Dragon Age 2

[Chen]

If you have Isabela's (or Sebatien's) friend bonus there are circumstances where it is added/removed badly which can end up reducing your attack speed (Isabela) or your resistances (Sebastien). I seem to recall reading something about loading save games when they are not in the party. This "removes" the buff but since they were already not in the party the buff wasn't actually being applied so you actually lose 5% attack speed and whatever bonus Sebastien gives you. Once you've lost stats this way there's no way short of editing your savegame to get them back.

[Menacing Spike]

If you have Isabela's (or Sebatien's) friend bonus there are circumstances where it is added/removed badly which can end up reducing your attack speed (Isabela) or your resistances (Sebastien). I seem to recall reading something about loading save games when they are not in the party. This "removes" the buff but since they were already not in the party the buff wasn't actually being applied so you actually lose 5% attack speed and whatever bonus Sebastien gives you. Once you've lost stats this way there's no way short of editing your savegame to get them back.

The speed removal stacks.
Eventually the bitch completely decays your attack speed.

[VectorZero]

Yeah, isabela's 'thumbs up' passive bonus is bugged (badly); every time a game is loaded with Isabela out of the party the speed buff is incorrectly deducted. Hawke grinds to a halt. same thing with sebastian and damage reduction. There are several threads on the issue at the bioware boards, but i think this one summarises the issue well.

[Menacing Spike]

Romance options suck.

Spoiler:

Anders: I houses a corrupted spirit of vengeance, and blew up the mofucking chantry. There can be only war. Now kill me and make me into a martyr, love of my life!
Carver: Bro you are so much better than me I hate you bro aarghblllfleblgrrrk
Fenris: Crawling in my skiiin, those tatoos will not heaaaal
Isabela: It moves! Let's have sex with it! Sex! Sexsexsex!! I now have only you, my love, and.. Zevran! Let's hump! Sex!
Merril: What do you mean, blood magic and demons are bad? I KNOW WHAT I AM DOING OHGOD KEEPER WHYYY
Varric: Doo doo hi Hawke seems like I'm the only well-ajusted and interesting character. Romance? You are too high maintenance, sorry.
Aveline: You get a kiss!

edit: What the fuck Sandal

[TheBanana]

Romance options suck.

Spoiler:

Anders: I houses a corrupted spirit of vengeance, and blew up the mofucking chantry. There can be only war. Now kill me and make me into a martyr, love of my life!
Carver: Bro you are so much better than me I hate you bro aarghblllfleblgrrrk
Fenris: Crawling in my skiiin, those tatoos will not heaaaal
Isabela: It moves! Let's have sex with it! Sex! Sexsexsex!! I now have only you, my love, and.. Zevran! Let's hump! Sex!
Merril: What do you mean, blood magic and demons are bad? I KNOW WHAT I AM DOING OHGOD KEEPER WHYYY
Varric: Doo doo hi Hawke seems like I'm the only well-ajusted and interesting character. Romance? You are too high maintenance, sorry.
Aveline: You get a kiss!

edit: What the fuck Sandal

I like Aveline but yeah I agree on all the others. Although...

Spoiler:

Carver was growing on me before he was forced out of my party by the deep roads quest

[archeleus]

Played as a female rogue, so yeah romance actions sucked bigtime. Lesbian female rogue btw.

[el_loco_avs]

High Dragon fight 1.

Spoiler:

the one in teh Bone Pit

Jeez. Long fight, And I got very nervous when I had the third horde of dragonlings along with TWO regular dragons.

Lost two (Aveline and Anders who was randomly there due to his quest nearby) but my mage and marrill finished it off. Fun stuff.

[pseudoidiot]

I just did that fight as well. Quite tough. My first attempt was pretty disastrous as I wasn't quite prepared for it. Second attempt went very well with no deaths.

[el_loco_avs]

Wha? I just got the last part of the act 2 item set after collecting the act3 set?! that's just stupid.

[Xeio]

I just did that fight as well. Quite tough. My first attempt was pretty disastrous as I wasn't quite prepared for it. Second attempt went very well with no deaths.

I had quite a few deaths (Merill twice, anders once, main character twice; Aveline was the only one to survive it without being knocked out, though she got an injury anyway, wtf...). Hooray for Ander's revive and revive potions.

[el_loco_avs]

Erm. I'm... stuck?

