Dragon Age sequel official

[frank_austin]

Is there a reason you aren’t peeling things off your non-warriors, or are you just lazy at micromanagement like me? I’ve died several times because I haven’t the desire to make my warrior or rogue taunt/stun/whatever off my mage when I fail horribly at positioning but I blame myself for this problem and not Bioware.

Probably because Taunt has a cooldown of FOREVER.

[Jason_Townsend]

Re: times when you can’t give commands, DA:O also had some situations like that - right after a cone-of-cold at least. I don’t know how the quick heal and quick mana/sta pot buttons work, but they don’t seem as useful as having potions manually dragged to the toolbar as in DA:O. As some have reported they sometimes are greyed out for no very clear reason, wheras actual potions on the taskbar work as expected. (and I don’t mean the elfroot and healing pots being on different timers.)

On normal (levels 1 to 8, after which I got hardware issues) I felt positive about the feel of the combat and how the difficulty was tuned - a bit more challenging than DA:O’s normal, as I recall. A few fights - particularly the one involving Trask and a cave - were punishing yet satisfying to beat. The Lowtown bandit encounters that have annoyed some people struck me as easier than people are making out, although on Hard it might be a different matter. The very short health bars on certain enemies are a prime consideration, and I assume everyone is using “tab” regularly to ensure total enemy HP is being reduced efficiently.

At the risk of parading my shallowness I loved both the noticibly better graphics and the flashy-for-flashy’s sake swordplay and giblets. (Picked Speed on my rogue to crank up the ginsu carnage quotient.) The unnaturally vivid eye colours in the new and improved puppet theatre are curiously appealing, and an interesting contrast with the glaucous Gamebryo style of eye-depiction.

I like that my character can specialize in the “wise-ass” dialogue - thereby also shaping some automatic dialogue, I think - while still taking the goodie-two-shoes choices a fair amount of the time. It suits the barless morality system of DA.

I’m confident the combat is fun and fresh right now. In terms of its eventual comparison to DA:O it’s too soon to tell I think. Yeah there’s no flanking bonus, but there is a rogue skill based on enemy targeting that has a quite similar effect, and is somewhat better suited to the frentic speed of combat maneuver than the old flanking bonus percentage. And the slower spell and potion cooldowns comprise a sort of ‘complexity’ themselves. DA:O, on the other hand, also gave players a toolkit that could reduce the game to triviality. How rich and unpredictable is playing a Mage-Mage-Mage-1HS party built for crowd control and shattering, particularly with the ludicrously broken Force Field?

EDIT: Re: Friendly Fire, all I can say is I was sure glad it was turned off by the time I’d played a few hours. Between movement speed, combat dynamics and spell design, it’d be very hard to use AOEs otherwise. That’s somewhat related to the positionally messy, less-tank-and-spank oriented combat positioning; often a Miasmic Flask, knockdown ability or AOE spell is used defensively to protect party members and allies.

[Two_Sheds]

What was the tactical counter to this?

The counter was to pay attention to the rogue from the start, not lose track of him, and keep him stunned and busy so he couldn’t sneak up and backstab Hawke to death. Also to keep the archers off of him and not get so low on health that a backstab and a couple arrows could bring him down. Which is what I did when I re-fought that fight, and I made it through.

[frank_austin]

DA:O didn’t have combat as responsive as DA2, which is why the times that you can’t issue commands stand out more.

[Two_Sheds]

One thing I’m not clear on is the health poultice cooldown. I get that it’s global (which I kind of like), but for some reason I’ve been in the situation a couple of times where the cooldown expires and I can use a poultice with one party member but it’s grayed out for another. Anybody else notice this? What am I missing?

The party member in question is not dead.

[frank_austin]

Everyone has an individual cooldown for health potions.

[Jason_Townsend]

Put the actual potions themselves on your characters’ toolbars like in Origins, and they behave like those in DA:O. For some reason the quick heal/sta/mana buttons are often unusuable.

