Dragon Age is out

[Vympel]

Just picked up my Collector's Edition. It's early.

I won't be able to play it till late tonight - I'm going out for celebrations of my Melbourne Cup spoils.

[weemadando]

I've bought it via Steam (I got the spiffy edition because I'm a filthy whore) and am waiting for 1) my bandwidth cap to reset so I can get it and 2) time to play it. I'm thinking that I'll try to wrap up The Witcher first as that's been on my plate for too long and I recently got back into it. And also for my passing obsession with Torchlight to fade.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Holy shit, Australia got something before everyone else?

I'm still pre-loading, waiting for it to unlock in 12 hours.

[Aaron]

I'm heading out to pick it up in a couple hours, I to ordered the spiffy edition (more because I didn't think to ask the guy at EB Games what edition it was). I'll put up some thoughts once I get it on the 360 and have played a bit.

[Vympel]

The dumb cunts have got this stupid social networking beta site through which you've got to redeem the DLC you get with certain versions of the game, and the fucking stupid piece of shit refuses to register me even though I already have a bioware account and now a fucking EA account as well. Real smart design that, entrust your DLC activation to a beta.

[Aaron]

Social networking, like Facebook? Why the hell would anyone think thats a good idea, it's a single player game.

[Vympel]

Who fucking knows. All I know is that these utter twits have dropped the ball on launch, big time. There are more than a few complaints about inability to register, inability to activate DLC, etc on the stupid sites forum.

This is how the idiots have fucked it up:-

You have to log in to redeem your codes.

So, you can go to create an account. I did so. Then I chose my Bioware display name as mine - which prompts a box to come up saying this is a bioware name, and you need to confirm ownership by putting in your bioware email and password. Which I did.

You then try and complete registration - and it says error, display name already in use.

I then created an EA account. It ALSO insisted the Display Name (which is apparently auto-detected) was in use- except there's no fucking display name in the box!. And you can't type in the box. It's fucking unbelievable.

Then I check the EA page for my so-called 'master account' and I have a persona there so that my account is called 'DragonAge_[number]'. Where the fuck did that come from? What the FUCK is going on!?

Just infuriating, really.

[Aaron]

Did you buy it for PC? I ordered it for 360 and I just registered for the EA/Bioware accounts (same ID as my Live account) in hopes I can avoid this BS.

[Vympel]

Yeah, PC. It's a PC-optimised game, for sure. It looks great, I've just played through the "Origins" section with my Human Noble, it's very cool, lots of depth, I was somewhat disappointed with the look of the combat until I saw an impaling and a beheading in real time (not as cool as Witcher, but still visceral) - and as far as I can tell so far, it's highly polished.

Which makes the inability to redeem all the fucktons of DLC I'm entitled too all the more infuriating.

[Feil]

I tried to register to take a look at the status of the mod tools (though I haven't bought the game yet and don't plan to until there have been some people playing and reviewing the game that haven't been bribed to say that it is the best thing ever). Same problem:
[An Error Has Occurred
Error creating social site account]

Even though I already have a Bioware account.

[Aaron]

Well I have my 360 copy now, the guy at EB Games mentioned that the 360 DLC is delayed a day or two but that the PC codes might work, so I'll check that out.

[dragon]

Was thinking about getting though steam, but noticed that the price is in Euro and don't want to buy the wrong language so gotta do so checking on it first, or is the price always in Euro no matter where you are. As 50 euro is almost 75 dollars right now.

[Starglider]

I was really looking forward to playing through this with my wife. I will not be buying it until someone patches in co-op play (Baldur's Gate 2 style). While I usually agree with the 'not all games need multiplayer, quit trying to make everything an MMORPG' sentiment, in this specific case co-op is a killer feature (for me). The argument against it seems to be 'well it will suck because only one player can be at the center of the story', which is fair enough for co-op with random people on the Internet, but I think couples and close friends can enjoy a single player story as a pair.

[Aaron]

Played through a couple hours now, my origin story (common Dwarf) wasn't anything spectacular but it was decent. Though I'm not sure what the hell happened to my sister, seeing as I just upped and left town.

Combat is rather like Guild Wars, I can just sit and hold down A and left my guy keep swinging. So far there isn't any sense of urgency in combat like there was at various points in Mass Effect (possibly due to the music).

I did manage to snag my DLC without any issues though.

