LibriumArcana.Games

I've just finished playing it. It's decent, similar to DA:O but also different - looks good, plays well although I find it easier than DA:O (maybe because I play the latter on nightmare, but even DA:O normal is harder than this).

It's slightly less than a 2GB download.

Convo system is like Mass Effect's, though I was hoping it would be more like Alpha Protocol's. Combat feels a lot faster, more streamlined. They seem to have gotten rid of DA:O zoom out function, you basically have OTS and Slightly-Further-Away-OTS. Nothing top down. Which is a shame, feels less tactical. But combat is easy, sooo...

I won't say it's GOTY or anything, but it was fun if a little shallow.

My big problems are two problems which I think are limited to the demo: The PC demo crashes on me, and the PS3 one has itty-bitty-text.

But otherwise? I loved. The combat feels more engaging. The special moves feel legitimately special.

I wish I could get excited about DA2, but the original one didn't really click with me.

I guess I'm just bioworn-out.

SirNitram wrote:My big problems are two problems which I think are limited to the demo: The PC demo crashes on me, and the PS3 one has itty-bitty-text.

But otherwise? I loved. The combat feels more engaging. The special moves feel legitimately special.

The PC demo didn't work because I didn't have some .dll file, but it was an easy fix when I looked on the forums and found that I needed to get some microsoft direct x thing.

Anyway, I like that the cooldowns have been shortened considerably. Makes combat flow quicker, although I didn't have a problem with how it handled in DA:O. The difference seems to be, DA:O had a lot of talents which you could activate, this seems to have only a few (the skill trees are more streamlined and have fewer talents than in origins) but you can activate them more often.

Derek Thunder wrote:I wish I could get excited about DA2, but the original one didn't really click with me.

this is because you are an awful person

Eh to each his own dude. Downloading a demo though costs you nothing.

I guess I'm just bioworn-out.

i see what you did thar

Like all Bioware games, I loved the story, the characters, most of the plot, and the general feel of DA:O.

However, I disliked the MMO style combat system. So I am uncertain if I will be picking this game up or not. Suppose I'll get my hands on the demo and see what I think.

lol I am the complete opposite; I loved the gameplay, and felt that the story and writing was ho-hum by-the-numbers generic fantasy. I'm actually looking forward to the story in DA2 as it seems to be a slight departure of 'ONLY YOU CAN SAVE THE WORLD' and instead focusing on a smaller area and a more personal story, but this is bioware we're talking about, so of course the player character has to be the Champion of the Universe or something.

Alright, I've played the demo. Some initial thoughts after playing the PC version.

A and D aren't generic side strafe? Oh God that was annoying and immediately switched to something a little less likely to drive me insane. Turning the camera quickly to focus on a new enemy is still not very easy though. Not to mention when I first tried to play as a Rogue the game glitched and went "Nope, right clicking does nothing have fun trying to kill the bad guys!"

The combat flows better, and feels a bit less like a bog standard MMO. The fast refresh rates that are eventually achievable make the fighting much more interesting and less like something you can walk away from for a minute and come back to later.

Story. Here I have some doubts. Every time an "old" character showed up from the last game or something like that was mentioned I couldn't help wanting to be playing THAT story instead of this one. This is a serious problem.

Re-booting. I sort of have a problem with some of the reboots that I've seen. Flemeth being all decked out in armor and immediately seeing her as a dragon, I personally would have much rather they used her old outfit. Mighty fuck off dragon turns into little frail looking woman. Isabela, wasn't she white in the last game? And I've heard that the Qunari are growing horns. What I'd prefer they do with this rather than just straight up saying small character style reboots is that both of these are just stories being told, and that differences in appearance are the result of slightly different storytellers.

I think Isabella's reboot looks better. I mean, besides the obvious reasons. She now looks like a pirate from exotic shores whereas before, Isabella just looked like a local girl.

Flemeth, well, the armour I don't know about but on the other hand, it doesn't bother me because arcane warriors don't need to be super-strong at all in order to wear massive armour - that's established in the original game. And think about it, we only see Flemeth a handful of times in her hovel, and the implication was she was up to stuff we didn't know about. This is one of those things.

plus dude she went from frail old lady to fuck-off dragon in origins

I played through the entire game, not just the demo. Finished it up yesterday.

This game takes place both at the same time, and after DA:O, and starts in the same place. So it makes sense that some of the movers and shakers from the original game might make an appearance. Isabella for example, pirate, so it makes sense she would travel. Anders, itinerant mage, it may be a bit convenient, but I can live with it. The others are cameos or minor bits, that I think add to the story. They establish a sort of continuity with the world that I appreciate.

