Dragon Age 2 - Retrospective @Hihu

I actually know a person who liked DA2 more than DA:O. She said she appreciated it for being different.

I myself dropped it very fast after discovering how the combat changed, enemy waves and all. Played it again a few years later. Characters were good, combat was ok (my bar fell low by that time), but I missed the overarching plot. Even if it was just a story of Hawke, it could be much less disjointed. There could be some overarching final goal for Hawke, like, I don't know, earn X amount of money, get back their mansion, rise to be a mayor of Kirkwall, etc. Instead Hawke behaved aimlessly and the plot was going nowhere, it was a bunch of disjointed stories thrown together.
 
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Why would you do that? You would have to raise your strength over you magic and willpower so much to wear heavy armor that your mage would be useless.
Arcane Warriors use Magic instead of Strength. They make the best tanks due to all the buffs/debuffs/auras they can use, but lousy melee fighters (almost no actual melee damage due to the complete lack of melee skills). Still, it's quite fun, well worth giving a shot.

Oh and you can't wear heavy armors on mages in DA2 or DAI.
Indeed. I actually didn't like that change, as I like being able to create "battle mage" style characters. The closest is the Knight-Enchanter, which incidentally is my favorite DA: I class.
 
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I myself dropped it very fast after discovering how the combat changed, enemy waves and all. Played it again a few years later. Characters were good, combat was ok (my bar fell low by that time), but I missed the overarching plot. Even if it was just a story of Hawke, it could be much less disjointed. There could be some overarching final goal for Hawke, like, I don't know, earn X amount of money, get back their mansion, rise to be a mayor of Kirkwall, etc. Instead Hawke behaved aimlessly and the plot was going nowhere, it was a bunch of disjointed stories thrown together.

I think Hawke does become a Viscount of Kirkwall later in the game, and your choices and actions do resolve the biggest political conflicts in Kirkwall - so there was an overarching aim to DA2, though not clear initially due to focus on building the characters early in the game.

Furthermore and earlier in the game, you were supposed to earn X amount of money for the deep road expedition to progress the story.
 
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Arcane Warriors use Magic instead of Strength. They make the best tanks due to all the buffs/debuffs/auras they can use, but lousy melee fighters (almost no actual melee damage due to the complete lack of melee skills). Still, it's quite fun, well worth giving a shot.

Forgot about them and I played one, lol, but I wasn't wearing heavy armor or using weapons. A bunch of their spells can't be cast with a weapon that isn't a staff in hand.
 
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@everyone yeah, that JRPG I remember might have not been CT, that's just the only one I tried I still remember the name of. And yeah, calling DAO 'a secret JRPG' was poorly worded, but it has some parts that strongly reminded me of those JRPGs i tried and hated.

@Fluent tell you what, I'll try to play and finish CT and if I do, I'll bite the bullet and do the same with DAO :)
 
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Forgot about them and I played one, lol, but I wasn't wearing heavy armor or using weapons. A bunch of their spells can't be cast with a weapon that isn't a staff in hand.

They can be cast, but only after a rather cumbersome "sheathe weapon" animation. There's even a list of spells that can be cast without that annoying animation:
http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Arcane_Warrior_spellcasting

For anyone who wants to play an Arcane Warrior: I strongly suggest looking at that list, and primarily picking spells labeled ( D ). Doesn't mean people can't select the occasional spell with ( S ), as you can have two weapon sets and just swap to a 2nd set with a staff in it, but that gets tiresome after a while.

As you can see, most ( D ) spells are related to buffs, debuffs or crowd control, making Arcane Warriors excellent tanks. They also combine rather well with both Blood Mage and Spirit Healer, as all those spells can be cast while having a melee weapon drawn.
 
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@Fluent tell you what, I'll try to play and finish CT and if I do, I'll bite the bullet and do the same with DAO :)

I've played DA:O. Didn't finish it, though, but got pretty far with it. CT is a much shorter game so it's not a fair trade-off. :p

I just watched a video about CT last night that talked about things I didn't even know about the game. I knew the game had many different endings, but it has 13 total and so many variations based on the choices you make. If that isn't a CRPG thing, I don't know what is. :)
 
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