Dragon Age: Origins

[Arius]

I've been playing through the game relatively slowly, since I've been doing a lot of random sidequests. So, at this point all I need is to do the Deep Roads before heading for Denerim so, I've reached the Deep Roads and met the corrupted spiders.

I thought I hated the Flemeth Dragon and the mages in the abandoned Denerim building but no, these goddamned spiders are evil as fuck. They pin you and rape the shit out of you, so if you don't have shield bash you have to hope that you can get your allies to kill it before it starts having a cigarette and asking "Was it good for you too?"

...
spoiler...

[Darkobra]

I finally got Alistair to wear his blood dragon armour I got from the Collector's Edition. After that I found some fucking Juggernaut armour with pretty much the same stats, except more spell resistance, less health.

Just so you know, you only get the chest free for blood dragon.. The rest you must buy. 2-3 gold per piece isn't so bad. I dread to think what the chest would have cost if it sells for around 8 gold.

[Joshua]

I beat this game as a city elf Rogue/Duelist/Assassin and I really like Morrigans, I was immediately drawn to explore her character to the fullest it could go, a lot of the other npcs I got so far and no longer bothered.

[Arius]

Son of a bitch! I decided to let Loghaim live and when Alistair left the party my Blood Dragon Armor got stolen. That bastard!

[InsaneFool]

Yeah...I did the same thing, but he didn't abscond with the Armor. I almost counted on him coming back during the final battle after and confessing to being a huge whiny bitch he was being...I'm not going to make the same mistake again.

[Joshua]

You guys let that dick bag live? I told Alister to just kill him, It never occurred to me to let him live, nor did I think anyone ever would.

[Arius]

I did, turns out he's the secret party member.

I've also taken up the tactic of "have my archer draw out the enemies one at a time" in order to deal with difficulty spikes.

Edit: OH MY FUCKING GOD!!!

In the final battle, I went to the alienage and wiped out the enemies there and then figured I'd go and take care of the market. It spawned me on the wrong side of the map. So, I didn't get army control until I spent an hour killing every last thing in the map. God damn.

[BobsAvatar]

I got this game a day after it was released and have been utterly unable to play any other videogame since then >.< So far i've played through as a Human mage and a human noble. this game currently stands as my absolute favorite game of all time and i cant...stop...playing it! I think i need help! but it can wait until after i kill that damnedable andraste again...

final note: any one else think that mages are way to good at cc? i played on normal the first time with a warrior and died a ton then i went through on hard with a mage and died three times...total...it was awesome!

[Darkobra]

Apparently Arcane Warriors are brilliant but you have to actually prepare for them since the start of your character. I don't know how yet. I'm way too near the end of the game to do that anyway. I'll stick with blood magic.

Against humans, the third blood magic spell is incredible. It paralyses them and causes them damage over time. It's also an AoE spell so you can get all the warriors around you to just suddenly stop attacking.

Then I have Morrigan as frost which actually helped me freeze a boss once. I tried to duplicate that but she was being killed way too fast.

[D-Darsh]

I am with Joshuahow could you guys let that dick live I immediately when given the choice wanted his head on a pike.

Also for the final battle being a Paladin/Champion made it so easy due to recruiting the Legion of the Dead earlier.

[InsaneFool]

The reason I let him live was because (a) I talked my way past his Lieutenant lady that was gonna fight me on the way to the Landsmeet, and she begged me to show mercy...plus I derived pleasure from the sheer irony that he was to be made a Grey Warden

[Machalllewis]

I have yet to play this game.

[Arius]

I beat it as a human noble rogue. It upsets me a little that there is no mage storyline that starts outside of the circle. It would be easy to write a story for that.

Backstory: You're a runaway mage living in a small collective in the east with other mages who ran from the circle.
Event: The templars find the collective and begin rounding up mages. They take you to Lothgarin and you escape.
Recruitment: Duncan is headed towards Ostagar and sees you use a massive blast of magic to knock out a group of templars. He then saves you by inviting you to join the Grey Wardens.

There, took me thirty seconds to write and would be a nice origin story and have effects later, like when you save the circle.

Edit: Also, funniest part of the game: When you come across Sandal near the end and he's surrounded by darkspawn corpses and covered in blood. You can ask "You're surrounded by darkspawn corpses, what happened here?" and he responds with "Enchantment!" and opens the enchanting menu. I almost died laughing.

[badgersprite]

I love this game. The characters are utterly gorgeously voice-acted and the scripting is just wonderful. I spent most of the game giggling like the schoolgirl I am because of just how bloody charming everybody was. I can't even think of a single character who annoys me (which is rare) because any time someone starts to get on my nerves, I just put them in a stupid hat.

