Dragon Age II

[-Sho-]

Amazing

2nd screenshots , the second sword he helds looks awesome.

Anyway , it's a + for people who will buy Dead Space 2 & Dragon Age 2

[Who]

Is that Starfang in the first screenshot?

[Hooves]

Originally Posted by Zaseka

{O,o}
( | | )
_"_"_

What is this I don't even

First Mass Effect, now Dead Space 2.. The future is meeting with the past

[Who]

Here's a good reason to log into Facebook: 5 free (yes, free without pre-ordering or any of those shenanigans) items to download once you beat Dragon Age Journeys.

Source

Note that DA: Legends can be accessed via Facebook and nowhere else, if I recall correctly. Personal favorite is the ring that some guy used to punch demons in the face and kill them. Sounds like Touma punching women in the face.

Edit:
Managed to get a beta key for DA: Legends from some person on Bioware social who had extras. Will be posting screen shots later.

[Hooves]

Originally Posted by Who

Edit:
Managed to get a beta key for DA: Legends from some person on Bioware social who had extras. Will be posting screen shots later.

Lucky!! Hope you give us insight on what we are missing though

[Who]

Okay, so here's what I gathered from DA:L as of playing for a little bit.
-It's currently in "dark" beta, meaning that it's still the early stages of beta. There are some features missing, such as your quest list, which will get plugged in as time goes on. I expect the full release of this game to be out sometime in early/mid-February.
-It's "less" strategic, in my opinion, than Dragon Age: Journeys (the first flash game), as you don't have to move your units around the battlefield and position them in the right spots. Think more Final Fantasy without the ATB or whatever gimmick SE comes up with in each of their games. Turn-based.

Before this becomes a wall of text, I'll put up a few screenshots now.

Spoiler for First Pic, space saving:

Character creation. You're limited to human; should have realized that when they announced the same thing for DA2. Not as powerful as DA:O's character creator but they have several physical features available to choose from, as well as your standard 3 classes. As usual, I chose rogue. I wanted dual wield, but apparently, it was only bow (more on that later). I named him Izaya, after the character in Durarara but since he has a bow, I should've named him Archer or something.

Spoiler for Combat Tutorial:

Like I said before, combat no longer requires your management of the unit's positions. Instead, we have just pure, turn based combat. However, you'll notice a few things in the picture. There's the EXP bar in the top left, and to the right corner, there's a picture of a coin and a crown. The coin is obviously in-game currency. The crowns are a special type of currency which you can use to purchase weapons and equips and the like from a store. They are broken items in terms of stats, but I don't know how to acquire more crowns just yet.
In between the currency and the exp bar, we have "energy". That's what you use to determine how long you play. Certain maps deduct 3 energy from your bar; others deduct 5. So far, it's the only thing (well, not the only) that's impeding my progress; more on that in a sec.

At the bottom, you'll see the word "wave", followed by a fraction. You're given a set number of enemies to face, and they're separated into different waves, making it easier to handle.
Below that, you'll see your NPC allies (ignore the one that says "Alexander"; that's me). Furthermore, being that this is Facebook, you can have your friends join you in the fight as well. The advantage of using your Facebook friends is that unlike your NPC allies, they don't have a cooldown timer. The NPC cooldown timer is ridiculous; it's something like 1-2 hours. Hopefully, it's something they fix. But being that none of my friends are really RPG fans, I'm forever alone.

Spoiler for Leveling up, part 1:

Self-explanatory. You get one point per level up, as opposed to the 3 AP in DA:O, and the text in the pic describes what each attribute contributes towards.

Spoiler for Leveling up, part 2:

I think this is the most interesting part of the game, and it shows us how DA2's skill building will work.
There are 4 tabs. Archery is for... archers (derp), Skirmish is for melee rogues, Deceit is your basic set of rogue abilities (like Stealth) and training is your passives to make your weapons usage even more effective. Of course, it's different per class, but since I went with rogue, this is what I got.
The trees are branched this time around (no pun intended), and you can invest your skill points (again, one per level) more than once into a skill. So for instance, the first skill in the picture, Piercing Shot (goes through all enemies in a line; good skill to have), enables you to learn the skill. The second point and each one thereafter will upgrade the damage that is done with that skill. Not sure what the max amount of points you can put into a skill is, although I'm sure it's different for all skills.

