Dragon Age: Origins

[Mr-Niceguy2001]

Yeah spend the time upgrading your party, I recruited all possible party members but did have a specific lot I used so the upgrades went on them. When you gain XP, you can upgrade everyone in your party, regardless if they were with you fighting or back at your camp.

I've been playing it on the 360 and did manage my party adjusting their equipment and tactics accordingly to suit my style.

Oh and if you play as an archer, build up your dexterity and cunning and use the arrow of slaying perk, got over 1000HP damage using that, was basically one-hit kill later in the game.

[saturn-gamer]

I managed between presets as ranged, defensive etc. As some of my chars had double roles (Leliana being my main Thief and Archer). After trying a lot of possibilities, I found that the default AI tactics were the best to use.

What I manually did were mostly AoE spells (getting everyone out of the radius first), group heal, etc. CPU will also never use shapeshift for you.

Mostly fought with my avatar who was a 1h sword + shield warrior, and mostly invested in Str to be able to equip the best equipment and wield the best weapons. Give them lighter armor, and give the 2h sword Tanks the slower moving heavy armor and set a tactic from your healer on them when their health gets below a certain amount.

[JP]

How long are people taking to get to the end of the game on average?

I'm reading about people completing it more than once but I'm not sure I'll want to once I've got to the end. Having said that, I'm surprised that I started Mass Effect 2 again as soon as I finished it the first time so it's not impossible.

EDIT:
I've started playing through Leliana's Song too and she plays very different to my main character.

I was looking into the Awakening DLC for the future too but it's about £32 on the PS3 so I'll not bother with any more DLC until Dragon Age - The Ultimate Edition is released in October. It may be a full price game but it's still going to be cheaper than buying all the DLC separately due to the price of Awakenings.

[Mr-Niceguy2001]

My main save file shows 73 hours in Origins with Return to Ostagar, Wardens Keep and the Stone Prisoner DLC completed before the ending. I explored everything but I did save at points and went down one path, then reloaded and went the other way in all the story forks which the save file doesn't record so a lot more hours on top of that.

Yeah I enjoyed it Will start Awakenings this weekend

[saturn-gamer]

Some 55 hours with Shale, Ostagar, Keep. On Normal, although I had to go Easy a few times (being stuck on impossible 1 on 1's due to crap choices; don't choose that NPC mage in the Fade!).

Awakening illustrates the monopolist crap that is PSN. If this were a disc release, it would've been discounted by now for sure.

[JP]

Completed the Leliana's Song and didn't enjoy it at all.

Don't think I'll bother with the rest of the DLC, it's not cheap and if it's anything like the Mass Effect 2 DLC which I found to be pretty insubstantial and almost as if it had no connection to the main game.

Never mind, the main game is brilliant and there's more than enough there for me.

[Finsbury Girl]

Completed the Leliana's Song and didn't enjoy it at all.

Don't think I'll bother with the rest of the DLC, it's not cheap and if it's anything like the Mass Effect 2 DLC which I found to be pretty insubstantial and almost as if it had no connection to the main game.

Never mind, the main game is brilliant and there's more than enough there for me.

The armour alone made it worthwhile for me!

[saturn-gamer]

Witch Hunt is utter ****e. I feel ripped off. It didn't answer anything, and it assumes choices I didn't make during Origins. Don't bother with this crap, just watch it on Youtube.

Only good DLC is Stone Prisoner (free anyway), Ostagar and Wardens Keep. The rest sucks.

[Uli]

after the initial shock about the off-putting Xbox 360 graphics i started to get intrigued by the story and played for 10 hours already. but i am still not used to the complicated combat and skill using interface. my biggest problem is i still haven't learned to queue up commands to make the combat less hectic and more controllable. so how can i queue up actions?

[JP]

I've just ordered the new Ultimate Edition as it's cheaper than buying all the DLC separately and I can trade the original version in. I'm surprised at how poor the cover art is though!

