Dragon Age 2 Play thread

Originally Posted by Nerevarine
I think that the reason why crafting is criticized is that it's yet another gameplay element that was already lacking in DA:O, and rather than expand on it or make it a better, improved part of the game, it was ridiculously "streamlined" to the point of irrelevance. It reminds me of the removed skills - they were mediocre and didn't have much effect on gameplay, causing non-combat skills to ultimately be more of an annoyance than a worthwhile part of DA:O. But Bioware's lazy solution was to simply gut the non-combat skills entirely, rather than come up with a solution to flesh them out and turn them into an improved aspect of the game. This is regression, and I think that criticizing these elements are perfectly valid and not silly at all because all of these minor flaws really begin add up over the course of the game. A lot of games - even great ones - have at least a few mediocre elements within them, so I see your point, but they make up for their shortcomings by having a lot of depth elsewhere.

Well said.

Originally Posted by azarhal
I actually like DA2 companions more than the DAO ones. Show that people don't like the same thing.

Who I think you get something.

Bah. The ability to "whip up" ten healing potions in the middle of a dungeon is silly. Crafting in games like these is never a draw for me… I can understand how some might like it, but I really don't care. It always feels like a time waster to pad out the game. I find crafting systems usually very lame or boring at best. Wish they'd go back to Baldur's Gate style D&D play and eliminate it altogether.

Originally Posted by Ovenall
So far, I agree with you. I liked Leliana for example, but the manner in which their stories were revealed was terrible. You could go to camp and basically interrogate every one of them, and they'd just spill their guts and expound on and on about themselves. DA1 characters were good, and the writing was great, but the presentation was awful.

I totally agree with that but apart this point, in DA2 I experimented deeply Merrill, Varric, Fenris. And despite the game merging was awful in DAO all those DA2 companion are far to have get the character depth of almost all DAO companions. That said I also didn't enjoyed how I felt almost none attaching in DAO.

Originally Posted by Ovenall
Bah. The ability to "whip up" ten healing potions in the middle of a dungeon is silly. Crafting in games like these is never a draw for me… I can understand how some might like it, but I really don't care. It always feels like a time waster to pad out the game. I find crafting systems usually very lame or boring at best. Wish they'd go back to Baldur's Gate style D&D play and eliminate it altogether.

That's my overall opinion, but I found the DA2 system quite excellent and in fact more realist, like if you had time to pick some flower in the woods when you are busy saving the world. Find the resources sources, get xp for that, let commoners do the collecting and crafting, and have them sell you some through their reserve and using an interesting item teleporting feature, quite good design particularly when compared to more old school approach.

Also I do agree the teleporting is a bit too much from a pure realistic point of view but have just one merchant available to do that was less practical.

Originally Posted by Ovenall
Bah. The ability to "whip up" ten healing potions in the middle of a dungeon is silly. Crafting in games like these is never a draw for me… I can understand how some might like it, but I really don't care. It always feels like a time waster to pad out the game. I find crafting systems usually very lame or boring at best. Wish they'd go back to Baldur's Gate style D&D play and eliminate it altogether.

The ability to whip up potions is not only not silly it is and has been done more or less in the real world for many years. Ever watch survival show they are always pointing out plants and herb you could use if you were lost in the wilderness.

The mortor and pestle is a real world item that would easily fit in a back pack. Used by real world pharmacists since the late 1700's to make medicines. So if one had a motor and pestle and the proper know how it is totally believable that they could whip up medicines in the middle of a cave.

I agree that whipping up hundreds of potions in dao was a fundamental flaw of the game but they could have easily limited the # of components to fix this or you could just choose not to whip up that many potions.

Whether or not you like crafting is a totally different issue. I like crafting so yes this is a negative for me but no it doesn't mean that da2 is not an rpg as you asked.

I liked dao's crafting because my character was actually crafting. In da2 you are not crafting you are just buying potions at home.

And btw I'm now 15 hrs in to da2 and am starting to enjoy the game and some story aspects much more but there are some glaring omissions from the game that i'm really missing and crafting would be one of them.

on a side note anyone else really like the new quinari. I think they are pretty awesome sten did not do the race justice.

