Cleared Dragon Age II

It was pretty disappointing all-round.

The battle system was alright but enemies with way too much health and annoying as fuck assassins and rage demons that keep vanishing and reappearing took away a lot of the fun.

The writing wasn't exactly stellar to begin with but it just went fuckstupid at the end. It might have been a better with a bit foreshadowing (one fucking letter for the mage and one fucking line from Varric's brother for Meredith don't count).

In the end nothing about the stupid idol or the city and its relation to all the blood mages is explained (in fact unless you look you don't even KNOW that the city has anything to do with the blood mages and are forced to just assume that all the NPCs are retarded), and instead of an epilogue telling you what happens after you just get AND THEN THERE WAS WAR AND EVERYONE VANISHED. THE WARDEN TOO. OH HEY LOOK IT'S LELIANA, TO BE CONTINUED. Fuck you.

Seriously though, the third part was just terrible. Throughout the game I was partial to the mages (having played one first in Origins and of course having Bethany around in II) but all of a sudden comes third bit where all of a sudden the mages (even the ones I rescued before) decide that I'm trying to kill them and respond by just attacking me on sight. And then other mages go nuts too and do stupid shit. And then Anders, fucking Anders, goes and bombs the fucking church. And THEN the elf guy who seemed to be the only fucking reasonable NPC in the game turned out to have been a fucking psycho who was hanging out with the guy who murdered your mother and uses blood magic to turn into a fat zombie demon monster thing.

Oh and Meredith who seemed to have been just a paranoid overzealous mage-hater, with decent motives (she just wants to protect the city, judging from part 3 the mages really ARE just a bunch of psycho retard demon-worshippers, and her sister was a mage who got possessed by a demon and murdered her whole family)? Oh hey she's possessed by an evil magic sword.

Fucking stupid.

Ugh.

Ah well, now that I know everyone is irredeemably stupid I won't feel as bad when I start on my inevitable crazy asshole character playthrough.

I think I'll probably do another of those in the PS3 version of Origins first so I can import the save, though. Haven't done one in Awakening yet either.

Dragon Age: Awakening

Cleared Origins (and most of the DLC) and Awakening on the PS3 a few days ago.

The usual stats.


The Mother was a pretty disappointing battle, the High Dragon before her gave me more trouble.

It was decent, I guess, but the quests didn't seem to have much replay value, unlike Origins'. There's plenty of fun in resetting your characters and changing their builds over and over again, though; I redid my main character six times.

I haven't played Golems of Amgarrak and Witch Hunt yet, maybe later.

This week's loot (4th December 2010)

Turns out that just getting the Ultimate Edition would be cheaper than buying all the DLC (including Awakening) separately.

...of course, it would've been best if I'd just bought the Ultimate Edition in the first place. Bah.

Edit: God the PS3 version of Dragon Age sucks. Maybe there's something wrong with my settings but ○ is confirm and × is cancel in menus. That's fine but outside of the menus × is used to open doors and shit so it's really fucking annoying. I've sort of gotten used to that but there're other problems, namely the framerate dropping sometimes when there's too much stuff on the screen (had no such problems with the 360 GoD version) and best of all, the fucking load times.

I mean, sometimes I get a loading message when I talk to someone. Why the fuck?

Let me guess, typical American "let's make the PC and 360 versions first then half-ass the PS3 port durhur", right? Fuck you, EA.

I'm currently playing my mage again. Mostly the same spells, except I'm learning sleep and waking nightmare too this time.

Didn't mention it on the blog but my second playthrough in DA was a chaotic evil (or as close as you can get while saving the world) homicidal dwarf princess, stabbing everyone when given the option in dialogue and purposely trying to screw everyone over. That was fun.

Dragon Age: Origins (3)

About the Archdemon...

