Game News Let's All Play Dragon Age 2

[tehRPness]

I found the game very hard and unsatisfying as a very unspecialized mage, until I rerolled cookie cutter and discovered the 'spell combos'. Then I waded through 90% of the combat and 95% of it after the Super Saiyan or Arcane Warrior or whatever prestige class.

In many other games but this one, not being cookie cutter didn't leave me with anything other than a beating. The game is balanced for certain "specs" and certain combinations of classes. Shitty ass MMO design that does not belong in an RPG.

There is no such thing as 'filler' in DA:O - all enemies are hand placed, by a pedantic, fiendish DM. This is no Sacred 2 or Dungeon Siege 2. It is this type of uninformed criticism that is contributing the the decline of the tactical RPG. BioWare has every right to look at these forums - after 5 years of working on something as (comparatively) hardcore as DA:O - and conclude that NOTHING can be done to please this crowd. So they try their luck with the Modern Warfare audience.

The encounters have keys to them, and after you figure those out, that type of encounter becomes a grind. With so few types of enemies, you don't really have alot of different ways to kill groups of them.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

I must have gotten a beta version where they forgot to add any interesting enemies or challenge. It was relatively challenging for a while on nightmare, but not because of interesting or "fiendish" design, and eventually got so much of a tiring slog that I just put the difficulty on easy so I could get through the next trash mob quicker.

 

[racofer]

I must have gotten a beta version where they forgot to add any interesting enemies or challenge.

No you haven't. Those features will be available as future DLCs.

 

[Befuddled Halfling]

The game is balanced for certain "specs" and certain combinations of classes. Shitty ass MMO design that does not belong in an RPG.

Yes, let me think. You could have 1 crowd control mage and 1 healer mage and 1 2H warrio and 1 sword and board ... or 1 crowd control mage, 1 rogue assasin, 1 rogue duelist, 1 rogue archer... or 1 personal golem, 1 healer, 1 sword and board, one ranger rogue etc etc. So you're right, no much choice of permutations at all, actually. Considering all the possible party compositions and skills builds I think they balanced it pretty well. Yes some didn't work out, archery was hard to build, and a lot of mage spells were not that great. But on the whole? I don't think it's a bad job.

The encounters have keys to them, and after you figure those out, that type of encounter becomes a grind. With so few types of enemies, you don't really have alot of different ways to kill groups of them.

I agree, certain encounters do have keys ... for your particular party. For many people that "key" always involves Wynne healing. For me it usually involves placing the uber boss in a Force Field.

But do you believe that you can copy and paste that often with DA:O variety? How do I copy and paste my strategy for the refugee fight with 20 genlocks 2 hurlock alphas and 1 emissary ... onto the circle tower enclosed room with 4 templars and a desire demon. Or onto a group of Blackstone mercenaries in a field, some in the far corners with bows, one elite up close, 4 mob melee and the uber boss? Or onto an ogre in a courtyard with lots of resurrecting corpses and an emissary? Or onto Gaxkang? I know these are not "key" type scenarios, but that in a way, is my point. The game throws so many different battle variations at you, that you need to have a very 'flexible' key indeed.

Yes not EVERY fight is totally unique. Some do follow a theme, but with variations. Yes, you do fight more than one battle with Sylvans in the Brecilian forest.

If you got bored with that, then maybe the game was too long? Maybe the message to BioWare should be - cut the length, otherwise RPG fans will call even very varied and well thought out combat "filler shit" because after 67 hours, they will - inevitably - have had a few cases of 'deja vu'. Just make it like Sacred 2 with mobs of 7-10 skeletons roaming around every inch of the map. That was much better.

 

[Befuddled Halfling]

Elzairs Review:
http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=197

Discussion Thread(80 pages lol):
http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=37800

VDs Review:
http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=195

Thanks, I'll have a look there now. Though I'm willing to make a bet that people didn't realize there was a massive difference between PC and console. Hence youtube vids of 'solo rogue beats Flemeth on nightmare (Xbox)' and ... 'how to survive Flemeth without a health poultice, but with a full party (PC)'.

