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Dragon Age: Origins

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Dragon Age: Origins

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Dragon Age: Origins

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you turn Vsync off, and it actually makes some parts of the game smoother, but the vertical tearing that occasioanlly happens with vsync off bugs me. I will say also that, it seems to me the funnest path to play, so far, is a City Elf Mage. But then again I havent played too much as any one race yet. One thing I dont like that I was hoping they carried over from Mass Effect, when you select dialogue for your character to say, the avatar doesn't actually speak. It's like a step back in that respect. Despite that, I give it five stars. Great game so far, I've already played it almost a week, and despite working almost every day I've got like 20 hours logged and, by the Strategy Book Guide, I've barely scratched the surface on the game. Highly recommended.

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Dragon Age: Origins

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to begin as a Mage in the Mage's Tower, a Human Noble dealing with unrest in his/her house, a City Elf or a Dalish (forest) Elf, or a Dwarf Commoner or Noble. Each story presents the world differently and can actually be pretty involved. For instance, as a Mage you learn how the world mistrusts magic and has created The Chantry (the religious organization in Origins) to watch over them to make sure they only do approved things. As a Human Noble, you'll live a life of privilege, until you watch your world come crashing down one night. Likewise, the other origins present such themes as fratricide, racism and a look into social castes. Taken together, these origins provide a more rounded view of this mythical world than most full movies or novels do. Whatever choice you select, ultimately you will be ushered into a select group called The Grey Wardens, who are tasked with saving the world from the Darkspawn. The Darkspawn come every so often, in an attacked entitled The Blight and the only thing standing between destruction and these monstrous beasts are The Grey Wardens. Truthfully, the story in Dragon Age will be immediately familiar to anyone who has played a Bioware game. The structure is the exact same structure they've utilized since the beginning. Give a great opening, then give some semblance of freedom to tackle three or four main missions before the game goes back to linearity and you are pushed along a route to the end. Speaking of the end, my first play through clocked in at much over 30 hours. And that was doing some but not all of the side quests. I mostly stuck to the main story, which is amazing. A lot of Bioware games presents a relatively short main storyline and peppers the game with lots of side quests that add to the length. Dragon Age has a very meaty, long main storyline, much longer than their recent games. Adding in the side quests (of which there are lots), and you have an incredibly satisfyingly long game. The most surprising thing about Dragon Age is how unsurprising it is. Most of the character tropes and themes--regardless of how well conceived and plotted they are--are the same we've been seeing throughout Baldur's Gate, Mass Effect, KOTOR, Jade Empire, etc. In some ways, Bioware has become complicit in their game design and so it was almost too easy to see the direction the story took with each mission. That said, even when I knew how the story would progress before I even got to the plot points, Dragon Age had its teeth sunk deep into me and I found myself unable to stop playing. Frankly, the combat system in Origins is the most inspired design Bioware has come up with yet. Merging the RTS-lite feel of Baldur's Gate with the more immediate, third person perspective of some of their later games, Origins makes combat fun and strategic. You choose four people to fill your party and with each combat scenario you are given a few options. You can easily spend the entire time in third person in your main character, allowing the AI to manage the other characters based on tactics (for those who know, think the Gambit system in Final Fantasy XII...except more user-friendly) that will dictate how you want them to play. Want one character to be a healer? Select the healer drop down and it will auto-populate the character's fields with skills and triggers (like "ally

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Dragon Age: Origins

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It's challenging enough that you need to approach it tactically, preferably using the top-down view unique to the PC version. That is to say, for most encounters you can't just sit back and let your characters hack away at the enemy while using the occasional power-up. You end up micromanaging your party members a great deal (particularly rogues and mages) but the end result is that even the average fight feels like a challenge, but one that can be overcome by using your party members tactically. I generally play RPGs for the stories (I think of them as interactive novels) and this is the first RPG I enjoy the combat as much the sotry and dialogue. CONS: - Dragon Age is old school in that it's composed of detached zones rather than the one huge contiguous world of games like Oblivion and Fallout 3. It's not a terrible downside, but I feel like you're more easily immersed into the game's world when it's tangibly one big interconnected world. - The "Tactics" system on the whole works well but it might be a bit overwhelming for a few people and it suffers from some curious limitations. Tactics is the games system for assigning behaviors to party members when you're not controlling them directly. Things like "If your health is below 25%, use a healing item". Generally, I really like the level of control that it offers but I realize that most people might just want a *one-button* "turn on AI intelligence for this character" type deal. Noentheless, the game offers something close to that by giving you "presets" which will fill in a character's tactics for you but I think that might still be one layer of complexity too far for casual players. However, personally, I think its absolutely great to have that level of control over your characters, especially given the challenging nature of the combat. The one thing that really bugs me is that the the system lacks a few options that'd be useful for rogues. A condition based on whether you're facing the back of an enemy would be useful, as well as something to instruct a rogue to try to get behind an enemy (though the default rogue behavior seems to already do the this to some extent) Overall: If have any bone in your body that enjoys RPGs, then get this game.

