I found Aveline held her own against the ogre with Shield Defense active. My Rogue died due to being fireballed by Bethany, but at that point I had whittled the opposition down to the ogre at around 1/2 health, a hurlock, and 2 Hurlock Grunts that were close to dead. I had to heal Aveline once with a spell and twice with potions. But the only casualty of the battle was my Rogue. It was a near thing for Bethany though (she was down to a sliver of health by the time she managed to take out the grunts and the ogre fell). I didn't have Winter's Grasp either. I'll have to try that out next run.

The pre order price dropped on GG to £29.95, which is roughly 35€ for me, a price tag i'm willing to consider.

They have matched D2D who have had that price all along. Handy as I was able to apply the 25% off coupon at Christmas on the Signature edition :D

Ah, it's a matching price drop then ? I didn't know that.

Yeah, that was a good deal. The soundtrack (comes with the sig ed, right?) interests me, but i'm sure they'll make it available separately.

Nice. My Aveline died when she didn't drink the healing pot for the 2nd time even though I kept spamming the quick heal button so I assumed there's some sort of CD going on.

Yah, gonna try Winter's Grasp later too.

Yeah, there's a global cooldown on pots. So what I recommend is go pot, then heal spell, then pot.

Article on DA2 and Bioware on hookedgamers

Interesting read.

Interesting situation has cropped up: apparently DA2 is already up for download from torrent sites. Nothing new there I hear you say, games are often cracked before release, but here's the kicker: the PC version hasn't been leaked yet, it's the console versions that are up for download apparently! Sorta goes to show that pirates will get their hands on it regardless of the platform...

http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/03/03/dragon-age-2-for-xbox-360-leaks-how-will-this-be-blamed-on-pc-gamers/

Indeed, you should turn yourself in and repent, or burn in the fires of hell reserved for us PC gamers! Repent, the end is nigh, throw your computer through the window before it's too late! :D

I would call that a well written lambasting. When I played the demo I couldn't shake the feeling I was playing Enslaved: Odyssey to the West with a clunkier combat system and slightly more complex skills. The dialog options seemed so meaningless, they actually could have had a more fleshed out story by just writing the dialog for you. I mean, did any dialog mean anything besides inviting someone else to join your party?

With that said, I may very well pick up this game, but they want me to get it on release day. I'm sorry, they didn't make a release day worthy game. They get 20 bucks next year, for the on sale GOTY edition.

Just another opinion piece like the dozens or so written already on the subject. The only thing I really agree with is the success of DA:O should have meant little change from the original. If DA2 flops then i'm sure they will realize their error, if not then they were right to make the changes. I'm a big CRPG fan but these days it's dying for a reason, there just isn't the market to sustain massive budget CRPG's and there wont be till the consoles die off.

No, they will be financially rewarded for making the changes, that doesn't make it "right", per se, unless the only point to making a game is to make money (and if it is then we kind of lose the moral high ground, saying games can be art).

Really silly thing to say. Of course people only make games to make money, how are people supposed to live on donations and good will?

I suspect you're either wrong or oversimplifying. If people only made games to make money (and were as mercenary as you imply) they sure as hell wouldn't be programming games, because it pays very little for the effort involved compared to what they could get elsewhere.