Hey I'm thinking of getting the asian region versions of DA:O Ultimate & DA2 for the 360 (got DA:O on ps3 but lost my save when hard drive died.. yay for retarded save locking...), now I'm in the Australian region so I'm wondering how does the DA:O Ultimate Edition DLC work? Is in on disc? Is it just a bunch of codes?
If it's the later do you know if it will work in any marketplace region?
I have the Ultimate Edition of DAO, and the DLC is on the second disc, and no, it has no codes. It just uses your CD key.
That's the thing. I don't have said DLCs because I never bought them. And I'd rather not reinstall Origins all over again and reinstalling the 5gb or so mods I had with my save file directories of Origins.
If it's insignificant, I'd continue on with my save file that has only up to Awakenings. If it has, then I'd probably be better off with a 95% similar save file that I could get from Dragon Age Nexus, with the only difference that I didn't choose Harrowmont as the next dwarf leader.
Aside from one or two mentions here and there, there are no consequences. Currently starting act 3, and the only mention of my actions I had was a bit of setnoise babbling about the Warden in an inn, and encountering a former werewolf on the way to a side-quest which didn't last long enough to be more than a simple nod.
So I say save yourself the trouble, and just go with what you have.
Maybe if I was playing on Normal or Casual it wouldn't have been a big deal, but I did my first playthrough on Hard. I needed the healing, especially playing a glass cannon rogue.
Edit: The difficulty granularity was whacked, too. Hard was a good challenge on most fights, downright impossible on some fights, and other fights still changing the difficulty made no difference at all until I dropped to Casual (namely, the Arishok + entourage fight).
Beat the game. Everyone except Varric is infuriating to be honest
Spoiler:
Anders: Radical beliefs. Won't ever shut up about templars. If he wanted change, he killed the wrong people.
Fenris: Brooding machine. Won't ever shut up about mages.
Merril: Trust demons over myself
Isabela: Untrustworthy thieving wench
Aveline: The best thing about her is that she's a stone wall. The worst thing about her is that she's stone wall.
Seriously.. the game is making a good job of not made me care for these characters
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"Legitimacy is based on three things. First of all, the people who are asked to obey authority have to feel like they have a voice—that if they speak up, they will be heard. Second, the law has to be predictable. There has to be a reasonable expectation that the rules tomorrow are going to be roughly the same as the rules today. And third, the authority has to be fair. It can’t treat one group differently from another.” Malcolm Gladwell
Y'know, the more I digest the ending and the overall story and experience of this game, the less I'm convinced it was worth paying $60 for.
Anyway... Dragon Age II. Was it fun? Yeah, it was. Does it have problems? Hoo boy, it has problems. Many, many more problems than DAO ever had. I'd say it's definitely not Bioware's strongest release in the past few years.
So, let's get to the not-so-short review/collection-of-opinions. Obviously, this contains spoilers of the very spoilery variety. Proceed at your own risk, but I suggest spoiling the plot if you're seriously considering buying this game right now. It may make you reconsider and wait until DA2 shows up on a Steam sale.
Spoiler for Romances:
This is the first big one. Not only can you romance practically any companion, but Bioware didn't lock any of them out by Hawke's sex. Every potential love interest is bisexual--that's fucking amazing. Well, except for the DLC guy, but who cares about him? I'm really happy with Bioware for making this decision and realizing that the LGBT community DOES contain gamers, and we WOULD like to have romances in-game that are meaningful and in some way linked to our real-life sexual orientation.
Starting DA2, I was upset I'd be forced to romance Isabela, despite pretty much hating her character, because she'd be the only obvious lesbian choice. But I was pleasantly surprised that this was not the case (even though my Hawke ended up having sex with Isabela anyway during Act I, LOL... basically it's like Anders says, everyone eventually has sex with Isabela...)
Lots of bones have been made about how bad the romances are, but I'm really quite happy with them.
