How do I get the most out of ME2 and DA:A with time constraints

Hello!

I'm in a situation were the precious time spend exploring mythical worlds soon will diminish for an expanded time.

I have several games that I would like to complete before the curtain falls in June (poor choice of words but then I will have other things to do for an extended time)

The most recent ones to grace my cupboard of escapism, "The Portal" as I call it to my benevolent and understanding significant other are:

Dragon Age: Awakening
I enjoyed DA:O and finished it with a lvl 22 DW warrior, Its good to be king!
Q? is it worth taking your old character or is it more fun to play something different?

Mass Effect 2
I finished my second play through yesterday as a Paragon Vanguard, lvl 56
as a VG I regretted the points spend on the shotgun and used the pistol for the absolute majority of the game. playstyle as a tactical soldier with some barrier and lift use.
First finished run as a middle of the road soldier.
Q? I know people have different views, but what would you play, given time restrictions (no restarts and having the most fun in the first run)?
Import the VG or the Soldier? or play as something completely different?

(I have overclocked my poor E6300 45% and my HD4850 another 10% just for this game, I'm anxious to start the frolic )

Fallout 3
Last on my list, when I bought the complete version I played for a couple of hours but never got hooked, didn't finish oblivion either.
Q? How do you get into it?

I'm most interested in your thoughts on ME2. I understand that they have changed the way combat works and how some classes play, like vanguards ( and I used the shotgun far more when playing as a soldier then as a vanguard)

How do I get the most out of the 10-15 hours a week that I have for the next 8 weeks ?

And I'm a completionist who took 45 hrs with ME1 and 80 hrs on DAO

Regards
Crilloan

(with a fiancée, a toddler of 17 months and getting a newborn in June.

My opinion is to wait awhile on DA:Awakening. That game has a ton of bugs right now, and I'm not sure what's taking Bioware so long to releaes a patch.

Doesn't sound like Fallout 3 is your type of game, and if you're under time restraints then you should probably avoid that kind of game anyways.

I have already played once Awakening and didn't met that much bugs but I totally agree, wait at least first patch and see first the feedback and perhaps wait second patch. I'm used to always wait first patches before playing a game. But recently, (is it because I'm older??) I break more and more often my rule.

For the time spend in Awakening, don't be too much worry, for me DAO 120 hours at first play not counting many reload after a fight going bad. 30 hours for Awakening but I forgot played one part, and at Nightmare I reload because of a fight going bad less than 5 time. Don't be wrong, there's quite many gameplay change I enjoyed in Awakening but it is too short, there's much less dialogs, and the fight difficulty is too low after you have played DAO.

EDIT: About using your character from DAO, I don't know but from the few I read in forums it doesn't seem change a lot the game. Sure some details change but not much. I noticed in first parts that you are only the Warden Commander with a new character when with an imported you are sometimes named as the hero. Or the old companions you met recognize you or not. One point is if you import it's probably better to avoid import your final character. A new character is level 18, import one level 18/19 is probably wiser than level 22/23.

Thank you for inputs.

Couldn't hold my self so I started ME2 yesterday.
Beautiful game but it will take some adjustment from the way I played ME.
Went for soldier but haven't decided if I am regretting it. (restarters anonymous, hard to keep in check).
I've understood that there are a lot of biotics from the npc to play around with so it might work anyway.
Or change the import to infiltrator

DA:A can wait, I tend to wait until first patch as other have mentioned (but I have been sloppy on that account with some recent games that I wanted to dive into)

I think Fallout3 will stay on the shelf for awhile, got the same "empty" feeling I had when playing oblivion. Guess there is gold in there if you know how to get it.
Anyway, there are other more interesting games in my backlog and in my cupboard to take care of.
(planescape torment, never finished but sworn to and Stalker among others)

Cheers
Crilloan

Just wanted to add a little something: Stick with the character you went through DA: O with - it's more fun to continue to build such a character than starting over, since you get new talents and abilities. Also, there are tomes in DA: A that can reset all your talents if you want to.

I'd wait for patch too (for DAO: Awakening). I have been experiencing massive lag and glitches which forces me to reset my computer. Sigh…

IMHO

DAO:A works great (no patch needed) , and is in many ways better than DAO. Skill system is greatly improved. Locations are better looking. Story is more consistent.

Its not as long. So I would play it first.

