So I JUST ordered this on Amazon for $40 for XBOX 360. Didn't think I'd like it, since I never really played Balder Gates or anything, but saw my friend playing it and he says it's his fav. game this generation plus LOOKED great too. I'm really excited to play it, and I'm surprised there hasn't been a thread here about it... everyone here jRPG fans or what?

I got it for the XBOX, not PS3, after doing some thorough research. Here's the final verdict:

PC is best for graphics, lag, texture, everything (assuming you have a strong PC).

PS3 had the graphics set better, but there is more lag and slowdown

XBOX has the worst graphics but runs the best (next to PC of course).

I am a dual-system owner, and ALMOST went with PS3 but decided a game like this is more about gameplay than graphics. Plus, the graphic difference isn't THAT big, maybe only when you zoom in or something. The game isn't super pretty to begin with, so I'm going with gameplay, I think I made the right choice.

Anyway, discuss! And if there are any XBOX owners with this game, I'd love to hear what you have to say about it!

Been wanting to pick up this game, sadly I don't have a system to play it on, but I did get to spend some time on it on my brothers 360. I made a Human Rogue and I only got to the beginning of the Grey Warden Trials, but I had fun doing a few quests I could, kicking some invader ass with my mom and pissing off my brother by getting a dog(He's playing a low class Warrior Dwarf, which doesn't get a dog apparently or at least not yet), who I named Gir.  Hopefully soon I'll be getting a new pc so I can actually play though the game.

I started as a Dwarf Casteless as my first character, and finished the game with it.

Then I rolled a mage, an elf I think. He's going to be my jerk character if I ever get around to playing it again.

My biggest advice is also kind of an endgame spoiler, but here it is: do everything, ever sidequest etc, before attending The Landsmeet late in the game. After that quest, parts of the world basically get locked off (namely Redcliffe, and then after that EVERYWHERE). It is the point of no return for this game.

Great game but there's lots of things that should have been done a lot better. For example most of the class specializations are useless, and having chance to get two specializations just makes odd characters story-wise. There's lots of different equipment to find but 99% of it is useless vendor trash. Many of the talents also feel very uninteresting and useless. The AI is also pretty damn dumb and the whole tactics system is just unnecessarily tiresome.

For example most of the class specializations are useless

wat

When I unlocked Assassin and Duelist for the rogue my guy quickly became some kind of crazy killing machine. They aren't exceptional in any way but they're far from useless.

I will agree the AI is pretty dumb, I've had countless situations where my team mates have just stood there doing jack shit so I have to F2/F3/etc (i played it on pc) over to them to get them to actually fucking do something, even though the tactics screen described pretty accurately what I want them to do.

The plot, graphics and sound are really top notch though, I played the Human Noble storyline which wasn't all that exciting compared to some of the other beginning plotlines, but generally I enjoyed the locations and quests etc. The gameplay is also good but by the second half of the game all I had to do with my rogue really was sneak up behind someone and hit Flurry -> Whirlwind -> Dual-Weapon Sweep (with Momentum and Dueling activated) and a lot of enemies would be dead... maybe I'll increase the difficulty the next time I play, I did it on Normal first time.

The Archdemon was kind of difficult though until I realised there were ballistas you could use. Then it was sort of a joke. The ending battles were enjoyable, but fighting hordes of Darkspawn in Denerim got kind of boring.

So yeah good game, definitely worth getting I'd say, though I don't know much about the console versions.

Man, I have a love/hate relationship with the tactics system. I LOVED it in FFXII, where it worked really well, but it was just kind of dumb and cumbersome in this. It just didn't flow nearly as well and I pretty much just found myself having everyone as ON ENEMY -> USE ALL YOUR FUCKING SKILLS and controlling my healer manually for the whole game.

i have this torrented and all but i wont' have time to really play it again until the summer which is okay because i'm waiting for stuff to come out in the modding community. 

I actually changed my order from getting it for xbox to ps3 since I'm kind of a graphics whore. Is it super laggy on ps3? What systems did you guys play it in? I'll comment more on the actual game when I get it in my hands!

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yeah I bought and liked this game. The dialog isn't the most well written, conversation choices were pretty nuetral most of the time and boring as shit and it didn't have me laughing as much as other games did (neverwinter nights 2) but I still thought it was pretty decent and the ending is cool as hell.