 

[Coyote]

Befuddled Halfling: For me, what made combat in DA:O easy even on nightmare level was the number and efficacy of crowd control spells. Cone of cold, in particular, was very overpowered; if there was any enemy in the game who couldn't be frozen (even if only for a second), I don't remember it. And if you had two mages, you could practically spam it on most enemies while leaving them only a narrow window in which to attack. (I think you could do this with just one mage for some weaker enemies.) And it affected multiple enemies and could be used in conjunction with crushing prison to instakill all but the toughest enemies, useful for quickly taking out annoying mages or high-HP fighters. There was also crushing prison (IIRC that lasted a good, long, time, could be cast from a reasonable distance, and dealt damage over time, making it my second most useful spell), some sort of petrify spell, a spell that kept your enemy in a bubble that I think was in the same line as crushing prison, glyph of paralysis, mind blast, etc. I'm sure there were more, each school of magic had at least one.

So in any given fight, if you had two mages you could keep most of the enemies incapacitated while your warriors and rogues dealt with the others. If you only had one, you still could keep a good number out of the fight entirely. And this worked as a strategy for 90+ percent of the fights in the game. Also, I never tried it (never had any use for the fourth-tier destruction spells), but if you had two mages with the most powerful destruction spells I've heard that you could take out a lot of weaker enemies before fights even began, while drastically weakening the stronger ones at the same time.

A lot of builds were overpowered, too. With one ability that you could get by mid-game, high-cunning dagger-wielding rogues became powerhouses that could take out most enemies very quickly (the high attack speed of daggers more than offset the low damage when the damage from cunning was factored in), provided you could get behind and/or stun them. I've heard that archers can be pretty OP, although I couldn't get them to work well. And then there's the overpowered nature of blood mages and arcane warriors. I'm fairly certain a combo blood mage/arcane warrior could solo the game on insane, might try that if I ever pick up the game again. The only class I'm not sure you can overbuild is a warrior, and you only really need one in your party anyway.

There was only one fight that consistently gave me trouble once I knew how to play the game, and that was the optional one where some female lieutenant of Loghain's came to attack you while you were in the process of rescuing the queen. That was one tough bitch, and she had a lot of backup.

That all said, I would still agree that Dragon Age on nightmare is probably the most tactical RPG released by any mainstream developer (including Obsidian) in at least the last 5 years. At least it required you to figure out these things and use some forethought in designing your characters, whereas games like Fallout 3, Mass Effect, or The Witcher could be won on twitch skills alone.

 

[Befuddled Halfling]

@Coyote - I agree with all your points. Cone of cold was too powerful. You could freeze 4 opponents and then each of 2 mages could cast Stone Fist and Crushing Prison, instakilling all 4 (usually). There was also an unbelievable combo of Spell Might, Blizzard and Tempest. This gave Storm of The Century and killed everything. However it also killed your party because you had be close enough to cast in and then ended up being in the area of its effect. I think the devs failed to realize how Storm of the Century could be abused. They nerfed Cone of Cold in patch 1.02

 

[Xor]

Ah, I remember their occasionally being traps now. I guess I forgot about those because I'm not a complete idiot and kept a rogue around to disarm them. That fight you mention with the exploding staircase - I'm pretty sure I beat that one by turning off companion AI (alistar kept wanting to run up the stairs like a retard) and pulling the enemies out of the room with ranged attacks. Actually, I'm pretty sure that's how I beat the majority of the encounters in that area.

By itself, an encounter where I had to use that tactic would have been refreshing. Instead, there are like 12 of those encounters in a row just to guarantee that it gets tedious as fuck.

 

[Kaanyrvhok]

Re the Fade - I think you just didn't like the concept, as the Fade was just an exercise in going solo and utilizing the spirit/burning man/golem form skills.