Spoiler for Fights:
This was improved over DAO in a couple of ways. For one, the combat is a lot faster-paced, which is usually a strength (but sometimes a detriment). The "coming in waves" thing is really, really annoying, but it isn't a show-stopper. It seems to be one of the many Matrixy combat themes that has been added to the "more stylized" Thedas portrayed in DA2.
The biggest improvement came in the form of actually interesting boss fights. In DAO, there were very few notable boss fights--the Harvester is the only one that really comes to mind, and that's in a DLC! DA2 had several entertaining boss fights, from the very first ogre (which was a rough fight on Hard, especially without much in the way of abilities!) to the Ancient Rock Wraith in the Deep Roads--easily the BEST fight in the game. The fight with the Arishok in Act II was good ONLY if you get him to duel you, in which it's a very entertaining fight (even though it's not that hard). If he attacks with his entire entourage, it's frustratingly difficult. The Orsino-Harvester and Meredith were likewise entertaining boss fights, but neither were truly TENSE like the ogre boss in the prologue and the Ancient Rock Wraith in Act I.
Spoiler for Characters:
While I'm not sure if I like the characters in DA2 better than the ones in DAO, I have to hand it to Bioware this time. DAO had precisely one personal quest per character, and for most of them, it was really quite short--Morrigan's personal quest was the only one with any real meat to it, and it's not like Flemeth was much of a challenge.
DA2 really improved this by bringing not just a personal quest, but personal quest chains, reasonably meaty ones, every plot arc. This was a great way to handle things I think--gives you plenty of dialogue options to build lots of good (or bad, if that's your thing) influence with the character.
As for the actual characters themselves, I found myself liking Bethany the most. I was very upset when she caught Plot Disease at the end of Act I and died. >< Definitely a Guide Dang It moment. Next time I'll bring Anders. Other favorites were Varric--using any "snarky" conversation options with him is ALWAYS fun.
Merrill... yeah, she gets her own paragraph! She seems to be a love-her-or-hate-her character in regards to the fanbase, but I thought she was adorable. Like every other character, she's broken in some way (some more than others, though) and her brokenness was compounded by my bad dialogue choices (getting her entire clan killed, hoo boy)... but I suppose it worked out in the end. She's really the Tali'Zorah of DA2, taking the Grotesque Cute spot the quarian engineer occupied in ME and ME2. At least Merrill can be romanced by a female Hawke--I am still bitter that a female Shepard can't romance Tali. >< So Merrill was my Tali stand-in.
The change in character DESIGN was one that I partially approve of and partially dislike. While most players think the redesigned qunari are buckets and buckets more badass than they ever were in DAO, I actually LIKE the changes made to the elves. In DAO, elves didn't really look elvish enough. Except for the very old ones, they looked like humans with pointy ears. In DA2, they're very obviously NOT human--they're much more slight of build and their eyes are far larger, and always almond-shaped.
Spoiler for Gameplay:
Everything's been streamlined, and I really liked that. I wish there were more options for party member armor, but it's not too bad. I know Bioware wanted to keep their unique looks, just like they did in ME2, but come on--you should have at least made the armor scale with level, rather than changing once an act. They do end up getting alternate outfits later, but it'd be nice if you could pick like in Mass Effect 2.
Rogue was a lot more fun to play in DA2 than it was in DAO. In DAO, I only really felt like I was having fun when playing a mage (or tanking as an Arcane Warrior, with mods). The other classes would blow through their stamina and then just be autoattack bots for the rest of the fight. The addition of stamina draughts in Awakening should have been retro'd to DAO with a patch, seriously. But I seriously enjoyed how flashy my dual-wielding Hawke fights--which brings me to my next and biggest point of all: the combat system itself.
While most people are griping about the lack of customizability, items and suchlike, I'm saying they didn't remove ENOUGH "RPG" elements. This game feels like a hack-and-slash action RPG, and yet it still has the rotting, desiccated soul of a shitty game engine from thirteen years ago. This frustrated me more than any other gameplay issue.
