Dragon Age: Origins

[Archangel]

Considering how NWN2 played and looked right after release this game is almost bug free

[Tiavals]

I've finished the game and played all the origins and here's what I have to say:

The game itself is very generic and bland, without anything that makes it stand out in the imagination department. However, it is very well done and quite polished. What it lacks in originality, it makes up by the general well-madeness of the game.

Easily the best part in the game are the origins, of which you choose one each time you play. Basically they're your backround as a character, and make you feel like your character is actually a part of the world, instead of just some random dude who one day decides to save the world. You have friends and family and so on in these origins, but sadly they're only some 1-2 hours of length, after which all the origins merge to the normal game, and your origin rarely(though sometimes) has any effect on the world. It seemed to me they spent most of their effort in making the origins, since they're so much better than the normal game itself. I would certainly say it would've been an excellent game if they seperated the origins to their own storylines and completely removed the "normal game", instead expanding on each of the origins. Those who've played the game surely understand the viability of this, since most of the content in the normal game is pretty much tied to the origins in one way or another.

The game suffers from the normal Bioware flaws, that is to say, poor combat, bland characters, faceless villains, general genericness and so on.

It's a fine game, and probably worth playing, if you're not bothered by it's flaws too much. Don't expect too much from it and it's certainly nice.

[MonkeyLancer]

I know this isn't news to anyone but I think now that the evil overlord EA Games has consumed Bioware, Bioware is has crossed the line of being more concerned about the bottom line rather then the consumer. So it isn't surprising that a game with the money and time to spend on a million trailers, TV ads,wanting to draw in MMORPG players and use of a Marilyn Manson song, for chrissakes, will not live to the hype.. That being said I think the ONE good thing that came out of it, is the use of the character origins which it sounds like it really gives a real immersion to the game. Its too bad that I cannot enjoy that element of the game, because of everything else in the game which is utterly repugnant to me.

[Marinx]

Today I found about Dragon Age Journeys.
It's flash based DA game. I'm on my job right now so didn't tried yet, but I saw it was rated good.

[dastein]

I played it a couple of weeks ago and it got repetitive quite quickly, which is especially troubling as combat is slow going. Still, a nice promo effort.

[Demiath]

Considering how NWN2 played and looked right after release this game is almost bug free

It's funny, I've never played NWN2 before but finally got around to buying it now that it's really, really cheap. Updating the retail installation to the latest version took forever due to the insane amount of (usually comparatively large) patches which have been released for that game, and I guess that alone gives some indication of how buggy the game must have been right after launch...

Oh, after reinstalling DA:O my save files started behaving normally again, and thus there was thankfully no need to start over from the beginning again.

[VentilatorOfDoom]

what do you guys think of how DA handles the spells for mages? You never can switch your spell selection, so you'll never be able to use the majority of spells and you know relatively few spells anyway, which leads to using the same spells and spell combos again and again. Pretty lame imo.

[Archangel]

Not much different then D&D sorcerers. And you can have 3 (you+2npcs) mages in your party so you can try most spells that way.

[quasimodo]

I think DA:O is a good fun game, but not a great one.

If it had a good TB system like KotC or ToEE it would have been great.

If it had a good imaginative story like MotB or PS:T it would have been great.

Still I think its the best Bioware game I have played.

[Archangel]

Kotor is a better Bioware game although it has an even worse combat system.