The golem skills were too detached from the rest of the game. There was no relation or anything to build off of to justify itself as a part of the story or lore. As a gameplay mechanic it was good for something that made up such a small portion of the game. That doesn’t really say much considering how much combat is in the game. The real issue with the Fade was its encounter system just like the rest of the game. My clearest memory of the Fade involved kiting with my rogue or really more like drawing agro with sneak attacks taking advantage of AI and killing creatures one by one. That’s just boring. Give the rogue some XP just for stealthing past everything. That’s a better game mechanic. Instead your rogue has to go on a solo killing spree to keep pace with xp gain. Again that’s where the level scaling kicks in. You go on a one woman killing spree and you gain one level.

Re consoles - I played one campaign, and was able to do with a party of 2 what I could barely do on the PC with 4. Take the Branka battle. Easy on a console. My impression was that there were fewer enemies and they came in waves, used fewer special skills.

Having the ability to move multiple party members makes a huge difference. If you had a creature bearing down on your mage you had to take control of that mage and nobody else. When did you play the console version? The difficulty was cut. Hard became normal in the patch. I played when hard was hard. Still the actual difficulty was not the problem. That was one thing I liked about it. That and the orgins.

Re kiting - that is not tactic 101. Stealth a rogue into a room to see what you're up against. Then mage sleep + waking nightmare or mass paralysis and fireball. The warriors and rogues just deal the coup de grace to an enemy that your (well built mage) has neatly gift wrapped.

I didnt build up sleep and debilitation. I only had one mage and played maybe half the game. Kiting was the best way to deal with all the hitpoint beast like Ogers, powerful demons, and Liches.

 

[Volourn]

"The console version was harder because you couldn't issue movement while paused so you couldn't kite effectively "

Not true.

 

[potemkin]

I ignored all traps in DA:O and played in Nightmare difficulty with a pure mage. The Lieutenant of Loghain was the only battle I had to think in order to win.

 

[Befuddled Halfling]

Ah, I remember their occasionally being traps now. I guess I forgot about those because I'm not a complete idiot and kept a rogue around to disarm them. That fight you mention with the exploding staircase - I'm pretty sure I beat that one by turning off companion AI (alistar kept wanting to run up the stairs like a retard) and pulling the enemies out of the room with ranged attacks. Actually, I'm pretty sure that's how I beat the majority of the encounters in that area.

By itself, an encounter where I had to use that tactic would have been refreshing. Instead, there are like 12 of those encounters in a row just to guarantee that it gets tedious as fuck.

Yes, I turned off party AI as a general rule, becaue each scenario was different. For that particular room, I put my rogue into stealth, set her off alone, and disarmed all the leghold traps. Then my mage ran in and cast fireball at the enemies on the lower level, while my rogue threw a flast at the enemies on the upper level and then meleed them. The mage then follows up with either a mass paralysis or sleep and waking nightmare. Shale or dog does the rest.

I never kite. Always totally on the offense, never ever use a health poultice except on nightmare against dragons.

 

[Coyote]

@Coyote - I agree with all your points. Cone of cold was too powerful. You could freeze 4 opponents and then each of 2 mages could cast Stone Fist and Crushing Prison, instakilling all 4 (usually). There was also an unbelievable combo of Spell Might, Blizzard and Tempest. This gave Storm of The Century and killed everything. However it also killed your party because you had be close enough to cast in and then ended up being in the area of its effect. I think the devs failed to realize how Storm of the Century could be abused. They nerfed Cone of Cold in patch 1.02

Really? I could have sworn that patch 1.02 was already out by the time I played the game (a few months after it came out). Edit: Just looked it up, looks like they reduced the damage but didn't do anything about the freezing, which is what really made the spell so powerful.

Storm of the Century still sounds overpowered, though as I said I have little experience with the fourth-tier destruction spells. Couldn't you just cast it when approaching a visible group of enemies from far away (situational, obviously, but still makes a lot of the combat trivial)? Or possibly cast it with 1+ party members outside the area of effect to survive the battle?