Been playing this since the 23rd or 24th or so and have about 24 hours clocked.... I just finished gathering alliances this morning, which is also when I fought the hardest boss yet, at least in my opinion. Broodmother, holy fuck. I lost Alistair very early and then Wynne (my healer) when Broodmother was still only half dead, so I had to have Morrigan tank the fight as a bear and eventually won. I actually died twice before on the boss, but that was before I realized that it grabs your party members and pretty much kills them if the healer isn't paying attention.

Been playing this since the 23rd or 24th or so and have about 24 hours clocked.... I just finished gathering alliances this morning, which is also when I fought the hardest boss yet, at least in my opinion. Broodmother, holy fuck. I lost Alistair very early and then Wynne (my healer) when Broodmother was still only half dead, so I had to have Morrigan tank the fight as a bear and eventually won. I actually died twice before on the boss, but that was before I realized that it grabs your party members and pretty much kills them if the healer isn't paying attention.

Really? I found that to be one of the easiest bosses. Just control your characters, use stun moves when grabbed, and take out all adds before focusing on the boss itself ​.

Yeah, that's how I went about it on my third attempt. The first two were pretty awful and I think those were the first two times I lost my entire party, despite the fact that I had a lot of close calls. It was long overdue, and I was glad that it happened. I haven't felt continuously challenged yet, so that boss was a lot of fun.

What are some good tank tactics? I mostly just have Alistair keeping threat on and charging in first to initially take on everything, and it seems to work most of the time.

That is the tank tactic, really. If you have the DLC then Shale is good, too, if you know how to use it. The different modes are useful when you get the hang of them. Note me being ambiguous because I can't be bothered to use more spoiler tags.

My first playthrough was a dwarf warrior, so she and Alistair ran in, and I controlled Wynne to keep them both healed and buffed. Between them aggro very rarely got anywhere else, and between both their massive HP bars I rarely had any deaths except in a few extreme cases. Tbh tons and tons of medium enemies were more difficult with that setup than one or two giant enemies. Also spellcasters were always a bitch. If I ever had deaths it was because of fucking Genlock Emmisaries or whatever they were called and their damn curses.

Yeah, my character is a warrior as well, so I've noticed myself that aggro rarely gets past Alistair and myself, except when Morrigan randomly runs in to cast a spell, which I should probably do something about.

About Morrigan, I never knew how much of a monster she was in bear form until the Broodmother. With Alistair and Wynne down, she was comfortably able to tank the entire fight without receiving any healing at all. I might consider playing around with her bear form a bit more to see how she compares to Alistair or even Shale.

Another neat idea if bear form as is great for tanking as it appears to be would be to make a mage character with the shapeshifter specialization, and just keep them in bear form for the game. That way, I wouldn't have to sacrifice Morrigan or Wynne since having two mages casting spells together in the party is pretty much win-win.

I never used Morrigan at all. I used the two Rogue characters you get interchangeably, Wynne, my dwarf warrior and Alistair for 90% of the game.

Problem was only one had lockpick, and the other had detect traps.. which is why I used both at different points.

On my next (well, already started) playthrough I'm rolling a healer wizard myself so I can just use him, Alistair, one of the rogues and that other tank I talked about earlier. I don't really see the need for two wizards, I guess it would make it easier but the game is already hella easy. On Wynne the only spells I use are heal, group heal, the heal over time and the knockback/earthfist/whatever it's called spell anyway!

Yeah I'm tempted to make a healer myself, just because I feel that Wynne's AI doesn't always do the best job at healing the party members, and I would rather control the character I created than Wynne.

After I beat it with my warrior, my next character will be a mage for sure. I just can't decide between healer or shapshifter yet. They're both quite fun from what I can tell.

Yeah Wynne's AI seems to be bugged or something. Sometimes she just attacks and lets the party members die even though she has plenty of mana to cast spells. Still, she's the only "healer" around so I take her wherever I go. I also use Morrigan always for crowd control purposes and elemental weapon buffs (fire weapons are awesome for Revenant fights). I barely ever use her shape shifting abilities though. I play a damage dealer two-handed warrior myself and the last slot is usually a choice between my tank characters (99% of time I bring Alistair).

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the last airbender...