So Dragon Age: Origins is rather fun so far

[Volourn]

I've playedn many RPGs with much bighger kill counts.. many of those being Kodex favorites so what's the point?

 

[Andyman Messiah]

I've playedn many RPGs with much bighger kill counts.. many of those being Kodex favorites so what's the point?

Like?

 

[MicoSelva]

I've playedn many RPGs with much bighger kill counts.. many of those being Kodex favorites so what's the point?

Like?

Baldur's Gate 1 had around 1300 when following main quest only:

It would be much more with side-area exploration.

 

[Roguey]

Derp Roads being more derp than the rest is an exaggeration. The only thing that makes it seem more tedious is the fact that most locations look the same. Mob content wise it's on a par with many other places in the game. There are a few neat boss fights there as well.

I was going to save this for a mini-paragraph reflection but what the hell. I kept a tally during my completionist run through the Deep Roads (including Shale's area) and ended up with about 86 battles, nine of which I thought were interesting. That's a pretty bad ratio (though still better than DAII in its entirety, which came close to but couldn't even hit nine). Here's mah list:

Aeducan: 30 darkspawn, 63 deepstalkers. 40 minutes,
Caridin's Cross: 61 darkspawn, 51 deepstalkers, 4 brontos, 3 mercenaries, 1 revenant. 1 hour
Ortan: 6 darkspawn, 35 spiders, 20 corrupted spiders, 1 spider boss, 4 golems, undetermined amount of dwarf ghosts, 1 pride demon. 1 hour
Dead Trenches: 115 darkspawn, 11 undead, 3 darkspawn bosses, 1 shade boss, 12 spiders, undetermined amount of dwarf ghosts. 1.5 hours
Anvil of the Void: 28 darkspawn, 13 golems, 1 spirit apparatus boss with dwarf ghosts, 1 golem/dwarf boss, 45 minutes
Shale's thing: 57 darkspawn, 1 ogre boss, 1 bronto, 40 deepstalkers. 40 minutes

Note that I'm slow and I'm sure other people would be able to get through these much faster, especially if they exploited storm of the century and/or beelined to the exit and avoided all optional content. Still too many darkspawn (especially the dead trenches), too many deepstalkers. Ortan Thaig was the one I liked best because it has the least amount of darkspawn and that part at the beginning where you see a dead ogre surrounded by dead spiders followed by seeing those 6 darkspawn getting attacked by spiders was like one of my Valve Corporation Half-Lifes.

 

[Infinitron]

was like one of my Valve Corporation Half-Lifes.

wat

 

[Roguey]

Telling a story through environment without dialogue followed by enemies battling among themselves.

The sentence was inspired by a quote from one of the Metal Gear games ("It's like one of my Japanese animes.")

 

[Infinitron]

Uh. Well, we are in the popamole forum.

 

[Cyberarmy]

All in all, the tower of mages wasn't too bad. The dream was even pretty good.

The siege of the village, on the other hand, was horribly boring, with its endless waves of repetitive enemies. Remembering the reasonably entertaining sieges of Hordes of the Underdark and NWN2 OC, I can't help but wonder why Bioware loves declining so much.

You're going to LOVE Dragon Age 2

 

[Andyman Messiah]

Not only has DA2 endless waves of repetitive enemies, it also has endless waves of repetitve dungeons.

 

[lokus]

Couldn't take Morrigan seriously in that game because whenever she spoke I kept hearing Aeryn Sun, no bitch you aren't a Witch you're a Peacekeeper. Leliana was pretty hot though, +1 for wearing a modest amount of clothing too

 

[racofer]

Not only has DA2 endless waves of repetitive enemies, it also has endless waves of repetitve dungeons.

People wanted more awesome, so DA2 devs implemented recursive awesomeness.

 

[Tytus]

Not only has DA2 endless waves of repetitive enemies, it also has endless waves of repetitve dungeons.

People wanted more awesome, so DA2 devs implemented recursive awesomeness.

 

[Erebus]

Maybe I'll just lower the difficulty (except for boss fights) if there really is so much combat in the Deep Roads.

I was going to write a fairly long message about how I find DA:O quite forgettable so far, but it turns out spending more than 6 minutes in a row writing about the game is boring in itself. Dragon Age Origins isn't exactly bad, but it suffers from a serious lack of inspiration.

 

[Roguey]

Whee, after three long months I've finally completed Taracco Blood Oranges a second time. My male elf mage received a lot of different dialogue that my female city elf didn't and I had about as much fun as I did the first, though it does tend to drag-on in nearly every section. I'll likely play it again in another three years, exclusively sticking to the critical path and avoiding as much combat as possible. Even with familiarity, it still took me forever:

I shaved about 20 hours from my first playthrough and killed over 200 more things. I forgot about the sixth black vial though. Could have been an even 2840.


