I took the plunge last night. Big mistake!

Everything else installed on my hard drives, even ARMA 2 will be collecting virtual dust for some time to come.

I designed my character, (human) to resemble Boromir of Lord of the Rings and wouldn't you know it, I am the second in line to the 'throne', my brother off to war. Funny coincidence. Been playing for several hours now and this game has me fully sucked in. The game world is truly alive. Feels like I am the main actor in a LotR type movie.

Taking my time admiring the graphics, reading all the wonderful lore and trying to get to grips with the combat system.

Looks like Bioware have outdone themselves with this one.

Well, I am off to get initiated with the Grey Wardens.

I decided yesterday I wasn't totally happy with my dwarf, so rerolled as an elf mage. Having one helluva good time now

Since I bought DA via Steam on Thursday I've been playing DA for about 22 hours. And have, according to ingame stats, seen just about 26% of the game.

Dragon Age is the best game I've played in a very long time and one of the best computer RPGs I've ever played. For me it's THE game 2009.

Combat is surprisingly challenging for today's standards where the player (at least in non-simulation games) has been pampered for a long time, story and characters are excellent and the dialogues are among the best I've ever seen in a computer game. And then the decisions... no more simple black and white like in previous games, the decisions in DA are often tough, sometimes terribly difficult and always emotionally engaging.

/back to Ferelden

I'm becoming less impressed with that aspect the more I play. Some of the situations you run into are just beyond ludicrous. I just came from about 20 tries at a battle with darkspawn while traveling. There are 3-4 elite (yellow name) melee dudes and about 15 archers behind them. It's maddeningly frustrating. Try to kill the elites, the archers rip through the party in no time. Ignore the elites and go for the archers first and I can get maybe half of them before the damage outpaces healing. I've had enough for tonight. :sleep:

Evil evil evil game!

I played untill 3am last night. Just 5 more minutes! Just this level!

Healing pots, or healer with mana pots is a must for some combats.

It seems like having 2 mages, 1 healing 1 doing AoE, seems to be the big thing for some of the crazy fights. Its how I finally got through my near-impossible fight.

yup found that out myself today need 1 healer 1 AOE then 1 melee and 1 rogue

I need to tune Wynne better... She runs out of spellpoints 10 seconds into a fight

I've so far did quite well with two fighters (my dwarf char and Alistair), Leliana and Morrigan. Leliana can do some AOE damage with bombs and Morrigan is my offensive/healer caster.

Some of the fights ARE quite challenging though. Sometimes it feels like the fights in Baldur's Gate 2 with 2 less party members and no summonded creatures...