Fallout 3 is a good game. Not great. But it gets awfully fun if you stick with it.
Only problem is that its a buggy as hell and CTDs all the time (for many people) even after sea of patches.

As for ME2 , playing it once was even more time than the game deserved from me.
…

Weird… most people would say the exact opposite regarding DAO:A and FO3. I've never heard anyone complain about bugs in FO3 (PC version), and I never experienced any that I can think of. On the other hand, I've seen a *lot* of complaints regarding bugs in DAO:A.

If you want to finish ME2 quickly with the best results I have two advices to give. The first is a general tip, the second I tried to make spoilerfree but if you want the best ending on your first go, there are some things you might want to know.

First, don't waste time harvesting. Only harvest when you need and only harvest from good or better planets. Harvesting is timeconsuming and boring. You might wish to harvest good or better planets when moving to a cluster without a relay though since it costs money each time you go there.

Second; with very minimum spoilers;

Originally Posted by JDR13
Weird… most people would say the exact opposite regarding DAO:A and FO3.

Agreed on FO3. I never saw any bugs, except those introduced by DLC's.

Originally Posted by JemyM

Spoiler

Once you are done, then do the IFF mission. See this as "time to finish the game".
At this point, for story reasons, don't waste any time. An invisible clock is ticking in the background. There's no time for buying stuff, no time for credit missions, no time for harvesting, no time to go to other planets.
You only have time to do one more quest before you need to go and I think you will be able to guess which quest I speak about.
(And I think you should do it because it's probably the most philosophical quest in the game).

As for the OT, I think that ME2 is the best choice. The game is strongly mission based and most of those missions are more-or-less self contained which makes the game well playable in smaller chunks.

Regarding the class selection, generally I think that classes which have some means to stay longer out of cover are more fun to play. Spending most of the time behind the cover just isn´t all that exciting.
My favourite of these would be sentinel with assault armor. The class has diverse selection of powers making it less dependent on companions, and with armor piercing ammo bonus power (obtainable later in game) you get a traditional jack-of-all-trades character which also lends itself well to in-your-face gamestyle on top of that, regardless of difficulty settings.

ME1 encyclopedia is one of the worst reading of my entire life, I don't remember have read something as flat and boring. Well when I tried the game I have played few month before The Witcher and this didn't help. That with the fights disgust me of the game.

@DeepO

Originally Posted by JemyM
…
First, don't waste time harvesting. Only harvest when you need and only harvest from good or better planets. Harvesting is timeconsuming and boring. You might wish to harvest good or better planets when moving to a cluster without a relay though since it costs money each time you go there…

thx for the tip. (last tip Ill have to revisit later)

Ive just started on ME2, and boy do the planet scanning suck!
Actually preferred driving around in the mako, since the planets revolve so slowly when you try to speed scan them.

So far I have done the missions to get the team members from omega (I like the salarian quick talker) and and Zaed.

Impressive game, but its suffering from a case of "consolitis".

1. No Frigging short keys to change weapons!!!
(why drop the F1-F4 that worked well in ME?)

2. No key mapping worth mentioning!
(were talking about journal and codex etc)

3. No possibility to take of helmet when walking around and talking to people!

4. No skipping of starting movies and intros without editing game files!
(last one sucks if you want to do some quick tries with different classes)

No "porting to PC" let down this time, sure….

I'm loving the setting and atmosphere,the casting and the dialogue, but I feel less in control over my character then I did in ME. Guess Its a question of adjustment.

Final rant. Concerning #1
If they are going for a shooter/rpg hybrid (which is very fine by me, a favourite genre) how could they miss this?
Makes me regrett that I converted my lvl 56 vanguard to a soldier.

Well well, daughter in bed, pregnant fiancé chatting on msn and watching some awful "talent show" (is that an oxymoron or what when you see and hear the contestants!).
For me, a large glass of red wine, headset on and press start.
Once more into the breach my friends!

Have a nice evening and thank you for your input.
/C

I agree that the ME1 port was better than 2. Especially the lack of hotkeys was very annoying. Been used to that since Might & Magic 6 etc (M->Map, I -> Inventory, N -> Notes and so on)…

Originally Posted by Crilloan
3. No possibility to take of helmet when walking around and talking to people!

Overhelming´s underwhelming.
Use that 10% headshot visor and never look back.