I am so very glad that I mostly remember the dialogue from the early games, otherwise judging gender would have been really difficult. Kuja from FFIX was confusing for the first couple of minutes though.

 

Don't worry!

I'm still worried >_>. The lack of an isometric view isn't completely terrible (I didn't use it all that much to tell the truth.) However the faster combat is what really gets to me. At some point "faster combat" comes down to button mashing, not strategy -.-

 

You called the manthong? Man, Kuja confused me well into the end of Disk Two. Once I saw his huge hands, I decided that it was a male.

Anyways, Dragon Age. When it was released, my pc was crap as shit, so I bought the console version instead. Now that I have a much better pc... I'd like to buy it for the pc instead, but that would negate my playing of DA:O as far as DA2 is concerned. That's kinda sad.

 

Well for those who are still looking forward to the game here are the specs

Recommended:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4 GHz Processor or equivalent
CPU: AMD Phenom II X3 Triple core 2.8 GHz or equivalent
RAM: 2GB (4 GB Vista and Windows 7)
Video: ATI 3850 512 MB or greater
Video: NVIDIA 8800GTS 512 MB or greater
DirectX 11: ATI 5850 or greater
DirectX 11: NVIDIA 460 or greater

Minimum:
OS: Windows XP 32-bit with SP3
OS: Windows Vista 32-bit with SP2
OS: Windows 7 64-bit
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo (or equivalent) running at 1.8 GHz or greater
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 (or equivalent) running at 1.8 GHz or greater
RAM: 1 GB (1.5 GB Vista and Windows 7)
Video: Radeon HD 2600 Pro 256 MB
Video: NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS 256 MB cards
Disc Drive: DVD ROM drive required
Hard Drive: 7 GB
Sound: Direct X 9.0c Compatible Sound Card Windows Experience Index: 4.5

 

If you go to their gallery and check out the picture that reads "combat walkthrough", they now finally have a demonstration of combat that players can look at for the PC. http://dragonage.bioware.com/da2/gallery/#
DEcide for yourself whether you like it or not.

 

Combat wasn't too disappointing. The graphics looked like shit though. I'm really hoping the final release isn't in that same, cartoony bullshit style.

 

It will be. I recall something about how they wanted to establish their own distinct "look" for Dragon Age in the game.

I don't mind it that much. I just wish the default Hawke looked a little closer to the CG Hawke from the trailer. Though I'll probably be making my own anyway.

 

I don't mind the characters so much as the fire animation. It looks so damn "cartoony". The original DA:O had a dark, gritty "feeling" to it. The fire looked near real. This stuff looks like someone upped the blur & bright scale in photoshop.

Hopefully there's a mod that fixes little things like that.

Oh, and the PC version being $60? Fuck off EA, I've got newsgroups for that bullshit.

 

If you're planning to play a mage or just like free shit, get a free in game "epic weapon" by signing up for DA2's newsletter: http://dragonage.bioware.com/da2/info/parthalan/

A belt is up for grabs too: http://dragonage.bioware.com/da2/info/pennyarcade/

EDIT: Also, couple of hands on reviews which sound pretty promising: http://social.bioware.com/forum/Dra...nts/Hands-On-Reviews-Surfacing-5515798-1.html

 

So the demo came out today (PC and Xbox360 only at the moment, PS3 to come later today I think) Has anyone had a chance to play it?

 

Yes, it's bad.

 

If you like Dragon Age: Origins, then do yourself a favor and don't play the demo. It fucking sucks. Sorry, I'll clarify: the game fucking sucks.

I admit that I only lasted a few minutes, but nearly everything about it turned me off. The action has actually been dumbed down to a near hack and slash approach with - as far as I saw - no finishing moves that I felt was what Origins did really well. Instead you just click to attack your opponent, wait for Hawke to mindlessly hack away with poorly animated swings and then spam over the top abilities. No satisfaction at all.

The graphics haven't been improved at all; in fact, I think they may have gotten worse, and that's saying something considering Origins wasn't exactly miss Universe in the looks department, although the PC version wasn't all that bad. I will say though, that faces are pretty well done in the sequel, and I've heard that the face you make for Hawke will influenced the faces of you family, which sounds pretty neat.

Overall: Origins had its flaws, but at least it was unique in many ways. This is just... bad.

Also, if you install the demo, but can't run it, you probably need to update Direct X. Happened to me and took me some time to figure out.

 

... and sad was had by all =( I'm going to download it now. The graphics being the same doesn't surprise me, EA put the whip to them boys when DA was a success and they rushed out a sequel which probably used a modified engine of the first one... Rushing out sequel = EA always does, which fails and then the call the franchise shit and kill the IP. If Mass Effect 1 wasn't so epic that boring as shit collect a squad member a thon ME2 wouldn't of done so well.

 

I liked Mass Effect 2.

>.>
<.<

Lol seriously though I liked it because it was ridiculously obvious that Mass Effect 2 was made for one purpose only, setting up Mass Effect 3. No matter what they might tell you 2 was just one motherfucking gigantic prologue for Mass Effect 3 so I was cool with it.

 

I don't think it's fair to say the graphics are unchanged, they've changed all right. The models look much better, it's just that the surrounding textures look like SHIT.

My biggest problem with the game wasn't the fast action (I didn't like it, but it isn't terrible), it's the fucking load times. There's a slight maybe 1-2 second loading time between each cut scene/dialogue scene. In a game like DA:O or DA:2, there's a fucking lot of dialogue scenes. It was painful to wait. It felt like I was playing FFVIII again and waiting for that fucking black screen to go away between every scene transition.

The voice acting was subpar at best. It wasn't absolutely terrible, but I expect far better from Bioware. This was a mediocre effect.

Oh, and their servers were absolute SHIT, so I had to grab a torrent of it.

 

Just finished playing it, and while there were problems, it didn't feel like the polished version.

The demo is set to normal difficulty, so it was very easy. There are finishing moves, but it seems they only jump in on elite bosses.

As for the graphics being bad the demo isn't compatible with directx 11 and most of the graphical setting were turned off or put on their lowest setting.

Overall I didn't mind it, the delay with the dialogue and cut scenes shitted me, but I hope they just used an earlier version and that shit is fixed up in the proper game. The combat was good, I like the fact that sword and shield + two handed warriors aren't slow as all hell to attack anymore. Only other annoying thing was being unable to change the difficulty, playing on normal was just way to easy and meant that you very rarely needed to stop and actually think about how to beat down certain enemies.

 

I'll wait until the final game arrives on my doorstep to judge.

 

I didn't enjoy paying full price for the prologue to 3. I didn't pirate 2 because I believe supporting developers who do incredible work is the right thing to do, only to be treated with a ton of very drawn out for no reason intros to characters that could of been covered by some funny montages, or even done in half the time. I felt like it should of been released as an expansion to ME1, instead of a stand alone game. They had a lot of cool ideas, but it just wasn't all there for me.

 

Damn it. This was a huge let down. I hope the game won't be this bad. The voiceacting sucks for most chars. The NPCs are still STUPID and can't use AoE spells.There are cut scenes all the damn time. The whole game feels pretty much dumbed down. The best thing I've seen so far is the "loot all" hotkey, so you don't have to click every damn time you want to loot something.

I'll probably wait a few month before I play it, by then the modders will have fixes for most of the stuff.
Btw, I had no trouble with downloading the game, took me 15 min from their servers.

 

The one thing I will give to Bioware, they actually optimized the game this time. My rig doesn't grind to a standstill on all high settings.