[Uli]

John, if the PS3 version is anything like the 360's than i strongly advise you to go for the PC version, which is not only much better looking but has the better working combat system too. i just found out that you can't even queue up commands, forcing you to frequently pause and input a single commands to stay in control. great, so much for innovation in RPGs - and this 7 years after Star Wars KotoR (Xbox)

oh and there is tons of extra content you don't have to pay for - not to mention nicer looking female character skins

[JP]

I've spent many hours playing the PS3 version and it's definitely not up to the quality of the PC version. Tech sites such as Digital Foundry seem to think that the PS3 version is the best of the two console versions but apparently there isn't much between them.

The reason I'll be trading in the standard edition of the game for this is because things like the DLC and in particular the Awakening game aren't available on disc in Europe for the PS3.

To download Awakening via the PSN costs ?31 (from memory) so it's cheaper for me to trade in the standard version for the Ultimate Edition as that costs around ?28 and also includes all the complete set of DLC. Also, it'll just be nice to have everything on a disc.

I know it's the best version but I've really not had any interest in playing games on the PC (Mac for me). I've never been able to get into that stuff apart from WoW for a few months when it first came out. It's all set up for work and communication here and I don't even think it would run the game to be honest.

I know this is going to be an unpopular thing to say but I really hated jade Empire and the Star Wars games, I really couldn't get into them. I did however used to love their older PC stuff like Baldur's Gate & Neverwinter Nights.

It really was such a pleasure to come back to their stuff with Mass Effect 2 and then this game after a run of games I just didn't get on with. I've played Mass Effect 2 for absolutely bloody hours on the 360 and now that I've got rid of it I was so pleased to hear that I'll be able to play it even more on the PS3.

Thanks for the advice though!

[rmoxon]

The Ps3 version dosnet look as good as the PC one but it has no slowdown or anything, its alot better than the 360 version as far as I know, I havent played it, but I heard its pretty rubbish.

As for the art work on that box, it looks like an advert from a magazine. Is the Uk one the same? actualy is there a UK one?

[Uli]

a few questions for the veterans:

1) my biggest problem are injuries from the constant deaths and i don't find enough injury kits. is there any other way to deal with injuries, maybe a spell or can i make kits by my own?

2) can i revive fallen team members during battle and how?

3) are there penalties if i lower the difficulty to casual, e.g. less XP? (i really don't like the combat, i just want to get over with them)

4) is there a NewGame+ option after i completed the main quest and can i go on with any remaining side quests?

thanks in advance!

[Mr-Niceguy2001]

a few questions for the veterans:

1) my biggest problem are injuries from the constant deaths and i don't find enough injury kits. is there any other way to deal with injuries, maybe a spell or can i make kits by my own?

2) can i revive fallen team members during battle and how?

3) are there penalties if i lower the difficulty to casual, e.g. less XP? (i really don't like the combat, i just want to get over with them)

4) is there a NewGame+ option after i completed the main quest and can i go on with any remaining side quests?

thanks in advance!

1) I never had a craft building character so just used to buy the injury kits. You will find/loot a lot of them naturally throughout the game or just stock up on them from merchants. A mage can restore injuries back to health by using the cleansing aura spell if they have spirit healer specialisation, but that will require you to level up a bit before you can unlock it. Otherwise just go back to camp, craft or buy the injury kits.

2) A mage can do this if they have the spirit healer specialisation, it's a spell but I think you have to cast it on them whilst the party member is still active. Can't say I ever used this and having the AI cast this using the tactics slots didn't seem to ever work.

3) No penalites if you lower the difficulty to XP, achievements (besides 2 in the Golems and "

->Open Spoiler<-

Witch

Hunt" dlc) or anything else in game.

4) No newgame+ option to finish sidequests or anything. After the game is completed, it will autosave you at camp and you can import that character into Awakenings or any of the dlc packs. If you want to do them, make a save before the Landsmeet (this will also allow you to do the various endings). The Landsmeet triggers the finale of the game and anything not completed/loot collected etc... is lost, the point of no return.