Guys, I'm sorry, but the Infinity Engine was created in 1998! It's 2011 now! We do not NEED that clunky fake-real-time bullshit anymore. It works for strategy games (especially because my multitasking skills kind of suck), it does NOT work for third-person action RPGs. This game SHOULD have used a melee version of Mass Effect 2's combat system, complete with similar party-member control (i.e. bring up a menu, tell them to use a special ability).
Look, if you want to make a strategy-heavy RPG, just make it TURN-BASED. Really. Please. This pretending-to-be-turn-based stuff is just stupid. Fallout was turn-based and it was awesome. Arcanum was turn-based and it was awesome. If you want turn based, just make it turn based! I know "turn-based" is some kind of marketing bad-word, but still. The Infinity Engine sucked in 1998, and it sucks in 2011. Stop trying to emulate it.
The inventory annoyed me just as much as it did in DAO, but even worse with all the "junk" items and no rapid way to dispose of them without a store nearby. Seriously, there should be a "discard all junk" option in addition to a "sell all junk" option. And why the hell is there even "junk" in the first place? DAO didn't have junk. This isn't an MMORPG, why do we need vendor trash? To annoy us into having to go do inventory management every hour? Honestly, I would have been FAR MORE SATISFIED with a ME2-style system in which weapon/armor loadout was customized upon leaving Hawke's house--and then DELETING the inventory screen ENTIRELY.
DA2 would have been perfect with NO inventory to worry about at all, a fighting-game like combat system in which you could do combo attacks and stack special moves on top of each other, like The Witcher. The cross-class combo thing was a nice touch, but not very flashy. Playing as a rogue, the game felt VERY schizophrenic, as if it were trying to make me fight like this was a third-person action title, but with the requirement to lapse back into BG-style pause-issue-order-unpause combat every time things got dicey. It was clunky and not very intuitive, and it made some of the fights pure hell--especially with the camera no longer zooming out like it did in DAO.
I should mention that I'm pretty much furious with how much recycled dungeon there was. The areas were so ridiculously limited I felt like I was trapped in a box. Way to go Bioware, especially after making ME2 feel so goddamned enormous and open through clevery trickery, even when it really wasn't.
Spoiler for Story:
Hoo boy, this is the part I have the biggest problems with.
DA2's story asspulls so often it's looser than the Goatse guy. I'm not even going to bother with padding the blows here; this story was REALLY inexcusably bad. My theory is, DAO was billed as "dark fantasy" when it's really just Lord of the Rings With the Names Changed. This poses a problem, so Bioware scrambles to make DA2 appropriately Darker and Edgier. And does this by applying Kill 'Em All Tomino logic to the story.
I can understand one sibling getting owned by the ogre in the prologue. That's sad, that makes sense. Kill the unneeded sibling off (though the concept of Bethany dying right away makes me not even want to play a mage) to start things off on a somber note. Similar to killing off Duncan at the beginning of DAO (only nowhere near as dramatic and well-done).
But seriously, Bethany dying of Plot Disease in the Deep Roads was just fucking stupid. Really, Bioware? What the hell? Did she drink darkspawn blood? How did this happen? She's a MAGE! She doesn't slice and dice hurlocks--she shoots fire at them from fifty yards! How the hell does she get darkspawn blood in her system? Plus, we spent most of the time fighting rock wraiths, not darkspawn. So what the fuck? And the only way to save her is to have Anders with you--or to leave her behind to be taken by the Chantry, which makes her just as good as dead.
Why did my mom have to die in such a hamfisted, lame way? A sidequest, really? It was stupid, it came out of left field and it was not appreciated.
The finale was so bizarre and wrong I just don't even
Why did I have to kill the mage-templar alliance? Why did Fenris's stupid Tevinter bitch get involved with them? They could have made some sort of DECENT ending out of this--mages and templars, working together for a common goal rather than openly hating each other. What the HELL, Bioware? The Player Punches sure don't get pulled here!
