Ah, you got the german version, then it makes sense. Speakin of which, could you do me some english to german translation for that fixpack mod? Stick with ToEE, it's much better.
I hope it's not too much to translate, I like to spend my sparetime on chess and RPGs. Send me a list of strings to translate.
You can get it from here: http://rapidshare.de/files/48543807/Ergo_s_Fixpack_v174.rar.html Extract and open the package. Then there should be locale_en.sql (or locale.sql). There is something like ~50 lines of strings to be translated. If you got some spare time, I'd highly appreciate your effort. You can send the translated version to ergomane(at)yahoo(dot)com.
IMHO Dragon Age is a fun CRPG. I have played CRPG fom Ultima I-9, BG 1, II PS:T , TOEE , NW!, NW 2, ROA Trilogy and others. Dragon Age gets two thumbs up. In my personal opinion Drakensang was boring and a pain to play. Drakensang has no replayability. I do not care if it was a budget title. If I pay my money I expect it to live up to its hype. Eschalon I by Basilisk Games was much more fun than Drakensang and it was an independent budget price title. I will be pre-ordering Eschalon II when Basilisk accepts pre-orders.
If you don't get or subscribe to PC Gamer, you missed out on a quite good article on this game. The previews were a definite mistake, solely based on the music choice. I guess it caused all sorts of uproar on forums by veteran CRPG'rs (PnP RPG'rs), like ourselves. Take a look at this site and the related articles for a few more views: (If you can find the article written by Desslock, read it!) http://www.gamesradar.com/pc/dragon-age-origins/g-2007021318127502086
The Revenants/Dragons are a piece of cake. They're also a thousand times easier to beat than a band of low-level thugs in Denerim, which makes no sense. Tough enemies take an MMOesquely long time to beat, which doesn't make them hard at all. You just need a melee fighter with a shield, and a healer-mage. couldn't be easier or more straightforward. I'm, for one, completely disappointed with the spell and skill system, which is entirely too straightforward and bland to say the least.
dragon age is a terrible GAME mixed with an excellent "interactive movie". The story is well written, the setting is well crafted, the graphics are cool, the voice acting is amazing, and so on. But what they messed up on is the game part. The game is just a boring uninspired grind fest with too many MMO trappings, a horribly unbalanced system, a ton of character design traps that will make you suck if you don't bypass them... A bioware employee actually explained that the reason their skill/spell/talent descriptions were so vague is that they locked in all the final wordings in the game for translation while they were still working on balancing the gameplay. So, yes, every single line of dialogue was set in stone before they finished balancing the gameplay (which they never did finish). The bugs are annoying, many of which are balance critial, for example the description says that dex contributes to bow damage, but it is actually STR that determines your damage with a bow. Many skills have issues like that, or they are just plain terrible. Premium content decimates suspension of disbeleif (in game merchants selling it, your journal shows "premium content" as a town name, and lists quests, your map shows some areas in Gold, they are DLC areas, etc... and those are all there if you bought it or not... buying it still means it is labeled premium content and a different color. Best party is 1 shield tank with knockdown immunity and 3 mages... hard and impossible are no different than normal, while easy is still too hard, and is only made "easy" by making AoO spells not affect your own guys (another suspension of disbeleif issue). Dragons, trolls, bosses, etc are all push overs while the most difficult fights are the 20+ random mooks spawns you keep on facing. And lets not forget the terrible uninspired side quests... (fetch this, kill this, etc.) Despite being single player every aspect of it is MMOish... enemies run through your warriors who block the door, unless your warrior uses his "aggro" skills. You can just chug potions, etc etc etc... terrible game. I finally got the point where I couldn't play it anymore despite wanting to see what happens next.
I agree on the fact that it shynes more for the stery than for the gameplay (aside of the MMOG style of many features there's a lot of stuff i think it's related to the fact it's alsoa console-game).. surely tactical-wise it can't be compared to TOEE. Anyway i must admit I'm enjoying it.
must say plaaying more and more gameplay gets dull.. it's just kOTOR all over again.. yet if you can stand the repetitive and console-like combat (even baldur's gate has more tactic than this game sadly, were you can't even block a door with a character since mobs willl be able to ypass him without problems) with too many mmorpg moves (sunder armor, sunder attack and all those "buff, debuff" to kill the monster, were the greatest tactic is to be able to keep aggro)the story is good. note to self: never rewiew a game uunless you ve played it at least once to the end.
I dont get the harsh criticism for DA:O here? I accept and agree with some of the points raised but to say it is a terrible game is just odd. And yes there are flaws in the mechanics of the game. Some pointless specialization- Shapeshifting for example. Difficulty is all over place. But imho most of the issues such as these were more on the level of niggles rather than game breaking. On the plus side, the game ran rock solid for me. GFX on max and some very long sessions without any crashes, bugs or tech problems of any description. The characters and the plot are excellent. I personally didnt find the combat got old at all. Anyway I just wanted to say something as I think DA:O is a very high quality RPG that I enjoyed a great deal. I think some of the criticism here is a little mean spirited. I still adore TOEE but come on guys, that game had more than a few little 'niggles' on release did it not? I for one found it unplayable and EXTREMELY annoying in its unmodded state. I accept that DA:O isnt the game for everyone but to say it is a terrible game is just simply untrue. I was genuinely moved at the epic climax of the game. Tears were shed. For some bizzarre reason I had made my elf mage look like an ex gf from iceland. The biggest problem I have is with replayability though. Maybe with more DLC and some patching I would be inclined to plow another 50+ hours of my life into it. But for now I am back on TOEE
