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Incredibly deep and expansive, Dragon Age: Origins is one of those titles that can easily swallow up dozens of hours of play and keep you coming back for more. The fact that BioWare chose to include downloadable content, including a new character and side quest, on launch day proves that they have an extensive plan for supporting the game. Couple that with the fact that each character can be developed in radically different ways, and you have an adventure that earns its own place among BioWare's expansive RPG collection. While the visuals are a bit underwhelming and the difficulty is a bit easier on the consoles, this is still a great title. This is the kind of adventure that fantasy RPG fans have been hoping that BioWare would deliver – a game with a ton of re-playability and an incredibly vivid world that is the start of an impressive franchise. 9.0 Presentation A rich and vivid world, loads of mature themes and story expand the tale of Ferelden in front of your eyes. Inconsistent Origin elements and the gift feature weakens believability though. 7.5 Graphics Muddier textures and framerate hitches wind up making the visuals on the console a rough experience. Animations are fine, if a little stiff at times. 8.5 Sound Voice acting can be hit or miss, and some effects can go on for too long, but the music and the majority of sound effects are excellent. 8.5 Gameplay Gameplay is definitely action focused, and the radial wheels do a decent job, but the difficulty level is scaled down. 9.5 Lasting Appeal Set aside a large amount of time for this one – beating the game will frequently make you want to pick up and play again to see just how a decision or a conversation would be different. 8.7 Great OVERALL This game is available for sale in my eBay store at a good price: http://mariio128.comRead full review
Here is a review I wrote for the PS3 version: Dragon Age is probably the best RPG made for a console system. I may be a bit spoiled since most of my RPG time has been on the PC spending hours playing games such as Diablo/D1/LOD and similar, but I have not seen one decent Role Playing Game for the console - until Dragon Age. The Awakening expansion adds countless hours to game play and even at full retail, playing on the easiest mode (casual), you will still get your money's worth with game time. An outstanding story line, great character customization, and the ability to really "choose your own adventure", making many moral decisions that effect game play instead of the typical, do this - do that don't forget this - style of game play. The rating of Good (4 stars) is simply because I think there is room for improvement. Overall, a very good buy for anyone looking for more of a true RPG on the console.Read full review
Not Bioware's best effort, but Dragon Age: Origins is about 60 hours of solid gameplay that will keep RPG fans happy. The basic story is standard fantasy genre fare, complete with Dwarves underground, elves with bows and arrows, treacherous humans, dragons, mages, a kingdom in need of a hero, and evil on the precipice of victory. Gameplay is impressive and the item management menus are well done. Some of the quests will really challenge your concepts of right and wrong and the concepts behind the kingdoms are well written and compelling especially the Dwarven kingdom of Orzummar. There are minor bugs in the code and once in a while the dialogue from NPC's will get very tedious, but overall the game is impressive. So why is Dragon Age not a 5 star game? Compared to Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, and Jade Empire, Dragon Age seems to lack the creativity because its just too much like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings That being said, Ive beaten the game twice, and I plan to play at least two more origin stories before I put it down. So thats at least 240 hours of game play.... definitely worth the moneyRead full review
I have not completed a quest yet. That being said, so far a very good single player game. It has a more mature theme than most D&D genre *(there are some mature relationship scenes - I would advise you stick to the rating recommendation). This game takes some thought and good strategy to win. There are several very good story lines. So you can replay a number of times without getting bored. I am somewhat disappointed in the fact that there is no real estate to explore -- like Oblivian. Within the limits of the area exploration is necessary and satisfying. However, the quest is somewhat linear in places. In some of the areas it is -- forge ahead, tackle the mobs in order, and try to keep healthy enough to fight through. The side quests are good but sometimes distracting of the "purpose", I wonder why some were put in? Was this to fill out the game to give it "more depth". Overall a very good game but not excellent. I am still looking for an immersive world to go visit from time to time. Maybe I need to check out WOW.Read full review
Why this game had some good characteristics it was more like playing a novel. Every person had this incredibly long elaborate story to tell you. Even a person working in the kitchen you got to feel you knew there life story. At first it was okay, after a while you are left to think: "Do I ever get to do anything besides listen to people talk for 5 minutes at each segment?". Yes is the answer and the fighting system is very good. Why I did not play the game long enough to really write a complete review on all elements I felt I logged enough time to get a feel for it. It reminded me of KOTOR mixed with Baldur's Gate two. You had many options to choose from to level up your character's skills. The fighting was fun and it was based in real time with the ability to pause and choose a better analysis of what you want yourself and your party to do when you unpause. However my biggest complaint is I felt like the action was a temporary break from the endless talking. It generally never lasted that long and I was left to complete a mission and then hear someone tell me the history of how they came to be known as .... (whatever). It really annoyed me after a while as the majority of this game seemed to me I could just read a novel of it instead of playing it. With games with a lot of dialogue like KOTOR, Mass Effect and Oblivion it was nice that you could hurry up the talking and then your mission gave you a summary. While this game did a lot of that the basic problem I had was I felt my missions were to talk to people to end up talking to more people. Maybe as I got farther this would change but I think for the graphic levels and the appeal of the story I just was not hooked enough to care. This game is very gory, even unnecessary so. You get blood spattered everywhere and after a while it is just comical. Your fighting also feels a little rigid as it has that delay before you do your action and that also drove me away a little. With modern games ability this should not happen I feel and it along with barrage of unending dialog drove me to dislike this game ultimately. All in all I feel if you really want a detailed RPG you are better with the games I mentioned above as this one seems like a lot of others put together with worse graphics, worse speed and a ton more dialog. I would give it a C+, it's not bad and if you enjoy games you want to sit and just listen for hours of people talking rather than do anything. Me I can only take so much of it and the action was not that rewarding to me. But it was fun and expansive, I did like that.Read full review
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