Hungry

@Brodehouse said:

DA2 actually has _more_ party conversation than DAO, they're just partitioned out more slowly. In Origins you can be hilt-deep in Morrigan five minutes after leaving Lothering.

This. The way the party members are handled and how their stories and personalities are delivered to the player is one of the few things Dragon Age 2 actually does right. Not just competently either, as in Dragon Age 2 does it pretty damn well.

Now, like almost everything else is pretty bad. But if you can deliver to me characters that well I am willing to forgive a lot. That is why I think Dragon Age II is just sub-par and not trashcan awful.

As someone who has recently been playing Dragon Age 2 after "stealing" it from EA with that free coupon deal, I have to say that I am looking at Dragon Age 3 with incredible interest. Not to play it, per se, but academically. Honestly, there are maybe like two or three things done right in Dragon Age 2. Everything else in the game is fucking awful. The awful things happen to refer to the combat and the systems that underlie it, the technical things (like the art assets) due to the time limitations, and the last being the main plot and the main character. Dragon Age 2 was incredibly sub-par, and I felt like Mass Effect 3 was pretty mediocre, so I don't have a lot of faith in Dragon Age 3.

However, Bioware has gotten such a bad rap from people for these games I find it incredibly interesting to see how they respond (if at all) to all of the whini-err... valid criticism.

@Loafsmooch said:

Play the full game and your opinion will probably change. Also, switch to normal if you're playing on classic. No point in complaining when you could just turn the difficulty down.

I'm having no problem with the percentages. And people either being at full health or dead is totally not true. Just research armor or something. Geez man.

If someone feels like the random chance is the main factor in the difficulty of the game, I think turning down the difficulty is not the correct solution. When you play on harder difficulties (which from hearing what people say, Normal is boringly easy) you want more of a challenge. If you feel the RNG is overcoming any actual challenge the game would have without it, then it isn't a good challenge. This works both ways by the way, being too lucky and being too unlucky.

That said I completely agree with you. Get some better tech and play through the game a little longer and the RNG will not feel so bad.

@MordeaniisChaos

While I feel that in the early game (at least on Classic and above) luck does oftentimes factor way too much into outcomes, the second you get level 1 armor and weapons the game becomes more manageable, and then once you get even a single plasma weapon the game becomes a cakewalk on Classic. Right now I am playing on Classic with most of the Second Wave effects on and I feel like it mitigates the luck-beats-strategy problems the early game has a little more.

However, if you like a game where strategy is all that matters and everything is purely mind games and mathematics, Frozen Synapse is probably the king of strategy games. It is really, really good and fucking tense.

@Enigma777 said:

Ran into my first mutons last night. Spotted a group of 3 of them, then 3 more came out. Then a cyberdisc showed up. Then 3 more mutons and 3 sectoid commanders crashed the party. Then my sniper panicked and headshotted my other 2 guys.

Fuck this game.

Wait, your first encounter with Mutons had a Cyberdisc and Sectoid Commanders? To me that sounds like you are either playing on Impossible or you took way too long building stuff up. On my Classic Ironman game I beat a bit ago I killed pretty much every kind of alien except Ethereals before I fought a Sectoid Commander. Sucks to be you though, thems the breaks.

@The_Laughing_Man said:

Still get nightmare about the sounds the Crysalids made in the first game.

The worst part was that not only did they have a 100% chance to convert your dudes AND after killing a zombie it turned into another Chrysalid, but their walking animation wasn't very fast so as it approached one of your dudes and he misses all of his snap shots you go "No... no... no... NO NO NO NO NONONONONONONONO FUCKING SHIT!"

The last mission was a cakewalk. I thought it was going to end up being a battle of attrition at one point because I ran out of medpaks by the time I got to the end boss. However, I killed the end boss the second his little cutscene ended so I don't even know if he is a dangerous enemy. Also, the second I got Plasma Rifles Classic Ironman almost became Baby Mode. I can't imagine how easy XCOM is on Normal.

@BisonHero:

Being up in the air does count as being in half-cover like a Floater does. I also think it gives you the normal benefits of being at a higher elevation. It also makes it so objects don't obstruct vision.

My setup after completing the game on Classic Ironman is as follows:

1 Heavy- Specialized in suppression. He had a grenade on him mostly for the guaranteed damage or cover destruction.

2 Supports- Both specialized in suppression and mobility. Smoke grenade was a neat utility but it is mostly about being where they need to be to fuck shit up with their plasma weapons and to deliver healing. When they got second items I gave them SCOPE for like 80+% accuracy at long range.

1 Assault- Specialized in getting in balls-deep and not dying while doing it. I felt like some of the critical strike bonuses were not useful if you were using a shotgun. Run and Gun up into point-blank range with an Alloy Shotgun and then using the double fire will have like 80+% accuracy and about that much critical chance and that will kill pretty much anything. Until I had no need for interrogations or weapons he had the Arc Thrower on and after that he had a Medkit so I didn't have to waste one on other dudes if he got banged up.

1 Sniper- Specialized in sitting still and killing everything. When I discovered the end boss and the cutscene played, he killed the end boss before the boss even had a turn to do anything. Easy.

1 Situational- This ended up being a mobile pistol-focused sniper because it was the only character I had with Psionic abilities at the end of the game, but at times it varied from being a Heavy or an Assault or just a blank Rookie slot to train soldiers up. Heavies in general are not great soldiers to have lots of unless it is a terror mission, as the lack of mobility is not as bad in urban environments, and suppression really helps in those situations.

I equipped all of these soldiers with Titan armor except my heavy, who I gave the Archangel armor. The grapple ability on the Skeleton suit is nice for early-mid game, but later on in the game you need to be able to absorb as much damage as possible. I used the Archangel armor to negate a lot of the heavy's mobility problems, and it makes his accuracy and ability to suppress much less restrictive.

Also as a general tip, it seems like most of the enemies in the game are asleep until you discover them. When Ethereals start to show up all I did was gather my squad around the 1-2 entrances to the room I knew was going to hold the Ethereal and waited. Once it was my turn I would open the doors and unless I got very unlucky they would be cleared out. I feel like once you got Plasma weapons Classic difficulty was almost a cakewalk.

Reporting in on being at the doorstep of the final countdown on Classic Ironman. I can confirm that as long as you have the latest weapon upgrades for the interceptors you will be fine. Later on in the game when you try and shoot down battleships or terror ships it might be a little luck-based if you only use one Firestorm with a Plasma cannon, but the consumable items for interceptor combat is not required, it helps a lot though.

Edit: I grossly recommend capturing aliens even when you have already interrogated them. Plasma weapons are expensive and getting the research to use plasma weaponry makes the game just a step above a breeze.