[Gendal]

In concrete terms the easy thing in DA:O (and in Holy Trinity RPGs in general) is to slaughter healers/casters, fragile DPS, and then normal enemies, elites and bosses in ascending order. You press tab and see what you’re up against, and then Apply The Formula. In DA2 the element of uncertainty mixed that up a bit. I’m not sure if we’ll wind up with a modified “trash first” target triage anyway, just with a longer and more complex trash-fight, it’s too early to tell.

I’d like to get a sense on how the reinforcements are triggered. If it’s based on a simplistic “mob X dies, spawn reinforcements” system, I’d think that cuold be gamed (or accidentally anti-gamed) in an unfortunate way.

This drives me up the wall. I went through 4 waves of templars while tanking a lieutenant before I collapsed on hard. Next time I switched to tanking the adds while concentrating on the boss. Boss died, zero additional spawns. I noticed the same thing with the Ogre before, my usual destroy adds then finish boss just won’t work anymore. I f’ing hate this.

Other than that I surprisingly like a great many things about DA2 over DAO, just not the encounter design and combat.

One thing I’m not clear on is the health poultice cooldown. I get that it’s global (which I kind of like), but for some reason I’ve been in the situation a couple of times where the cooldown expires and I can use a poultice with one party member but it’s grayed out for another. Anybody else notice this? What am I missing?

Frank Austin posits above that it’s because your party member is in the middle of another action like attacking, and DA2 doesn’t support action queuing.

[Matt_Perkins]

DA:O worked exactly the same way–there were no “turns,” hidden or otherwise, just a freeflowing series of actions. So that much, at least, is unchanged. Some changes that you can add to the list, however:

2. No friendly fire. This hugely simplifies tactics.

3. No flanking. I could be wrong about this, but the more I play, the more certain I am that they removed this element from the game. I’ve been watching the battles pretty closely, and I’ll be damned if I can see any sort of positional bonuses for damage. The Codex says nothing about flanking. Yes, rogues do get bonuses for being “behind” someone when they backstab, but the bonus seems to be tied to the ability rather than to the character’s physical placement. You can use Backstab even when you are standing directly in front of a target.

4. A bunch of small changes like reduced effectiveness of CC, increased movement and attack speed, and encounter design that focuses on large numbers of similar enemies conspire to make the battles less tactical. Success in DA:O almost always depended on good planning and controlling the flow of the battle. Success in DA2, at least thus far, seems to depend more on spamming damage as fast as you can. Does it really matter which of the 13 identical foes Aveline Taunts? No. Is Varric’s ability to Pin one of the four identical guys rushing him for 1.5 seconds really going to tip the battle in your favor? No. Kiting seems to be the most effective crowd control tactic at your disposal. Sometimes I feel like the game should be playing Yakety Sax in the background.

All of these things are a big part of why I decided to wait to buy Dragon Age 2.

Long story short from that pimpage, the demo, the reviews, the streamlined features have convinced me, even with the likes of Angie (whose RPG opinion I do trust for the most part…minus her Rogue loving) saying how it is still fun and interesting, I just can not bring myself to buy it at full price.

[flyinj]

I’ve put about 10 hours in so far, still in the middle of Chapter 1 completing all the sidequests.

Some background: I initially bought Dragon Age: Origins on the 360. I couldn’t believe how bad it was. Impossible to control combat scenarios, terrible framerate, awful graphics, and piss-poor audio quality. I actually sold the game back to the store I was so disappointed in it, and I believe I’ve only sold a used game once before that.

I then kept hearing the PC SKU was better, so I picked that up. What a difference. I loved the game.

Now, after playing Mass Effect 2 (which I enjoyed), I was getting the vibe that they were going to “consolify” Dragon Age 2 from the previews. Over the shoulder third-person as the main view, faster action combat, etc. I played the demo on both PC and 360, and really didn’t like it very much. The setting was so bland, and it was just wave after wave of combat. I felt that the 360 SKU did play out better given the use of a controller. I read a lot of the reviews on release day and was excited about their enthusiasm for the post-demo game content. I decided to go for the 360 SKU.

