With MacquarieCon out of the way (more on that soon, I promise), I knuckled down and finished Dragon Age. I know there are a number of different endings, and there’s a particularly interesting one that I would like to take, but now that I’m done with my first play-through, I’m not sure that I can be assed doing it again straight away. I deliberately avoided a bunch of sidequests so there would be some surprises, but I know it won’t be enough to keep me interested.
I think party of the problem is the complexity of the combat system. While Mass Effect was laughably simple (action RPGs often are), more traditional games can get complex. In games like Neverwinter Nights, I had no problem maximising my build because I knew and grokked the underlying D&D system. With Dragon Age, I was learning on the fly, which resulted in a substandard build that only really became effective in the last quarter of the game.
And then I made some bad decisions about party makeup in the final stretch, forcing me to drop down to casual (the easiest difficulty setting) to defeat the Archdemon. At that difficulty, it’s very easy to see the changes the game is making to make things easier for you. For one, the ballistae don’t jam, and they distract the dragon so it can’t do anything.
Anyway, part of my eagerness to move on is that Mass Effect 2 is approaching fast, and I’ve been given a pile of things to try on my new PS3. I’d really like to get through a bunch of those games by the end of January. They’re mostly old games, so I probably won’t write about them unless something stands out.
All I have to do now is commandeer the TV back from P.