and fix the difficulty spikes and memory leaks. They won't though.

The "tactics" you end up relying on are horrible. You stand no chance in an open fight because of the insane flanking rules. Basically you need mages, you need a few, there's no other way to play the game. You'll get a healer character and a caster character, you pretty much always have to bring them along if you like them or not. Forget the dog, can he make fireballs? No? Let him grow cobwebs.

Aggro mobs, hide so they pull, this is necessary in open fights since mages become a normal enemy after a bit in the game(sometimes they cast fireball sometimes they dont), and the idiotic flanking rules can result in your melee dying in a few hits.

That said, I haven't been finding much of worth in chests anyway. Anyone getting good stuff that makes it worth bringing chest openers?

You get stuff sure. However the game is meant to be played with at least two mages, since a insane amount of boss encounters

Also I'm pretty sure my melee doesn't follow on a range unit running to hit them with a spell. I think the game isn't so abysmal, though jesus christ come on.

Oh god and don't let me forget about the micro managing of turning tactics on and off

Granted I haven't played too far, I'm hunting werewolves in the Brecilian forest currently. Where are you?

Mage tower done, red cliffe done, trying to get the ashes and don't feel like back tracking all the way from a boss to get new party members.

 

[made]

What difficulty were you playing on again?

On hard, I wouldn't say multiple mages are required, though it definitely helps. To put things into perspective: my PC mage has 60% of overall damage done, mostly due to aoe spells but also because I've specced the other party members in useless ways, ie rogue into lock picking and archery instead of melee, tank for tanking instead of 2h dps, Morrigan for entropy and shapeshifting etc.

If anything you could make a point that the various talent trees are unbalanced.

-Primal is THE dps tree due to all the aoe you can chain on groups of mobs, but that's no different to other game systems that allow that play style.

-Shapeshifting is useless. The long cast time prohibits changing forms on the fly (say, like a druid can do in WoW) so you have to select a form before combat and stick to it, forgoing all spells the char might have. The forms themselves feel rather lackluster too.

-Archery for rogues seems subpar. My rogue seems to do more damage with 2 daggers than her bow despite having no talents for it. The ice/fire weapon enchants (I have both enabled, although thinking about it, only my tank benefits from them) don't work for bows, neither do poisons. Word on the forums has it that dex is bugged though and daggers don't scale into endgame so I dunno.

-Tanking seems useless except for bosses. You're better off going with a dps warrior and mowing stuff down quick with aoe abilities before it kills you. All warriors have access to taunt to keep mobs off the squishies. And as far as tanking goes, I often resort to kiting hard hitting bosses around the scenery anyway because it appears to be more efficient than healing with potions.

They should fix these issues first imo before tempering with the difficult settings. Though ofc it's harder to do, and there's nothing wrong with making easy even easier for the super casuals that just want to skip combat and enjoy the story or whatever.

 

[Inziladun]

THIS GAME IS LIKE SO EASY ON NIGHTMARE, OMG I'M SO GOOD AT THIS GAME I WISH THEY MADE AN UBER NIGHTMARE MODE BECAUSE THIS GAME IS TOO EASY THAT'S HOW GOOD I AM AT THIS GAME.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Just finished, game is pretty awesome.

Which party members do you feel offer the best banter?

Well i went through mostly with allistair, brain-damage girl and morrigan (fucked both by the way) and all three had decent enough banter, if you want the lulz though swap allistair with oghren.

Cuz he's a dirty cunt.

 

[Worm]

They should fix these issues first imo before tempering with the difficult settings. Though ofc it's harder to do, and there's nothing wrong with making easy even easier for the super casuals that just want to skip combat and enjoy the story or whatever.

I wish I had a better reply, but the all caps guy below you said it all. That's great if you happened to start the game with an optimal class/spec. Whatever, though I just know I'm having way more issues, way more often than I have with any other RPG.

I really don't believe you're NOT jamming the space bar constantly, and I really don't believe you're not keeping most enemies in a constant state of stunlock. Unless of course having a main character mage just lets you nuke the hell out of everything and keep your guys healed up.

Maybe this seems natural to a person who two-boxes WoW. Though the game is still difficult on normal. I'd really like to see what it looks like when one of you guys playing on hard one shots the Abandoned Building in the human city, or the two bosses before the gauntlet in the Ashes quest.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Just finished, game is pretty awesome.

Well that is distressingly quick. How many hours does it say it took you?

Ohh dude, i put in mammoth play sessions, the game is actually un-healthy, similar to Arcanum and kings bounty the legend in that regard.

I had to make a decision to say fuck it to a lot of sidequest (some that actually affect the story/scroll down text at the end of the game) and just focus on the main quest, second play through will be more relaxed.