As far as the story, well I like the fact that it has so many homages to other fantasy games and fantasy novels. I sort of get the sense that the team deliberately took every fantasy trope and cliche in existence, and then decided to just go nuts in twisting them and playing with them. The game seems refreshingly self-aware, and there's really nothing better than a game that makes you like you're in on the joke.

Gameplay is deliciously difficult. The combat system has finesse to it. You can't just bash random attacks and hope to win (well, unless you're a mage, maybe); you really have to think and have a plan of attack, and even a little luck to get through some of the fights. You can be brave and structure your party differently, but, well, if you miss the two mages, you're going to struggle on the harder difficulty.

[Alterran]

Aww man I got this yesterday as it was on sale on Steam and it's like Mass Effect but with swords and magic! Much in the same way Fallout 3 was like oblivion but with guns and radiation.

[Dr. Atrocity]

Aww man I got this yesterday as it was on sale on Steam and it's like Mass Effect but with swords and magic! Much in the same way Fallout 3 was like oblivion but with guns and radiation.

I think you mean KOTOR there, chief.

[InsaneFool]

Honestly, that means you're playing it wrong.

Also, I wanted to know what everyone else thought of the origin stories...
I play the first time as a City Elf and man did it shape how I played the rest of the game I was constantly barking at any human NPC who made a comment about my being an Elf, and taking offense to any Elf related comment, even one from Leliana, I made her feel bad and she came up to me later to apologize and said she had a new respect for the Elven plight. Any body else have their origin stories affect the rest of their games?

[Arius]

Gah, I shouldn't have turned it off.

I've lost the will to play. I can't seem to turn it back on.

[Bryy M. Miller]

No mention of Morrigan?

Morrigan disapproves (-3594279)

Uptight bitch.

My favorite character, thus far, is Shale, the downloadable golem. Both for amusing dialog and for saving my party's ass on multiple occasions.

It's not even funny how many Darkspawn a properly-leveled Shale can take all by his lonesome.

[Darkobra]

I prefer Alistair myself. Not fully got to grips with Shale but I will next playthrough.

I got Alistair the Wade's Dragonbone Plate and Bergen's Helm with a sword/shield mastery. He's been able to take on LOADS of darkspawn himself. Not too good at damaging them. So hard to find a good one handed sword. Every rare sword I've found has been two handed.

And if in doubt, inferno!

[Newfie]

I must say, I love this game. I bought the PC version roughly around launch. I am kind of rotted it's on sale for Black Friday though...

Anyway, the first thing I did was play through all of the different origin stories. They seemed pretty important and I wanted to have a bit of background knowledge about all the races and situations before I fully delved into the world. I think it was worth it because the origins were pretty cool.

Now I'm playing a Human Noble Warrior. Kind of a plain boring choice I know, but it was the first origin I did, the character I put the most character creation effort into, and was just what I wanted to play. I kind of had an 'Aw crap...' moment when I met Alistair but anyway. I'm not very far in the game yet, I travel with Morrigan, Leliana, and leave the third spot as kind of a wild card. A question for the masses though, I've been putting my teammates on 'Auto Level Up', I do my own character's levels because I want to make sure he turns out how I want him but I'm kind of lazy for doing with the others/worried I might screw them up. Bad idea? Or can I keep my faith in the game's choice?

[Bryy M. Miller]

A question for the masses though, I've been putting my teammates on 'Auto Level Up', I do my own character's levels because I want to make sure he turns out how I want him but I'm kind of lazy for doing with the others/worried I might screw them up. Bad idea? Or can I keep my faith in the game's choice?

Turn Auto Level Up off. Now.

My second playthrough, I did the Duncan Glitch and got up to level 22 just to see how it would affect things.

All of my party members stats were horribly effed-up. I was unable to give them the items I wanted to give them all because the computer made assumptions based on their starting class.

[Dr. Atrocity]

What's the Duncan glitch?

[Bryy M. Miller]

You can keep going to him for the three vials of Darkspawn Blood quest. You can literally keep completing it.

[Newfie]

Turn Auto Level Up off. Now.

My second playthrough, I did the Duncan Glitch and got up to level 22 just to see how it would affect things.

All of my party members stats were horribly effed-up. I was unable to give them the items I wanted to give them all because the computer made assumptions based on their starting class.

Thanks for the info. I'll do that. Unfortunately I was playing a bit more today and a couple characters gained levels while still on Auto-level. I have however noticed that my characters do seem to have points put in stats that aren't that useful for the character, at least not in the way that I use them. Oh well, guess I deserve it for taking shortcuts. I'll know better now, if you want something done right (or at least to your liking) you have to do it yourself. Thanks again.