Dragon Age: Origins

[Adam]

can anyone who has played through journeys tell me whats the go with the item unlock conditions changing everytime I log on? I like the ones I've got at the moment, kill 4 ogres and get all achievements. I don't want it to go back to complete the game with each class and complete the game on hard

Wasn't aware they changed this but can't you complete the majority of the game on easy then on the last fight switch it to hard? I know when I played through it the 2nd and 3rd time I just put it on easy and noticed you could change the difficulty mid game. Still hassle though.

[mekanor]

mm the conditions seem to change everytime I log on. doesn't matter I suppose, will just wait till there are some good ones before I finish the game

[Orgun]

New Haven -

->Open Spoiler<-

At level 12 I thought i'd have a crack at the high dragon, yeah that was a bad idea. He landed on me and killed Lianna + Morrigan straight out. 5 seconds later we were all dead hehe

edit: I thought i'd give it another attempt on my way out and managed to beat it Without a spirit healer, only Morrigan with the basic heal and lots of poltices Make sure you have a lot of space in your inventory heh.

[abigsmurf]

Finished it now. Ending was typically dissapointing (as is the norm with WRPGs).

Overall, a solid RPG but not an all time classic. The balance wasn't quite right, stuff like Cone of Cold was way wasy too overpowered, archer balance was poor. They spammed archers at you then realised that made you die in seconds but rather than reduce the number of archers, they reduced the power (including for yours). Made rogues pretty worthless in combat as neither archery or daggers scaled properly with dexterity (there's a patch to fix it but you're left with enemy archers killing you in seconds).

Also does something unforgivable in that it removes/kills certain party members, possibly ruining party balance and in one case, taking all their equiptment with them. If you want to know which character to avoid using, reveal:

->Open Spoiler<-

Morrigan will leave you before the final battle if you refuse to sleep with her and create a demon spawn with the power of a god. The elf mercanary also fights you but that may be prevantable

.

[Guts]

Piece of advice for those looking to unlock subclasses without spending a fortune: Quicksave before you buy a manual, buy the manual, save in a different slot, then load the quicksave.

Subclasses are unlocked gamewide once you buy them. Saves you having to spend 100g or so unlocking various subclasses.

You can learn the subclasses at various parts of the game for free. You don't need to buy them.

Also does something unforgivable in that it removes/kills certain party members, possibly ruining party balance and in one case, taking all their equiptment with them.

So, you're crying about your actions having consequences?

[abigsmurf]

Erm... The character that leaves will leave no matter what you do, will do so with absolutely no warning, is likely key to most people's teams and leaves at a time when you don't have much of a chance to gear up someone else.

[Riskbreaker]

Does anyone know what the various gemstones and creature skins do? I've heard certain items can be used to make armour but I've got the feeling I'm holding onto diamonds and wolf skins for nothing

[Eight Rooks]

It definitely is unbalanced. I've started a new game with a warrior rather than a mage and not having the ability to AE or effectively paralyze entire sections of the battlefield at will is a staggering difficulty spike. Yes, mages are weaker - so what? If they can't do anything to you, what's that count for? Take the single combat against a particular character towards the end of the game; I tried fighting this character with a warrior, got pasted in three or four swings. No way to nullify the damage they were doing, I can't heal myself and hurt them, I don't hit anything like as hard. Tried it with a mage, Cone of Cold, chipped away at their health bar, lather, rinse, repeat, job done. It simply hasn't been polished as much as it could have been.

Not to mention while the dialogue and storytelling is much better than any other Bioware game thus far it's still nowhere near Obsidian levels. They still repeatedly do that horribly, horribly frustrating thing where they make you take a choice without ever giving you a chance to ask the questions or make the arguments any sane person would. I don't care if it's essentially a bi-polar choice, you will not leave me no way to defend myself against the idiot who thinks I'm Satan incarnate for doing X just because they've got issues with the implications.

I've enjoyed it a great deal, obviously, it's just it does have some nasty flaws. Definitely an 8, tops. Still recommended to anyone who likes their western high fantasy RPGs, though, derivative or otherwise.