Also, I can't believe I forgot to mention that one spell that blood mages get which is basically an area-of-effect version of crushing prison for any enemy with blood. Though that was so overpowered I decided not to use it, so I guess it makes sense.

 

[Befuddled Halfling]

I ignored all traps in DA:O and played in Nightmare difficulty with a pure mage. The Lieutenant of Loghain was the only battle I had to think in order to win.

Why? Cone of cold, stone fist, winters grasp, cone of cold, rinse repeat.
That was about the only battle I didn't need to think.

 

[potemkin]

Why?

What Coyote said, she had a lot of backup, I had to choose which enemy would have to stay out of the fight at different moments because there were a lot of enemies in a small space.

 

[Befuddled Halfling]

Really? I could have sworn that patch 1.02 was already out by the time I played the game (a few months after it came out). Edit: Just looked it up, looks like they reduced the damage but didn't do anything about the freezing, which is what really made the spell so powerful.

Storm of the Century still sounds overpowered, though as I said I have little experience with the fourth-tier destruction spells. Couldn't you just cast it when approaching a visible group of enemies from far away (situational, obviously, but still makes a lot of the combat trivial)? Or possibly cast it with 1+ party members outside the area of effect to survive the battle?

Also, I can't believe I forgot to mention that one spell that blood mages get which is basically an area-of-effect version of crushing prison for any enemy with blood. Though that was so overpowered I decided not to use it, so I guess it makes sense.

Yes, there were work arounds with Storm of the Century. But you had to stop using it, as it rendered all non ambush encounters trivial. When I first worked out how to survive it, I thought it must be an easter egg or some broken stats.

Agreed that blood mage was OP too, and so stopped using that voluntarily. But it just goes to show, there are loads of ways of beating this game so people talking about "filler shit" are probably not using their imagination enough. In one of my playthroughs I had great fun with the glyph spells too (and the combos there).

But I think in a way, that is the very essence of DA combat. Your party of 4 is mobbed by 20 opponents, 2 or more being elite. It looks like a no win on auto-tactics - and that's just taking EITHER the mob of 20 or the 2 elites on their own. If you were to let it play out on AI you would re-load endlessly. But in turn, the game has given you god-like powers, you just got to know what they are and when to use them. Kiting lol. Eg that lieutenant of Loghain that you describe - that's Ser Cauthrien. The way to kill her is death hex and misdirection hex. So she cannot hurt you unless she rolls a crit, and all your normal hits become automatic crits. Fight over in 15 seconds, no poultices. And look at all the moaning on the forums! BioWare has made this huge difficulty spike DUMB IT DOWN!!

 

[Befuddled Halfling]

Why?

What Coyote said, she had a lot of backup, I had to choose which enemy would have to stay out of the fight at different moments because there were a lot of enemies in a small space.

Sorry I thought you meant Loghain himself :D . The lieutenant is Ser Cauthrien and the way to get her Death Hex plus Misdirection Hex (see my previous post)

 

[sheek]

Looks boring and ugly, true to the spirit of DA:O.

I honestly don't understand DA1 bashing here. After NWN it was one of the best RPG titles we had in the last few years, imho. I can accept that the main story was cliched and full of holes, but the depth of character on the companions, and the moral decisions the game raised (whether it handled the consequences well is onther matter) were really good. Also, what is it with all the 'filler combat' criticism here? Are we playing the same game? On the PC on hard, every fight was near impossible without a masterplan and lots of pausing. The enemies were meticulously set up, with traps and surprises that made each fight unique. There were no 'trash mobs' in my version.

Does that make me a full homo...?

Um yeah

 

[Dantus12]

The game was depending on DLC items a lot.
Flemeth for example , I had Alistair as tank with armor and rings for 100% fire resistance, it was a fight for one or two minutes.