Anders BLOWING UP THE FUCKING CHANTRY was definitely a serious HOLYSHIT moment. I really have to give Bioware mad props for that--my jaw literally DROPPED and I uttered the words aloud! But thanks to Bioware's stupid decisions, I couldn't kill Anders! I wanted to, I really fucking wanted to stick him with a knife and twist, letting the bastard know that he ruined EVERYTHING I worked for by killing the Grand Cleric.
But guess what? Because Bioware didn't give Merrill the Creation tree, I HAD TO KEEP ANDERS ALIVE. BECAUSE HE WAS MY ONLY HEALER. Holy fucking SHIT that right there makes me want to put my game disc in a fucking microwave. Because Plot Disease killed Bethany, I had no other healing options, and potions are just on way too long a cooldown to be relied upon--especially playing on Hard. So I couldn't kill him, and I had to "support" him. Ugh, I felt the seething rage of my Hawke wanting to reach through the screen and strangle me for making her go that route!
But I swallowed my distaste and moved past that, because hey, I was at the end! Little did I know it was about to get even stupider.
I'm so infuriated at the mages. I felt for them. I hate the Chantry; I think they're a bunch of asshole zealots who bully the mages simply because they can. The Chantry spent the entire game doing horrible things to mages in the name of protecting the people from blood magic, and I felt bad. I stuck up for the underdog--not to mention I was sort of sleeping with an apostate mage, too--and let's not forget Bethany, either. So I side with the mages, I join forces with Orsino. I have the sweetest cutscene with Merrill before the final battle...
... aaaaaand then 90% of the mages start using blood magic and summoning demons. Just like the templars said they would. That was the ultimate kick in the head right there. I stuck my fucking neck out for you, and THIS is what you DO?! I was actually happy when Orsino went insane and used blood magic to turn himself into a Harvester--I had a chance to get a little vengeance after getting the most royal EMOTIONAL ASSFUCKING of all time.
Meredith going crazy because of Random Artifact of Insanity was the most ridiculous asspull I've ever heard of. Seriously, what? That just came out of nowhere. Yeah, we knew the dwarf sold the thing, but not to whom. It was never even hinted at that Meredith was the one who bought it--nor did we have ANY idea it could turn into a sword. The artifact ITSELF making the dwarf crazy and locking you in the Deep Roads was a stupid asspull. Using it to make Meredith batshit-looney was just shit icing on the manure cake.
The final boss fight itself against Knight-Commander Meredith was actually well-done, and felt appropriately tense and chaotic. But the ending was just... ow. Seriously. What. The. Fuck.
AND WHY THE HELL IS LELIANA BACK WITH THE CHANTRY?
And why did Bioware build up Flemeth so much before release, and she has virtually NO story involvement whatsoever?
Ugh. Bioware, I am disappoint.
DA2's story was a steaming pile compared to DAO's, and the game itself was a JOKE compared to the awesome that was Mass Effect 2.
It's okay, guys, Dragon Age doesn't NEED to be grimdark. Why can't it just be good epic fantasy? DA2's story feels inconsistent, full of deus ex machina and just plain unfocused and weird. It is the definition of TRYING TOO HARD to be cool and edgy.
tl;dr version: DA2's story in a nutshell--an entire city holds Idiot Balls of enormous size for the entire game. And Hawke holds the biggest Idiot Ball of all for not just saying FUCK IT and going back to Ferelden!
That's it for my extremely-disorganized "review." Is this game worth buying? Yeah, I'll say it is. Is it worth paying full price for? HELL NO. Wait until it's $20 on Steam, the toolset's been released and there's some decent DLC out for it. And for the love of everything that is good and holy in the world, A FUCKING CAMERA UNLOCK MOD to make the stupid Infinity Engine combat system LESS FUCKING HORRIBLE.
