Dragon Age reviews and press

[mwmorph]

You mean at the Harrowing?

I ended up getting it, finding the fire and golem guys were the biggest challenge, after that, it became simple, not really much of a puzzle, just maze exploration.

 

[Pepsei]

hmm any knows where the 'locked chest' is after you find the body at the er swamp? i play a mage

 

[Mem]

Anybody having issues with DA and Win7 x64?...my game is stuck in transit at parcel depot/van so should get it today or tomorrow.

The reason I ask is I hear there are a few issues with Win7 x64 and this game from what I read over at their forums http://daforums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=702647&forum=146 .

 

[VashHT]

Anybody having issues with DA and Win7 x64?...my game is stuck in transit at parcel depot/van so should get it today or tomorrow.

The reason I ask is I hear there are a few issues with Win7 x64 and this game from what I read over at their forums http://daforums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=702647&forum=146 .

I have had any problems so far with win7 Ultimate x64, it's been running great so far.

 

[BrownShoes]

The blood splattered all over your characters on close-ups is a little over the top but funny in my opinion.
My main character is a mage and he comes through fights clean as a whistle.

 

[Adam8281]

Ordered off eBay for $30 -woot!

 

[BrownShoes]

I'm out in the woods fighting wildlife. HECK YEAH.
Four of us are ganging up on one lone wolf using swords and magic fire and lightning.
Stupid puppy!

 

[ayabe]

hmm any knows where the 'locked chest' is after you find the body at the er swamp? i play a mage

If it's the 'last will' quest you're referring to - there's a hidden chest in the campsite on the west side of the Wilds, it's buried in the "rock pile" that looks like a campfire.

Edit - Man this game is awesome, really really fine voice acting. Probably the best in any game that I've played recently.

 

[sticks435]

Figured I'd throw in my 2 cents. This game is f'ing awesome! I've played for 12 or so hours, and only like 5% complete. Just messing around finding sidequests, following all possible dialog trees and looking for loot. As the other poster said, most of the voice acting is top notch. Like has been posted in the forums, some of the textures are not as good as other's, but overall it fits the setting. I went into the .ini and turned on tripleBuffering, Trilinear Filtering, and AF to 16. Now if I could just figure out how to get Physx to work on the GPU.

 

[datalink7]

This game is very very cool. Staying up until 0200 to play it which I need to stop doing.

I went to the capital city as my first stop and tried to do some of the back alley quests to kill some gang members... they pretty much destroyed me. Will have to try when I get more powerful.

I found getting the healing spell for my mage to be invaluable.

 

[s44]

Anybody having issues with DA and Win7 x64?...my game is stuck in transit at parcel depot/van so should get it today or tomorrow.

The reason I ask is I hear there are a few issues with Win7 x64 and this game from what I read over at their forums http://daforums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=702647&forum=146 .

Only problem is that after you patch, you may not be able to play from the regular shortcut. Make yourself another one from the launcher.

 

[Elcs]

I am thinking of picking this up but...

I like the look of this but despite playing BG2 through to completion I was never any good at it and I hated NWN as for some reason I could not get into it.

On the other hand I bought KOTOR1 from Steam and absolutely loved it. Played it through and although it was difficult to get to grips with early on, I found it challenging in the pleasant way.

I have a preference for Action RPG but as long as the combat does not need to be broken up every 5-10 seconds by the requirement to pause the game to issue new orders, I can deal with that.

Recently I have been running x4 AA w/ AAA and x4 AF in most games @ 1920x1080p. Running an AMD X2 6000+ (3 Ghz), 512mb HD4870, 4 Gb DDR2 800 and soon to have an SSD too. Would it realistically run at 30+ FPS at such settings on the aforementioned hardware?

To finish... I must say that I find the continuous trolling of Steam by GodlessAstronomer to be amusing. Currently owning over 120 Gb of Steam-based games, 32 games in total, I have hardly had any issue with any of them. The most recent 'issue' I have had is that due to Steam testing, the latest patch for Torchlight was delayed by at the very most 48 hours. However other providers required a full download of Torchlight, Steam was only a patch

 

[NoSoup4You]

Yep, I love Steam and have had no issues with it. I downloaded The Witcher EE last week and it was d/l'ing at 4.0MB/s, no complaints here. Actually, I get ticked off when games aren't available on Steam right away, like Need for Speed:Shift most recently...

Dragon Age - I run the game at 1920x1080 with 8xAA with vsync on and the game never stutters or drops frames...etc. It runs smooth always and so far no matter how many characters are on screen the game seems to run flawlessly at those settings. C2D @3.6Ghz, GTX260. It appears the game is cpu-limited in most situations provided you have a solid video card, so I'm not sure how the AMD 3.0Ghz will compare.

This game generally does need to be paused frequently to make sure your mage isn't doing something stupid like blowing your mana pool on enemies that are already almost dead...etc. But pausing is half the fun, it buys you time to strategize and strategize you must. This isn't Mass Effect where you can ignore your allies throughout the game even on the Hardcore difficulty level. On Normal in DAO I have to pause frequently to make sure my allies are targeting the correct enemies and using the proper skills.

