Dragon Age

[koda]

Dog and Shale feel pretty interchangeable to me. They both have some amazing abilities, but don't scale quite as high due to the fact that they only have two item slots.

I beat the game awhile back and I'm kinda putting around with a second playthrough now, just taking my time and trying to do things that I missed before, or go about things in a different way. I'm playing on Nightmare difficulty this time, but it feels like things are actually easier so far -- maybe just because I know what I'm doing this time around.

Mages do seem to be grossly overpowered though, I have to say. Especially going into the Arcane Warrior specialization, given that the 'Shimmering Shield' doesn't deactivate once your character runs out of mana like other abilities of this nature (Cleansing Aura, etc.) do. Not sure if that's a bug or not. Using two Arcane Warrior / Spirit Healers is just disgusting. With all the +% elemental damage items, a quick Fireball, Grease, Inferno rotation is going to lay out just about any group before they can lay a finger on me.

[FuryFox]

I don't think I could play through this again. I can barely work up the interest to keep playing as it is. I feel like I'm pretty far in, about to hit the finale mission, but my characters aren't developing in interesting ways, the equipment is super boring, and I have no patience for the storyline whatsoever. Conversations are a big chore that I key through as quickly as possible...I just piece together the gist of it from my offered responses like a 1-sided phone call.

I don't care for any of the team members, and have a team based purely on utility. Not being able to queue up commands during a pause makes the combat awkward and seems like an obvious inclusion.

The cutscene where Lelianna sings for the camp is one of the most cringe-worthy, awful things I've ever seen in a videogame.

I guess what I really wanted was a team-based dungeon crawler.

[Melf]

I agree that this does suffer from the typical Bioware "400 million pieces of useless equipment" syndrome. The story was excellent though, imo.

New DLC coming this holiday:

Polish up your armor and prune your dialog trees: EA has announced a new Dragon Age: Origins DLC adventure, "Return to Ostagar," is coming to Xbox 360, PS3 and PC this holiday season for $5. The add-on will allow your hero to "revisit Ostagar, the site of the Grey Wardens' darkest hour, to reclaim the honor and learn the secrets of Ferelden's fallen king."

[epmode]

The loot is definitely horrible, no question there. At least it's possible to sort it this time (WTF @ MASS EFFECT). Also, mods will help.

New DLC coming this holiday:

Bite-sized episodic DLC sucks. Expansion pack pls. You'd think that Bioware already forgot about Throne of Bhaal.

[Melf]

I fully expect Bioware to offer one or two bite-sized DLC releases on consoles until 2011, and then offer one expansion before forgetting the game exists.

[koda]

I fully expect Bioware to offer one or two bite-sized DLC releases on consoles until 2011, and then offer one expansion before forgetting the game exists.

Well, there are already people working on Dragon Age 2 (Gaider and the writers, I'd assume), so I wouldn't expect them to keep rolling out expansion content for Origins after that one's been released. But yeah, supposedly their DLC roadmap spans two years.

[Despair]

I dont get the combat whining. You can pause and que in commands for each of the characters, or let them handle few turns while their moves/spells on cool down. It was hectic at first, but now I got ahold of how the system works, my party is truly kicking ass.

Granted I haven't gotten in that far still, but the story is fucking excellent, and even conversations havent bothered me too much yet.

You do get way too much loot, but hey its a folly of every friggin rpg in existance, say thanks its not diablo levels of loot to pick up I do suffer from being stingy and not wanting to spend gold on backpacks yet, and now being stuck in the middle of 1 way dungeon and trowing away useless shit left and right.

[Despair]

I am all excited about more DLC content. Warden Keep and Stone Prisoner both were excellent.

[Despair]

I had a blast fighting Revenant mini boss at the Mage Tower. It was almost mmo experience, with me controlling all aspects of boss battle - tanking and agrro, heal rotations, rogue watching agro, and damn mages not doing too much pew pew to get them killed.

[epmode]

You do get way too much loot, but hey its a folly of every friggin rpg in existance, say thanks its not diablo levels of loot to pick up

The big problem isn't that you get too much of it (although that's also true), it's that the loot itself is garbage. Upgrades barely mean anything. It's pretty much the opposite of Diablo.