As for the story, people seem to largely behave like real people. Over time, people's opinions can change, loyalty gets legitimately tested and you can see these things in their interactions with you and the world. While it is Bioware, and you will always end up the champion of something, having the game's scope take place in a single city and the rise to power of your character is refreshing and new--even if what takes place in the one little city state has cascading effects elsewhere.

Without spoiling, the plot is fucking fantastic, and given the world, realistic. While the events of the game itself are not so world-shatteringly epic as in the original, the effects on the world as a result of those actions are. Sort of like how the French Revolution was a bit of a game changer. You dont start out as some epic hero. You start off as a refugee (and in my case, apostate mage) trying to survive in a new city... and the city is headed for a world of shit.

SPOILER ALERT! DO NOT READ TINY TEXT IF YOU DO NOT WANT A POSSIBLE ENDING REVEAL!!!!!!!

The conflict between the Circle and Templars had been building since DA:O, and even then you could see that someday, shit would go down. In this city, it just saw the worst of it because the head of the templars was a paranoid zealot who eventually went batshit. Squeezing the mages, and creating a positive feedback loop. She squeezes them, they balk, she thinks this is evidence of corruption and squeezes harder. Eventually when she starts purging them and their sympathizers the whole thing explodes, first in the city and then across Thedas. At least when you side with the Circle, which of course I did because I am both a mage whore, and hate theocracy.


END SPOILER ALERT

The graphics are a huge upgrade, but seem to tax my system less than the original ever did, and the voice acting is fantastic.

The user interface is also a lot less clunky than the original. The combat feels good, and while individual opponents can in some cases be easier, that is because they have fewer hitpoints. The horrific damage they can do to you is the same. They are just easier to kill. As a result there are often more of them, with mages (for example) summoning Shades, thieves or guards coming from elsewhere when you engage etc.

I like what they did with abilities, and the different specializations, upgrades to base powers etc.

All in all, the full game is a must buy.

The game definitely suffers from a mild case of KOTOR 2 syndrome, wherein the writing gets...somewhat disjointed towards the latter third of the game. Sidequests occur that make little sense in context of your past actions, conversations reference things you've never done, so on and so forth. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the hell out of it as a whole, but the editing stumbled on the run up to the endgame.

Also, I thought that Merideth having the Evil Lyrium Relic Sword Thing was a huge copout. She went from 'zealot embodying the worst of religious fervor, an enemy whose motivations can be understood for all that she must be slain' to 'oh, it's another puppet of the Gizmotron.' I felt it lessened her character.

As an addendum, why do we not have spoiler tags here? Pasting to notepad feels so...1998.

you actually select the tiny text and cut and paste to notepad?

why don't you just quote someone and that tinytext disappears in the quote box?

We have Spoiler Tags here........just none of you used them

If you don't beleive me, check some of the movie threads.

the Tags are...oddly enough [spoilers ] [ /spoilers] or something of the like

[spoilers]see[/spoilers]

Ah, rather than being [ spoiler ] like every other forum I've ever seen spoiler tags on. I tried that before posting, didn't think to try nonstandard syntax. Thanks.

Blame our programmer.

-eyes Destructionator-

Ok. Just finished Dragon Age II. I'll do some quick general notes on several sections with spoilerized further notes added in. BTW, I played Male Fighter.

Gameplay: Holy shit was this an improvement. A++ in my book. Part of qhat very nearly dragged me out of the first Dragon Age was the utterly dull and tedious feeling fights. Gone also is the "surprise" difficulty curve where you can kill a High Dragon without too many problems and then get entirely wrecked by a bunch of bandits on your way back to town.
[spoilers]Specializations got a bit fucked in the ass though. I liked how in Dragon Age you had to work towards getting Berserker or Templar or Duelist. In Two? Yeah sure, feel free to pick it up. Lame.[/spoilers]

Story: For the most part good. By the end you do get a feeling of "Fuck yeah I'm the champion of Kirkwall".
[spoilers]Could use a little less "shit goes to hell no matter what you do". There were several times in the game where it just became comedicly transparent. What's that Merrill? You want to do blood magic but you claim you know what you're doing? This can only end in puppies and rainbows!

Overall though, by the end you are a badass and you feel like a badass and plenty of things that happen earlier in the game come back and suddenly make more sense. Fucking idol man... fucking idol...[/spoilers]

Music: The music was fantastically done. Not the best I've ever heard but it generally did it's job very well as mood setting and background music. There were a couple times when the more battle sounding music would go off with out any enemies nearby though.