This game does have some excellent preset combat tactics to allow your characters to act on their own, but I haven't explored that much of yet beyond just the most basic configs. Maybe with some effort put in there, pausing isn't as frequent... but pausing's half the fun of the game so I'm not too eager to quit.

 

[s44]

Honestly if you found KOTOR challenging and BG too hard you would enjoy Dragon Age... on Easy.

 

[Alienwho]

Honestly if you found KOTOR challenging and BG too hard you would enjoy Dragon Age... on Easy.

True Story. I've played about 15 hours on dragons age on normal and I just changed it to easy after having several fights that were impossible for me to win. I don't understand how people can play on hard or even nightmare. It's not like I'm a moron when it comes to issuing orders and using strategy.

 

[coreyb]

Which fights did you find impossible to win?

 

[alcoholbob]

True Story. I've played about 15 hours on dragons age on normal and I just changed it to easy after having several fights that were impossible for me to win. I don't understand how people can play on hard or even nightmare. It's not like I'm a moron when it comes to issuing orders and using strategy.

This game favors tanks + mages given the implementation of MMO aggro and crowd control spells. (Or to be more specific, 1 tank + 3 mages). Rogues can be strong under certain circumstances but require a ton of micromanagement, and aren't very effective in crowd control since you are going to get surrounded quickly. Against bosses, most of them have cleaving attacks, so your DPS is quickly nullified. This basically outlines 2/3 of the battles in the game. Rogue archer is possibly the worst class you can play, because archer feats require high dexterity, but bow damage requires strength.

For example, in the battle of Redcliffe, if you have 2 fighters and 2 rogues, you should probably give up, unless you have a ton of potions to chug. And while you are chugging potions, you are doing no damage. Now if you had a bunch of mages with CC spells, you could just stand your meat shield all day chugging potions, and spam cone of colds and other CC spells.

 

[Alienwho]

Which fights did you find impossible to win?

I have my mage, morrigan, alistar and lilian right now. I would love to take a third mage but I haven't found another yet.

My first difficult fight was a revenant with a dozen skeleton archers. I tried 10 times, finally had to bust it to easy to pull it off.

My second difficult fight, that I actually did on Normal was fighting the waves of undead at redcliffe. This one was painfully hard and all of the NPC's and my characters died except for morrigan, and she had about 1/10th of her health remaining and I had no potions left. What I did was had the 20 remaining undead chase me in circles around the fire, eventually they all caught on fire and died. This was an epic battle and very difficult.

 

[s44]

Rogue archer is possibly the worst class you can play, because archer feats require high dexterity, but bow damage requires strength.

One of the devs has made a hotfix that boosts ranged power considerably. Also, crossbows already use Dex only for damage, but with the hotfix shortbows do too.

With the Redcliffe castle fight: did you remember to open the gate for the knights? Force field the boss until you wipe the archers.

 

[ayabe]

I have my mage, morrigan, alistar and lilian right now. I would love to take a third mage but I haven't found another yet.

My first difficult fight was a revenant with a dozen skeleton archers. I tried 10 times, finally had to bust it to easy to pull it off.

My second difficult fight, that I actually did on Normal was fighting the waves of undead at redcliffe. This one was painfully hard and all of the NPC's and my characters died except for morrigan, and she had about 1/10th of her health remaining and I had no potions left. What I did was had the 20 remaining undead chase me in circles around the fire, eventually they all caught on fire and died. This was an epic battle and very difficult.

I had the same experience, I had to redo the whole quest in order to change my party makeup before i had chance of winning and it cost me 30 light and 10 normal potices - and even then I just barely made it with only my main alive.

I'm almost considering starting over my as my Elf Warrior with a bow is the biggest gimp of all time - the Rogue/bard chick is also complete garbage. I don't expect the game to be "easy" but I'm getting my ass kicked pretty much at every major encounter.

I guess on a reroll I would pick a melee fighter with lockpicking(somehow) or a mage with lockpicking - leave the gimp rogue out of the equation and go tank/mage for all my other slots. Seems to be the only way to guarantee you aren't going to get owned.

 

[coloumb]

Ordered off eBay for $30 -woot!

Thailand?

 

[Alienwho]

One of the devs has made a hotfix that boosts ranged power considerably. Also, crossbows already use Dex only for damage, but with the hotfix shortbows do too.

With the Redcliffe castle fight: did you remember to open the gate for the knights? Force field the boss until you wipe the archers.

I heard about this part and the first thing I did was open up the gate and there were no knights! Was I supposed to tell the knights for wait for me at the gate or something? I was on my own.

Also, anybody know where I can get some decent robes for my mage? I'm tired of him looking like a douchebag.

 

[s44]

Did you not help them at the village first? Or did they all die? If you buff them and do it right, the only way any of them should die is if they walk into the fire

Unfortunately, all the mage robes look like ass. There's a nice statted one in the mage tower (obviously), but it makes you look like Black Garius -- feathers aren't really my thing.

 

[Alienwho]

Did you not help them at the village first? Or did they all die? If you buff them and do it right, the only way any of them should die is if they walk into the fire

Heh, every single villager in the battle with the undead died. Only morrigan barely survived and just lured the undead mob into the fire over and over until they were dead.

 

[s44]

LOL. Well, there's your problem. Even the knights died? Wow.