I admit my first play through was on casual, because it had been a good 4 years since I played a party style RPG.

But bioware's games seem to be having more and more EA influence as the sequels are released. Which is a bad thing. I played the DA2 demo on normal, and it was too easy.. almost tediously so.

I'll start on hard, then.

I played Origins on Hard, except during solo segments like the Fade. Where I went to Normal. And to Casual on one occasion. Like the building full of Blood Mages and traps in Denerim. Doing that without Mana Clash is ridiculously annoying.

And my only really issue is that ice magic seems...almost useless...now. I saw a Fire damage boost skill in the tree, but not one for ice.

Mcface:
I admit my first play through was on casual, because it had been a good 4 years since I played a party style RPG.

But bioware's games seem to be having more and more EA influence as the sequels are released. Which is a bad thing. I played the DA2 demo on normal, and it was too easy.. almost tediously so.

Then bump it up to hard like they said. There's no reason that lighter players should get shafted just because the bettter/more hardcore ones want their optimal difficulty to be called normal.

I'm there for the story, battles in RPG's have always felt tedious and dull to me. Especially when they're done like in the first Dragon Age. I prefer, by far, the more active and dynamic system that actually lets you feel like you're in control that DA2 has.

So casual/normal it is for me, and boy am I glad that Bioware are recognizing the toughness of the first Dragon Age.

i want that shield.

I too confess I played Origins on casual, though I think the normal level of difficulty in DAII, based on the demo, is pretty well balanced. Which makes me glad because even on casual Origins sometimes kicked my ass, and I grinded my characters to pretty high levels, almost maxing them out by the end of the game.

Now, if they could explain why they made it suck, that would be nice!

Seriously, the Dragon Age 2 demo was so bad that it made me very very sad.

.________.

That sad.

I started playing Origins on easy, I'll admit it.
Then I advanced to medium, then hard, which I ended up beating it on. Course I was playing as a tank, leaving my character free to charge headfirst into battle like a certain Sir Jenkins. I'm sure I'd face more challenge as a rogue or mage.

I got good at the tactical combat and understanding what party member is good for what role, so I think I'll start DA2 at hard.

I play Bioware games for the story. If the gameplay gets to hard and interrupts the progression of that story, I get pissed. Which is why I always play the games on easy the first time through.

Blah. It wasn't hard. Kids have it too easy nowadays. Back in my day, we had to have our characters eat food and water or they'd DIE. And we had to do it MANUALLY. Through 5 feet of snow, both ways!

I played Origins on hard and it was easy 0-o, ggaaa stop watering down stuff for the mouth breathers already!

The only problem I see in DA2 is the micro management with the consoles. I have to press X for attack which makes it harder for me to pay attention to every one, when I am busy pressing the X button to attack. Thankfully it has a auto attack, or I would be screwed.

Mirrorknight:
*snip*

Storm of the Century was broken as hell. :)

But I'm talking about DA:2, which doesn't seem to have Blizzard.

I found only one part kind of hard, and that was just after getting Liliana. The rest of the game was kind of a sinch. This disapoints me, games should not be a sit back and cruise through the action - you SHOULD have to think about what moves you make. It's called making a rewarding experience people!

The problem with Origins and every other BioWare/Black Isle/Obsidian (I lump them all together because they're obscenely similar) was the negative difficulty curve. At the very beginning, the small encounters are just as challenging as the stuff in the middle or end of the game, but you have less gear/items/abilities to deal with it. As you get more gear/items/abilities, stuff gets ridiculously easy, to the point where, on normal difficulty, the only fights I actually had to control beyond casting Cone of Cold or pre-casting Blizzard through the wall were Revanents and bosses (god fucking damn those Revanents).

I'll bet you anything this game will fall into the same trap, with the difficulty going from acceptable to hard in the beginning and piss-easy at the middle/end. At least I hope mages (in particular their stunlocking ability through the frost tree) and Arcane Warriors aren't as overpowered.

I really don't care for the "small unit tactical simulator" feel of "classic" RPGs. I want to focus on one person - you know, playing a role - and have the other people be background, supporting characters. Having to constantly pause and control four people at once felt like playing pen and paper DND by yourself. As well, the constant stuns and CC of DA:O meant that practically, if your main was melee, you *couldn't" just play them as they were out of the fight all the time. I just don't accept the idea that pretending to be four people at once is more a roleplaying experience than pretending to be a single person - it instead just feels like a relic from earlier games which couldn't deal with henchmen AI and players are just too conservative to give that up even though the technology has made that unnecessary.

I for one and very happy at the change.

yeah da:o wasn't that difficult, I finished it on the hardest settings with my mage, and hardly broke a sweat... so yeah, DA2 should be a walk in the park.

sad.

Heh, pansies.

I have friends that had to turn down the difficulty, and I think DA2 should have kept the 'normal' from Origins. It really wasn't that hard people, and those of you on the console had it even easier for some reason.

