MrBrown

Finished the game. A few additional thoughts. Didn't like the ending that much. Maybe it feels different if I choose different options. Quests in Act 2 and 3 were probably the best stuff, storywise. I guess it's a rush job, when you have to recycle the end boss. Well, ok, the end battles had new enemies too, but that was kinda cheesy. Lots of foreshadowing of the next DA game... or whatever the next installment in the setting is going to be.

It's a quest. Read your journal.

The weapon type restrictions don't really limit how you develop your character and companions that much, because the majority of abilities are in trees not restricted to a specific weapon type. The only major restriction really, is that Warriors don't have any ranged option.

Have you tried changing the Behavior box at the top of the Tactics screen? There are. The game tracks your choices, and will provide extra options to solve situations, if you have used specific choices enough. Peaceful solution, etc. I dunno the exact math on how this works.

Frankly.... I don't get what all the bad rep is about. Bashing DA2 seems to have become some sort of internet phenomena. Obviously, the game has it's problems, and I'm sure more will pop out when people look at the game files closer. But the difference to DA:O isn't that big, and there's lots of good stuff in the game. Critique is due, but the overall quality isn't bad enough to bash it to the ground. It's definitely a Bioware-quality game (whatever that means to you). If one didn't dislike DA:O, I see no reason not to buy DA2.

Does it really involve ? I hope that

It does seem like that to me, actually. That it has way better choice & consequence stuff than any previous game. Of course, it's really hard to tell until you've played it through at least twice to try all the other options, and I've yet to complete it once. Like I said in the previous thread, it's slow to start. You won't see any serious C&C stuff until you're 15+ hours in (assuming you do all sidequests).

Isn't that kinda contradictory? If you know about the good stuff before hand, then you won't enjoy finding them out in the game. Plus they're not nearly as good written down. In any case, a few examples. 1: Qunari philosophy. I rather like the stuff. If you hated everything Sten said in DA:O, you probably won't like them this time around either, though. 2: A more specific example, the one I've liked the most so far. I'd advise against reading, but you asked for it. Obviously, this might play a bit differently depending on what you choose.

That's a class-based restriction. Warriors: Two-handers, sword&shield. Rogues: Dual daggers, archery. Mages: fancy sticks. Interestingly enough, Hawke's armor is not class-restricted. But it has differing stat requirements by class, so it might as well be. Weird. EDIT: There are story-related instances where a companion will change their armor's appearance, but I'm not sure if this changes the stats. PS. Companions (warrior and rogue ones) are restricted to one weapon type. So while you can change Aveline's sword and shield, she'll never equip two-handers. They obviously also lack the tree that gives abilities for the other weapon type. Mage companions, on the other hand, lack one spell tree. All companions have one specialization tree, that's unique for them (but all somewhat similar to other specializations in DA:O or DA2), and which cannot be picked by Hawke. Hawke has 3 specialization trees, of which s/he can access one at level 7 and a second at level 14. In short: Hawke, 6 base trees, 3 specialization trees per class. Companions: 6 trees, 5 from base class trees, one unique. Oh, and you don't have to find specializations in the world, just get to the required level. (well, that was a long addendum.)

Only Hawke can change armor. The others stick with what they have, though they can be upgraded. Varric is an exception, he also won't change his weapon. The others will. Accessories, which include amulets, belts, and two ring slots, can be changed for everyone. As to why they did it, maybe they wanted companions to keep their unique looks? Yes. They basically work like two different areas, rather than a cycle or anything.

You have used the right mouse button to change the view, right? I got used to it once I figured that out

It seems to me it'd work better, if there were more of it. If gameplay was more linear, and after 10 hours of sidequesting you wouldn't suddenly remember "oh, there was that thing". It's foreboding I guess, because there's several possibilities on how the game will end.

The story is really slow to develop. For the first 10 hours, you're basically just doing stuff that either introduces stuff in the world, hints at later plot developments or sets up allegiances. _All_ the stories develop in acts, so you won't, as an example, just pick up Valygar, get this companion quest, go do his quest, get his whole story, and be done with it. Later on, there are a lot more development, twists, and so on. Some of them are kinda generic, some are really cheesy, but I've run into a few that were really, really good. (No, dunno about the ending yet.)

Sounds like the major difference between Normal and Nightmare is positioning and constant movement. My two-hander using Warrior seems to be performing about equally in normal, as Azure's does in Nightmare. Either I've levelled him badly, or there's not much difference in enemy stats.

When you meet the first ogre, your guys are level 2 (or maybe 3?), and have exactly that amount of abilities, part of which might be passive, or not useful against the ogre. So, yes, the battle will be pretty boring. Battles on higher levels rely much more on active abilities. On lower difficulty levels, you can probably get by mostly on using the Tactics-options, though. EDIT: In regards to what Azure wrote, I think there are some slight differences in DA2 that changes the roles each class can have. Namely, Warriors using Two-Handers mostly deal AoE damage, and thus are most useful in clearing out mobs rather than bosses. Mage base attacks seem to be a lot more powerful, so you don't necessarily want to constantly keep hitting that arcane bolt/lightning bolt -button like in DA:O

Maybe they're cut-scene only. Good riddance, I say.

No worries on that part. AFAIK, the side-quests can only be solved before you proceed past a certain point in the main path.

There are four types of quests. Only one of those types feels like cheap filler. And they are literally "find an object on the ground, now go find the guy it belongs to." You're running the bloody lost and found. I assume this is also where the "80% of quests are fedex" claim comes from. Thankfully, those quests take really little time... they start when you find the item, and the recipient is then clearly marked on your map. In the open-exploration part Tales' at, these quests make up 50% of the quests numerically, but take only a few percent of the total time. The "real" quests are more well thought out, and seem to have several options on how to resolve them. Though how much of that has any kind of consequence, I can't say yet. None of the stuff has really stood out as great yet, but I haven't really been disappointed in them in general.

It's just like BG2, and everyone loved BG2, so that's must be good, right? Right? The range on the scale is short though, so it's easy to get to one end, even if they occasionally disagree with you. It isn't like Awakening, where you had to watch closely to everything you said...

I wouldn't want to play with Friendly Fire in this game. Every other ability seems to do AoE damage.

There are quite a bit of boss fights that take several minutes, because they just have so much HP. If I used the new weakening abilities more efficiently, they might be faster, but so far I've used my ability points on passive abilities, threat management, and healing. :/ EDIT: I've already encountered over a dozen chances for Faustian deals. I wonder if there's some sort of grand consequence for this stuff.

I don't think this is the case. Weak enemies still seem to be weak, but the tougher ones I still have to whack at for several minutes.

Spoiler: feel free to spend money on items. At least, if you plan on doing all the side quests. I think the structure of the game is very reminiscent of BG2.

I've had no loading time or crashing problems in the 10 hours I'm in. Only problem I've had is it sometimes turn from fullscreen to windowed mode when returning from alt+tab.

DA:O still has unfixed infinite exp and infinite money glitches. So, nothing new there...