Dragon Age 2, still not riftFollow

Well alrighty then, I'll have to give that a try. I hadn't wanted to deal with the whole online thing after all the difficulties getting to game to run in the first place. Sounds like it's worth another shot.

Xsarus linked to it on the other thread we had going, near the beginning of page 2 or 3. I'd go find it and repost it here, but that's typically something I get other people to do for me.

I've only seen one elf (or at least only paid attention to one) -- the poison vendor guy. He looked like the love child of the dork virgin elf in DA:O and Gizmo from Gremlins.

For DA:O there's just something about the elves. The face maybe, it's just not right. I can't put my finger on it, but after creating my 2nd elf I can't seem to make a face that I actually like. The angled and rigid jawbones perhaps? I dunno, just seems wrong.

The elves in DAO were only slightly more skinny looking to me than the humans. That and as protein said, their faces are a bit more angular, but that's it. Frankly, I don't think my elf looks like an elf, aside from the ears. But I do think they went too far with making them look distinct in DA2. I just feel like they could have done something to make them look different but still normal I guess? I've read plenty of complaints about how the game overall feels like it was rushed though, so they probably just didn't give themselves time to really flesh out the elf design.

There's a mod to shorten the CD's on spells, because yeah, it's ridiculous. Primal is good, but elemental seems to be better. With your ice spells, you can brittle enemies, which then enables rogues and warriors to do a crazy amount of damage on them. Plus from what I've read, Firestorm is the biggest damage AoE in the game. Or at least for the mages. I don't think mages are weak, they just aren't as OP as they were in Origins. The OP class now is dual weapon rogues.

I went warrior because I'm lazy and hitting things is easy.

I think the story is much better as a Mage, personally.

That said, Mages definitely aren't the power houses they were in DA:O. But they aren't weaklings, either. They're just a LOT more about control.

Rogues give you amazing single target dps (particularly when talking about a DW Hawke). Wariors give solid close-range AoE DPS. Mages give great large-area AoE DPS, particularly when you have big groups. More importantly, they have a higher ability to control enemies and buff allies than the other classes.

Because Heal and potions both have a fairly long CD, you can't play DA2 the same way you could play DAO, falling back on them as a crutch. You need to be proactive with your defenses and avoid damage where possible. Mage is the best option for that control, and you really can't rely on an AI to provide it. If you're going to have to micromanage your Mage anyway, it might as well be Hawke. Particularly since he blows the other two Mages out of the water, having a much larger number of spell options.

You can still spec Hawke to be a stronger AoE damage dealer (with some somewhat powerful single target skills) but it will definitely require cross-class combos. He does have one of the better AoE CC combos, though.

It's just his neck. If it were his knee, he wouldn't be able to go on adventures.

Slept with Isabella already. Rawr.

So far the thing that has annoyed me most is all the damn side quests. Normally, it doesn't bother me but in the first act of the game it felt like I HAD to do all these side quests to get enough money to get on the Deep Roads expedition. And most of the side quests just haven't been that interesting so far. I hope the rest of the game isn't like that. I enjoy doing side quests, but I want to do them when I want to do them, and I don't want to feel like I have to do them, if that makes sense.

But if you don't do them before you go in the Deep Roads, are they there in Part 2? I was afraid that if I didn't do them, they would be gone and I'm a completionist, so I didn't want to run the risk of that happening. I ended up having 20g left over after I finished everything, aside from the loan quest which I didn't need.

****.