Game News Dragon Age 2 Redefines Visceral Combat

[Shannow]

Out of curiosity, what's the best way to deal with beholders when you don't use the shield? From what I remember they randomly spammed an endless stream of petrification and other instakill magic. Could you just melee or shoot them fast enough to avoid getting TPK'd?

with great difficulty, that's the difference to using the cheater shield.

It depends on the party. I'd only use one guy (most likely the PC) who's most badass, has the best saving throws ( to save vs the ray effects), equip as many items that grant magic resistance as possible and load up on invis potions so that you can go invisible if shit hits the fan. Being able to go beserk (Korgan, Minsc, a berserker PC) helps too.

+ Glitterdust blinds enemies. Dual-Classed Berserker/Wizard was fun.

 

[Archibald]

I like BG series so i`m not a hater or sum shit but frankly this sounds same as "how to larp in Oblivion" bullshit. If player has to come up with his own "rules" how to play game as not to make it broken then there is obviously something wrong with the game.

 

[Sceptic]

Nothing wrong in abusing items or skills...if you came up with the idea yourself. Looking on the net, using a cheese build and then whining about balance is pathetic.

Agreed

Hands on your hearts: who here thought of laying traps for Kanggaxx or Demigorgon themselves? Who had the protection scrolls and remembered to use them? Who managed to beat them without cheese?

Hand on my heart: I thought of laying traps (and it wasn't anywhere near enough to significantly damage Kangaxx the Demilich - most of the traps always get set off by his regular lich form), I had the protection scrolls and completely and utterly failed to remember them, and I beat him without cheese. After a LOT of thinking and planning, a lot of trial and error, a large number of retries, and a fair share of luck. I was trying my weapons one at a time to find SOMETHING that would damage him, and that something turned out to be Staff of Magi (I didn't even know Carsomyr existed). Which could only be used by Edwin. Cue buffing, Stoneskin (useless), Tenser's (the reason I eventually won) and so on. The feeling of satisfaction on killing him with a staff was very pleasant.

 

[waywardOne]

like art, cheese is subjective but still definable. just because you can cast cloudkill into a room and shut the door doesn't mean it's not cheesy.

AI coders shouldn't (and don't) waste time closing every exploit.

 

[Relay]

Most of the cheese in BG2 are things that you wouldn't have paid attention to unless someone spoiled you the trick on a forum or you backtracked/created a new game to exploit it.

The anti-beholder shield is the perfect example of that. For as long as the time you're free to spend in Athkatla and its surroundings goes, you don't need that shield and you aren't likely to buy it and put it in your bag or something. You won't see any beholders before you get trapped in the underdark or do the temple quest. Even if you remember having seen the item in the shop you're fucked and would have to reload an older save if you wanted to use the trick.

 

[Arcanoix]

But the main question is, will Volourn like it?

Just watched it.
Holy crap.

"Only Jade Empire and Mass Effect can be described as action games with RPG elements."

Action RPGs and they have more role-playing than the BGs, KOTOR, NWN OC, NWN SOU, and NWN HOTU.

You're seriously asking for an asswhooping Volly, but at this point, everyone accepts that you're a troll. Atleast I hope they do.

 

[Roguey]

Comparing BG2 with mods versus Dragon Age without AI-and-difficulty enhancing mods

All right, nothing more to say about that.

Nothing wrong in abusing items or skills...if you came up with the idea yourself. Looking on the net, using a cheese build and then whining about balance is pathetic.
Hands on your hearts: who here thought of laying traps for Kanggaxx or Demigorgon themselves? Who had the protection scrolls and remembered to use them? Who managed to beat them without cheese?

Wasn't whining, just saying that Bioware is bad and they've always been bad. Complaining about Dragon Age not having sufficient difficulty when you're not the same clueless novice you were when you played Baldur's Gate 2 is weird. Because if you have RPG experience it's not difficult either (unless you use mods of course).

Oh, and I figured out that strategy on my own. I found out how awesome traps were on my first lich, and those protection against magic scrolls were a no-brainer purchase. I'm the obsessive compulsive type who has to read the description to EVERYTHING.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Comparing BG2 with mods versus Dragon Age without AI-and-difficulty enhancing mods

All right, nothing more to say about that.

Really? For me it looks as if I talked about mods only when explaining why certain items are cheating and when they are not cheating, not when "comparing difficulty".

Wasn't whining, just saying that Bioware is bad and they've always been bad. Complaining about Dragon Age not having sufficient difficulty when you're not the same clueless novice you were when you played Baldur's Gate 2 is weird. Because if you have RPG experience it's not difficult either (unless you use mods of course).

