Dragon Age 2 Incoming. - Part 1

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Experience the epic sequel to the 2009 Game of the Year from the critically acclaimed makers of Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2. You are one of the few who escaped the destruction of your home. Now, forced to fight for survival in an ever-changing world, you must gather the deadliest of allies, amass fame and fortune, and seal your place in history. This is the story of how the world changed forever. The legend of your Rise to Power begins now.
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Official Website
 
El Bastardo said:
It's awesome that you also decided to elaborate on your generic comment with an example of how this is the case. :up:
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Maybe you would get a better response if you didn't act like a horse's ass all the time.
 
What a righteous way to close out a thread.
 
I killed that god-awful bastard of a High Dragon. It wasn't so much a power disadvantage as a strategic one I encountered the four or five times I tried before. I had a team consisting of a two-handed, offense-focused Hawke with nothing geared toward defense besides a large HP pool, damage-focused Merrill, healing/spirit-focused Anders, and Isabela. Everyone kept dying except for Hawke because they kept drawing the dragon's attention and none of their defense boosts could make up for their low HP against the dragon's attacks.

I switched Merrill and Isabela out for Aveline and Varric, tweaked my Hawke to have Turn the Blade and Might instead of all the Reaver and Berserker health/stamina trade-off talents, tweaked some tactics on everyone, and mainly controlled Varric since the warriors are by far the best "hands-off" characters where tactics are concerned--all you have to do is make sure to pause and quick-heal every now and then if your healer is too low on mana to do it. It's so much easier to command the other party members as a long-range character rather than a warrior jammed right up the dragon's crotch all the time, worrying about why your attacks aren't taking off that much HP. I switched back to Hawke for the fights with the dragonlings and smaller dragons, Aveline took the majority of the High Dragon's attacks and shrugged them off easily, and the dragon was dead within 10 minutes. Good times.

I was thinking of using a dual-wielding rogue as my third Hawke, but I'm totally going with an archer now. Archers are as good in DA 2 as they were in Awakening, and they were bad-f***in'-ass in Awakening. :up:
 
is this the Bone Pit High Dragon, or another High Dragon.
I saw something really cool happen in the Deep Roads Expedition mission.
My team was being attacked from both sides, but my Hawke took out one side while everyone dealt with the others. I then ran to the other side, and Anders DID what he was supposed to do and ran right beside me to the other side of the room to stay out of the fight and heal.
I took Bethany in the Deep Roads with me
And she was made into a Grey Warden. Has anyone not taken their sibling into the Deep Roads with them? What happens? I'm kind of regretting it, because she was my aggressive mage.
 
@Speedball:
She gets taken by the Circle, so you need to replace Bethany with Merrill more or less
 
High Dragon is in the Bone Pit and it's a jerk. Drops some epic gear though.
 
Benstamania said:
High Dragon is in the Bone Pit and it's a jerk. Drops some epic gear though.
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He was easy for me...
Beat him in one try, and no one died.

The battle with the Dragon in the Deep Roads was more intense for me.
Anders stood in the hallway leading there, and the Dragon decided it was going to attack him. Anders began to slowly move down the hallway, and the dragon kept on following him. A battle that was intended to be fought in the big open room became a battle that was fought in a VERY enclosed space, because the dragon filled the whole hallway.
 
I beat him in one try as well.. he himself wasn't all that hard (wasn't easy... but wasn't hard) it was the little dragons that kept taking my attention away from him that got on my nerves.
 
Benstamania said:
I beat him in one try as well.. he himself wasn't all that hard (wasn't easy... but wasn't hard) it was the little dragons that kept taking my attention away from him that got on my nerves.
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I make my Hawke more as support for the other teammates when smaller enemies pop up during boss fights.
He's a dual-wielding Rogue, and I make him attack the smaller, annoying creatures while everyone else attack the big boss.
That's what I did for the giant Rockwraith in the Deep Roads.
 
Drz said:
@Speedball:
She gets taken by the Circle, so you need to replace Bethany with Merrill more or less
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I hate that.
I had come to rely on Bethany as my go-to mage, and somehow neither Merrill nor Anders really fills the void she left that well. I have them both tagging along all the time and it feels like my warrior Hawke still tends to be doing all the work. I think I'm gonna reconfigure Anders as more of a healer/damager hybrid instead of healing/support and replace Merrill with Aveline. I read that you get Bethany back at some point, though, so I'm gonna swap Anders out for her later on. Family FTW. :up:

Looking forward to making Carver a Grey Warden with my female jerkface mage Hawke.
 
So, one thing i'm a little confused about. In options you have the choice of DX9 or DX11. no DX10. The problem with that is most people out there are still using cards that use DX10...NOT 11. So for most people, they will be stuck using DX9, because the devs didn't add DX10...and using DX11 just causes massive frame drops.

Am I wrong?
 
I restarted my first playthrough, so I'm a bit slow to the finish, currently playing through as the BioWare default male Hawke - so Blood Mage and Force Mage. Blood Mage is absolutely brilliant in this one. <3 Hemorrhage.

