Must be. It's supposed to play an arranged version of a Florence + The Machine song.

Casual (Easy) is a cakewalk. It's speeding things up perfectly. Honestly, I like the challenge of Nightmare with Friendly Fire and the necessity of using your party's talents to maximum effect. But the fact that every battle throws waves of enemies at you just makes me want to get through the combat as quickly as possible. It's really only served to make the game tedious to me. At this point I'm just curious to see how the story plays out.

The waves are certainly the worst part of combat, but after leveling up a ways they really never bothered me. I had so many crowd control and AoE attacks that I could just wipe them out quickly, and that was on hard mode. On nightmare I could see them being a much bigger pain in the ass I guess.

I did turn it down to normal for some boss fights though, not really because they were hard but more because they were so long.

For me it's horrendous. You can't use AoE talents/spells when your party is being mobbed without seriously damaging or killing one or more party members. I'm not one of those guys that plays on nightmare and boasts about what a cakewalk it is. I find it hard. But I like that. However, when waves of enemies are spawning in behind your party or in closed areas around your squishies, it takes it beyond hard to just plain aggravating. I can live without the aggravation.

***spoiler***

A good example is one of the quests in chapter one where you go into the 'barracks' and get into that fight with the false guardsmen. Your party arrives in an entry room with a door in the N, E, and W walls (assuming you enter from the South). The doors to the east and west can't even be interacted with. You open the door to the north which leads into a main hall and the battle starts. I held my party in the entry room and battled it out at the doorway, which is a sensible tactic.

Of course, the second wave spawns into that entry room. Meanwhile I'm still trying to clean up the first wave (most of whom run right by my tank who's blocking the door) and despite the fact that I knew they'd spawn in there and I moved my squishies to the peripheries, they spawn right beside them and start spanking the crap out of my mages. So I have to try to move them. But I can't take them into the main hall because it's blocked by my tank and the mobs he's fighting. This despite the fact the mobs can run right through at will! Can't drop AoE spells because I'll toast my own party. Can't even cast a bloody spell because the overpowered archers just constantly pincushion my mages and the knockback effect both clears their action queue so no spells can be cast and also makes it so they can't move.

Meanwhile, the third wave now spawns in the other room and proceeds to run in and add their little bit of grief to the party. Despite all this, I actually managed to get through that battle (with one party member left standing), but this kind of crap keeps happening in almost every single battle.

As a caveat, I realize the spawns in this particular case can be explained away as having come through the doors in the East and West of the room, but FFS, at the very least those doors should have been able to be interacted with even if it was only to get a message that they're locked. And once they do appear, then let me use those fracking doors for a tactical retreat!! But by and large the spawns are just out of nowhere and completely illogical.

Bah. I don't even know if this rant makes it clear what I'm frustrated about.

***End Spoilers***

Sounds right. Try hard mode, it has no friendly fire but is still hard.

I understand your frustration perfectly, i already mentioned that specific fight in another thread.

Oh, and they really fall through the ceiling, the attached pic was taken during that fight ;)

If they were to come through the side doors you could use the doorways as choke points and adjust the position of your party to keep making a stand in the entry hall, or you could have your tank clear a path and then retreat into one of the rooms and then have your tank block the doorway, have your rogue dealing with anything that made into the room and have your AOE's being spammed beyond the doorway in the entry hall. That's the point when people say there's no tactics in DA2. Pause and micromanaging without a defined battlefield is not tactical combat, it's just pause and micromanaging, and waves of mobs spawning in from mid air and landing on top of your party denies any notion of a defined battlefield, there just isn't one. That plus the insane combat pace completely denies any tactical approach and the key to almost every fight on Nightmare is CTRL + A, CTRL +A, CTRL+A, that's about as tactical as it gets.

That fight in the barracks, aside from the Wraith in the deep roads, is probably the tougher one in CH1 and in nightmare it's a chore, not fun at all. The fact that the last spawn drops 4 or 5 elites is just a big kick in the quads.

Things I disliked story wise.
!!SPOILERS!! people.

------------------------


Anders/Justice blowing up the Chantry. I don’t even want to begin to try and understand he justification behind this. There just isn’t is there? Not really. It’s a giant over the top thing they put there to finally get the two sides to attack each other. Also I’m rather annoyed nothing came of that potion, I knew something was up when it was all too simple collecting the ingredients but seriously. Anders had us on a needles wild goose chase to set that one up. And his clothing changed to black, I could do nothing more than raised an eyebrow until the event happened and the other eyebrow joined it.

Repeated areas, to an extent I can deal with it. They could have added a few new areas for the last chapter though, it would have been nice.

