(no subject)
Productive weekend! Saturday I went to Dressmart (outlet shopping centre) with 
shihadchick,
blademistress and L-who-doesn't-have-an-LJ and bought ALL OF THE CLOTHES, T-shirt division. One of which is a boys' polo shirt, but I am totally OK with that because it fits and cost $5. We wanted to go to the secondhand shop too*, but in the interests of
blademistress not shivving us, we did that on Sunday. I tried on what felt like ALL OF THE TROUSERS (including some hilariously small ones, because apparently my thrift-shopping eye is out of practice) and bought cargo pants, drill pants, jeans and two T-shirts for the grand total of $38. The jeans I am particularly proud of, because I got them by sticking my hand into the jeans rack in a panic when they called 20 minutes till closing, and they fit perfectly.
About two-thirds of my T-shirts are now the same colour. I am a sartorial experimenter!
I also played some Dragon Age 2. So far, my thoughts:
1. OMGWTF EYE COLOURS. This is sort of freaking me out. I played DA:O on low graphics, and I got so used to Alistair having black eyes that I couldn't handle it when I popped up to high graphics briefly to see what colour my own eyes were.
2. OMG WTF DWARF CHEST HAIR. Sometimes improved graphics are not an unmixed blessing. But Varric is awesome and hilarious and I never don't want him in my party.
3. I don't much like the simplified skill and ability business. What do you mean opening a chest is based solely on my Cunning? I liked how Origins handled it, which was Cunning + whatever points you'd chosen to put into it. I also like D&D-style rolls, because the element of luck makes it more fun. Straight Cunning check, not so much. That's the sort of thing I expect from Echo Bazaar, not a full-service RPG. And what happened to Coercion? I hope I don't spend the whole game not getting to intimidate or persuade anyone. I do like not having to put my mages' points into stupid buffs unless I want to, though.
4. I also miss picking up awesome epic weapons with awesome names everywhere and dressing my companions up. :( I don't know if their rationale was that the extra complexity might be a barrier to new gamers or what, but I LIKE all those baroque curlicues. (I also liked actualfax curlicues like having pretty gold borders around the inventory screen.) I was as nooby as you please when I started Origins, and it never bothered me. And I was even noobier when I played KOTOR, which had a MUCH more complicated outfit system. Half the fun of repeat playthroughs was deciding which sexy epic armour set I was going to give my boyfriend Alistair this time. Now there's less epic shit, and they seem to have given up on thinking up cool names for it, and two-thirds of what there is I can't use.
5. Combat. I don't know what they've done to it, except for getting rid of friendly fire (which, yes, it was annoying, but I like some realism in my fantasy mage battles, tyvm), but I'm considering putting my difficulty up, because eight hours in, I've only had one TPK, and that was when I accidentally closed a door with Varric on the other side and didn't notice until I died. Oops. Default tactics seem to have improved, which is probably a large part of it - I haven't felt the need to tweak tactics or micromanage yet. On the one hand, cool, but on the other, I'm spending a lot less time playing with Varric's awesome archery skillz than I otherwise might. And I REALLY miss having a hotkey to switch between two weapon slots, especially given that, unlike last time, enemies take long enough to close that it's actually worth starting a fight with archery.
6. Having to run around earning enough money to do the next part of the plot feels awfully familiar somehow. As does most enemy mages' go-to tactic of spending half the fight encased in giant blue globes. Hee.
7. Whining aside, I really like it. The plot is cool, and I'm enjoying the fact that I don't have an overarching goal like Stop the Blight or Save the Jedi - as the player, I know vaguely where I'm going, but as Hawke, I just want to make some dosh. It's unusual in my (admittedly small) RPG experience, and it's fun. My Hawke is totally rad (though seeing the goody-two-shoes conversation icon rubs in exactly what a sickening goody-two-shoes my RPG personality is) and I want to use all my companions, unlike Origins, which was all Alistair/Wynne/Morrigan-or-Leliana all the time. I mostly only took the others on their personal quests, and once I took Sten because Alistair kept annoying me by trying to have a Relationship Talk, but I regretted it almost immediately when Sten got all sniffy because we were collecting allies instead of marching straight up to the Archdemon and inviting him to chew on us. Back to camp with you! But so far all my Kirkwall peeps seem awesome and useful and fun to have around.
*Aucklanders: Savemart in Onehunga is great. Better range and better prices than the Manurewa one, in our unscientific gut-feeling estimation.
