Dragon Age

[alias_sqbr]

I started enjoying Dragon Age a lot more once I gave in and used cheats. I've only been using the ones which help with a specific battle so that when I'm in the mood I can play the game properly. But (a)The battle difficulty is absurdly inconsistent (sometime the boss minions are much harder than the boss, for example) and (b)The ratio of fighting:plot I enjoy is much lower than the game requires.

The plot and characterisation are great. No matter what three party members you choose out of the (currently) seven I have to choose from there are little dialogues between pairs of them, including the dog. Each of the major quests I've done has had a really interesting and different fantasy story attached to it, and a lot of the sidequests are cool too.

I was having MAJOR difficulty with the romance option until I looked up a walkthrough, it probably says a lot about me that my reaction was "Wait, I'm supposed to openly tell them how I feel and say lots of nice things? They like that?" :D Also I'm attached to my character and she doesn't actually really suit any of them, and the mean options are so much funnier.

I think once I'm done with my sensible atheist dwarf commoner woman (Gee I wonder why I'm so attached to her and wish to stay in character :D) I shall go for an evil man (race and background undecided) and do all the mean options and perhaps find love with Morrigan or Zevran. I think it's awesome that there options for same sex relationships (plus the option of "surprise me" at the brothel) I also like the fact that you can mostly stay in character, eg most times a religious person is all "Praise the Maker" I had the option to reply that human gods have no relevance to me (and then when I tried to get together with Leliana she said "I know you don't share my beliefs.." and I thought "Crap! She was paying attention!")

Comments

[ilumiari.livejournal.com]

I'm a female elf, in a relationship with Leliana :P In fact, my party is entirely female.

[alias_sqbr]

I tried the all female party, but Morrigan kept getting grumpy when I was nice to people, so I decided to have an all soft hearted goody two shoes party instead :)

[oliverm.livejournal.com]

I have very much enjoyed playing it, for all of the reasons you've given. I actually quite like the combat as well, once you figure out general strategies (and realise that most of the tactics are terrible, you really need to be issuing instructions individually in a lot of cases) it works nicely.

It actually took one full playthrough to start figuring this stuff out, my first play through I didn't complete any romance or anything.

[alias_sqbr]

See, once I got the hang of general strategies the fighting was just repetitive slog and I was bored of it.

I tend to not feel like replaying games once I've finished them, at best I might enjoy it if I played it in a totally different way with a different party, so this is my only chance to see the romance with the characters who get along with my current character.

(Overall moral: I have a short attention span :D)

[tattered-pinion.livejournal.com]

Which fight are you talking about? On Nightmare the difficulty scale is pretty broken but on my second playthrough on Hard I found most fights pretty consistent

[alias_sqbr]

Heh. I'm playing on Easy (I suck at combat) Playing on Hard with cheats seems a bit silly :)

The specific fight I'm referring to was one of the demons in the Fade (by which point I must admit I was using cheats which skews my perception) But the thing that made me decide to use cheats was the way the fights in the north of Lothering were way harder than the ones before and after.

[tattered-pinion.livejournal.com]

Hunting the bandits and stuff? I guess I never noticed. I played on Nightmare and the hardest fight was the baby dragon in the forest which was the first zone I went to because Overpower killed my tank even with full buffs.
I'll resist declaring you Bad At Video Games for struggling with easy because DA has some balance issues, but you're close to it!

[alias_sqbr]

Oh, no, feel free to declare me bad at video games. My brain pretty much refuses to work when I have the slightest amount of adrenaline in my system or have to think about long term strategy, which doesn't leave much beyond puzzles, and I'm only adequate at them. The only games I actually do well at are word games and they don't come up much :)