The difficulty is on a whole different level, the fact that you had to resort to cheese pretty much proves it.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Nothing wrong in abusing items or skills...if you came up with the idea yourself. Looking on the net, using a cheese build and then whining about balance is pathetic.
Hands on your hearts: who here thought of laying traps for Kanggaxx or Demigorgon themselves? Who had the protection scrolls and remembered to use them? Who managed to beat them without cheese?
I passed every single fight with luck and strategies I came up with myself and it was all the more satisfying. But if I had thought of using protection scrolls, I'd still been satisfied because I used what was given to my advantage.

Me, and I wouldn't say it's that rare either. There aren't many places in the game where protection scrolls are needed, and trapping up the place is the default 'fallback' for any combat that you're having difficulty winning firstup but for some reason can prepare the area in advance. Did the same to cheeze through the red dragon fight at low level before I ever found Kangaxx. The prot undead scrolls were an obvious second fallback - it's AD&D so it's not like I wasn't going to notice those scrolls existed.

Nothing 'walkthrough-worthy' in those tactics. Cheezy, yeah, but very very standard AD&D tactics - it's the first thing many players would have thought of when they get their asses handed to them the first time. Not everyone would think of it, but then that's what those challenges do - makes you do some minimal thinking about what your options are in the event that brute force isn't working.

 

[hiver]

Never used a single trap in BGs. Though i started using pro-undead on repeated playthroughs, mainly so i can go through some encounters faster, though that changed when i started using Tactics mod in which liches also have an answer to such cheesy tactics.

Cant remember have i ever beat beholders under Athkatla without that shield though. I think i did once with only one survivor and the rest of the party dead or petrified but i cant remember exactly how. Must have been some total clusterfuck and luck in the end.

hmmm... maybe i could replay BGII for the hundreth time with SC mod... and find out...

 

[Volourn]

"You're seriously asking for an asswhooping Volly, but at this point, everyone accepts that you're a troll. Atleast I hope they do."

wut tha fuk r u whinin 'boot now?


Anyways, it's fuckin' hilarious that the BG2 fanboys defending it against DA feel the need to use a fuckin' unofficial mod in their argument. What a fuckin' cop out, FFS.

 

[DraQ]

"Only Jade Empire and Mass Effect can be described as action games with RPG elements."

Action RPGs and they have more role-playing than the BGs, KOTOR, NWN OC, NWN SOU, and NWN HOTU.

Volourn, please stop being a fucking retard.

Well, BG was more along the lines of inaction RPG as long as you were outside and the AI was enabled.


In the dungeons, however, and whenever you tried to do something more sophisticated than a simple gangbang, it became more or less a clickfest, except that instead of mashing buttans in an actiony battles you were mashing space bar and wondering how the fuck did your keyboard start to lose packets without even using a network connection.

 

[DragoFireheart]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeTNAfUb1w4


I just... what the hell? Where is my Dragon Age?

 

[GarfunkeL]

Fun fact, kiddo- NORMAL is supposed to be the optimal difficulty setting for every game- not too easy, not too hard. If you need to change the diffulty to hardest to get at least a bit of challenge (which isn't the case in DA from what Vod is saying) then it's a shitty game design.

Not too easy, not too hard for whom? Because my impression is that most people thought Dragon Age was too hard on normal. RPG veterans aren't the target audience, they made it clear on their forums that hard/nightmare was the recommended setting for people who play more than a few games a year. Should have made it more difficult without cheating, but that's the way it goes.

I must have missed that amongst all the "spiritual successor for BG" and "old-school RPG" bullshit they hyped. And only ones who complained about the game being too hard on normal were console-trash who don't really count. If I can kill two Revenants and nearly two dozen orcs in one go with just auto-attack, the first rogue dual-wield skill and two mages spamming their first spell (outside of the staff-shit), on motherfucking HARD, the game is too easy for everyone.

As to the cheese-discussion, I agree with VoD. It can be fun and time-saving but using obvious exploits, even if they are obvious only in hindsight, takes away your right to bitch about difficulty and/or balance. I don't think I ever complained about the fact that half of the time the enemies in DA didn't react to being immolated in inferno, if their LoS to my caster was sketchy enough. That was an exploit, simple as that.

And seriously, vanilla BG2 on hardcore was much more challenging than DA on hard/insane. Of course BG2 lost to Gold Box games but trying to claim that DA was just as challenging than BG2 was is silly.