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Dragon Age: Origins

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It's challenging enough that you need to approach it tactically, preferably using the top-down view unique to the PC version. That is to say, for most encounters you can't just sit back and let your characters hack away at the enemy while using the occasional power-up. You end up micromanaging your party members a great deal (particularly rogues and mages) but the end result is that even the average fight feels like a challenge, but one that can be overcome by using your party members tactically. I generally play RPGs for the stories (I think of them as interactive novels) and this is the first RPG I enjoy the combat as much the sotry and dialogue. CONS: - Dragon Age is old school in that it's composed of detached zones rather than the one huge contiguous world of games like Oblivion and Fallout 3. It's not a terrible downside, but I feel like you're more easily immersed into the game's world when it's tangibly one big interconnected world. - The "Tactics" system on the whole works well but it might be a bit overwhelming for a few people and it suffers from some curious limitations. Tactics is the games system for assigning behaviors to party members when you're not controlling them directly. Things like "If your health is below 25%, use a healing item". Generally, I really like the level of control that it offers but I realize that most people might just want a *one-button* "turn on AI intelligence for this character" type deal. Noentheless, the game offers something close to that by giving you "presets" which will fill in a character's tactics for you but I think that might still be one layer of complexity too far for casual players. However, personally, I think its absolutely great to have that level of control over your characters, especially given the challenging nature of the combat. The one thing that really bugs me is that the the system lacks a few options that'd be useful for rogues. A condition based on whether you're facing the back of an enemy would be useful, as well as something to instruct a rogue to try to get behind an enemy (though the default rogue behavior seems to already do the this to some extent) Overall: If have any bone in your body that enjoys RPGs, then get this game.

+ 0 likes

Dragon Age: Origins

...

It's challenging enough that you need to approach it tactically, preferably using the top-down view unique to the PC version. That is to say, for most encounters you can't just sit back and let your characters hack away at the enemy while using the occasional power-up. You end up micromanaging your party members a great deal (particularly rogues and mages) but the end result is that even the average fight feels like a challenge, but one that can be overcome by using your party members tactically. I generally play RPGs for the stories (I think of them as interactive novels) and this is the first RPG I enjoy the combat as much the sotry and dialogue. CONS: - Dragon Age is old school in that it's composed of detached zones rather than the one huge contiguous world of games like Oblivion and Fallout 3. It's not a terrible downside, but I feel like you're more easily immersed into the game's world when it's tangibly one big interconnected world. - The "Tactics" system on the whole works well but it might be a bit overwhelming for a few people and it suffers from some curious limitations. Tactics is the games system for assigning behaviors to party members when you're not controlling them directly. Things like "If your health is below 25%, use a healing item". Generally, I really like the level of control that it offers but I realize that most people might just want a *one-button* "turn on AI intelligence for this character" type deal. Noentheless, the game offers something close to that by giving you "presets" which will fill in a character's tactics for you but I think that might still be one layer of complexity too far for casual players. However, personally, I think its absolutely great to have that level of control over your characters, especially given the challenging nature of the combat. The one thing that really bugs me is that the the system lacks a few options that'd be useful for rogues. A condition based on whether you're facing the back of an enemy would be useful, as well as something to instruct a rogue to try to get behind an enemy (though the default rogue behavior seems to already do the this to some extent) Overall: If have any bone in your body that enjoys RPGs, then get this game.

+ 0 likes

Dragon Age: Origins

...

