Dragon Age reviews and press

[exar333]

the first dragon was very hard for me as my party was not that powerful. the second high dragon during the quest for the "holy grail".... slightly easier.

my party is my mage, alistar, lilian, and wynne the spirit healer <- she makes everything even easier with her group heal and revive

it's neat that they give 3 different romantic interests per gender (2 straight and 1 gay). and you have a chance to have threesome (with no cutscene).

for defending the redcliff village... looks like all the spoilers above gave all the tips to make everything easier. i manage to beat it with no death, it was very difficult for the militia, i had to pause often to get 'aggro' and heal the wounded. the knight up there had a boost because

Spoiler

you can use the oil from the warehouse to make a wall of fire

i like to complete everything and leave no stone unturned. was suprised that they even have two kissing cutscenes in redcliff village. of course, lilian didn't like it.

and yes, i did the mage tower first to get wynne, then completed the redcliff

Spoiler

if you side with mage, you can use the mage's help to avoid killing conner or isode

, holy grail, and i'm doing the dwarfs now.

This begs an interesting question. Can your party members die permentely in DA:O? If people here remember in BG, your party members can take massive damage and be cleaved on the spot (no resurrection) or be turned to stone or something and then shattered. Although frustrating, it adds an interesting element (and danger) to combat, especially with powerful foes.

 

[pathos]

This begs an interesting question. Can your party members die permentely in DA:O? If people here remember in BG, your party members can take massive damage and be cleaved on the spot (no resurrection) or be turned to stone or something and then shattered. Although frustrating, it adds an interesting element (and danger) to combat, especially with powerful foes.

Anyone who "dies" during combat gets up again when the fights over. The only time it's permanent is when the whole party goes unconscious, then its game over. Haven't seen anything that could permanently kill off a character without wiping everyone out.

 

[ayabe]

Not possible, unless maybe you use cheats or mod the game using the toolset. By default, only rouges can lockpick.

Hmm, I swore that was one of my sets for my main. Didn't make sense to me at the time, I think I was looking at Leleina or something.

Thanks for the correction.

Spoiler

Just finished the Mages tower lastnight, felt like a marathon to me, couldn't wait to get done with the damn Fade sequence. Now back to Redcliff.

 

[exar333]

Anyone who "dies" during combat gets up again when the fights over. The only time it's permanent is when the whole party goes unconscious, then its game over. Haven't seen anything that could permanently kill off a character without wiping everyone out.

Too bad. This makes the game a little "kiddy" to me. Albeit, I am a old-school gamer and RPG player, but there should be more drawbacks to character death. To those who remember, character death was very troublesome in BG/BG2 unless you had a lot of cash for a true resurrection. The level loss alone was a killer.

I get headaches remembering vampire lvl/skill drain....*pain*

 

[ZzZGuy]

Too bad. This makes the game a little "kiddy" to me. Albeit, I am a old-school gamer and RPG player, but there should be more drawbacks to character death. To those who remember, character death was very troublesome in BG/BG2 unless you had a lot of cash for a true resurrection. The level loss alone was a killer.

I get headaches remembering vampire lvl/skill drain....*pain*

And how many people just quick load if a character is killed in BG1/2?

 

[ayabe]

I die enough in this game, perma death would just be frustrating and wouldn't add much to the game, IMHO.

 

[Chriscross3234]

So yeah, I just stumbled on the part where you can only continue the conversation if you have the DLC and WTF! I can't believe Bioware/EA (I'm pretty sure it was mostly, if not, all of EA's responsibility) pulled this stunt. It's one thing to have DLC be a completely separate add-on like Fallout 3, but damn, they just dangle this one right in front of your face in-game! Just leaves a sour taste in my mouth after I experienced that...

Don't get me wrong though, DA is a wonderful game and I am thoroughly enjoying it .

The difficulty feels just about right for normal, and perhaps maybe too easy. I guess I'm just used to playing BG2 and being able to properly manage my resources and utilize tactics... or maybe I'm just not that far into the game yet.

 

[coreyb]

who cares about perma death when you can just reload saves to avoid it.