 

[Volourn]

"And seriously, vanilla BG2 on hardcore was much more challenging than DA on hard/insane. Of course BG2 lost to Gold Box games but trying to claim that DA was just as challenging than BG2 was is silly."

No, no, no.

POR hard? give me a fuckin' breajk. I beat that agme when i was what? 10? 11? WTF? EAasy peasy beautiful. LMFAO

 

[Jaesun]

POR hard? give me a fuckin' breajk. I beat that agme when i was what? 10? 11? WTF? EAasy peasy beautiful. LMFAO

How about Pools of Darkness?

 

[circ]

Final Fantasy Age.

 

[Roguey]

The difficulty is on a whole different level, the fact that you had to resort to cheese pretty much proves it.

I don't think I had to, I just like to immediately go for the slam dunk, take the quickest path of least resistance. I'm only concerned with winning asap with the in-game tools available to me, and Bioware gave me a lot of great tools.

I must have missed that amongst all the "spiritual successor for BG" and "old-school RPG" bullshit they hyped.

Suckerrrrr. It's an "old-school RPG" in that it's not an action-RPG and it's a "spiritual successor" in that it features many of the same designers/programmers from the BG series and is a blah-fantasy party-based rtwp rpg. Spiritual successor doesn't mean "sequel in all-but-name" though I can see how easily it is for someone to mistakenly believe that.

And only ones who complained about the game being too hard on normal were console-trash who don't really count.

You mean, like the entire staff of Rock Paper Shotgun, who are supposedly the last bastion of integrity in game journalism? Guys who consider themselves huge X-Com fans and yet DA was somehow too hard for their dumb idiot moron brains?

Of course BG2 lost to Gold Box games but trying to claim that DA was just as challenging than BG2 was is silly.

In my personal experience, DA was roughly about as challenging as BG2. Some reloads here and there and a whole lot of filler trash mobs (BG2 just uses a larger variety of different sprites to fool you).

 

[Konjad]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeTNAfUb1w4


I just... what the hell? Where is my Dragon Age?

What the fuck is this??????

 

[Shannow]

And only ones who complained about the game being too hard on normal were console-trash who don't really count.

You mean, like the entire staff of Rock Paper Shotgun, who are supposedly the last bastion of integrity in game journalism? Guys who consider themselves huge X-Com fans and yet DA was somehow too hard for their dumb idiot moron brains?

The way you ask the question pretty much answers it. Here, I'll provide emphasis:
You mean, like the entire staff of Rock Paper Shotgun, who are supposedly the last bastion of integrity in game journalism? Guys who consider themselves huge X-Com fans and yet DA was somehow too hard for their dumb idiot moron brains?

 

[GarfunkeL]

POR hard? give me a fuckin' breajk. I beat that agme when i was what? 10? 11? WTF? EAasy peasy beautiful. LMFAO

And you lost how many party members? Had to reload how many times? Absolutely more often than in DA. Go into the abandoned library in PoR without mirrors and the basilisk will turn your whole party to stone and there is no way to avoid it, once you enter the damn library. Is there anything like that in DA? No. PoR isn't insane, you don't have to min/max to actually win the game but the game will fuck you over if you play stupidly or over-extent yourself.

You mean, like the entire staff of Rock Paper Shotgun, who are supposedly the last bastion of integrity in game journalism? Guys who consider themselves huge X-Com fans and yet DA was somehow too hard for their dumb idiot moron brains?

Yeah, who apparently have very little problems accepting the new X-Com. One small article voicing few concerns is better than what every other site did but it doesn't turn winter into summer. And when did RPS argue that DA:O is too difficult on normal? I must've missed the lulz-thread on Codex, which should have emerged from that :D

In my personal experience, DA was roughly about as challenging as BG2. Some reloads here and there and a whole lot of filler trash mobs (BG2 just uses a larger variety of different sprites to fool you).

Eh, really? Compare the Keep fight against the trolls and yan-ti, a fight that you could do almost immediately after the "tutorial" and compare it to the saving of the village and then taking back the castle fight in DA:O. Very similar premises, both can be the first dungeon/quest after the initial fights. DA:Os fight requires one fireball per wave while defending the village plus auto-attack, only slight challenge being the revenants(?) in the castle which demand you to chuck few potions or heal spells. In BG2 the yan-ti have spell resistance and the trolls regenerate, facts which immediately make it more challenging as simple auto-attack won't win the day.

 

[Achilles]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeTNAfUb1w4


I just... what the hell? Where is my Dragon Age?