They definitely made the game a lot more streamlined. No equipping armor on your other party members, less skills, action combat. I gave them the benefit of the doubt and dove in with an open mind. And I really like what they’ve done. It is a bit of a relief not to have to constantly juggle 4 pieces of armor between 4 different party members, constantly comparing leather boots to hardened leather boots. Are these boots good for me? Nope, throw them in the trash. I’ll just press one button at a vendor in about 30 minutes and dump everything for cash. Get on with the game.

The combat itself is very fun for me on the console. Playing a rogue, a tank and two mages. When combat starts I assess the situation by tapping left trigger, give my initial mage spell assignments, then rush in and go to town slashing and backstabbing. I keep an eye on the status bars of my other party members, and if I notice someone in need I pause the game to check them out. I find it to be a great balance of slight tactical control and action combat. It flows well. The random spawns mid-fight can be annoying, but I find that pausing the game and repositioning my mages isn’t that big of a deal once they spawn in.

I love the single-city setting of the game. The writing is quite good so far, and the city just has great character. It makes you feel like you’re getting to really know the place well… and it’s broken up by forays out into the countryside enough to give some variety from constant urban settings.

So, yeah, I’m really enjoying the game. If you take it for what it is, a party-based action RPG with strong storytelling elements, it succeeds greatly. Better than almost all other RPGs that try to accomplish the same thing, in my opinion.

[Mazuo]

There is most certainly flanking. Characters with 0% critical chance frequently get critical damage, those white flashes, when attacking from behind an enemy.

The manual even states there are flanking bonuses for anyone attacking from the rear 180°.

[Neopythia]

Flanking does exist as a rogue it’s my lifeblood.

I think the rogue class is much improved over the first game. I have a decent number of attacks with manageable cooldowns. My longest cooldown is the two blade strike and that’s understandable as it’s basically a one hit kill on most mobs. The few times I’ve played a companion mage or warrior I’ve been appalled by the cooldowns. I just don’t find it fun to play a class with one strike on a 30 sec or longer cooldown as is the case with a two-handed specialization. At least they have tweaked the number of active modes. I never liked the stamina reduction aspect of those toggles. They often felt like more trouble than their worth.

Oh and there is some variety in encounter design. Occasionally, you get a THIRD wave.

[Ben_Sones]

Ah, good to know. We poor Steam shlubs don’t have a manual yet. I’m glad that flanking is still in the game, but I have to say, the visual feedback for that sort of thing was a LOT better in DA:O. I can’t understand why they took out the indicators for facing and flanking zones. I mean, they still have the little selection circles, but they actually went out of their way to make them less informative. Bizarre.

So anyway, I’m curious to see what peoples’ characters look like. Here are the sisters Hawke, in my game…

[Jazar]

This drives me up the wall. I went through 4 waves of templars while tanking a lieutenant before I collapsed on hard. Next time I switched to tanking the adds while concentrating on the boss. Boss died, zero additional spawns. I noticed the same thing with the Ogre before, my usual destroy adds then finish boss just won’t work anymore. I f’ing hate this.

Oooh I hate that. I think DA:O had some parts that did the same though I could be wrong.

[Mordrak]

Wow! Ben that’s some incredible work with the face editor.

[Jag]

Ah, good to know. We poor Steam shlubs don’t have a manual yet.

I haven’t even checked my Steam folder for the manual yet. Is there anywhere else to get the manual? Wouldn’t mind reading it while bored at work.

[zengonzo]

Pretty flattering picture, too.

[BroadwayJoe]

This is my (kinda sad looking) rogue. Varric keeps staring at my ass.

[flyinj]

This is my (kinda sad looking) rogue. Varric keeps staring at my ass.

2 rogues 2 mages? How is that working out for you? Are you playing on Hard?

[BroadwayJoe]

2 rogues 2 mages? How is that working out for you? Are you playing on Hard?

Working fine so far. I’m playing on Normal. I don’t have a warrior party member yet, still only 3-4 hours in.