Originally Posted by sakichop
on a side note anyone else really like the new quinari. I think they are pretty awesome sten did not do the race justice.

I mostly hated the new art direction (you call those…things…elves!?), but I do think that the qunari have been improved quite a bit. They are much more imposing now and their look fits their militant warrior culture.

Originally Posted by sakichop
…there are some glaring omissions from the game that i'm really missing and crafting would be one of them..

I do agree that a more traditional system of crafting has some meaning, not one like in DAO but in some other older game, ie you collect stuff and during exploration time only you can use some alchemy skill to craft some potions.

But I feel a little weird that you can enjoy and support only one choice. It makes full sense for a RPG centered around a town to not have a hero with plenty skills and also alchemy, and then only discover sources for resources and order potions from some merchant.

There was in town a merchant for ordering crafted potions and one for rune crafting. Just don't use those put at home if it's such a trouble for you. For sure I do agree they put that at home just for practical reason and it is broken the good overall realism they setup well through this new system. But well it's also a detail you can easily ignore if you like roleplay a bit to improve immersion. I definitely don't roleplay much in RPG but I did it for this point, well almost always.

Originally Posted by DoctorNarrative
Hard mode is really difficult when you are facing either a boss or a large group of ranged enemies like archers or the Qunari spearmen. The knockback on ranged enemies is IN-sane.

It's annoying because most fights are a breeze even on hard but then you will stumble across one that is almost impossible because they start you in the middle of nowhere surround by archers or something.

At my first play I never quote this archer problem. I was using almost always two mages a long range rogue and one fighter. In my current replay I notice the problem or the difficulty this sort of case involves.

It's a matter of having the lonely long range attack enemy long range and then all harass him. This case is quite aggravated when you make your mage use a spell like firestorm or even fireball on a group of archer, something which is tempting but has quite bad effect in that configuration.

In my current play often using a mage, two close range rogues and a fighter I got this sort of problem during multiple fights. I quoted that two rogues and two mages could even be better in that sort of fight just because the long range tend be less concentrated on a single mage. But I don't think that no fighter is really an option in DA2.

Another point is that I delayed a bit too much sustained spell protection with Bethany unlike with the mages I was using at my first play. For now I don't have clear general plan to manage this sort of problem with one mage and three close range. Well with three fighters I think it would be less a problem. My characters at this replay at still only level 7 so I have margin to adapt builds to this specific problem.

Horrible difficulty spike:

Originally Posted by Ovenall
Horrible difficulty spike:

Spoiler

The Ancient Rock Wraith in the Deep Roads is ridiculous. I was going along on Hard and hit this encounter and could barely dent it. I lowered to Normal, and it still was taking a damn eternity just to nick away at its hit points. I figured out the "hide behind the pillars" trick for its radioactive glow-attack, but got messed up when my damn party wouldn't stay put. I had to get them to all hide behind the SAME pillar for it to work. Very frustrating, and purely bad game design. I finally switched it to Casual and it still probably took five minutes real time to kill the thing. Maybe I wasn't specced just right, and I had Merrill instead of my damage dealing Bethany. Funny though, Merrill got through this almost without a scratch by hanging way back and avoiding the charge attack.

Still, it's way too hard an encounter that hits out of the blue. Just bad game balancing.

Spoiler for deep roads.

Yes you need use select all members, move in the hide area and it's clearly identifiable looking at the ground, and you have a lot of time to do it and during that phase activate the hand to stop members move.

No I didn't beat it at hard but after I finally understood the key points I think I could have. It's clearly a tricky fight and not one easy to beat at first attempt.

Yes that was a big jump in difficulty. I got trashed my first time didn't know what to do. Second time my last guy died at the same time monster died. It cut to the partys dead screen then all of the sudden jumped back to my character killing the monster. Very weird but was happy to be past it.

It was more of a third person fight than a party based fight I thought.

I was using the hold command, but I had different party members behind different pillars. Even with Hold on, the rest of the party will sometimes move towards the controlled character if he gets too far away so they catch up.

Anyway, I figured it out, but the amount of health or armor that thing has is stupid compared to just about everything else you've faced.