Spoiler:

after fighting Orsino

I can't leave the area... can't loot him or seem to trigger anything ?



edit:
nvm, redid the fight.

[el_loco_avs]

Hahahahahahah Sandal is awesome.

[el_loco_avs]

Well. That end fight was as anticlimactic as part 1. Too easy, more difficult fights during the game

[thecommabandit]

Well. That end fight was as anticlimactic as part 1. Too easy, more difficult fights during the game

I did have a bit of a holy shit moment when

Spoiler:

the slave statues started coming to life and crawling towards you.

But otherwise, I agree. The difficulty in this game is screwed up. I started on Nightmare, and It would have been manageable were it not for the game going "Oh, you've nearly finished off those guys? You must be having so much fun! I'll send two more waves in for no narrative reason!" Whereas on Normal most fights were ridiculously easy. Next playthrough though, I'm going on Casual. The combat design is just too messed up so I'd rather it just be a momentary distraction than an annoying interlude.

Hahahahahahah Sandal is awesome.

Everytime he says "I want to go home..." I have a sadface.

[Vaniver]

So... just finished the game. Was disappointed by the ending.

Spoiler:

So, I was a mage and sided with the mages. At the end, why would Orsino turn to blood magic when you're winning? And why would he fight you? That just aggravated me to no end. I was generally disappointed with how little your actions and choices seemed to shape how things turned out, where your ability to do that (while still limited) was one of the big draws of DA1.

Indeed, the main changes seemed to result from who you took with you on various quests. If you took Varric, he could talk through several situations; if you took Anders, he could heal several dying people (notably Bartrand); I'm sure there were others with people I didn't take on quests regularly. But those rarely had any long-term impact and weren't really decisions so much as reflections of which characters you liked fighting with.

Also, I totally called that Meredith went insane because of the idol.

[Menacing Spike]

So... just finished the game. Was disappointed by the ending.

Spoiler:

So, I was a mage and sided with the mages. At the end, why would Orsino turn to blood magic when you're winning? And why would he fight you? That just aggravated me to no end.

Spoiler:

First enchanter stupidity: could be due to all of his dead friends and the years of oppression and the stress of the situation. They don't do much for mental stability, those things.

[Vaniver]

Spoiler:

First enchanter stupidity: could be due to all of his dead friends and the years of oppression and the stress of the situation. They don't do much for mental stability, those things.

But, who killed his friends? Not the templars I was fighting, since I crushed them without them damaging any NPCs. It just came across as laziness on the part of the devs- "why give you two endings when one is half the work?"

[pseudoidiot]

I was actually okay with the ending overall. Slightly annoyed would be about the most I'd say I felt towards it.

Spoiler:

As far as the the first enchanter: there's a cutscene at the beginning of the battle of the templars where they rush in and start mowing down mages. So, yes, those templars did kill his friends. It just happened before you could do anything about it. Not to mention the bad treatment he and all the other mages endured. Especially since it seemed like the Templar/Mage relations were a lot worse in Kirkwall than other Circles.

So, yeah, his reasons for going all insane were a bit tenuous, but things were at a breaking point. Dude resorted to Blood Magic & things went badly as they usually do. Yeah it was silly to block off the Templars, but at the same time it wouldn't have added a whole lot to what was going on. It just would have meant fighting Orsino and a bunch of Templars at the same time, 'cause they sure as hell weren't going to stop attacking you.

Overall, I was fine with the ending. It annoyed me a little that Orsino goes crazy and attacks you instead of trying to just ravage everything (not to mention the Templars). But I'm actually okay with the ending sequence being near-identical whether you side with the mages or the Templars. I liked the feeling of damned if you do, damned if you don't. Kill 'em all and let the Maker sort 'em out.

I also thought it was cool that Zevran & Nathaniel were in the battle with Merideth. I'm assuming if you killed either in Origins or Awakening they wouldn't be there. I'll test this on my next play-through since in one of my playthroughs of Awakenings I killed of Nathaniel.

[Eseell]

Spoiler:

I also thought it was cool that Zevran & Nathaniel were in the battle with Merideth. I'm assuming if you killed either in Origins or Awakening they wouldn't be there. I'll test this on my next play-through since in one of my playthroughs of Awakenings I killed of Nathaniel.