It's challenging enough that you need to approach it tactically, preferably using the top-down view unique to the PC version. That is to say, for most encounters you can't just sit back and let your characters hack away at the enemy while using the occasional power-up. You end up micromanaging your party members a great deal (particularly rogues and mages) but the end result is that even the average fight feels like a challenge, but one that can be overcome by using your party members tactically. I generally play RPGs for the stories (I think of them as interactive novels) and this is the first RPG I enjoy the combat as much the sotry and dialogue. CONS: - Dragon Age is old school in that it's composed of detached zones rather than the one huge contiguous world of games like Oblivion and Fallout 3. It's not a terrible downside, but I feel like you're more easily immersed into the game's world when it's tangibly one big interconnected world. - The "Tactics" system on the whole works well but it might be a bit overwhelming for a few people and it suffers from some curious limitations. Tactics is the games system for assigning behaviors to party members when you're not controlling them directly. Things like "If your health is below 25%, use a healing item". Generally, I really like the level of control that it offers but I realize that most people might just want a *one-button* "turn on AI intelligence for this character" type deal. Noentheless, the game offers something close to that by giving you "presets" which will fill in a character's tactics for you but I think that might still be one layer of complexity too far for casual players. However, personally, I think its absolutely great to have that level of control over your characters, especially given the challenging nature of the combat. The one thing that really bugs me is that the the system lacks a few options that'd be useful for rogues. A condition based on whether you're facing the back of an enemy would be useful, as well as something to instruct a rogue to try to get behind an enemy (though the default rogue behavior seems to already do the this to some extent) Overall: If have any bone in your body that enjoys RPGs, then get this game.

+ 0 likes

Dragon Age: Origins

...

It's challenging enough that you need to approach it tactically, preferably using the top-down view unique to the PC version. That is to say, for most encounters you can't just sit back and let your characters hack away at the enemy while using the occasional power-up. You end up micromanaging your party members a great deal (particularly rogues and mages) but the end result is that even the average fight feels like a challenge, but one that can be overcome by using your party members tactically. I generally play RPGs for the stories (I think of them as interactive novels) and this is the first RPG I enjoy the combat as much the sotry and dialogue. CONS: - Dragon Age is old school in that it's composed of detached zones rather than the one huge contiguous world of games like Oblivion and Fallout 3. It's not a terrible downside, but I feel like you're more easily immersed into the game's world when it's tangibly one big interconnected world. - The "Tactics" system on the whole works well but it might be a bit overwhelming for a few people and it suffers from some curious limitations. Tactics is the games system for assigning behaviors to party members when you're not controlling them directly. Things like "If your health is below 25%, use a healing item". Generally, I really like the level of control that it offers but I realize that most people might just want a *one-button* "turn on AI intelligence for this character" type deal. Noentheless, the game offers something close to that by giving you "presets" which will fill in a character's tactics for you but I think that might still be one layer of complexity too far for casual players. However, personally, I think its absolutely great to have that level of control over your characters, especially given the challenging nature of the combat. The one thing that really bugs me is that the the system lacks a few options that'd be useful for rogues. A condition based on whether you're facing the back of an enemy would be useful, as well as something to instruct a rogue to try to get behind an enemy (though the default rogue behavior seems to already do the this to some extent) Overall: If have any bone in your body that enjoys RPGs, then get this game.

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Dragon Age: Origins

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of flames to believe them. Nevertheless, what really stands out is the gameplay. Every battle is a puzzle to be solved, pausing ever so often to reallocate enemies to the best suited party members (a feature I loved in BG!). Of course one can always turn off the autopause feature and let the AI take over the rest of your party and turn the game into an hack&slash action RPG (not exactly my cup of tea but, hey, it's still nice to know it's there). Finally, this is a game made just like the classics in many ways, including duration. I am now playing the game for over 20 hours and I feel that I barely scraped the surface! DRAGON AGE: ORIGINS is one satisfying RPG! My only gripe is this: I did not appreciate such short dialogue options. Most fit a single line and more often than not they consist of a couple of words. I like my RPGs to be wordy and challenging to my verbal imagination as well - and I want my characters to participate in the humor, not just provoke it or react to it. Remember the long dialogue options in BG? Well, expect to find DRAGON AGE: ORIGINS much more laconic. I guess 10 years of fast-paced FPS and blitzkrieging RTS do take their toll... The blood sprays, the swords clang and the spells explode. The animations are beautifully made and add a lot to both enjoyment and immersion. There is a verse in Homer's Iliad I love: "the warrior fell and his armor echoed around him" - and I was reminded of it many a times throughout the game. This game will stay with you. Do not miss on it. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!