Dragon Age: Origins

7 / 10



Dragon Age is the next KOTOR evolution with a fantasy mish-mash of Lord of the Rings and World of Warcraft. It is not an MMO, it's single player. I played through the game on the "hard" setting, so my view of it might be a bit skewed.


Pros:

- It's Bioware, so the voice acting is EXCELLENT. Where else can you hear Captain Janeway be a witch?

- Complex moral quandaries are frequent and important. I found myself second-guessing earlier conclusions I had drawn about the people and their intentions a lot.

- Doesn't pull punches when it comes to the choices you make. This is important: Dragon Age has an overall policy of being true to a character involved in an encounter before worrying about your ability to play the game. I like that, a lot.

- Non-trivial side quests. Almost everything you do in this game has some kind of ripple effect, it was fantastic.

- Good gameplay. Challenging, frustrating at times (on hard), but worthwhile.

- Good graphics engine, handles particles and spell effects very well.

- Good, visceral combat. Sounds and voices mix really well with what's happening on screen.

- "Finishing move" animations are neat, but infrequent and often missed


Cons:

- CRASHES. HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE CRASHES. Admittedly though, I played the entire game in a very non-standard resolution and identified one of my video cards as going bust. In the last 4 days of my playing it, the game has probably crashed 50 times.

- Memory leaks. When the game DIDN'T crash for a couple hours, it would eventually slow down. It's pretty obvious that the engine suffers from some serious bugs.

- No voice acting for the main character. This was a big issue for me, because it could have been SO much more, but wasn't.

- As with all Bioware games, sometimes the answer to the question I had, or the choice I really wanted to make was just not available. It was frustrating.

- Persistent people and things - everything is left untouched from the last time you were at a given scene, no matter how much time has passed. Even the corpses that litter the ground are in the same exact spot.

- Magic was FAR overpowered. I'm not sure how anyone could play through the game as a warrior or, god forbid, a rogue.

- Some of the cut scenes and interactions could have been done better. For example, I had an entire conversation with a jewel through text and number keys, which was rewarding in the story line sense, but also lame.

- Corrupted save files. This one is down near the bottom because it only happened twice, but it sucked when it did. I started double saving my games.

- A bit disconnected. The entire game is played through jumping from scene to scene, and only the world map provides any sense of cohesion.



Overall, Dragon Age gets a 7 out of 10. It's VERY clear that EA and Bioware both spent HUGE amounts of time and money on the art, graphics, animation, story, and voice acting, and it really shows. The game is quality, but suffers from a little bit of bad execution and a LOT of bad crash bugs.

I played through the game on hard because I didn't want to feel guilty for abusing the shit out of bad AI and pathing bugs, which are both available in no small amount. The game actually kind of encourages you to do it, and I was still challenged despite my flagrant disregard for anything resembling realistic enemy behavior.

If you liked KotOR, or Neverwinter Nights, you'll like this game. If you have an extra $25 to spend for the collector's edition, go ahead and spring for it. Getting the content to work via Steam was a bitch, but doable if you're very technical and dedicated.

If you're scraping together $50 to get it, don't bother holding out for the collectors edition - it adds some content and some story, but not $25 worth.

I just realized that all 3 of the games I've rated here on the forums I've given 7 / 10 to.

Huh.

Obligotory Link to Yahtzee review

A positive review, by Yahtzee's standards.

Dun think I'd be interested myself until there's a multi-player variant.

PS. Memory leak seems to be associated with a pirated version. ^_^ - But I did notice the INSANE minimum recommended CPU - effing quad core! >< I mean, I happen to have one myself, but your average quad core has almost more raw calculating power than the human brain - wtf could the game possibly be doing with all that?
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"Essflawcondodgeckindesimudstorliketersockity." - Zero Punctuation, Mirrors Edge
Thothie

There's a memory leak in the retail steam version for sure. After about 2 hours of play the load screens start to lengthen exponentially.


Personally I like the game, but the magic system isn't as fleshed out as it was in ealier bioware games. You basically go suck, less suck, Hammer of God.

about halfway through or so your AI become immune to 95% of your spellcasting, so cone of cold or blizzard = instant win.

the only way to win as a warrior would be to tote around 2 spellcaster's as backup, one to spam heals and the other to spam blizzard.

Still a good game, put about 60 hours in it through one entire playthrough. Engine needs some work, but I suspect the second game should be pretty sweet.