Graphics: Ehhhh... There was a general upgrade but shit gets bland FAST. You can only see the exact same dungeon so many times before you just start rolling your eyes in annoyance. There are a couple places where the visuals really pop out at you, the Gallows for example. But other than that...

Companions: Here Bioware dropped the ball. And dropped the ball hard. What companions of yours that aren't completely unlikeable are generally annoying and forgettable, with only a few exceptions.
[spoilers]Seriously. Varric, Aveline, and Bethany are the only remotely likable companions of the group. I have a hard time remembering the names of most of the rest of the group some times, that's how much I was drawn in by their characters. Lets go over some of them shall we?

Anders: Whiny prat, and lets not forget COMMITER OF MASS MURDER AND STARTING A WAR. Yeah Anders, real fucking smooth there. Not to mention he killed one of the few NPCs I liked. "Everything will be better if we're free of the Templars". Really asshole? Is that why the Tevinter Empirium is full of fuckheads and as soon as I sided with the mages they started getting their blood magic on? Real fucking smooth there. He's supposed to be a love interest, bu between him being a whiny prat and me not being gay, nothing came of it. Anders was in my party mostly due to being able to bring people back from the dead... and that's about it.

Merrill: The well meaning self-acknowledged blood mage who claims to know what she's doing no matter how insane or stupid it is. Needless to say I threw her in the alienage and proceeded to avoid her as best I could. I don't need her crazy rubbing off on me. I especially love how after a demon got her to turn on me in the fade she still kept insisting that nothing could possibly go wrong with her plan. Lets not forget the ending though! Where she ends up murdering her entire tribe because she fucked up and didn't leave well enough alone. Another possible love interest, but between the whole being a blood mage thing (Seriously woman, even goddamn Morrigan didn't touch that shit and she was a lot better at this magic shit than you, not to mention more arrogant) and the whole scrawny twiggy elf thing I decided to pass.

Fenris: Such an awesome name... but unfortunately, like his past he is utterly forgettable. Had some interesting information on the Tevinter Imperium... but that's about it. The other male love interest, but as you can guess. I had no interest in this character.

Isabella: Jesus Christ. Never before have I actually cheered when a companion left me. The supposedly witty one, her one defining feature was "I am a slut." Wait, I'm sorry, she did have three other features. Selfish bitch, tit 1, and tit 2. Her wit is sometimes passable, but Varric does it better and in my opinion Aveline bests her whenever she says "Shut up, whore". She is the only reason you have conflict with the Qunari in this game and when you try to get her to make up for it she get pissy like its somehow your fault that she has started a war that will kill thousands. So yes, I literally cheered when I discovered that since I did not have a rivalry or friendship with her that she would not be coming back. Another love interest, but I think I've done a good job over the last paragraph explaining why I didn't touch this one.

Sebastian: Like I'm gonna buy a DLC character when I already didn't like 2/3 of the twats you threw at me this game. I didn't even buy the DLC characters in Mass Effect 2, and I liked the companions in that game.

Bethany: There's little to say about her honestly. For a great deal of the game she is not in the party, though her getting dragged off to the circle makes things a lot more intense and pulls your character deeper into the story. She is one of the few other sane characters in the party and in that regard was a bastion to me during the early mad times. When she got pulled off to the chantry I was rather annoyed.

Aveline: All business, and also mostly sane. We disagreed on a few things, her being essentially Lawful Good and me being Chaotic Good. But we were both on the Good side of the alignment scale so we managed to get along well. I loved her storyline with setting up the City Guard and even her romance of Donnic (Christ she really is bad at that). Also notable as the only character that I wanted to romance, and one of the few in this damn game that you can't! C'est la vie. I have my eye on the Seeker if she's a companion in the next game. She seems generally nice and not crazy. She's not a selfish slut or a blood mage elf so... she'll be better than the options in this game.

Varric: You smooth motherfucker. If you aren't a companion in the next game I will be sad. Seriously, he was always in my party, and not just because I needed a rogue to open locks and disarm traps. Witty, funny, sarcastic. Varric is my kind of guy as most of you can guess. He's also mostly sane, which is a plus considering the vast majority of the rest of the party. At the end, he and I were sorely tempted to go "You know what, fuck this crazy shit. It's gotten out of hand and I'm not cleaning it up anymore." Varric was the other non-romancable companion (besides your sibling of course. Though apparently a few people complained that you couldn't romance your sibling... ew).

