[Maark Abbott]

Further thoughts having played for a bit:

Removing heals and putting an arbitrary potion limit down was a dumb move.
Putting a brick wall at the end of a major storyline quest (one shotting multiple characters at once? Really) was an even worse one.

[Wolfdrop]

Just got this and must have replayed the opening sequence half a dozen times trying to decide on what character I want. I've always got this problem with RPG's!

[Cause]

I know you can be a qunari inquisitor in the game but is the qunari culture present in a meaningful way?

[Werthead]

 Imperial Historian, on 21 November 2014 - 03:36 PM, said:

So anyone else got this for PC? I got it and played it for an hour or so, and from what I saw the game has potential storyline wise, but the control system felt really clunky to the point I quit because I was getting annoyed with it. I suppose it might get better once I'm used to it but it still seems strange, looting is frustrating, it's incredibly easy to get the camera in an idiotic position during combat, and the way the system is set up of you controlling the lead character and everyone else follows you makes playing a non-tank frustrating as you will inevitably enter combat first and everyone charges at you (yes I know you can control other characters, but I designed a mage character because I want to play as one not a fighter!) . The tactical view screen also doesn't zoom out nearly enough.

The PC controls are knackered. BioWare are issuing a patch, apparently.

Quote

To be fair most games will be geared towards consoles now. PC gaming, whilst still awesome, is becoming more and more niche as consoles spread into genres they'd otherwise have avoided.

This is definitely a sentiment from about ten years ago The situation now is that PC gaming is coming back quite large and strong, and we've seen from various Kickstarter mega-successes, surprise hits like the PC port of Valkyria Chronicles and improved sales of the PC edition of various big games. PC ports even seem to have a lot more work being put into them now.

[Maark Abbott]

Steam may be helping with PC gaming, as will the kickstarters, but honestly, I doubt I'd go back to it as my primary platform. Keeping up with games tech is very cost-prohibitive.

Back to topic: FINALLY got past Alexius (seriously Bioware, WHY), and just beat the second boss (much more appropriate for this stage in the game... Good old WoW style tank'n'spank).

I'm about twenty hours in all told, and holy balls, this game is massive. They weren't kidding when they said that The Hinterlands were bigger than Kirkwall and the surrounding area combined.

[drinksinbars]

Picked this up off cdkeys for cheap last week and have to say i am really enjoying it. the world is just huge and highly entertaining, but there are some major flaws in the pc version that hopefully will get modded out - though its easy to look past them.

the constant need to click every object to loot or check from one inch away is beyond irritating after a while. in previous versions if you click from a distance away your charcter would go and pick the thing up themselves, which was much more pleasant. now you have to get to just the right spot, adjust the camera and then clic, sometimes multiple times to pick up some useless stuff you dont even want. grrrr - most of the time i just no longer pick shit up. same for combat, before if controlling a character you simply clicked them and the character would auto attack, you could drop in some moves if you wanted but basic atacks would continue happening. now its like i need to be trying to aim attacks (easy to miss with things being quite chaotic and a very zoomed in view) with a control system that doesnt favour it.

aside from that the game looks fantastic, and some of the set pieces and environments are great to explore. the random difficulty spikes can get annoying, but having a balanced team really helps. the charcters interaction while you trudge around is also very entertaining.

overall very impressed, though the inquisition perks are abit slow coming, been playng for ages and think i am still only level 4 in perks!

[Maark Abbott]

Who else rolled Qunari rogue? I know there are others.

Amusingly the character model is about a foot taller than the human party members, but cutscenes put my character at anywhere between eight and ten foot tall. Sneaky sneaky tally stabby. O ho ho ho.

Odd to have a Qunari that speaks like Hawke or Varric, too.

[Obdigore]

 Maark, on 22 November 2014 - 09:31 PM, said:

Further thoughts having played for a bit:

Removing heals and putting an arbitrary potion limit down was a dumb move.
Putting a brick wall at the end of a major storyline quest (one shotting multiple characters at once? Really) was an even worse one.

I also don't like the removing of heals, but if you had one dedicated healer it made most encounters pretty easy, especially when you only fight one creature at a time. With the 'overshields' and their cool-downs, it makes the game more tactical.

I believe that 2-H warriors have a heal-on-hit thing they can use, and there are a lot of (at least that I'm using) Percentage Heal on Kill additions to weapons and armor, so that every time you kill something (and I've yet to encounter a boss that didn't summon adds).

Can you spoiler tag which boss you are fighting? I'm not sure which one you are on, but I haven't encountered anything like that yet. That said I've been exploring a whole bunch and my storyline is at

Spoiler

Figuring out why the Grey Wardens are congregating in the Western Approach because the evil templar dude is somehow sending them the mind thingy that makes them think a blight is approaching

I've captured 2 keeps and am level 15 so far.