The hold command also could not work if you didn't deactivate tactics and have an enemy go in range of an attack involving moving. That behavior is a little special, perhaps a bug but have them never use such type of talents is perhaps also a sort of bug. Not sure what would be the best solution, but not move and not use special attack involving moving seems a bit more logical.

Yeah that fight is a bit special. But I enjoyed this section with quite diversified fights before the last.

About cinematic that force characters position at a start of a fight, it's clearly also to avoid abuse of starting a fight with all party far back. But the truth is if you have a blocking point you want use, but get the team position reset at start of fight, you still can move at start of the fight to position and hold a point. I abused a little of that so I know how possible it is.

I have all tactics off as I find it more annoying trying to figure those out versus just micromanaging the fights.

I find myself enjoying this game the more I play it. I'm just past the Deep Roads and have started a few quests in the next part. I know it's less traditional RPG than some games but it's just damn fun to play. This game grows on me, and I keep thinking about my next play through… though it takes me forever to finish big games.

I'm not seeing where all the hate is coming from towards this game. It's a lot of fun and a fine RPG in all the best ways that games are RPGs. I'm at about the same palce as Ovenall. But then I never understood all the hate the DA:O garnered, either.

Originally Posted by Dasale
About cinematic that force characters position at a start of a fight, it's clearly also to avoid abuse of starting a fight with all party far back. But the truth is if you have a blocking point you want use, but get the team position reset at start of fight, you still can move at start of the fight to position and hold a point. I abused a little of that so I know how possible it is.

Why do you call this tactic an "abuse"? Three of your party members hold a defensible position while rogue scouts ahead for traps and mobs. Makes perfect sense to me!

@Ovenall: Me too I'm impressed how fun it is to replay chapter 1. But I have an hypothesis about that. The chapter 1 isn't bad at all but, is a little confuse or complicated from a story point of view. Also it setup some bases for future events or quests. Both elements work not that well at first play. At second play you already know plenty stuff and things are more clear overall during this chapter 1. Also many little points or some quests take another dimension because you know the future evolutions related to them.

@BillSeurer: It's clear there's ton of madness around this game. For sure it has its bag of flaws and too many obviously rushed elements. But it's also sure it has many strong qualities. But wait have finish it before to take any conclusion. The chapter 3 satisfy some players quite enough and not really some other. Both reactions have reasons. Myself I perhaps overreacted at some points of this chapter 3, making me found it weak enough to waste the game overall. But I read a thread with different opinions about it and I perhaps I got dragged a bit by the insane mood around the game.

@zahratustra : I mean to make it before any fight started, you can do it once the fight is started anyway. But ok I feel it an abuse because it anticipate too much a possible fight like a sort of cheating. But yes it's just a personal feeling.

But on another way it's not a so big nuisance, again, try do it after the fight started, most often you'll still be able take and hold such key point if you want, no real need to do it before the fight.

Originally Posted by Nerevarine
I think that the reason why crafting is criticized is that it's yet another gameplay element that was already lacking in DA:O, and rather than expand on it or make it a better, improved part of the game, it was ridiculously "streamlined" to the point of irrelevance. It reminds me of the removed skills - they were mediocre and didn't have much effect on gameplay, causing non-combat skills to ultimately be more of an annoyance than a worthwhile part of DA:O. But Bioware's lazy solution was to simply gut the non-combat skills entirely, rather than come up with a solution to flesh them out and turn them into an improved aspect of the game. This is regression, and I think that criticizing these elements are perfectly valid and not silly at all because all of these minor flaws really begin add up over the course of the game. A lot of games - even great ones - have at least a few mediocre elements within them, so I see your point, but they make up for their shortcomings by having a lot of depth elsewhere.

I'm quite glad of the removed skills . . . I never remembered to brew up enough to make alchemy or poisons worthwhile skills, and I always take the speech options in every game I play because otherwise I feel like I'm missing out on content (or might be missing out on content).

And if they're doing full voice acting then having too big a range of different responses depending on personality characteristics would be a vast undertaking. Would you really prefer them to go back to pure text so that they can build in an old style rpg with different speech options?