Various system shames and thoughts on how they were addressed in the sequel:

Mages and warriors don't get enough incentive to put points into anything other than magic/strength (and enough dex to meet requirements for sword&shield or dual-wielding) whereas rogues have to reach 20 strength to wear the best light armor and sink a bunch of points into cunning and dexterity. Bioware addressed this problem by making only two stats matter for each class. So funny.

Speech as a win button. Removed and good riddance.

As with many RPGs, resources start out as something to consider, then become trivial midway through. The option to win fights with poor tactics simply by slamming down health and mana potions shouldn't exist. For the sequel they gave 'em a 30 second cooldown instead of 5 and closed the exploit that allowed you to ignore the paltry five second cooldown by drinking a different kind of potion. This decision deeply upset a number of posters at the BSN. I say to hell with 'em. They're as bad as people who want degenerate resting.

I completely ignored traps and bombs so no comments there (they seem to be the kind of thing one would only want to use with a no-mage party), but it's terrible how there are some redundant and just plain-bad choices when it comes to poisons like aciding coating, adder's kiss, fleshrot, and soulrot coating (and the lack of transparency in the unmodded version makes this even more annoying). Thankfully streamlined into something sensible in II. It's also nice how they fixed the exploit that allowed you to stack multiple coatings of different poisons.

I don't know what they were thinking with arcane warriors and shapeshifters. With one they thought "Let's give mages the option of being great fighters so they have zero weaknesses!" and with the other they thought "Let's give mages an ability that makes them unable to cast any spells! People like auto-attacking with mages, right?" Good thing those were removed.

Massive hammers like cone of cold, mana clash, and storm of the century that turn decent set-ups into nails. The first was nerfed (but testing on nightmare, I noticed cold-immune enemies still have a chance of getting frozen; whyoware?), the others removed.


Josh Sawyer presents: Project Eternity: A Josh Sawyer Production is going to be a million times better of course. And now I'm free to turn a critical eye to Icewind Dale and it's likely going to eat into time I could be spending playing Shadowrun Returns damnit.

 

[Zeriel]

So I guess now we know the mythical players developers are referring to when they say their RPG is an "80-hour playthrough".

 

[circ]

Ya that's pretty padded. I don't think I'd manage that even if I tried and listened to every single conversation to the end. Or maybe that's what it takes.

Tomb Raider took me two days, and I didn't even do it in one sitting either.

 

[Tytus]

Roguey:

Only 95% world discovered? I'm disappoint.

 

[sea]

80 hours. 80 hours? Really? My first play-through was probably about 45 hours, and subsequent ones were probably half that thanks to skipping the dialogue.

 

[Zeriel]

My first playthrough was less than 20 hours, and I read all dialogue/love sidequests. Seeing people's numbers has me feeling like a turbonerd.

 

[Tytus]

I don't remember how long my playthrough took but it was something around 35-40 hours while doing everything I could in DA:O, even those stupid job-quests you get from those vendor mages/mercenaries. But with DA2 it was even faster. I finished the game with everything done clocking at around 28 hours. Bioware seems to make their games shorter and shorter.

 

[Brayko]

It's too "heavy" and cinematic, and character progression isn't as steady as I would like it to be (too heavily focused on feats and new awesome button attacks). It's not complete shit but it's not quite passable either. I put NWN2 ahead of it, the shortcomings there are more forgivable.

 

[abnaxus]

What the hell are 'fantastic creatures'?

 

[Andyman Messiah]

Creatures that are fantastic, obviously.

If it'll help, maybe you can think of them as 'fabulous creatures'?

 

[Tytus]

Creatures that are fantastic, obviously.

If it'll help, maybe you can think of them as "gay creatures like unicorns" ?

Fixed.

 

[Roguey]

Ah, I see all the rushers are coming out of the woodwork shocked over the idea of others taking their time. Well I'm not the only one who took forever.
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2010/02/25/news-tidbits-dragon-age-origins.aspx

Complete pass on the game took over 90 hours by an experienced QA lead.


Record QA speed playthough was over 12 hours using cheats on skipping all dialogue.

I already posted these so might as well post 'em again:

Roguey:

Only 95% world discovered? I'm disappoint.

I refused to enter the buy-our-Return-to-Shitagar-DLC area.

What the hell are 'fantastic creatures'?

Werewolves.