Dragon Age 2 Destruction of Lothering Escape to Kirkwall

Dragon Age 2 begins with the release of the dragon age 2 demo, which allows the player to play through the first stage of the dragon age 2 game. The first stage of the dragon age 2 game involves the destruction of Lothering and the fleeing of the champion from Lothering to Kirkwall. Essentially, Lothering has been destroyed by the Darkspawn, and the King has been slaughtered due to betrayal at Ostagar. Hawke gathers his family and escapes down some treacherous road to reach Kirkwall. The road is, of course, full of Darkspawn.

The dragon age 2 demo allows one to choose between 3 heroes and 3 heroines, each belonging to a class of either mage, warrior or rogue. As is tradition in dragon age games, we start with a mage. The dragon age 2 demo initially starts with the mage having all sorts of powers including fireball, firestorm, cone of ice, mindblast, and the original dragon age mage staff attack. He or she is able to throw all these spells, and with full mana, against hordes of darkspawn and including an ogre at the start of the game. However, the storyteller is interrupted by the chantry person, who does not believe him. Wise choice, as the storyteller now tells of the alternative tale of the champion - a hero or heroine rising to power from the ashes of a refugee.

The second and subsequent fights with a mage Hawke will involve just the spell Mindblast - which allows the mage to blast at multiple enemies and then they will run away and attack other companions. Good for a mage with low health points. Hawke is joined by his family Bethany and Crawler and his mother, as they fight through hordes of hurlocks. Using a decent gaming PC, the game was run on 1920 X 1080 medium res (DirectX 11 may crash with the dragon age 2 demo version, although it will not with the full version released on 8 March 2011). Very smooth graphics and great smooth action of launching mindblast and staff fire attacks after staff fire attacks. This is complemented by Bethany's fireball attacks and the warrior's mighty strike. Good rotation allows the mage to pinpoint enemies from afar, and launch more fireballs at them, whilst the warrior dispatches the melee hurlocks.

After clearing the hurlocks on the path, Hawke and family meet a couple ambushed by more darkspawn. At this stage, Hawke as a mage would have leveled up enough to be able to cast fireball, along with Bethany, who can also cast Heal. The leveling up system in Dragon Age 2 is slightly different from Dragon Age with radial, as well as linear methods of leveling up, unlike Dragon Age Origins which is all linear.

Anyway for this battle to rescue this besieged couple, advance slowly and use warrior characters on the nearby creatures first. Use the mage to launch fireballs at the faraway Hurlock Bolters. Once the first wave is done, move on to the second wave and so on until the couple is reached. Do not advance all at once, otherwise the characters will become isolated and be eliminated by the Hurlocks.

After meeting up with the couple, and the female warrior (who can be leveled up in the dragon age demo more as a shield defender character, and one should level her up as the main tank shield defender character - reasons see below) will join the party. Her name is Aveline. Her husband has been wounded by the Darkspawn and cannot join the party. If Hawke is a mage, then natural animosity springs up between the husband templar and Hawke. Nice for working as a team.

Following that, the group fight off more darkspawn and emerge at the top of a hill, only to be attacked by an Ogre. The Ogre tears up Bethany before anyone has the chance to react, so the party is reduced to 3 with Hawke as mage, and 2 warrior characters. It is very important to have collected all the health potions already, as both warriors will need health potions to survive. Use the warriors to attack the ogre, and then Hawke to throw fireballs at the puny hurlocks swarming around the ogre. If the hurlocks come close to Hawke, use Mindblast and they will run away. Aveline will function as a tank using damage reduction skills, and Hawke as the fireball expert.

Once the ogre is eliminated, one thinks there are no more hurlocks. Not true, as more darkspawn appear. At this time, a mysterious dragon appears. The story of Hawke and this mysterious dragon continues here.

Overall, the dragon age 2 demo is excellent, and gameplay appears smooth with a PC game at i5 750 3 GHz, nVidia 320GTX 1GB, 4GB DDR3, Win7 64. Definitely time to shift the XBox 360 gameplay back to PC gaming.