Dragon Age 2: Blam. I win.

Spoiler heavy.

Yep: within the span of less than a week, I've conquered Dragon Age 2. My Hawke became the most badass of badasses. My party hit level 20-21 right near the end.

An update since the last post: when I finally went on the Deep Roads expedition, I ended up taking myself (obviously), Varric (required), Bethany, and Anders. The latter because I may have peeked in the guide for companion help and accidentally seen something very important about whether my sister was going to live or die in the Deep Roads. Anyway, my sister became a Grey Warden (like old times! Wish I could live through the golden age of the Wardens, not just the Blight where there were three of us).

Through the rest of the story, I never saw Flemeth again, which surprised me a tad. I like Flemeth, and her presence in the story was so emphasized... It made me a bit sad, to be honest.

My favorite party became Hawke (tank) + Merrill (damage) + Isabela (damage) + Anders (heal). Early on Isabela was replaced by Varric. I maintained full friendship with Isabela, Anders, Merrill, and Varric and moderate (above 50) friendship with Aveline and Fenris, but Fenris left in the end and battled me. It made me sad. Not because I particularly liked him (my favorite part about him was either his voice or his hair), but because I had to kill one of my friends. I mean, come on.

And Anders. Jesus, Anders turned out to be this huge jackass. I didn't want him to rejoin the party. He wouldn't have been in the party had I not needed a healer badly. I would have executed him. So. Hard. Because Jesus, Anders, you are such a goddamn extremist. Blowing things up is not the answer. I do not condone terrorism.

Anyway. Thanks to Stupid Anders, Meredith invoked the Right of Annulment (basically said that all of the mages in the Circle were going to be executed). So I took the mages' side because I'm an avid supporter of freedom and blah blah yada yada. Turns out Meredith was an evil bitch who had been possessed by that artifact from WAY BACK in Act 1, in the Deep Roads. Oh, and Orsino turned into a huge evil abomination that we had to fight (lucky us). The first time I fought that fight, it glitched up halfway through and he didn't "respawn" when we killed little-evil-Orsino, so I had to reload it and do it all over again. Yay.

The final battle with Meredith was pretty awesome. I hadn't expected her to go insane. It was bloody amazing. When Cullen decided to fight with us, I got so excited. And when the statues jumped off the walls and decided to punch through us with enormous stone fists! Impressive. Hehehe.

I have to say, though: having played a Mass Effect game all of the way through (2), and a Dragon Age game all of the way through (2), I prefer... Mass Effect. Less strategy, more badassery, thank you. Don't get me wrong, I love strategy, but I love it even more when I don't get stuck again and again on one battle.

In Dragon Age 2, I did end up switching to casual. The three times I remember doing so were 1) in the duel with the Qunari leader (and that only because it was taking bloody forever to whittle down his massive health bar and I was losing patience, especially with me being a tank and having no damage output and all), 2) in the battle with the High Dragon in Mine Massacre (bloody hell! Didn't even finish that one), and 3) in a really tough battle during The Last Straw in the Docks (with a lot of shades and a Blood Mage and a Pride Demon). After the last one, I realized that actually it wasn't the difficulty itself keeping me down, it was the fact that I needed to wipe that Blood Mage out quick. But I did end up slaughtering Meredith and her statue slaves on Normal difficulty, much to my cheer and delight.

Romance-wise, my Hawke did in fact eventually become a lesbian. It's not my fault. It's the fault of Anders and his horrid extremism. It's the fault of Fenris and his anti-mage campaign. Varric is in no way romance-y. He is one of those friend people that it just does not occur to you to flirt with. And then all of the girls are fascinating with these awesome personalities and back stories! It's like begging me to swing the other way. They were begging me. So Isabela and I hit it off and my uncle Gamlen made some crude remarks about it.

Next time, I'm totally going for Merrill. Heheheh.

I didn't score any maximum rivalries, but I'm going to next time. Maybe with Fenris, or Isabela.

Post-game rating: 4.5 stars where 5 is impossibly perfect.