Spoiler:

That's interesting because in mine it was Carver and . . . that one Templar who didn't suck. I never even met Nathaniel that I can recall, and I didn't kill him in Awakening. Maybe it's a class or alignment thing?

edit: fixed broken spoiler tags

[Xeio]

Spoiler:

No one extra showed up in the final for me that I recall, just the party members were there.

Also, I killed Zevran (bastard tried to murder me! twice! fuck him). Not sure if the fact that I never finished awakenings had much of an effect.

[pseudoidiot]

More about final battle:

Spoiler:

For me, I had Bethany & Merrill as backup since I didn't put either in my main party. As well as Zevran & Nathaniel.

Which brings up a question about the Hawke siblings. Just to be safe, I'll put this under a spoiler, even though it really only covers the intro/tutorial part of the game.

Spoiler:

I keep seeing people refer to Carver later in the game. I played as a male, thief, Hawke. In the fight with the ogre at the beginning Carver got cut down immediately by the ogre and Bethany stuck around. I didn't take her with me on the Deep Roads mission and when I got back she'd gotten taken in by the Circle.

I'm guessing a different Hawke combination means Bethany bites it at the beginning? Maybe mage Hawke means Bethany bites it & fighter/thief means Carver does?

[Vaniver]

I liked the feeling of damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Spoiler:

I don't mind "choose between two bad choices"- like Bhelen and Harrowmount. But I do mind "choose between two bad choices- but it doesn't really matter what you choose." Because what's the point?I rushed to the end, and so didn't do Anders's Justice quest; as I was watching him blow up the Temple with Justice's help, I thought "hm, maybe I should have fixed him." Turns out, if you do his quest you're getting him the materials he needs to make explosives to blow up the Temple. Great!

pseudoidiot- your last question has it right.

[Menacing Spike]

Which brings up a question about the Hawke siblings. Just to be safe, I'll put this under a spoiler, even though it really only covers the intro/tutorial part of the game.

Spoiler:

I keep seeing people refer to Carver later in the game. I played as a male, thief, Hawke. In the fight with the ogre at the beginning Carver got cut down immediately by the ogre and Bethany stuck around. I didn't take her with me on the Deep Roads mission and when I got back she'd gotten taken in by the Circle.

Play a mage.

[BurntPancake]

I was pretty disappointed with this game.
All I wanted was to be able to play after the ending (Which, by the way, gave no closure. Stupid DLC addicted Bioware.)
When/if Dragon Age 3 comes out, I hope they learn from their mistakes in DA:O and DA2. Boy, there sure are a lot of them.

[Menacing Spike]

I was pretty disappointed with this game.
All I wanted was to be able to play after the ending (Which, by the way, gave no closure. Stupid DLC addicted Bioware.)
When/if Dragon Age 3 comes out, I hope they learn from their mistakes in DA:O and DA2. Boy, there sure are a lot of them.

They want the COD audience, don't expect the games to get better.
[/elitistprick]

[poxic]

So I've played through DA2 a few times, always being a nice Hawke. I decided to give it one last go before putting it away, but this time as a proper jerk.

So I gave Hawke a descriptive first name. Your character's first name is usually pointless, but it did give me one giggle:

Spoiler:

Oh come on, he isn't *that* bad... okay, he is. >.>

[emceng]

Hah, I named mine "Boobs Hawke". I also recently picked up Pokemon Platinum. I named the best friend/antagonist "Dumbass".

[Jesse]

Are you ten?

[emceng]

Yes?

[Vapour]

Upon choosing a name for a rival, it must always be Gary.

Choosing Boobs as a name is pretty lame.

[Beardhammer]

I was pretty disappointed with this game.
All I wanted was to be able to play after the ending (Which, by the way, gave no closure. Stupid DLC addicted Bioware.)
When/if Dragon Age 3 comes out, I hope they learn from their mistakes in DA:O and DA2. Boy, there sure are a lot of them.

They want the COD audience, don't expect the games to get better.
[/elitistprick]

EA wouldn't allow them to do anything but maximize profits through endless DLCs, anyway. I wonder how much money EA's gonna be losing in the coming months, now that they've taken a lot of games away for their stupid Origin service. I know there's a LOT of people who have straight up said they'll pirate EA games, rather than buy them now simply because of that.

[poxic]

So I downloaded and installed patch 1.3. I read through the list of changes and didn't care about any but one -- the option for constant highlight, so I don't have to hold down the tab key throughout the game. That, I thought, was worth it.

