Starwars

The awful orc caves in Act 1 of the NWN2 original campaign.

Well, comparing it to one of the most pointless and boring dungeons ever doesn't really say much. Those caves sure were... awful though to say the least.

I did Orzammar last as well. But while I loved the city, the Deep Roads really put me to sleep. I don't know if I was overleveled at that point but the combination of A) there really being a lot of battles and B) very little of it being actually challenging it was one of my least favourite parts of the game and one that will probably hurt the games replayability for me. I dunno, I like the ancient underground roads type of vibe and all but... Didn't really like the combat.

You are now awesome.

One of the funniest ones in quite a while, and completely true as well.

He's part of one of the Group Feat quests, can't recall which one right now.

Exploring one of the dungeons on the Sword Coast: Oh god... Not these gnomes again: Time for some dragon slaying:

I don't really mind that most towns are sorta just there as a quick stop. I do agree though that it would've been fantastic if, say, if the city in Chult (name escapes me atm) and Neverwinter had been a bit bigger and had some more stuff. But yeah, I think the development team was stretched as it is. It would've been so goddamn awesome to get a game like SoZ (with all its features) with a full-on budget and development team.

Haha, that's the best thing ever.

I actually liked the dungeons of SoZ. There were a lot of complaints that the dungeons were not big enough but I think for the type of game that SoZ is, they were pretty spot-on. I could've done with one or two more "puzzley" type of dungeons though. But I find the encounters to be pretty fun, especially since the enemy variety in NWN2 is fairly large. I think they made good use of that in SoZ. It's funny in contrast to DA which I played just before. DA has encounters which are generally very well thought out (moreso than most of the SoZ ones) but parts of it still managed to bore me because of A) low variety in enemies and B) overtly long combat sections. SoZ is undoubtedly very combat-heavy, but you're always on the move from one place to the next. That seems to make a big difference for me. SoZ is kinda weird to me since there's sooo much stuff I can criticize in it, a lot of design decisions I would've wanted to be different. But I don't think I'll ever get tired of replaying it.

Playing some SoZ. Port Last, now invaded by the Luskans (and I will keep it that way, teehee); Solving a puzzle in a Temple of Umberlee: The Blacklake District: Visiting the Temple of Waukeen:

I should also mention my feelings about the ending. I do feel that the game (overall) is a bit combat-heavy for my tastes, and I'm not a big fan of the many battles near the endgame either unfortunately. However, I was very pleased with the actual ending cutscene. I found many of the cutscenes and choices towards the end quite touching actually, and there appears to be a great deal of reactivity to what you have done in the game (or haven't done even) which was great. There were some stuff that genuinely surprised me. All in all, Dragon Age is absolutely my favorite Bioware game. It's a great effort all in all and will rank pretty high on my fav RPG list. Like I said, I feel it is a bit combat-heavy overall but hard to criticize the game for that. It is what it is and Bioware were honest as to what the game is. My expectations regarding a lot of the gamedesign matched what the game is, it's just that almost everything was much *better* than I expected. Very impressed overall.

I played as a City Elf, and there are a few things that seems to be unique to that Origin. Most of it is just small touches though, but there were some things I thought were nice. A thing in the ending cutscene was especially nice. I admit I wished for bigger actual consequences to my Origin choice, but I think Bioware did a really good job in recognizing my characters race and making the campaign still feel pretty natural given the huge scope of the game.

I thought they did well with that section and making it unique, but I also felt it went on for a bit too long.

I'm not crazy about the darkspawn either. It would've been cool if Bioware had chosen to do an all-political plot, since I really think they did a good job on the various cultures and all that in the game. At the moment, the Blight feels more a minor annoyance than anything else. The hubs and their own quests is where my interest lies. I'm playing Hard and have found it to be very challenging. I'm doing Orzammar now though and it's starting to get quite easy. However, it is the last hub I'm tackling and I've completed a lot of sidequests so I might be overleveled for the area at the moment (which is fine of course). Might try turning it up to Nightmare for now but we'll see. Really enjoying the game all in all. Bioware did a great job on this and I think the long development time has definitely paid off.

It's alright, I admit I'm a filthy pirate. Yar yar ya scally-wags *drinks grog* and so forth. Someone call the police so they can take me away. Now, the game... It's good!