I am going to go back to my happy place now, where in my head my Hawke screamed FUCK THIS I HOPE YOU IDIOTS ALL DIE IN A FIRE after Anders blew up the Chantry, grabbed Merrill and the dog and moved to a tiny cabin in the middle of nowhere. And fuck what else happens to Thedas.
Merrill... yeah, she gets her own paragraph! She seems to be a love-her-or-hate-her character in regards to the fanbase, but I thought she was adorable. Like every other character, she's broken in some way (some more than others, though) and her brokenness was compounded by my bad dialogue choices (getting her entire clan killed, hoo boy)... but I suppose it worked out in the end. She's really the Tali'Zorah of DA2, taking the Grotesque Cute spot the quarian engineer occupied in ME and ME2. At least Merrill can be romanced by a female Hawke--I am still bitter that a female Shepard can't romance Tali. >< So Merrill was my Tali stand-in.
I can't speak for others, but my dislike of Merrill has nothing to do with the quality of the writing, it's purely a subjective dislike of her brainless ditzy little girl character. Bethany being gone was a bit of a plot whoopety-doo indeed.
While on the subjects of fanatical characters, I think the only reason this seems to irk people is because the fanaticism isn't so idealistic as it is in most other games. In most games, every fanatical character is either fanatical about something that is an element of the plot anyway, or it doesn't matter. The later is a brush-under-the-carpet approach (a fanatical characters personal drive will be largely ignored in most games, being given only the occasional nod). For the former, it goes a bit deeper.
Fanatical characters in this game come more to the forefront and look like idiots because we get to see both sides of the coin. For example, nobody in DAO argued against the fanaticism everyone hunted the darkspawn with, nor did anyone disagree with how evil the Tevinters are. Yet, in this game we get to see both sides of the coin. We get to see the poor mages oppressed by the evil Templars, and we get to see the good-hearted templars getting slaughtered by the evil mages.
This creates conflict, because we aren't as fanatical as our partymembers, we can't just blindly see one side as evil. We don't have Anders experience as an oppressed mage, or Fenris' experience as being a slave to a mage. To our views as an outsider, both of them are idiots. Yet, we can't fully disagree with them either.
But is that such horrible writing?
I say no. And the reason I say no is because I look around, see the political and social landscape of my country and see the exact same idiocy. Islam is being labeled as evil (compare to the chantry), entire social parties are viewed as criminals simply for being born with different heritage (compare to mages), simple ways of life such as gaming are labeled as tools of the devil (compare to the way of the Qun).
Granted, the analogies aren't perfect and it's not as violent as it is in DA2, but the ground base for the conflicts remains very similar. It's bigotry, it's fanatical, it's stupid, but it's also real.
The very fact that we look at this and see the idiocy of it all just proves to me how well the writers pulled it off.
Location: In Maya world, where all is 3D and everything crashes
Age: 36
Quote:
Originally Posted by synaesthetic
Spoiler for Romances:
This is the first big one. Not only can you romance practically any companion, but Bioware didn't lock any of them out by Hawke's sex. Every potential love interest is bisexual--that's fucking amazing. Well, except for the DLC guy, but who cares about him? I'm really happy with Bioware for making this decision and realizing that the LGBT community DOES contain gamers, and we WOULD like to have romances in-game that are meaningful and in some way linked to our real-life sexual orientation.
Starting DA2, I was upset I'd be forced to romance Isabela, despite pretty much hating her character, because she'd be the only obvious lesbian choice. But I was pleasantly surprised that this was not the case (even though my Hawke ended up having sex with Isabela anyway during Act I, LOL... basically it's like Anders says, everyone eventually has sex with Isabela...)
Lots of bones have been made about how bad the romances are, but I'm really quite happy with them.
Spoiler for response:
so you can't romance prince what-his-name... pity, he was the only character I was looking forward to to romance :/