Except then the game began to crash every hour or so of play time. And then -- you know that really irritating feature of monsters that grow up from out of the ground, how they hang onto a single point of health beyond all reason until their out-of-the-ground animation finishes? Suddenly, many more monsters suffer from that. Even ones that don't require animations to finish. I watched all four party members deliver the pain to a single goddamn Shade for up to (what seemed like) twenty real-life seconds while that Shade retained its single health point before the fucker finally lost its red ring. On casual. This happened regularly and it ticked me off every time.

The finishing blow was when I found myself in Act 3 with two quests to complete, one a Main. Minor spoilers:

Spoiler:

"Kind of Want" was a regular old kill-the-nest-of-nighttime-baddies, but I could not finish it. The quest marker was right there over the doorway, but I couldn't activate it. I tried every character in the party, I entered and left and re-entered Lowtown several times, but I could NOT get through that doorway. The gamekiller was being unable to complete Meredith's quest to find Huon. I met Nyssa, said I'd come back at night, saw the "go back at nighttime" journal entry, but the quest marker (and Nyssa and Huon) never appeared in the Alienage. I restarted the whole game twice, cycled through different party members, looked online for help. No joy.

So I uninstalled the whole mess and (tried to) reinstall from disc. Insert crappy internet trouble and a lot of banging of crania against walls, but it finally happened. And yay, all of my DLC was approved and ready to go.

One of the things that I was really looking forward to, one of the sole consolations of losing all of my past characters and whatnot, was having the tiny joy of reaccomplishing all of those achievements. Watch Varric tell the opening story, change the Kirkwall map to nighttime mode, and so forth.

But that doesn't happen. Somehow, even though I always checked "do not upload my stats", they are still there. Every single achievement I unlocked during the previous install is still there. No new gorramn achievements for me. I am not worthy.

>.<

I'm almost sort of hating DA2 right now, except of course that I'm not. But still.

[You, sir, name?]

I decided to try finishing DA2 after quitting out of frustration half way through on my previous attempt (and I finished Alpha Protocol, so I'd like to think I'm fairly patient with my games). I've found that maximizing the number of warriors you have in your team makes the wave combat manageable. My team generally consisted of Hawke* (great sword toting warrior), Fenris, Aveline and Anders; or occasionally Isabela instead of Fenris. All the screen shaking still annoys me to no end, but at least they stay alive despite potions being completely useless.

The writing is good as always in Bioware games (even if some of the plot twists were quite obvious), but I'm still really torn on this game.

* this time I named him Ebon Hawke. Last game he was Toma Hawke. I think changing the appearance away from the default Hawke douchebag look also helped me sticking through.

[EmptySet]

this time I named him Ebon Hawke. Last game he was Toma Hawke. I think changing the appearance away from the default Hawke douchebag look also helped me sticking through.

Haha, nice. This makes me want to buy the game just so I can name him Bob.

[poxic]

By the way, I did find out how to delete one's accomplishments, at least in WinXP. (Forgotten exactly just now but I think it's profile.dap in My Documents\BioWare\Dragon Age 2\Settings. Nuke that and you've erased every trophy you've ever won. Whee!)

I'm still having hella trouble with random reboots. It seems to be a video card issue, or maybe a conflict between the video and audio handling. Harumph.

Not that the reboots are specific to DA2 -- one occurred during a complicated browser maneuver that probably hit whatever video or video/audio circuit that keeps crapping itself. Argh. Graahh. Grr. Etc.

[ShortChelsea]

I haven't finished the game yet, but I've found it enjoyable. I haven't been a mage yet but I doubt I'll be using Carver for anything. I watched a friend play a little with Carver and found myself hating him the whole time. Does he get any less irritating or does that last the whole game? I can't see myself using him for any longer than I have to.

[Xeio]

Spoiler:

I was going to say I totally don't remember Carver at all, and then I remembered that someone in the family died in the prologue. Apparently who dies is based on the class of the main character, so Bethany survived for me and Carver was ogre'd.

[poxic]

Carver largely remains a complete twit for the entire game, with a bit of redemption at the end depending on what happened with him earlier.

He is sometimes worth putting up with to hear the interactions between him and other party members. Isabela pretty much tortures him. It's funny.

[Xeio]

Where are all these characters I don't remember coming from.

Evidently I need to play through again.

[AngrySquirrel]

Does anyone know if chosing the blood mage specialization has any effect on the dialogue or reactions through the rest of the game?