What I think BioWare absolutely succeeded in, no question, was making every single ability and talent tree useful. How useful is clearly going to be subjective on a player-for-player basis, based on playstyle and team composition, but nothing's a simple write-off like a bunch were in DAO. I wrote off Entropy early on until I spent some time actually looking through the tree, and while I haven't committed to the full tree (I'd like to, but I'm starved for points), it's really rather nice.

So, for anyone curious, my build, just shy of level 19:
Winter's Grasp
Cone of Cold
Spirit Bolt
Heal
Heroic Aura (upgraded to Valiant)
Haste (upgraded, 20s duration ftw)
Horror (upgraded for damage every second)
Torment Hex
Blood Magic (upgraded; with equipment I'm currently at a 1:6 health:mana trade)
Sacrifice
Grave Robber
Hemorrhage (upgraded; +900% damage vs. Staggered enemies, bwahaha)
Blood Slave
Fist of the Maker
Telekinetic Burst
Unshakable
 
El Bastardo said:
I restarted my first playthrough, so I'm a bit slow to the finish, currently playing through as the BioWare default male Hawke - so Blood Mage and Force Mage. Blood Mage is absolutely brilliant in this one. <3 Hemorrhage.

What I think BioWare absolutely succeeded in, no question, was making every single ability and talent tree useful. How useful is clearly going to be subjective on a player-for-player basis, based on playstyle and team composition, but nothing's a simple write-off like a bunch were in DAO. I wrote off Entropy early on until I spent some time actually looking through the tree, and while I haven't committed to the full tree (I'd like to, but I'm starved for points), it's really rather nice.

So, for anyone curious, my build, just shy of level 19:
Winter's Grasp
Cone of Cold
Spirit Bolt
Heal
Heroic Aura (upgraded to Valiant)
Haste (upgraded, 20s duration ftw)
Horror (upgraded for damage every second)
Torment Hex
Blood Magic (upgraded; with equipment I'm currently at a 1:6 health:mana trade)
Sacrifice
Grave Robber
Hemorrhage (upgraded; +900% damage vs. Staggered enemies, bwahaha)
Blood Slave
Fist of the Maker
Telekinetic Burst
Unshakable
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I wrote off Entropy too, until I actually read what some of the spells do and realized that one of them is an auto-stun on virtually any character, regardless of rank. This is after I was grousing to myself about how Merrill's Petrify was useful for freezing even high-level enemies but prevented my warrior from doing as much damage while they were frozen. They did a good job of providing lots of good spells/talents so you can combine them into whatever suits your play-style best, especially with the mage spells. I'm really looking forward to building up my mage Hawke on my next play-through.
 
I just brought Dragon Age: Origin Ultimate Edition from eBay, and I'll be playing that after I'm done with ME2. However, I found this article on the criticisms of DA2, and I wonder if this writer's points about its shortcomings are valid:

CHUD: The Bizarre Design Decisions of Dragon Age II
 
See, I did Mage Hawke and now I'm suspecting that my Warrior Hawke play through won't be as fun, lol. Hawke's story line seems tailor made for the Mage class.
 
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I really want to play through as a Warrior again, but I hate the specializations. They're why I restarted the playthrough.
 
Raiden said:
I just brought Dragon Age: Origin Ultimate Edition from eBay, and I'll be playing that after I'm done with ME2. However, I found this article on the criticisms of DA2, and I wonder if this writer's points about its shortcomings are valid:

CHUD: The Bizarre Design Decisions of Dragon Age II
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I should have stopped reading when I read "Mass Effect Fantasy Land" but, I didn't. I DID however stop when the guy started complaining that Hawke spoke and because of that you feel "less connected" to the character.
 
Regarding http://www.chud.com/43029/the-bizarre-design-decisions-of-dragon-age-ii/:

The writer loses all credibility with his opening statement. Any professional writer - hell, any amateur writer, too - who begins and formulates a critique off a stupidity-of-language comparison (read: "...Mass Effect: Fantasy Land") should find another line of work.

It's like beginning the critique of a book that has pirates with "This is great, it's just like Pirates of the Caribbean!"

Also, his assessment that DAO was super-fine and in no need of corrections is blatantly incorrect, and any fan of DAO should be able to agree with that. He then goes on to almost spoil his own point with: "It felt like BioWare took every criticism to heart and fixed each and every one." Yes, this is called progress.

But, hey, at least he attempts to explain his stance. That's more than most people do.
 
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Yeah, he was building up DAO to be the perfect game. Um... no.

His harsh critisims of Mass Effect (the first) also threw me for a loop. Most people who bash DAII also bash ME2 for being dumbed down for us stupid gamers who don't like to "stratigize" or "create good armors and rings for party members".
 
The plot complaint kills me. Not everyone has to save the whole world or universe or all of creation. Sometimes, if a city is as near and dear to one's heart as Kirkwall obviously becomes to Hawke's, saving that is enough. Personally, I welcomed the smaller scope because it opened up really compelling political undertones that you just can't stop to focus on when your character is jaunting from place to place, reducing virtually every city you pass through to interchangeable scenery. Kirkwall, more than any of the cities in Origins, has its own character and feel that changes right along with Hawke. It's a great example of that vaunted storytelling the writer praises later on in the review.
 
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