[21:58] <@Vel> Yeah. That tends to make it a bit tricky. Usually you get a bunch of friends helping, depending on how you did the earlier quests
[21:58] <~Me> What?
[22:00] <@Vel> You can bring Loghain (though alistair leaves if you do), that bald elf, whisperfang, swiftrunner, the dwarf paragon, and I forgot who else
[22:00] <~Me> Er
[22:00] <~Me> Bald elf + Whateverfang dead
[22:00] <~Me> Werewolves made human
[22:01] <~Me> Crazy lesbian dwarf killed
[22:01] <~Me> Loghain killed
[22:01] <~Me> Yeeeeeaaaaaaaaaah
[22:01] <@Vel> Yeah, that would explain it

[22:02] <~Me> >>You can once again call on your armies to assist you
[22:02] <~Me> ...I assumed you couldn't because they didn't follow me into the fort.
[22:03] <~Me> DAMN IT.
[22:03] <~Me> >>Arl Eamon
[22:03] <~Me> I don't recall seeing him anywhere (I did save both his wife and son, though)
[22:03] <~Me> >>First Enchanter Irving or Knight-Commander Greagoir
[22:03] <~Me> Helped the mages, playing as a mage, neither showed up.
[22:03] <~Me> >>Swiftrunner or Zathrian,
[22:03] <~Me> See above
[22:04] <~Me> >>Kardol
[22:04] <~Me> Who?
[22:04] <@Vel> That's the legion of the dead dwarf you meet before the crazy paragon
[22:04] <~Me> ...who?
[22:05] <@Vel> Dead Trenches segment. Bunch of dwarves fighting darkspawn on the first bridge. Kardol's the only one you can talk to
[22:06] <~Me> ...I didn't notice that.

[22:06] <~Me> .
[22:06] <~Me> Oh.
[22:06] <~Me> You will be joined (PC only) by Arl Eamon, First Enchanter Irving or Knight-Commander Greagoir (depending on choices made during Broken Circle), Zathrian or Swiftrunner (depending on choices made during Nature of the Beast), and/or Kardol (if you persuaded him to join your armies), who can help you with the Archdemon.
[22:06] <~Me> You will be joined (PC only)
[22:06] <~Me> (PC only)
[22:06] <~Me> (PC only)
[22:06] <~Me> Why
[22:06] <@Vel> That... yeah
[22:06] <~Me> the
[22:06] <~Me> FUCK?

[22:07] <@Vel> Also, you apparently missed an entire army
[22:07] <~Me> And half my party who got slaughtered before I could do much.
[22:07] <@Vel> Kardol shows up in Orzammar after the paragon quest is over, talk to him to recruit the entire Legion
[22:07] <~Me> So yeah, you're supposed to take on that thing with a ton of people and I did it with two?
[22:07] <~Me> I rule.

[22:07] <~Me> ...
[22:07] <~Me> Ballistae on the towers?
[22:08] <~Me> Didn't notice that either.

Edit: I tried fighting the Archdemon again, summoning the elves to help and using the ballistae.

I defeated it really quickly without anyone getting knocked out at all.

Nice.

Dragon Age: Origins (2)

Cleared the game.

As usual, stats.










Had a pretty tough fight against the Archdemon. It took out Morrigan and Oghren halfway through and I ended up fighting it with just myself and Alistair. Spammed ice and lyrium potions to freeze it while Alistair hacked away, with both healing themselves whenever HP dropped below 50%.

By the end I was decked out fully in dragonbone plate armour, and had a whole ton of magic active all the time.

The whole flaming glowing transparent death-sucking man with magic swords look was pretty cool.

Played a good character this time round. If you checked out my profile on social.bioware.com you'd have seen I already had another character (human warrior) but I don't plan on playing him just yet.

No, my next character's going to be a deranged and evil dwarf. Have to think of a name.

It's a pity you can only set the first, and not last names freely in Dragon Age. Because I have some pretty cool ideas for an evil dwarf's surname. Just saying.

Dragon Age: Origins

If you haven't noticed from the gamer card, I got and have been playing Dragon Age lately. Game on demand version, which I'm sort of regretting right now after finding out about Awakening and the ultimate edition and deluxe edition and whatever edition and cheaper edition and just fuck you damn it. Didn't I fall for this with Fallout 3?

Gah.

Anyway, have two characters, but have only been playing the mage> so far (only up to Ostagar with the warrior).

Got the elves and humans to join, only the dwarves left.

Also, killed Flemeth.



Wasn't easy. She knocked out Alistair and I ended up using every last mana-restoring potion I'd hoarded up to that point (I usually don't bother with them because I use Death Syphon to suck MP out of dead enemies).

Level 13 right now, with my specialization in Arcane Warrior. Currently using that Spellweaver thing I picked up in the mountains together with a shield, but plan to swap the shield out for a dagger as soon as I can find one that I can equip and enchant with ice.

Using mostly primal magic (especially ice) with a tiny bit of entropy (animate dead).

Edit:

Oh hey this is cool.