It's a real tragedy that they decided to hide their very interesting characters and world within such an insanely generic LOTR ripoff plot. I almost skipped out on the game because of that. Luckily, it is just the "overarching" plot and doesn't really affect 90% of the game which is wrapped up in more isolated questlines.

Mage origin story is a fantastic way to start for anyone who thinks the game looks generic. Definitely got me hooked into the experience right away. I hear the dwarven ones are really good too. The dwarven quests later on get really dark and crazy, I'm pretty sure the ESRB was not told about some of the stuff in there.

I think that, hands down, this is the best cast of characters Bioware has ever written. Yeah, no one is quite as overtly hilarious as Minsc, but they all have a lot of depth and none of them are stupid or annoying. There's tons of banter between all of them when you're walking around town (always the best part of bioware games) and most of it is really funny or insightful and the relationships actually progress over time. It's cruelty that you're only allowed to use three at a time. I wanted to use every single one.

The silly persistent blood can be turned off very easily in the options menu, which is highly recommended. Nothing can be taken seriously when everyone is covered in red dots. I recommend not using subtitles as well.

I finished the game last night, took about 45 hours, and have already started it again despite having lots of work to do. That's the best endorsement I can give it. Can't stop playing, aargh!

It seems like people either really like this game or really dont like it.
I'm scared to buy it because I dont know which one I'll be!

Quote: Original post by LockePick
The silly persistent blood can be turned off very easily in the options menu, which is highly recommended. Nothing can be taken seriously when everyone is covered in red dots. I recommend not using subtitles as well.

or just ask your dog to lick it off

Quote: Original post by Cygon

I don't enjoy the AD&D rules.

DAO is not DnD, it's some weird mashup of DnD-like-but-not-like rules & World of Warcraft. Honestly, I think it translates much better to a PC game than PnP DnD.

Quote: Original post by Cygon
Controlling a group also isn't for me. I want to identify with a character and be immersed in the world as him.

I'll probably wait for Mass Effect 2.

I kind of agree with this. My favorite Bioware game so far has been SoU + HotU. It's pretty much just your character, and your trusty kobold bard!

I completely agree with prefering to have a single character than controlling a group. The larger the group, the worse it is.

I remember with baldurs gate you could have up to 6 characters in your party, but I always went with the minimum I could get away with, which usually meant just 1 person (the main guy). It was way harder that way but its more my style.

Have played four characters up to level 6 or 7 now. Two elven mages, one dwarf warrior, and now a human thief.

Dialogue is a bit underwhelming to me. Why didn't they go the extra mile and get 6 actors to do the character voices? And I hope that the choices I make after Duncan is killed will seem to have more of an impact on the storyline. So far, no matter the answers I chose, the game seemed to play out the exact same way.

Graphics are underwhelming.

Combat mechanics are underwhelming. There are times when I can't even see where I'm casting my area effect spells (sleep).

Have had locked doors that should be triggered to open by the storyline remain locked.

But I still enjoy the game a lot, so...

Am really liking playing a thief right now, more so than the mages. Love trying to get those backstabs in (though dual wield doesn't work with backstab). Hope to switch back to playing a mage once I get a better feel for the combat mechanics, so I can go back to playing nightmare.

Quote: Original post by Silvermyst
There are times when I can't even see where I'm casting my area effect spells (sleep).

really? the large overlay on the floor for the target area isn't a clue? (I'm talking about the PC version of course)

Quote: Original post by phantom
really? the large overlay on the floor for the target area isn't a clue? (I'm talking about the PC version of course)

I imagine that is quite difficult to see from the default console camera angle. I've been playing on the PC as well and mostly use the top down view for combat so haven't had a problem with the area effect indicators but I can see how they'd be hard to see from the third person viewpoint used in the console versions.

I beat it last night at about ~40 hours in and am rather underwhelmed by the whole thing. I rolled Human Noble Warrior and ended up taking the shield talents to serve as the group's "tank" since I figured that'd be the easiest way to avoid the tedious party management functions on a console.

Once I had raised my strength enough to wear Massive armour, I was unkillable and the whole game went downhill. I had bosses hitting me for ~5 damage and was sitting on a stockpile of over 60 health potions by the time I got to the final boss. Keep in mind: I was playing on NIGHTMARE difficulty.

I played the entire game with an all melee party except for my healer and my advice is to not do it. There's not a single place they can stand against most bosses without taking damage, front, sides or back, and that's very taxing on your healer to have your entire party taking damage. The game is very biased to mages and with the Arcane Warrior specialization, they get all of the armour benefits of being melee anyways.

Very broken combat system.

I might try again playing entirely by myself as an Arcane Warrior without any party members -- that might make it somewhat interesting. I'll first have to work up the nerve of replaying the Dwarf city... what a nightmare. If your technology can't have the city be one loading screen, redesign the quests so you don't have to face 3 loading screens while you run across town to investigate and hand them in.

Quote: Original post by GroZZleR
I beat it last night at about ~40 hours in and am rather underwhelmed by the whole thing.

Maybe because you sped through the game? I'm about 40 hours in and I'm just to the dwarven city and about 25% of the content. This isn't an MMO where the goal is to get to the end as quick as possible (and even in an MMO that shouldn't be the goal!).

How many achievements did you unlock along the way?