 | A lot of running around |
The Guest (PC)
In one evening, I bought, downloaded and played through all of this first-person adventure. Expect a review. There's a review now.
Dragon Age: Origins (PS3)
Oh man, where do I start?
I gave up at Soldier's Peak because I couldn't best the final challenge. I fought the possessed Grey Warden captain there, rather than bargaining with the demon using her body. Our first encounter was rough and it took a lot of planning and resources to bring her down. I battled my way to the blood mage who summoned the demons plaguing the tower, and aided him in sending them back. All went well until I fought a desire demon who absolutely wrecked me. No matter how many times I tried, I just couldn't destroy her, so I decided to leave and return when I was stronger. That meant having to reload to a time before I killed the Warden captain, so I'd have to plunge into that fight again.
I went to the town of Redcliffe and polished off some local side quests for a bit of gold. It seemed the town was expecting an attack from some monsters, so I thought I'd steel them for the coming disaster. I did what I could to boost morale, not short of lying to some soldiers so that they thought they were especially blessed by plain trinkets. When the fight began, my party and the town banded together and defeated them without issue. Our opponents were mostly simple undead foes, so the going wasn't too rough.
After that, I entered a tunnel into Redcliffe Castle and fought my way to the main hall. I let the imprisoned blood mage live, but didn't allow him to escape. Lucky me. On the way to my goal, I had a pretty nasty fight against a revenant and his skeletal cronies. I retooled Morrigan's logic to include a heal spell and commanded her to stand at a distance. For whatever reason, she's preset to engage in melee combat while slinging spells occasionally. Who the hell puts a mage in the frontline? C'mon, BioWare, your audience knows better than that.
We won the skirmish and entered the throne room. When it came to dealing with the issue there, I decided to summon the blood mage I'd spared and sacrificed an NPC so that I could save another possessed person's life. That required Morrigan to enter The Fade and fight a demon, solo. I was surprised she managed so well. I hardly needed to heal her and her spells tore sizable chunks of the demon's HP off.
My victory there lead to a fetch quest that took me back to Denerim. Rather than furthering the storyline, though, I thought I would take on all of the side quests available and complete as many as I could. A lot of thugs, darkspawn and tainted creatures died, and I banked a hefty pile of coins and loot.
I finally decided to visit the man who knew something about an item I seek: a legendary urn full of some special ashes. The only problem was that he wasn't home and the person in his living space was creepy and suspicious. I followed the lead he gave me anyway and ventured to a lake, where I fought some mad cultists and looted their corpses. Back in Denerim, I called the creep out on his nonsense and laid him to rest as well.
In the many, many hours it took me to accomplish all of this plot progression, I gained many levels and fell in love with Alistair (my character is a female elf), plus completed the quest where he meets his sister. I also had a pretty impressive--though not amazing--collection of equipment built up. I thought it was time to tackle some unfinished DLC quests.
I returned to Soldier's Peak and re-challenged the possessed captain. She fell without a problem. I took on the demons that the mage summoned, finished off the desire demon and closed The Fade. Mission accomplished. I also happened to find a cache with some good stuff that, when combined with the loot from the captain, bolstered my party considerably.
I also took the time to buy the control rod and liberate a town from darkspawn. That led me into a dungeon where I found a little girl being manipulated by a demon-possessed cat. The demon made me an offer and I lied to her, then completed the sliding tile puzzle in that room. When the time came, I convinced the girl that the cat was bad news (Er, is it bad mews? Hahaha please shoot me.) and fought the demon within. She perished quickly and the resultant NPC interaction allowed me to recruit Shale.
Oh, and I killed Zev. Yeah, sorry, I know I can recruit him and he's probably useful, but I decided to be uncharacteristic this time and just slit his throat instead.
The last thing I did was travel to Haven, where I steamrolled the batshit cult and rescued the man for whom I'd been searching. He led me to a temple in the mountain where the urn lies. I saved before the entrance and turned the PS3 off.
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