[Maark Abbott]

Spoiler

I'll say it was Main Quest 1 Side 1 and leave it there. Got past it in the end but the boss following it was much fairer (I loathe mage bosses)

Something I do like is that you can spec anyone into anything regardless of how they're advertised. All my warriors are tanks, all my mages are equipped with overshield and varying CC, and then I've got my archery rogue with me too, then me as melee dps.

[Maark Abbott]

Encountered a very amusing but also kind of annoying bug. I've tagged it below as it could possibly constitute a spoiler.

Spoiler

So I've unlocked Skyhold and holy balls. It's awesome. The scale of this game is massive. And I just met Hawke, too (Cassandra was admittedly pissed with Varric...) but the game asks if you want the default Hawke or a custom one. So I switched to custom.

Now my character has an upper class English voice (female Qunari rogue, because let's face it when else are you EVER going to see a lady Qunari?) but selecting the custom Hawke changed the voiceset to the American sounding one. My character wound up sounding like Roseanne. And it stuck beyond the cutscene too! Had to reload an autosave to fix it.

I'm now of to hunt a Warden who didn't die after I had Sten duel him....

Also nonspoiler protip: Speccing Iron Bull as a tank was a very wise move. He's nigh indestructible so far - almost always has max armour plus mage barrier up. I'm learning how to more effectively use my ranged DPS (at this stage Sera and Dorian) to keep their HP up as they're the party members that usually wind up taking the most damage.

[Obdigore]

If that is where you are, I have absolutely no idea what boss you were getting one shot by.

[Maark Abbott]

Spoiler

Alexius - He has this green circle AOE that ticks after about a second. Rogues are squishy and mages are squishy. It tends to make them very dead. I wound up dropping the difficulty because he was taking half my guys out in one go.

The following ones have certainly seemed more balanced, but I note that I'm not the only one to perceive these random spikes in difficulty. It'd be like having the Spider Guardian from Prime 2 in the first 10th of the game.

[Studlock]

It's going to be so devastating when I finally download this game, after days of trails and tribulations to attain it, only for it not to work on my old ass gaming laptop. I'm hoping ol' Besty can take it, she's been good to me these years after my third (3rd!) 360 died on me but I got a shit graphics card. I don't really understand it other than it's shit. Everything else though is pretty top notch. A pray upon a star.

[Maark Abbott]

If you turn everything down to minimum settings you might get away with it, but be prepared for hideous loading times.

[Studlock]

That's how I did Witcher 2 and that turned out fine. I rarely buy triple A games anymore so I wasn't prepared for my game-lust. I needed this game, everything I saw of it just made me want more. If I can't play I don't if I'll be able to handle the heartbreak.

Edit: if any kind soul wishes to part on me the wisdom of the computer gods that be great: I have double of the minimum amount of RAM (8.1 GBs), my CPU speed is 1.6 GHz while the recommended is 2.0. My video cards has more than the minimum amount of Pixel Shader version (4.0 VS 5.0), Vertex Shader version ( again 4.0 VS 5.0), and I have 1.0 GB dedicated video RAM compared to the minimum of 512 MB, and yet 'can I run it' says I can't (the actual video cards: minimum (AMD Radeon HD 4870) vs mine (ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650)).

This post has been edited by Studlock: 25 November 2014 - 04:53 PM

[Garak]

Take a look at this: http://forum.bioware...-please-see-op/ I beat all the requirements expect the processor and I can't run it (I'm getting an I3 from a friend to rectify this).

[Mentalist]

 Studlock, on 25 November 2014 - 02:02 PM, said:

It's going to be so devastating when I finally download this game, after days of trails and tribulations to attain it, only for it not to work on my old ass gaming laptop. I'm hoping ol' Besty can take it, she's been good to me these years after my third (3rd!) 360 died on me but I got a shit graphics card. I don't really understand it other than it's shit. Everything else though is pretty top notch. A pray upon a star.

Is it intelintegrated gphx? Cuz that's pretty much a writeoff. As is any integrated video card.

I've went through 2 laptops with integrated videocards through my postsecondary years. They've set me back hopelessly with a gaming backlog.

I've managed to get Witcher 2 running on Intel before, but I'd hardly call that playing. 2 xmasses ago I've built a proper gaming rig.

[Cause]

 Studlock, on 25 November 2014 - 02:02 PM, said:

It's going to be so devastating when I finally download this game, after days of trails and tribulations to attain it, only for it not to work on my old ass gaming laptop. I'm hoping ol' Besty can take it, she's been good to me these years after my third (3rd!) 360 died on me but I got a shit graphics card. I don't really understand it other than it's shit. Everything else though is pretty top notch. A pray upon a star.

http://www.systemreq...ntslab.com/cyri

[Cause]

It does not but it comes with something called dragons keep that asks you questions about your previous games so you it will tailor the story to match

[Garak]

I posted a link to the keep a few pages back (it's free to use btw).