HoonDing

People that complain about DA2's supposed hack 'n slash combat should hasten to the Witcher 2 thread. Somehow that game is getting a free pass and DA2 is receiving all the flak.

Maybe it's just me, but I have a nagging feeling that Yes Man was manipulating the courier all along. What he said in the end gave me the shivers. I think it's the best ending, though.

I picked up the English version of River of Time today, plus the Dragon Knight saga. River of Time has a pretty fantastic, very detailed manual, which I didn't expect considering how minimal the marketing for the game had been outside Germany. Hopefully the voice-over & dialogue in English will be of the same quality.

Why doesn't Isabela wear pants?

So I finished the game and though overall I had a really good time with it, I was sorely disappointed by the main quest in the end. I found the parts in Goodsprings, Primm & Novac really well done, and was particularly intrigued when I learnt that another courier had cancelled a job when he found out the main character's name, not to mention the weird message to the "sixth courier" written on some wreckage. This hinted at something larger going on, but for some reason this plot hook was never further developed. Very disappointing. Basically, after dealing with Benny the main quest goes downhill fast with a BioWarian visit to four locations to gather or destroy allies (my own fault, since I had already visited these areas beforehand, though maybe these plot areas could've been closed off similar to Quarry Junction?). I found this very boring... and the battle of Hoover Dam was pretty much an anti-climax that reminded me of the assault on the refinery at the end of Operation: Anchorage (though seeing the Securitrons rip everything apart was pretty entertaining). I also had to reload because apparently the random guy with the big sword that I had one-shotted with the AM rifle was supposed to be the Legion boss... and he had some things to say. Dealing with the NCR jerk before the slides was pretty nice. The game really shines when it comes to multiple solutions to side-quests, and lots of skillchecks (the only other recent RPG I can think of that has more, is Drakensang River of Time), plus a few excellent companions. The gameplay tweaks & refurbished mechanics were nice as well, and hopefully Bethesda will leave these largely intact for the inevitable Fallout 4. I can't say I have much incentive to replay the game from scratch, the way the final parts of the main quest wore me out (and VATS going completely bonkers), but perhaps I'll reload a save and see how the NCR path goes. I'll never be able to play the Legion side, because I found it very hard to take these guys seriously. I had hoped Caesar would save the faction with some compelling dialogue & explanation of the Legion's philosophy & motivations, but he turned out to be a pathetic jerk that I was glad to blow to the moon.

Well, the C-4 I snuck into Caesar's camp turned the meeting with the Great Emperor himself into comedy gold. Easily the highlight of the main quest for me, after Black Widowing Benny.

I noticed Cass managed to keep her .44 magnum revolver in all casinos. Maybe it had to do with my high sneak.

Casino employees and the Legion are not very smart. They do not confiscate C-4 from my character... nor confiscate anything from ED-E. Though that may be a bug.

In Oblivion, characters with 100 speed and 100 athletics moved very fast, actually. With 100 in heavy armour, it wouldn't even slow you down anymore. In Morrowind, I had characters with 700 Speed (game would crash around 1000 speed or so). Armour in FO:NV slows you down so much that it's just not worth wearing, beyond looking cool. Reinforced leather already has a higher DT than pistols and a lot of energy weapons... not to mention weapons of high-level enemies like brush guns & ballistic fists can easily pierce through power armour anyway.

Dragon Knight saga, the master edition of Divinity 2: Ego Draconis, is out on Steam as of today

After experiencing Veronica's exploits during my time with her in the game, I am tempted to do an unarmed build on a next run. From the perk list for unarmed + the long list of overpowered unarmed weapons (Pushy, ballistic fist) it seems ridiculously overpowered and way more effective than guns. Plus a combination of high STR, light armour & decent agility should make a character move much faster. Especially since you only have to carry around stimpaks (which have no weight for some reason) and no ammo.

Caesar Disappearance Trick: Vale, Vulpes Inculta. I probably blew Caesar across Lake Mead.

I've been noticing a lot lately that even if you target an enemy in VATS with 95% accuracy, the enemy can still move out of the way during the shooting animation, leading to a miss. I don't remember this from FO3. Is this another intended change to VATS? It's pretty annoying when this happens when you're trying to cripple the legs of rampaging deathclaws.

I'm guessing for the first DLC more Van Buren locations will be visited? I've heard places like Denver & New Canaan mentioned quite a few times in the game already.

Something+ that is admittedly annoying with companions is their constant remarks like "Waste of ammo!", "Should I take that away from you?" or "Keep it in your holster", even if you one-shot-kill enemies. I have the same problem. Real-time gunplay is Counterstrike all over again... the way enemies twitch around the screen at high speed. And trying to snipe a cazador gives me motion sickness (I suppose Boone could be really helpful with these things). But it's generally pretty easy to one-shot-kill everything, at least on Normal/Hardcore difficulty. Ratslayer for lesser enemies, hunting rifle for radscorpions & deathclaws, and the sniper rifle/AM rifle for the really big ones.

Veronica & Cass are great companions, and the best voiced characters by far as well. I only used Boone to clear out Scorpion Gulch. I never recruited the nerdy doctor, since he treated my low INT character pretty badly.

It'll certainly be the best looking RPG out this year. Not even the remastered edition of Divinity 2 looks this good.

I had a good laugh when I fast-travelled to Dead Wind Cavern for Red Lucy's final hunting quest. My party was surrounded by 3 Deathclaws and a couple of young ones upon arrival. Then later upon exiting the cave after clearing it out, I again literally bumped into two deathclaws.

My character was level 30 when she finally entered the Strip, and had covered 99% of in-game locations, not to mention become Idolized with all factions save the Powder Rangers and the Legion. Now finally following the main quest (though currently it seems to be come to a standstill with the bug I mentioned before, I'll try to use the console to re-input the platinum chip), I've been revisiting areas four times already, which gets very boring. It seems one is supposed to get to Vegas and the Strip as soon as possible, but with so many empty triangles around this is simply not possible for me. As it is now, I would've been content if the game had ended after nailing Benny, since I certainly had enough fun before that. After getting her revenge, I don't see why my Courier should care about the squabbles between the NCR, Legion and Mr House... beyond the fact that the Legion is very evil and would most probably use her as breeding cow until her death if they got their hands on her.

Gives a whole new dimension to the "ED-E My Love" sidequest. *downloads*

I believe it's the Wrecked Highwayman location.

The only weapon that always crits is the alien blaster. 10 luck = 50% critical chance with sniper rifle or ratslayer. Note that Finesse perk corresponds with an increase of 5 in luck, raising it to 75%.

So I killed Benny, gave the platinum chip to Mr House who used it to upgrade his securitrons; after this, I disabled House and let Yes Man install himself. Now I'm supposed to go to the Fort (like Mr House had instructed me before he was disabled)... but the problem is, Mr House never gave me the platinum chip back after I finished his first quest... and nor does Yes Man give it back, he just keeps on giving me print-outs. Am I missing something here?

Don't bother entering Vault 19 without a high Explosives skill. I couldn't finish the quest how I wanted and ended up helping the Powder gangers. I killed some NCR Veteran rangers for their armour, and though it certainly looks nice enough, it's just too heavy for my playstyle.

My game has been crashing to desktop much more frequently, with the error message in nvlddmkm or something like that. I assume it's a driver related problem, though I do not have any problems with other games.