Also posted at Dreamwidth.
shihadchick,
blademistress and L-who-doesn't-have-an-LJ and bought ALL OF THE CLOTHES, T-shirt division. One of which is a boys' polo shirt, but I am totally OK with that because it fits and cost $5. We wanted to go to the secondhand shop too*, but in the interests of
blademistress not shivving us, we did that on Sunday. I tried on what felt like ALL OF THE TROUSERS (including some hilariously small ones, because apparently my thrift-shopping eye is out of practice) and bought cargo pants, drill pants, jeans and two T-shirts for the grand total of $38. The jeans I am particularly proud of, because I got them by sticking my hand into the jeans rack in a panic when they called 20 minutes till closing, and they fit perfectly.
About two-thirds of my T-shirts are now the same colour. I am a sartorial experimenter!
I also played some Dragon Age 2. So far, my thoughts:
1. OMGWTF EYE COLOURS. This is sort of freaking me out. I played DA:O on low graphics, and I got so used to Alistair having black eyes that I couldn't handle it when I popped up to high graphics briefly to see what colour my own eyes were.
2. OMG WTF DWARF CHEST HAIR. Sometimes improved graphics are not an unmixed blessing. But Varric is awesome and hilarious and I never don't want him in my party.
3. I don't much like the simplified skill and ability business. What do you mean opening a chest is based solely on my Cunning? I liked how Origins handled it, which was Cunning + whatever points you'd chosen to put into it. I also like D&D-style rolls, because the element of luck makes it more fun. Straight Cunning check, not so much. That's the sort of thing I expect from Echo Bazaar, not a full-service RPG. And what happened to Coercion? I hope I don't spend the whole game not getting to intimidate or persuade anyone. I do like not having to put my mages' points into stupid buffs unless I want to, though.
4. I also miss picking up awesome epic weapons with awesome names everywhere and dressing my companions up. :( I don't know if their rationale was that the extra complexity might be a barrier to new gamers or what, but I LIKE all those baroque curlicues. (I also liked actualfax curlicues like having pretty gold borders around the inventory screen.) I was as nooby as you please when I started Origins, and it never bothered me. And I was even noobier when I played KOTOR, which had a MUCH more complicated outfit system. Half the fun of repeat playthroughs was deciding which sexy epic armour set I was going to give my boyfriend Alistair this time. Now there's less epic shit, and they seem to have given up on thinking up cool names for it, and two-thirds of what there is I can't use.
5. Combat. I don't know what they've done to it, except for getting rid of friendly fire (which, yes, it was annoying, but I like some realism in my fantasy mage battles, tyvm), but I'm considering putting my difficulty up, because eight hours in, I've only had one TPK, and that was when I accidentally closed a door with Varric on the other side and didn't notice until I died. Oops. Default tactics seem to have improved, which is probably a large part of it - I haven't felt the need to tweak tactics or micromanage yet. On the one hand, cool, but on the other, I'm spending a lot less time playing with Varric's awesome archery skillz than I otherwise might. And I REALLY miss having a hotkey to switch between two weapon slots, especially given that, unlike last time, enemies take long enough to close that it's actually worth starting a fight with archery.
6. Having to run around earning enough money to do the next part of the plot feels awfully familiar somehow. As does most enemy mages' go-to tactic of spending half the fight encased in giant blue globes. Hee.
7. Whining aside, I really like it. The plot is cool, and I'm enjoying the fact that I don't have an overarching goal like Stop the Blight or Save the Jedi - as the player, I know vaguely where I'm going, but as Hawke, I just want to make some dosh. It's unusual in my (admittedly small) RPG experience, and it's fun. My Hawke is totally rad (though seeing the goody-two-shoes conversation icon rubs in exactly what a sickening goody-two-shoes my RPG personality is) and I want to use all my companions, unlike Origins, which was all Alistair/Wynne/Morrigan-or-Leliana all the time. I mostly only took the others on their personal quests, and once I took Sten because Alistair kept annoying me by trying to have a Relationship Talk, but I regretted it almost immediately when Sten got all sniffy because we were collecting allies instead of marching straight up to the Archdemon and inviting him to chew on us. Back to camp with you! But so far all my Kirkwall peeps seem awesome and useful and fun to have around.
*Aucklanders: Savemart in Onehunga is great. Better range and better prices than the Manurewa one, in our unscientific gut-feeling estimation.
Also posted at Dreamwidth.