Spoiler for Map:

Easy enough. You follow the path, and each point unlocks new encounters, whether it be item uncovering or an enemy encounter. Note the "3" underneath the enemy diamond with the axes. That indicates how much energy you have to spend in order to initiate that encounter. Energy refills itself rather quickly; 1 per 2 minutes or so.

Spoiler for Castle creation:

Finally, we have a castle creator. You create your own base of operations, and customize it how you want. Better than Vigil's Keep already, in my opinion. You outfit with various rooms (you use the gold coins) and upgrade it as you go; the castle starts out small, but you can excavate the land around you to add more space. The rooms are pretty important; you can craft items in there like bombs, poisons and poultices. However, the time it takes to craft these items is pretty long, once again (Bioware sucks with these time restrictions), but there are ways around it. There are special rooms which double the workspeed of all adjacent rooms, and the happier your servants are (by building taverns), the faster they'll work to produce your goods.

So that ends my assessment for now. I'll post inventory and store screenshots later.

[Hooves]

Well, atleast you can build a castle in it

[BetoJR]

Well, I can't get past the "Name your castle" screen, no matter what I do, so...

[Who]

Okay, so I tinkered around and found a game-impeding bug where in the tutorial, if you kill an enemy before using a potion (as the game tells you to; this is why people should follow instructions), you become stuck on the Victory screen and cannot progress any further into the game, nor can you reset the game.

Not sure yet if I can add friends on Facebook without them requiring a beta key.

[killer3000ad]

Dragon Age 2 has 103 minutes of cutscenes.

Also the BBFC gave it an R18+ rating. YIPPEE!

[Irkalla]

You won't see the whole 103 minutes in one playthrough though, but still a good number. Origins had about 60 min all together, and this game is said to be much shorter. So YAY, more cinematics!!!

[Hooves]

Originally Posted by Irkalla

You won't see the whole 103 minutes in one playthrough though, but still a good number. Origins had about 60 min all together, and this game is said to be much shorter. So YAY, more cinematics!!!

This game is shorter? Disappointing... Just hope it isn't as short as "Awakening", but atleast there are plenty of cutscenes to make up for it

[killer3000ad]

Originally Posted by Hooves

This game is shorter? Disappointing... Just hope it isn't as short as "Awakening", but atleast there are plenty of cutscenes to make up for it

As long as the length of each cutscene doesn't approach MGS4 level. Also Bioware have said that DA2 will be longer than Awakening but shorter than DA1.

[FlareKnight]

In terms of the length just hope it feels like a good full experience. It would have been too bad if they couldn't make a new game longer than an expansion for DA1.

[Kyero Fox]

without the helm it would be cool.. the issac armor that is.

[Pacify]

Sad to hear its going to be shorter then Da1 . Really even DA1 was too short xD

[Irkalla]

A good guess would be that it's around ME2 length, which is okay. DaO felt waaaay too long for me after the first playthrough. Way too much fighting clustered together, especially in the deep roads. I spent hours just going through that on nightmare. After two or so playthroughs, I just started using "killallhostiles" cheat to progress as quickly as possible.

On a more positive side, apparently the German Gamestar mag comes out today with lots of new info, including a video of some sort? Is anybody German here that can get his hands on that?

edit. Found 2 Merrill screenies from the mag. Kicking some Templar ass, can't wait for that

[Key Board]

I did almost everything in DA in 60 hours

but a huge amount of that was inventory management, backtracking for locked chests and missed items, crafting, buying crafting ingredients and planning / wondering about my character build

I'm glad that DA2 will help streamline a few things

[Who]

^Inventory and crafting has been streamlined, don't worry about that. Not sure I can say the same about character builds (although they did away with a lot of specializations) with the new upgrading skill system.

[Hooves]

Originally Posted by Who

^Inventory and crafting has been streamlined, don't worry about that. Not sure I can say the same about character builds (although they did away with a lot of specializations) with the new upgrading skill system.

Less time on Inventory and Crafting, and more time on the character screen I would say