The hardest fight was probably Ser Cauthrien, for Loghain I tried dog:

He said that the future of Fereladan shouldn't be decided by a duel with a dog , was a funny situation.

As for DA2 party management is pointless in the demo, I had strange clicking problems , the camera is a lousy console port.

I extracted the textures and environments yesterday and found nothing but recycled stuff.

The Koricary Wilds with a added tavern and parts from
Awakenings.

The sad thing is that DAO wasn't that bad for me.

The problem is that everyone on other sites is praising DA2 like it's the second coming. They removed even quivers from the game.
I don't get it.

There are two textures 1024x1024, Flemeth's outfit, and Hawke's iconic armor, the rest is 512x512, and parts of Kirkwall 256x256.

This is not graphic whoring, but it's rather disappointing with what a company with much more funds than others can get away, especially after they removed from DA2, players impact on pretty much everything management related.

---------------------

 

[Befuddled Halfling]

Looks boring and ugly, true to the spirit of DA:O.

I honestly don't understand DA1 bashing here.

Does that make me a full homo...?

Um yeah

Fab! where do I go to get my first homo date?

 

[Befuddled Halfling]

The sad thing is that DAO wasn't that bad for me.

The problem is that everyone on other sites is praising DA2 like it's the second coming. They removed even quivers from the game.
I don't get it.

Re other sites - you mean reviewers, aka, the extension of EA's marketing and PR department? The "journalists" that are not sure whose payroll they are on? The ones who never played DA:O yet gush about how crap it was (despite giving the game 108% 12 months ago). The journalists that will turn on DA2 and say how crap it is in 6 months time when Laidlaw announces the first preview of DA3 Medieval Warfare?

As for the forums - well, it seems to be a bit 60:40. 60 wetting themselves and have have gone on hunger strike until BioHazard releases the full game, and 40 a rag-tag bunch of hard core RPG fans, disillusioned Orgins fans who wanted an intelligent game, disillusioned Modern Warfare fans who thought there would be shooting, and ... retards complaining that Casandra's boobs were bigger in one cutscene than another in the demo.

Apart from the BW Social forums where all the people who weren't happy with what Laidlaw had done were long since harrassed off by loyalist fanboi bullies, Chris Priestly's arrogance, and mods locking down threads.

 

[Kaanyrvhok]

Not true.

That kinda is true. You could do it but it was so uncomfortable and risky compared to simple Infinity Engine style hit and run.

 

[SCO]

No! I won't have this! How DARE you all criticize the spawns out of midair???? This is the OLD SCHOOL EXPERIENCE! Don't you all remember back in ancient times playing Wizardry and moving forward in a seemingly empty corridor before 'BAM' a sprite of a beastie suddenly appears from nowhere?

BIOWARE IS TRYING TO CATER TO THE OLD GAMERS WITH THIS GAMEPLAY ADDITION!

I salute Bioware for moving in this direction and finally giving us a game for both the old and new gamers!

I remember it in NWN

 

[tehRPness]

The game is balanced for certain "specs" and certain combinations of classes. Shitty ass MMO design that does not belong in an RPG.

Yes, let me think. You could have 1 crowd control mage and 1 healer mage and 1 2H warrio and 1 sword and board ... or 1 crowd control mage, 1 rogue assasin, 1 rogue duelist, 1 rogue archer... or 1 personal golem, 1 healer, 1 sword and board, one ranger rogue etc etc. So you're right, no much choice of permutations at all, actually. Considering all the possible party compositions and skills builds I think they balanced it pretty well. Yes some didn't work out, archery was hard to build, and a lot of mage spells were not that great. But on the whole? I don't think it's a bad job.

The encounters have keys to them, and after you figure those out, that type of encounter becomes a grind. With so few types of enemies, you don't really have alot of different ways to kill groups of them.

I agree, certain encounters do have keys ... for your particular party. For many people that "key" always involves Wynne healing. For me it usually involves placing the uber boss in a Force Field.