Dog: Or, as I call him, Enkidu. He gets a spot on this list despite having fewer lines than any other companion and only being summonable because despite these things, he was more enjoyable and more useful than over half of my party was. I couldn't find an option to give him a name, which I found disappointing. But yeah, he's awesome and if you don't like dog the card playing guard-baiting bad ass then you are a communist.[/spoilers]

Ending: Christ, talk about sequel baiting. But it's Bioware. They kind of do that sort of thing. They did it pretty well though. A lot of sequels are like "Hahaha, cliff hanger bitches!". This one allowed you to complete the Kirkwall mission and set everything up for the next game very well.
[spoilers]Anders is still a fucktard though, and the only reasons he was still in my party was because I needed my healer and I figured I could do a better job limiting the damage he was going to do if I kept him in sight. Orsino hulking out and going all blood mage on me was... rather out of left field actually. But helped to drive home the point that neither side was right, and when pushed up against the wall, many mages will take the easy route of blood magic Meredith having the lyrium relic I felt tied things together rather well, it gave a more plausible reason for Meredith going batshit than "She's just a religious zealot". She was a woman with genuinely good intentions who got corrupted and pushed further and further by an artifact until she couldn't tell good from evil any more. I look forward to seeing the Seeker again in the next game and hope she becomes a companion.

Seeing Leliana again was nice. As were pretty much all of the cameos that we got of the old characters. But with the companions I had this game it mostly only had me wishing that I had my old companions back, rather than my bunch. Fuck, I even wanted Zevran back in my party (though he's too busy being awesome, apparently). I imagine if I see references to most of the companions of this game in the next Dragon Age it will be to me going "Ugh, why aren't you dead yet?"[/spoilers]

Well, I'll say this, Havoc was right about one thing.

[spoilers]I fucking HATED that ending.

Fucking hell, the last third of the game just dragged it all down for me. It's like everyone just took a massive dose of stupidity through the whole thing. Meredith going nuts from the artifact, okay, cool, that much I get, but I had to have slaughtered at LEAST a hundred people just because someone, instead of being terrified of my reputation FOR KILLING EVERYTHING and letting me get a word in edgewise, decides, "No, you know what? I'm tired of living. It's such a bore, really, I do wish someone could come along and make me feel like my death was meaningful for something. Oh, look, I'm worth 24 XP, that's how many parts I'm in, hooray!"

I was all set to say, "Hey, Bioware, nice job with Dragon Age 2. I mean, sure, it's a bit too tunnel-focused for my tastes, and I've done this same exact dungeon perhaps a dozen times or more, but the characters are fun and the story was interesting."

Nope, not this time. Fuck you Bioware. Fuck you hard. I feel like I was sold half a game and a part of that was total shit.

They did so much right with this one too, there were some growing pains, some issues that needed ironing out, but so much was better over Dragon Age 1, except that there, people weren't absolutely fucking retarded as it got to the final act.

And the ending? THE ENDING? You run for the hills, with no resolution in sight.

IT DIDN'T END.

There is no resolution. The major threats are still in place. This goes beyond simple sequel-baiting, this is downright giving me half a fucking story. There's no real resolution with the Qunari arc, the Templar arc, the Deep Roads arc, the Gray Wardens arc, anything!

I'm going to stew over this for a while, but a Bioware game hasn't resulted in this much bile since Neverwinter Nights.[/spoilers]

tl;dr version

Fuck you, Bioware. Fuck you hard.

Another thing that really annoyed the hell out of me.

[spoilers]All computer RPGs are going to end up having a reactive PC. The nature of the computer RPG just makes it hard to not do that. Most of the time these can be worked around or even turned around to seem proactive. There are several parts in Mass Effect 2 that do this very well. I did not get this feeling at all with DA II. It seemed as though Hawke couldn't even wipe his own ass without someone giving him a quest to go do so. This game needed MA II style interrupts (the only one that I've heard of is given to Varric, further proving his badassery). Or just decisions that felt like you were taking initiative rather than simply standing around like a putz while the entire city falls apart around you. I mean hell, at the beginning of Act III I would have just gone up to Meredith and Orsino and gone "Hey, yeah. I'm gonna be viscount now. If you don't like that Meredith you are free to try and stop me. I killed the goddamn Arishok. You're free to give it a shot." I also would have been asking questions about that nifty sword she'd gotten her hands on, you know, before she started going freaking nuts. Or cornered Isabella and been like "So what exactly is the reason you don't want to go into the Qunari quarter, does it have anything to do with this thing you're looking for?" [/spoilers]