So many bloody blood mages. Having a fair few of them that resort to blood magic, particularly under desperate circumstances, sure, that was the point I assumed. The vast majority of mages just going for it? I hadn’t even done anything to antagonise them. Nope you're out to get them and they need to attack and use blood magic immediately. Talking? Who talks when you have so much blood around? That quest, where you’re just investigating a gathering of circle mages, most frustrating part ever. I was for mages damn it, for them. I was only supposed to take a peak and ended up killing them all.
And as far as I can tell blood magic isn’t necessarily that evil, a character even says it isn’t necessarily evil. Merrill does it, everyone knows she did and does. All the way through the game I was expecting something to happen, nothing, no reproductions when apparently it’s this huge deal and legit the most evil thing ever.

It’s a shame because I like where they were taking some of it and I enjoyed quite a few of the characters. The companion quests where good.

****spoilinis****



I guess the clue there was the ingredients. Sala Petre and Dragon Rock. Looking back it's pretty obvious it's meant to be Saltpeter (potassium nitrate) and Sulphur which are two ingredients in gunpowder. We know gunpowder exists as the Qunari use it, just people of Thedas haven't discovered it. Anders probably found the recipie from his Tevinter research then added Lyrium to the mix and .... BOOOM.

Still makes no sense for Anders to have cause the genocide of all the mages in Kirkwall.

It's harder at lower levels on Nightmare but once you get above Level 12 it gets alot easier. Focus on getting your tank/Aveline to withstand dmg, e.g. Aveline and the Guardian talents which you shld focus on ASAP after getting the most important Imp Shield Bash.
Turn off Party Tactics for all your members unless it's those spells/abilities that cast on a single target like Winter's Grasp. There was once I was winning a fight, and then Carver Scythed a group of enemies close to my party, effectively killing off my party members..
For heals it's up to you, if you prefer to time heals go ahead and turn heals off for your Mages.

Most importantly, have a Mage with Imp Chain Lightning, best if you get the max Primal talent that boosts it's dmg as well. Have your tank taunt a whole grp of mobs, then Imp Shield Bash one of them, pause the game before the Shield Bash hits, and activate Imp Chain Lightning on the mob. The cross class combo will effectively take out or severely weaken almost all the mobs around your tank. It's very useful on Nightmare and Chain Lightning doesn't have FF.

For neverending waves that occur in rooms which you feel you aren't powerful enough and can't take on yet, or is just plain impossible to fight in the same room: try using corridors and stairways to maximum effect while placing your tank right in front. Hold your party other than your tank at the corridor, while your tank goes into the room and lure them out a few at a time. If that's not possible and the whole bunch comes, immediately activate AOE attacks like Firestorm and Varric's Arrow Volley at the door with your tank slightly behind the radius of your AOE. Once they come, taunt them away and do an Assault to better keep arggo.

For asshole mobs like Blood Mages and Assassins, make sure your Mage has Improved Crushing Prison which works well with Staggered(Imp Shield Bash, 2H Warrior crits), Horror and Petrify. Even on Nightmare, if you time these 3 spells right, you can kill one Assassin before they even stealth out. So essentially, the moment they come at you and get Staggered, you can kill them already

I do this method for almost all the waves and waves of mobs on Nightmare. I had to kite on earlier levels, because I didn't learn about Stagger->Imp Chain Lightning. Once I got to higher levels like > 15, Other than using cross class combos, your party is able to withstand the normal waves without going to measures like kiting or luring.

So most of the time we're fighting mobs in DA2, which is y combat other than the Ancient Rock Wraith, High Dragon and Hybris is so repetitive and boring.

A translation of a Q&A with the...eh...'level designer'...or copypasta dude if you prefer.

Thanks for taking the time, but yeah, I know all those tactics/tricks. I've only reached level 9 so far, so don't have all of the talents you've outlined, but do have the lightning line with Anders. I use Fenris instead of Aveline. Maybe I'll try her for a while.

But honestly, I just wish the battles weren't all basically the same damned thing.

That's an argument that could be leveled against DA: Origins as well, and pretty much any combat-heavy RPG (Icewind Dale, Diablo 2, etc.).

To an extent, yes, but it's funny it just didn't seem as egregious in DA:O. But in other games, at least there are more varieties of monster and thus you more often need to use different spells/abilities.

Q: How much content is in DA2? Does it even get close to DAO's 100 hours of gameplay?

A: Everyone plays the game differently, and so the game's length varies greatly. In the end, DA2 is very long and can be prolonged by replays.

I find it amusing they actually rely on replay value to compare it to the length of Origins when by having one story and one origin it pretty much robs the game of much of it's replay value. Even ME2 as linear as it was had two distinct endings.