Just loaded the game up, 39 hours.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

So without spoiling the ending, uh... How does it work? You mention scrolling text, is it kind of like Fallout? Walking you through what happened to everyone after the end? They did a similar ending in Hordes of the Underdark if I remember right, and I liked it there too.

 

[MetalCraze]

Then you discovered that being an angry cunt is kinda cool, put on that persona and never stopped bitching and hating. You were a nice guy, skyway. Maybe it's not too late to start liking games again.

I like games, but I got fed up with each game I waited for turning out to be the same formulaic crap. I still like games the same, it's just most of games I play now are from '90s and they can really bring challenge and enjoyment as they contain quite a number of really good and varied gameplay ideas not found in present games (like Emperor of Fading Suns which I play right now). Most of the games today are action games with lots of dumbing down and lack of awesome moments like the ones I described that aforementioned BG is full of in this thread. Meh.

Aint it?

As I wrote I don't want to endure a game which is about saving the world again from ancient evil and other "mature" stuff plus regens where my characters even can't die. Like forever. Like it was even in BG. And then there is this level-scaling.

Bullshit. It was clear from day one that DA is not an original setting and that it won't deviate from the traditional, FR/LotR path. There is no fucking way you didn't know it.

I knew that it was fantasy with your typical races, mages, dragons and stuff. I have nothing against that provided that it has an interesting twist to it. But nowhere did it was suggested that it will be a ripoff of most generic parts of those settings on such a scale. Not mentioning that it was going to be a ripoff from Bioware games once again and the aforementioned twist was "omg even rats being made of skin and blood, mature epic buttseks".

As for the auto-regen, if you kill the hate mode for a second, play the game a bit analyzing how this feature works, you'll see that it's a good fucking feature that makes the game better.

I have yet to see how regen makes a game better especially the one where characters just get knocked out in combat. As BG is a part of the topic I'd like to mention that even though your characters died most of the time it wasn't permanent (like with being hit by a disintegrate spell) - but it still was pretty fun (and hard) trying to survive with crippled party through series of dungeons before finally getting to the temple with resurrection. Way way better than the stupid auto-res, regen and a couple of wounds after each combat.

Pulling the "many people" excuse? How very ESF.

I still don't see how it's relevant to the topic at hand - but oh phhhlease - I wasn't by far not the only one who thought that TG may actually succeed way back.

Are you surprised? That's the Bio formula.

Unfortunately I wasn't surprised.

You liked it in BG, you liked it in BG2, you liked it in the NWN games.

Haha no. I was even poking fun of BG ripping off stuff even from Star Wars from the start.

There is nothing wrong with heroic fantasy as a genre.

You can do without saving the world from ancient evil. And if you can't you can always pull off Arcanum. Even though I suspected the "twist" with "blam you are not messiah!" it was one of the reasons why Troika did a far better job than Bioware. You wanted the argument - that was one.
The problem with DA is that Bioware is forcing you to be a messiah openly, leaving you no choice. Yes the plot in Arcanum will eventually lead you to defeating the Main Evil Guy but there it wasn't 'delivered' in such a way - not mentioning that you are forced to join Jedi/Spectres/Wardens a third time in a Bioware game. And this is boring - I personally don't want to be a part of organization full of special people/chosen ones.

We can't unless you can prove (or at least produce some strong arguments), explaining why FO3 is a shitty sandbox game, because that's what it is.

Funny thing is that FO3 is a shittier "sandbox" game than even Oblivion - being the next step of Bethesda's decline - because it was the first game to introduce linear corridors and even city streets with artificial obstacles since when?
And F1 and F2 are much better sandbox games. Your point anyway? F3 is still a sequel.

Being angry at Bethesda for raping a dead, already raped twice franchise and hating Fallout 3 by association because your views are so fucking narrow that your hate clouds your reason? No.

You are talking exactly like ESF'er here. I hate F3 not only because it is a shitty sequel - I hate it also because it's a game made for retards (have you seen my father? How about you'll blow Megaton up just for lulz? Or how about we welcome the kid who ate his parents alive with open hands into the town and kill you if you try to harm him even before you talked to him?) with a setting full of inconsistencies (like the city of motherfucking unkillable children on top of the orc vault yet the only ones who bother them are raiders living who knows where or BoS not reacting at you bringing in a supermutant with you even though they are dedicated to killing them for some reason), Oblivion-like level scaling where you rape one of the strongest monsters at low levels, quest-compasses, etc.
It's not only a shit as a sequel - it's shit as a game.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Yep, like fallout. Tells you about your allies, (party members, dwarves, elves etc), a little about yourself, ties up your origin story and what happens to ferelden.