When was the last time you completely lost yourself in an extensive RPG? For me, it was when I played Dark Stone for the PlayStation. Dragon Age: Origins transports your mind into a world of war and magic. The game starts of with a character creation page, which could only be provided in all it’s detail by EA games. The creation of your character is very much like creating a Sim. You can customize the face of your character to the extent of decided the width of the tip of your character’s nose.
After customizing your character, you get to choose your race and class. Each combination has a variety of different backgrounds from which you character can emerge from. With each different background/class/race combination, there is a different opening, and a different hour long adventure which leads up to the joining of the Grey Wardens.
From that point, you’re unleashed into a world in which you can do as you choose. Far larger than the world of Fable II, you’ve got much to explore, and a excruciatingly large number of side quests to choose from, most of which are very entertaining, but there’s always one or two that get difficult.
The option to engage in various romances throughout the game is also very entertaining. To “get with” certain people you’ll need to change the answers to questions that your character is asked. Be more angry for some, and shy for others. This of course applies to many other portions of the game. Bargaining with people, avoiding difficult tasks, learning new abilities/specializations. The works.
The game all in all is quite amazing. The graphics are about as good as those of Devil May Cry 3, or God of War 2, mainly focusing on the story line, or game play instead, unless there’s a story line involved cut scene. It also features a large variety of voice actors, who all, for the most part, have done justice to their characters.
The actual game play is very basic. There aren’t many complex button combinations, not many puzzles, everything is pretty straight forward. This leaves me wishing for something a bit more Zelda-like. With everything being so straight forward, there isn’t much challenge.
Here’s where I’ll break down it’s strengths and weaknesses for you.
The Good: Dragon Age: Origins offers a large selection of customization for your characters from facial features, to higher level abilities. The world is very large, and leaves little room for you to get bored on your quest.
The Bad:Yes, I realize the game is an RPG, but in my opinion, took too much liberty with talking. Every 2 minutes-ish, you’re sent to talk to “so-and-so” and after a while it gets tiresome. There wasn’t much time in the game to just kill badies. Don’t get me wrong. There’s plenty of game play, but it’s tainted with the amount of talking you have to do.
The Ugly: The game, though fun, has terribly long loading times, often lags, and has muddy scene transitions. If you cast too many spells at once, or there is a large number of darkspawn attacking you, you’ll have a hard time getting through it without a bit of a lag.
Over all score:7.5/10
Bonnie’s Record Time (all available side quests): 76 hours, 27 minutes, and 12 seconds.