[Guts]

Does anyone know what the various gemstones and creature skins do? I've heard certain items can be used to make armour but I've got the feeling I'm holding onto diamonds and wolf skins for nothing

Gems do nothing, just sell them. There are certain gift gems that you can give to your party members.

Animal skins neither do anything, except for the drake scales which can be made into two different leather armors.

Edit: Actually you can give certain gems to the dwarves in your army after you've recruited them to make them stronger, but this isn't mandatory.

[Riskbreaker]

That's good to know, I'm still early enough in the game that I figure I can flog the ones I have and save any others for later.

[abigsmurf]

It definitely is unbalanced. I've started a new game with a warrior rather than a mage and not having the ability to AE or effectively paralyze entire sections of the battlefield at will is a staggering difficulty spike. Yes, mages are weaker - so what? If they can't do anything to you, what's that count for? Take the single combat against a particular character towards the end of the game; I tried fighting this character with a warrior, got pasted in three or four swings. No way to nullify the damage they were doing, I can't heal myself and hurt them, I don't hit anything like as hard. Tried it with a mage, Cone of Cold, chipped away at their health bar, lather, rinse, repeat, job done. It simply hasn't been polished as much as it could have been.

Indeed. Mages are incredibly broken and the game is balanced towards AoE by the sheer number of archers it throws against you.

There's an incredibly broken tactic I heard that'll win almost any non-boss encounter: get a warrior to taunt. Stick a forcefield on him, cast as many storm spells as you can whilst he's invincible. The AI won't stop attacking the warrior and will all die.

I actually did that fight you're talking about with Alastair. However he had largely the best possible equiptment and used lots of potions.

[Eight Rooks]

I didn't actually get right to the end the first time - I was dissatisfied with the way Morrigan's story was going - so I have no idea how bad the final boss is. The sub-boss some way through the Mages' Tower quest is still a ludicrous moment, though; I simply cannot see how that's possible on Normal, let alone anything higher. I was doing fine until I'd got about a quarter of the boss' lifebar left to take out, then it just... went mad. Bang, bang, bang, bang, less than twenty seconds later all my party are dead - two of them exploded, and I never saw anyone else use that spell in the entire game. It'd make SNK proud, seriously. As bad a display of cheesing AI as I've ever seen.

Oh, and while Shale's entertaining - and yes, more than a one-note joke, surprisingly - he's useless in many ways. His weapons mean he's completely unable to damage some enemies sometimes (and even a couple of seconds' floundering to switch them can mean someone ends up dead) and his AoE is pathetic - it takes several seconds to wind up meaning every single enemy can rush him or a mage can get a fireball off before he's even finished. Again, just more evidence the game's severely skewed towards magic-users.

At the same time, poorly balanced or not, it is interesting playing a fantasy videogame where a fireball is actually a very, very serious threat (extremely quick casting time, cooldown, huge damage with the right stats/buffs/equipment, knocks multiple enemies down, damage over time etc.), so eh.

[Eight Rooks]

Yeah, it is massively, massively weighted towards mages, and failing that any kind of heavy-hitting long range character. A single mage can comfortably kill my entire party at this point - if they shoot first, bang, dead. Fireball knocks me down, mage runs in, Cone of Cold, all frozen, mage's buddies run in, finish the job. Obviously one can argue every party must include someone who can hit from range, but I was hoping a golem throwing fecking great boulders would suffice... obviously not. Five hours' play down the pan now so I can reload before this location, give Leliana a bow and hope to Christ she can actually do some damage with the bloody thing.

The fact I'm still playing it indicates there's plenty of fun to be had, but all this reinforces my view Bioware are one of the industry's most over-rated developers. They're simply neither the amazing storytellers nor the masters of game design they're made out to be; people just want NUMBERS GO UP and big words to make them feel clever, is all.

[Welrain]

I've just started on this, currently at the first village after the series of unfortunate (and brutal) events. Enjoying it loads. Always been a big fan of Biowares work and see this as a fitting evolution to Baldurs Gate etc.

[Orgun]

I just met the Grand Oak, what an excellent conversation that was