[Vympel]

I'm too petrified to touch it, at this stage. Don't want to lose my codes. Logging in to the site actually works for me now, but I want to be certain my EA and Bioware accounts are properly linked. The amount of problems users are encountering in this regard is unbelievable. Just what were they thinking ....

[Aaron]

I have an extra set of codes here for the Feral Wolf Charm and Memory Band if you need them.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Is anyone else struggling with the combat? I've got a human noble warrior, specced for shields no less, and half the encounters are uphill battles - I feel like I'm 2 levels under what I should be, or something. I'm a compulsive completionist too, so I've grabbed every little scrap of XP and gear I can get my hands on.

It seems like I never do much damage, and despite running a defensive stance (upgraded so as to not hurt my offense) I take a lot of damage and guzzle a lot of potions. Then my party members all die and leave me fighting like 3 or 4 guys. Don't even get me started on the boss fights...

[Aaron]

Is anyone else struggling with the combat? I've got a human noble warrior, specced for shields no less, and half the encounters are uphill battles - I feel like I'm 2 levels under what I should be, or something. I'm a compulsive completionist too, so I've grabbed every little scrap of XP and gear I can get my hands on.

It seems like I never do much damage, and despite running a defensive stance (upgraded so as to not hurt my offense) I take a lot of damage and guzzle a lot of potions. Then my party members all die and leave me fighting like 3 or 4 guys. Don't even get me started on the boss fights...

Even on casual I'm getting my ass handed to me left,right and centre. I'm in the Dwarven city right now, with a Dwarf warrior specializing in two handed weapons at lvl 8. Whats worse is the Dwarf shops don't seem to sell very many health potions.

[Vympel]

Well my accounts are 'linked' now. Things appear to have resolved themselves. I guess there's nothing to do but wait until I get home, register my game, download the DLC and hope that I don't lose the lot because of their idiocy.

As for the combat, even in the tutorial I was having problems when fighting the Howe Knight - I got my arse kicked and my dog had to finish him off.

Hard combat ... well I've got to say good. Mass Effect was always easy.

[wautd]

I haven't heared of this game but it sounds interesting at first glance. So is it a hack & slashfest like Diablo/Titan Quest or is it closer to something like Baldur's Gate? I'm in the mood for both but still...

[Aaron]

I haven't heared of this game but it sounds interesting at first glance. So is it a hack & slashfest like Diablo/Titan Quest or is it closer to something like Baldur's Gate? I'm in the mood for both but still...

It's more like a fantasy version of KOTOR.

[Vendetta]

I haven't heared of this game but it sounds interesting at first glance. So is it a hack & slashfest like Diablo/Titan Quest or is it closer to something like Baldur's Gate? I'm in the mood for both but still...

It's more like a fantasy version of KOTOR.

Depends which version you're playing. I've had a fiddle with both versions at the Eurogamer expo on saturday.

If you're playing the PC version, it's more like Neverwinter Nights with a party. Same interface of hotkeyed items/spells, same pointy-click movement and combat, etc. It's not quite like BG, but the things that have changed from that seem mostly to have been it's archaic cruft.

The PC version is also supposed to be a little harder, with things like friendly fire on AOE spells being on by default on PC and off by default on consoles (probably because without the zoomed out isometric view it's harder to judge whether your dudes will be caught in them)

[White Haven]

Does mana/stamina ever start to regenerate at a non-shittastic rate? How 'about accumulate in a pool, rather than a puddle? I find that while combat isn't brutally hard, it's worse than Diablo for potion-chugging, and Diablo was already fucking annoying on that score.

[Xon]

There are spells which permit usable stamina regen, but most fights are small enough you can empty your small puddle of mana & stamina and when wait for the fast-regen to kick in.

The real killer is the long fights. When going to the Arl whatsisname, fighting the undead was so fucking hard. I burnt through almost 30-40 potions in mana & health in a fight which took almost 10-15 minutes. A combat healer is a vastly overpowered, with mana potions you get heals and stamina for the cost of 1 potion.

Also, heavy armor gives a percentage cost to spells/abilities. It isn't too bad on my primary tank, but ugh.

[Molyneux]

I decrypted this from Steam last night; it was a minor headache to get it started up and all the DLC downloading, but not enough to make me give up in disgust.

The game assumes that I have a mouse wheel, which is a little strange - I'm using a trackball. It reminds me of nothing so much as Neverwinter++, really.