I like the fact that you can hear Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody in the background. It seems fitting

 

[Roguey]

Yeah, who apparently have very little problems accepting the new X-Com. One small article voicing few concerns is better than what every other site did but it doesn't turn winter into summer. And when did RPS argue that DA:O is too difficult on normal? I must've missed the lulz-thread on Codex, which should have emerged from that :D

I'd rather not get into a semantics argument, but you did say console-trash and they're very adamant about being a PC-only site. Anywhere here you go:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/11 ... ragon-age/
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/11 ... lty-issue/
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/11 ... dragon-age
The highlight from that first annoying wall-of-text article:

Jim: Warrior, I hope the balance does change. At the moment I’m only winning fights by dint of heals.
John: I played most the game on Easy. Don’t feel ashamed to lower it – they fucked up, not you. It doesn’t change. The difficulty is not set right.
Jim: Well I feel like it’s an okay challenge, I mean i don’t want to win every fight, but the balance seems odd. It’s like there should be some other aspect to it that I’m missing
Kieron: I admit, you chaps have lost me a little here. I mean, if you’re winning with the resources you have… you’re winning. It’s not as if you’re failing. Healing management has always been part of RPGs, hasn’t it?
John: Yeah – going back up to Normal is worthwhile when you realise you’re breezing through stuff.
Alec: I suspect I’m going to load my mage with heal spells, then.
Jim: I’ve played with the tactics stuff a fair bit, which does help.
Kieron: Does it really? I wish they’d intro’d it better. I ended up spending a character point on tactics thinking it’d actually give me something useful instead of actually of something that’s a waste of time If I’m micromanaging the orders. And having the Neverwinter Nights issue of the NPC character running off to fight enemies which I can’t even see yet and aren’t active is silly as hell to have on standard. Though I think I’m managed to make the tactics not do that any more.
John: How are you approaching fights? Are you pausing every few seconds?
Jim: Yes! You absolutely have to in order to manage heals and powers.

And some semi-related extra laughs regarding their credentials:

There’s enough case-studies of What Games Journalists Did Next to find inspiration from. The fact that – to choose the most obvious example – Charlie Brooker became what he is while basically doing what he’s always done for a bigger audience says everything. People complain a lot about the level of games writing, but the success of these people retroactively shows how much talent there was in their work. I could list games journalist developers, novelists, critics, theorists, screenwriters and so on and on. If they were such incompetent fuckwits, how on earth did they go on to excel in enormously competitive fields? Because they weren’t. They were brilliant and they were choosing to piss away their talent because they couldn’t help it. Even the routes out of games journalism which tend to get some eye-rolling – like, say, going to become a PR… well, for my money, the best PR in the country is Simon Byron. Simon Byron ex-games journalist.

Games journalists are brilliant. They are brilliant because they keep their jobs in a competitive field. If you think they're saying something dumb or ignorant, you're just not properly understanding the brilliance at work.

Eh, really? Compare the Keep fight against the trolls and yan-ti, a fight that you could do almost immediately after the "tutorial" and compare it to the saving of the village and then taking back the castle fight in DA:O. Very similar premises, both can be the first dungeon/quest after the initial fights. DA:Os fight requires one fireball per wave while defending the village plus auto-attack, only slight challenge being the revenants(?) in the castle which demand you to chuck few potions or heal spells. In BG2 the yan-ti have spell resistance and the trolls regenerate, facts which immediately make it more challenging as simple auto-attack won't win the day.

I saved Redcliffe for last, it was easy. I went to De'Arnise Keep right after clearing the bar of slavers and I barely remember it. They give you plenty of fire arrows to use as a coup de grace against the trolls (I figured out this was the most efficient use of resources on the second or third fight I think?), I don't remember the yawn-ti at all. There was that room with the golems, but I just used sanctuary to steal to items, closed the door, and never looked back.

 

[Relay]

Jim: Warrior, I hope the balance does change. At the moment I’m only winning fights by dint of heals.
John: I played most the game on Easy. Don’t feel ashamed to lower it – they fucked up, not you. It doesn’t change. The difficulty is not set right.
Jim: Well I feel like it’s an okay challenge, I mean i don’t want to win every fight, but the balance seems odd. It’s like there should be some other aspect to it that I’m missing

There should be a permit for someone to have the right to own a PC and those guys should have theirs revoked.

 

[gothfox]

Since when RPS are any kind of bastion? Last time I checked, they were about as retarded as everyone else in derp-game-journalism, it's just they have PC slant instead of the usual console one.

 

[deus101]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeTNAfUb1w4


I just... what the hell? Where is my Dragon Age?

....They remade Demons Stone?