*goes back to play Ninja Gaiden. On the NES. With NO SAVES*

CardinalPiggles:
i want that shield.

You will get it if you did preorder DA2. http://dragonage.bioware.com/da2/info/order/

On the whole difficulty thing: I played Origins on Normal. I had my hard times, I had places where I got frustrated but I always felt like I would be able to pull it off, if I concentrated on it and played my cards right. And I have to say, in hindsight, it was a bit too hard for normal, so I can understand the often shunned and socalled "dumbing down" now in DA2. I don't know yet which difficulty I will go for. I think I will start with normal and crank it up to Hard later if I don't feel challenged enough.

But, to everyone, whether you play on Casual or on Nightmare, have fun with the game. That's what it's made for.

I whole heartedly agree with this decision. For some reason I could not do well on Normal difficulty, as I was dying way too much. Admittedly, this might be because the Tactics system was not nearly as well done as in FFXII and I was playing on console, but I pretty much played on Casual the entire last 2/3rds of the game.

Also, if you think this is a bad decision, you're allowed to have your opinion, but I really don't understand this mentality. The designer explicitly stated, "'Nightmare' is there for absolute ass-handing." In other words, they've lowered the barrier to entry for console and less experienced players (who were shafted last time, with a PC-oriented tactics system and high difficulty, respectively) and maintained the level of difficulty for more experienced players with the Nightmare setting. I fail to see why this is a bad decision, but perhaps someone can enlighten me.

Origins? Hard? I want what that guy's smoking, I did it on nightmare first time and it was piss easy, I ain't even that good at team based RPGs.

I felt that DA:O on Normal was a tad easy for my Mage. However, that being said, I was reluctant to boost it up to Hard due to the friendly fire aspect. I was a AOE Mage with Storm of the Century and the like so the last thing I wanted to do was to destroy my party with a big spell like that so I left it at Normal. If Normal is going to become casual, then I will definitely need to play it on Hard, regardless of friendly fire.

It wasn't that DA:O was hard, it was that the friendly AI was bad.

Unless, say, I issued a command to my mage to cast a spell every second or two, he would charge into the thick of things and melée with his daggar. If they wanted to make the game turn-based I'd say fine but this particular mix of turn based and real time just wasn't working for me.

If I otherwise had liked the game and the story, I would have switched it to casual to compensate for my retarded party members, but I didn't, so I just quit instead.

I'm on both sides here - I can easily jump straight into Origins and breeze through on Nightmare difficulty, but found the game a challenge to master. It's taken me a while to really understand the neuances.
I appreciate it when games are challenging, but when you can learn the ropes after a time and develop your skills until you can just generally bum rush them on hardest difficulty.

Having said that, this is probably an exception to the rule, as this is Bioware - a developer whose games one tends to play simply for the story. I would've been happy to play DA:O with relatively unchallenging combat simply for the story.

In conclusion, I think it's not worth griping about difficulty. The combat system has been tweaked significantly that even experienced players of Origins will likely need to bring 2 down to at least Hard whilst they learn how to operate the new game anyway. The only disadvantage I can see is that it'll be relatively easy to adapt swiftly and bulldoze over nightmare mode more quickly than one could learn to do in Origins.
But the same end result has been achieved, and to be frank - if your main reason for buying an RPG is game difficulty you might not be looking in the right area. You've played the story, enjoyed the challenge of learning how to beat the game, and just had fun. That's all the game is there to do.

If anything Origins was too easy.
If they've made all the difficulty settings easier, then this is going to be a boring game.

Eh, if I do get the game I'll just use the same tactic I always do for those games. Spam powers, have allies go nuts with the exception of the healer. If that fails, grind, come back, murder, profit. Hey I figured out the mystery step.

Hmm. That answers my question about the new gameplay styles since I watched Angry Joe play the Dragon Age II demo. The new gameplay reminds me of Dynasty Warriors in many ways, but the normal difficulty of Origins being too hard? Honestly, I don't see it.

Maybe because I played Baulder's Gate II a lot, along with KOTOR and Vampire the Masquerade through the years.

The only difficult part of Dragon Age: Origins was finding out where the enemy caster was. Everything that was melee or physical ranged was easy to take care of. It was only when the enemy team had a caster hiding somewhere and you didn't know it until they put Arcane Prison on your healer and then fireballed your team.

What's the point of a casual difficulty when normal becomes piss easy? I really missed the friendly fire in the demo. Playing as a mage used to have me worrying about the risk/reward of using an AOE spell. Yeah I would be taking a good chunk off the enemy, but I'd be putting my team on the line as well. Now all I do is point to where I want the explosion and everything's giblets.

I enjoy these kinds of games, but I'm not a master, or even "really good" at them, but that doesn't mean I want my hand held.

Sometimes I really wish Bioware still let Obsidian handle the sequels to their franchises. At least they built on the foundations of the original, rather than stripping them down to make it easier.

What i disliked is that a rogue with backstab and evade can beat an ogre 1 on 1 without taking any damage.