I paid 449 swedish crowns for my physical copy, that's about 44 or 45 Euros I believe. Still feels sorta expensive, but I think it's cause I'm used to buying either older games or games that typically enter the market at a lower price, like the STALKER games. And sorry mkreku, I'm not signing up for that stuff, I have no interest in it. Maybe if I'll need it for the toolset community stuff I'll register. You can regard me a pirate if you wish which is fine. But if you swing by other swedish sites, you may see that some people have also gotten their copies. sweclockers for example had one guy posting a picture of his copy on the forums (because the mods thought the discussion of the game was based on only pirated copies) and another one said he'd be picking up his copy from komplett (I believe it was) today.

I posted this just a few posts ago: So, yeah mr officer. But as I'm sure you're aware, there are plenty of shops that break street dates. This happened in the US as well where I think some places started selling it as early as last week. I know

I picked up my copy yesterday at my local game store, which was a bit surprising considering it isn't supposed to be out here until tomorrow (I think?). It was afaik the cheapest edition and I got the Stone Prisoner DLC, but not the Keep one. Didn't really look into those when pre-ordering.

The game is quite a lot better than I expected which was a nice surprise. Glad I plunked down the cash for it. I think it takes a while to really get going though. The Origins are interesting because they define your character but the parts after the Origins (before the world map opens and you can choose where to travel) were pretty slow and kinda boring to play through IMO. Not something I'm looking forward to on replays. However, after the game opened up things got much more interesting. While the difficulty for the first hours was a bit meh, I've found quite a few battles where I had to reload my game after getting pwnd (playing on Hard). Nice. I really, really, *really* miss a proper death system though. It would've fit in well with the whole "return to the roots" stuff. As of now, while many battles *are* challenging, it can still feel like battles are lacking that real 'oomph' or excitement. There are also some other things. I had hoped my being an elf would've had a greater impact on the game, insofar how people treat you and all that. But while the game *does* recognize it fairly often, there doesn't appear to be much consequence to it. Maybe there really is and I'll see it on another playthrough. But my character doesn't really feel like a second-class citizen which is what appealed to me about playing an elf in this game, oh well. As someone who usually gets really annoyed at Bioware companions, I find most of them to be pretty likeable here. They still bicker childishly at times, but I'm actually talking to them in this game and am eager to find out more about their backgrounds and such. Many NPCs are really well done. It appears to function basically the same in DA. You still have your stealth and sneak attacks and what not. Lockpicking so far have been very disappointing for me, not much fun stuff to be had unfortunately. The skills like poison-making are pretty cool though, and I wish I had leveled it up more at the start. It can be quite useful in some situations. On the whole I'm really enjoying it though. Again, I've not been much of a fan of Biowares games since the BGs (and even those I find to be sorta overrated) so this was a really nice surprise. The effort they put in this is appearant and I hope they won't be discouraged by reviews whining about difficulty and how it's a step from ME and all that rubbish. Nice to see such a huge budget game take the risk of incorporating some more old-school values.

Yeah, those are good interviews. And it will be really interesting to see what other stuff OEI has in the works as well. New Vegas we know about, but it hasn't been shown off yet. And then the other stuff using the Onyx engine.

Anyone named Vosovic is awesome. I think the level looks a bit linear in the way it's laid out, but it's nice that there's a high and low path so to speak. Anyways, hope to see some more developer PR stuff now if we can't have the bleeding game. Get to it Mr Rorie, chop chop!

It's not really needed if you can devour souls. There are one or two places where it's a possibility but really, you shouldn't need to use the XP sacrifice if you have a clue what you're doing. At any rate, I think the XP sacrifice is too easy of a way out. The XP lost is just of no consequence at all in the grand scheme of things. I also know that they changed the rate that the meter goes down in a patch. Travelling has a very small effect on it at the moment at least. Not sure about sleeping.

It's also the lame way of doing it. I think in the end, the Supressing path was the least interesting one. Unfortunately it was sort of set up so that you could just treat the meter as a non-issue this way. It's probably my biggest beef with the Spirit eater mechanic, the ultra good way of doing it is just kinda boring. Giving in to the hunger and becoming a devouring monster however, was a lot of fun.

Went to a village market here where I live. Organized two times a year, one in the Spring and one in the Autumn. Not that the goods sold are particularly cheap or anything but it's great to go out and check out the stalls and smell all the various foods being cooked and so on. A great atmosphere indeed. Bought a pair of really thick socks, some smoked eel and my favourite... Some fresh honey. Mhmhmhm, you could almost drink it. Should've bought more than just one jar, stupid me. So when I got home, made some coffee and made some cheese sandwiches and put a thick layer of honey on them. Heaven.