Dragon Age 2

[Fivelives]

I still haven't used Fenris or Merrill (outside of their respective loyalty quests).

First playthrough (allied with mages and went the sarcastic route) I went with mage Hawke, Aveline, Anders, and Varric. I romanced Merrill that time.
Second playthrough (allied with templars and went the diplomatic route) I went with rogue Hawke, Aveline, Anders (until I executed him, then replaced with Bethany), and Isabela, who was the target of my "affections".
Third playthrough I'm going to be as evil as possible - I won't spoil the choices I'll be making for you guys that are slacking and haven't finished the game yet.

And yeah, there's a bug on the 360 (not sure if it's on the PC or PS3 version) regarding imported saves - it's not reading the flags properly.

[Skye1013]

[Brutalicus]

Haha, always look at which symbol pops up before you say something...
Fun fact: if you take Bethany/Carver to the Deep Roads, Merrill's "Mourning" worst gets flagged as complete and you can't do her follow-up quest (getting the tool from the Keeper and the last step of Herbalist's Tasks) or continue her romance. I had to fix it with a debug screen in the dev console! D:

Also, Merrill's rivalry romance is infinitely better than the friendship version. Provided you disapprove of her use of blood magic, that is.

[Skye1013]

Haha, always look at which symbol pops up before you say something...
Fun fact: if you take Bethany/Carver to the Deep Roads, Merrill's "Mourning" worst gets flagged as complete and you can't do her follow-up quest (getting the tool from the Keeper and the last step of Herbalist's Tasks) or continue her romance. I had to fix it with a debug screen in the dev console! D:

Also, Merrill's rivalry romance is infinitely better than the friendship version. Provided you disapprove of her use of blood magic, that is.

If you read the comments section that Tim writes, it actually explains what happened in that particular scenario... he was trying to avoid as many rivalry points as possible... and his other two options both had hearts next to them (hooray for lose-lose situations... unless of course you like gay sex .)

[laterna]

Man that anders is a slut! He just met my female hawke. One quest later, he asked if I was intrested in him. I told him "keep it professional" and voila -20 rivalry points

Who asks the main character out after just a quest jeez...

[Shyrtandros]

Man that anders is a slut! He just met my female hawke. One quest later, he asked if I was intrested in him. I told him "keep it professional" and voila -20 rivalry points

Who asks the main character out after just a quest jeez...

He sails in all directions.. he did the same thing to my MALE hawke...

[Shyrtandros]

I went with a dual wield rogue spec with fully buffed Power + another self buff (Forgot name). I run anders with wep buff, heroic buff, heals and AoE's, Fenris with AoE's and group might + stamina buffs, followed by aoe Varric with the improved stuns and the smoke screens.

Even on hard it's pretty much 3-5 seconds of massive death for all common mobs with twin blades improved and assassinate improved I can pop some CD's and either 2 shot or have a target VERY low in the same time my group handles the trash.

So amazing

[Fivelives]

I usually go the speed route on rogues. With the rune reward from the haunted quest giving +20% speed, the attack speed for rogues goes BEYOND ridiculous.

Has anyone tried a lvl 50 playthrough yet? I'm going to do that with my third playthrough - it should increase the difficulty by a good clip, since the biggest, baddest weapons are only 45 damage (for melee) and 145 damage (for bows). I haven't had any issues with difficulty yet, even playing on hard. I imagine Aveline with Fadeshear (pre-order bonus) and Varric with Bianca will be my biggest damage dealers there, since both of those weapons improve with character levels.

[Sabindeus]

2H warrior/templar for the massive AoE win

[Aubade]

Just picked it up today! Just recruited Isabela and am playing through as a mage. Absolutely loving it thus far =]

[Passionario]

Tried it out yesterday.

Got my ass handed to me on Hard. Then I remembered to pick up promo/DLC items, and everything became simple again.

[Brutalicus]

How do you kill that Ogre in the prologue on Hard? I gave it a couple tries on my rogue (who is almost through the story now) and said "fuck it" before lowering it to normal... now she kills anything non-boss in one Assassinate strike -_-

[Fivelives]

Liberal use of healing potions, and turn Bethany into a healer - get the buff aura and heal spell from the creation tree. Then, let Aveline mostly take care of the ogre while you pick off all the other darkspawn from both waves. Once you're done picking off the darkspawn, the ogre should hate Aveline enough that you can unload on it.

And yeah, assassinate is overpowered as fuck.

[Passionario]

How do you kill that Ogre in the prologue on Hard?

Kite him around. His pattern of attacks is entirely predictable, and unlike DAO, you can actually dodge an autoattack by stepping away.

The most difficult part of that fight is downing all the Hurlocks, actually.

[cerwillis]

I finished my first playthrough yesterday, as a rogue Hawk. Having already played DA:O as mage and warrior, I decided that twin fangs and backstab were gonna be this guy's style. (some possible spoilers to follow)

I played my character as moderate as possible, rejecting the templars and blood magic, but doing what I could to help out legit templars like (whats-his-name). I also helped mages to escape from the circle when applicable, assuming they didn't turn into some monstrosity that required a dagger to the face.

My group was Aveline as tank, with Varric, and Anders healing. I would swap in the others for Varric or Anders as the plotlines suggested, or when I was trying to bang them. Speaking of which, I made friends with all of my people with the exception of the Elf guy, I didn't use him much. I did manage to get him to take my side in the final battle.

My romance was primarily with Isabella, who can deny that rack? Ultimately, I got bored and added Merrill to the harem. In the end they both told me they loved me, but the story had me end with Issie.

I was a little annoyed by the size of the text on my TV with the XBOX version, I often had to get up off the couch to read something, but that was a minor inconvenience. Bottom line, a great upgrade to an already great game.

Next, I will try out some rivalries and a different race combination. If you play a brown-skinned elf, is Bethany still your sister? I'm curious to see how they work that out. I could just be crazy and imagining char customization from some other game.