But do you believe that you can copy and paste that often with DA:O variety? How do I copy and paste my strategy for the refugee fight with 20 genlocks 2 hurlock alphas and 1 emissary ... onto the circle tower enclosed room with 4 templars and a desire demon. Or onto a group of Blackstone mercenaries in a field, some in the far corners with bows, one elite up close, 4 mob melee and the uber boss? Or onto an ogre in a courtyard with lots of resurrecting corpses and an emissary? Or onto Gaxkang? I know these are not "key" type scenarios, but that in a way, is my point. The game throws so many different battle variations at you, that you need to have a very 'flexible' key indeed.

Yes not EVERY fight is totally unique. Some do follow a theme, but with variations. Yes, you do fight more than one battle with Sylvans in the Brecilian forest.

If you got bored with that, then maybe the game was too long? Maybe the message to BioWare should be - cut the length, otherwise RPG fans will call even very varied and well thought out combat "filler shit" because after 67 hours, they will - inevitably - have had a few cases of 'deja vu'. Just make it like Sacred 2 with mobs of 7-10 skeletons roaming around every inch of the map. That was much better.

There were melee, ranged and caster opponents. Occasionally you fought a big dude with a club or a boss. There were almost always more melees than ranged, and more ranged than casters. You attempt to use the same setup every time because the modicum of spell combos are so powerful, you're cheating yourself otherwise. And giving opponents more hit points doesn't make them tough. An example is playing nightmare mode in ME2 or even just ME. There isn't introduced anything new, you just have bigger packs of dudes with more hit points. Combat sequences aren't really harder, just slower.

One of the keys is to use the standard MMO party with a tank, a healer and two damage dealers. Not much of a gameplay-mechanic puzzle there. You can't even solo either. Psch.

Most of the unique and interesting fights are the optional ones you gotta storyfag around to find, like those LoTR ripoff wraiths that hide in tiny jars or something. I probably would have enjoyed those fights yes, if it hadn't taken most of my sanity points to crawl through the main plot with some sad hope that the game might redeem itself in the next chapter, or the plot holes might be filled out.

Congrats that you liked the combat. Lots of people did.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Can you give an example - a fight or set of fights or dungeon area, where you thought there were just random mobs with no tricks or surprises or challenges, that you dispatched without pausing the game or thinking about how to handle it?

I agree the deep roads had the deep stalkers which were not my favourite monster, but they still posed some challenge because there were just too many of them (like a dozen or more) and with spit and stun attacks. You could not use your special attacks on any one because it was a waste of stamina. And, often around the corner the deepstalker mother boss would suddenly join the fight making it another reload job.

Again, this is PC, on hard/nightmare.

What, did we play the same game? I played on hard. Let's see - all of the origins are straight run-throughs, herp derp. The Wilderness thingy and the Tower were piss easy if you had enough brain cells to focus fire and have Alistar tank which isn't exactly rocket science. I think it's in the tower that you get Cone of Cold if you play as a mage and that made the fights even easier.

The village defence and then "infiltrating" (lol, you kill everything) the castle - same thing. I expected something like the de'Arnise castle from it but was disappointed.

Same with the ambushes you get while travelling from place A to place B - oh there's a barricade on the road, how original, maybe I'll drop a fireball behind it, ah no need since all the enemies conveniently rush towards me in any case but keep hitting Alistair thanks to his magical aggro button.

I don't see the point of talking down DA - all it does it gives the devs an excuse to say "see, we can never please the RPG hardcore, let's give up on them and woo the Modern Warfare audience".

Fuck that. The fuckers have wanted that since even before EA bought them and after that it's been painfully obvious to anyone who has a modicum of sense. Bioware was a lost cause when they discovered easy profits through consoles with KotOR. You're just acting like the battered housewive who keeps going back for more punishment because "I know he can change, maybe this time he'll change if I just cook a little better dinner!"