Well I'm very vaped right now. I also have a nice beer and a new copy of Dragon Age 2 for Xbox 360.
Here are my initial thoughts:
Upon beginning the game it's what a lot of you have experienced in the Demo, with the exception that you can now customize your character's appearance.
I promptly made an old man with a luxurious wizard's beard. It's a shame your character only has one voice, I found the robust vocals to be directly at odds with my wizened appearance.
If you haven't played the demo basically it throws you directly into combat. It teases you in an extremely creative way. A story of your character is being retold, the original version he tells is embellished and as a result you have access to high tier spells and abilities. They cut back to the frame and the listener complains about the story being false, the real game proceeds afterwards.
It seems at first the tactical side of this game is missing at first. Then you figure out the L Trigger can pause the action for command issuing. You are thrown into combat with some simple directions. I found it much easier after I switched the left trigger to function as a toggle switch rather than holding it. Then I could pause the game and issue commands without holding the L trigger the whole time. The problem is there is no tactical view so it's not as tactical feeling when you try to position your party. Sometimes you just have bad angles to work with and it's harder to get an overall sense of the battle.
I did find the AI to be quite a bit more reliable than the one in the first Dragon Age. There are more options and detection settings. I find I am not pausing the game nearly as much as I did in the original Dragon Age as a result. Generally I would always control my characters in DA:1 but now I focus on controlling my mage.
To be fair it is quite early to really appreciate any tactical aspect of this game yet. With only so many abilities at my disposal I'm sure it will be quite a bit different down the road. I must say the abilities I did get to try look pretty amazing.
And speaking of the graphics I don't think anyone would disagree they are much better in this version. Cleaner, more focused design and a tad darker perhaps.
It is definitely feeling more like an action RPG than DA:1 but don't be confused it's by no means Mass Effect 2. It's still got a lot of potential for tactical aspects and the sheer amount of abilities available makes me drool.
That's another thing to point out, instead of skills going in a linear path they go in a tree like path, so you don't necessarily have to get one skill to get another further down the line. They have more than 1 path to the higher tiered abilities.
The combat is extremely fluid but feels too easy as of now.
Only time will tell if it gets more challenging. I am playing it on normal difficulty so there are 2 more tiers to increase the challenge.
Well I'm out of words, I'll post more thoughts later.
If anyone has specific questions let me know and I'll see if I can answer them.
--EDIT--
The way the game handles injuries has been simplified. Instead of affecting combat ratings injuries now simply decrease the maximum HP for any character with an injury. Injury kits still exist to repair these. It's not a big difference but I liked reading the different injuries in DA:1
Here are my initial thoughts:
Upon beginning the game it's what a lot of you have experienced in the Demo, with the exception that you can now customize your character's appearance.
I promptly made an old man with a luxurious wizard's beard. It's a shame your character only has one voice, I found the robust vocals to be directly at odds with my wizened appearance.
If you haven't played the demo basically it throws you directly into combat. It teases you in an extremely creative way. A story of your character is being retold, the original version he tells is embellished and as a result you have access to high tier spells and abilities. They cut back to the frame and the listener complains about the story being false, the real game proceeds afterwards.
It seems at first the tactical side of this game is missing at first. Then you figure out the L Trigger can pause the action for command issuing. You are thrown into combat with some simple directions. I found it much easier after I switched the left trigger to function as a toggle switch rather than holding it. Then I could pause the game and issue commands without holding the L trigger the whole time. The problem is there is no tactical view so it's not as tactical feeling when you try to position your party. Sometimes you just have bad angles to work with and it's harder to get an overall sense of the battle.
I did find the AI to be quite a bit more reliable than the one in the first Dragon Age. There are more options and detection settings. I find I am not pausing the game nearly as much as I did in the original Dragon Age as a result. Generally I would always control my characters in DA:1 but now I focus on controlling my mage.
To be fair it is quite early to really appreciate any tactical aspect of this game yet. With only so many abilities at my disposal I'm sure it will be quite a bit different down the road. I must say the abilities I did get to try look pretty amazing.
And speaking of the graphics I don't think anyone would disagree they are much better in this version. Cleaner, more focused design and a tad darker perhaps.
It is definitely feeling more like an action RPG than DA:1 but don't be confused it's by no means Mass Effect 2. It's still got a lot of potential for tactical aspects and the sheer amount of abilities available makes me drool.
That's another thing to point out, instead of skills going in a linear path they go in a tree like path, so you don't necessarily have to get one skill to get another further down the line. They have more than 1 path to the higher tiered abilities.
The combat is extremely fluid but feels too easy as of now.
Only time will tell if it gets more challenging. I am playing it on normal difficulty so there are 2 more tiers to increase the challenge.
Well I'm out of words, I'll post more thoughts later.
If anyone has specific questions let me know and I'll see if I can answer them.
--EDIT--
The way the game handles injuries has been simplified. Instead of affecting combat ratings injuries now simply decrease the maximum HP for any character with an injury. Injury kits still exist to repair these. It's not a big difference but I liked reading the different injuries in DA:1