Dragon Age: Origins Review - A Bioware game

Ba5sett Thu Nov 19, 2009 5:50 pm

Dragon Age Origins Review

Developed by Bioware

Published by Electronic Arts

Review by Ba5sett

Dragon Age: Origins is the latest RPG from masters of the genre Bioware. The Canadian developers have been responsible for games such as the Baldur’s gate series, Neverwinter Night’s, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire and Mass Effect. This is their first ‘Fantasy’ RPG since the excellent Neverwinter Night‘s back in 2002 so expectations for this new title are high.

Dragon age: Origins is set in the land of Ferelden which is unfortunate enough to suffer a ‘Blight’ every few hundred years where the land is attacked by hordes of nasty creatures called ‘Darkspawn’ the land is protected from the Darkspawn by a group of elite warriors known as the Grey Wardens who specialise in eliminating the Darkspawn threat.

Upon starting the game you need to create your character and then choose a class either Mage, Warrior or Rogue there are further specialisations of these classes later on in the game giving you a large amount of flexibility in how you want to play the game. Based on the class and race you chose when creating a character you then play through one of several origin stories which acts as a prologue to the main game and will have greater implications as you get further through the game. Each origin story is extremely well crafted and gives a good insight into a distinct corner of the complex world that Bioware have created. Talking of the world, it is one of the most detailed and complex I have experience in a game yet, a huge amount of time has been spent in developing layers of history and as a result the game world feels alive and real. If you are interested there are tonnes of texts and history books to collect which give further insight and background to each area that you visit.

Dragon Age: Origins Review - A Bioware game 16_mor10

The combat takes place in real time or as a semi turn based system, I ended up using both depending on the situation, the tougher fights in the game require more micromanagement and I found myself playing them almost completely as a turn based system picking the required skills for each character as they came up but I found the real time system fine for most encounters. You control a party of four and the combat takes place in real time, you control one party member at a time and can flip between them with the LB & RB buttons you can also pause the action at any time with a squeeze of the left trigger to queue up actions for other party members. The main innovation with the combat is the tactics system which allows you to set activities for certain characters, for example you could set your healer to cast a healing spell when a character’s health drops below 50%. As you get further through the game you get more tactics slots and are able to string together more complex actions. I found it really satisfying to set them up and see how things played out in game but if you didn’t want to get so deep into them there are plenty of useful presets that allow you to ignore the system completely and get on with the game in your own style.

As you progress through the game you gain companions to aid you in your quest, they are a varied and likeable bunch, the voice acting is superb and really helps to brings them to life. Everyone will have their own favourites. I particularly liked the sarcastic warrior Alistair and the irritable witch Morrigan. But I liked the other characters so much I ended up swapping my party quite regularly whereas normally in games like this I tend to pick a group early on and stick with them until the bitter end. Characters outside of your party level up with the rest of the group so you don’t need to worry about them getting left behind.

Dragon Age: Origins Review - A Bioware game 12_fli11

Your actions in the game also affect how your party behaves towards you gone are Bioware’s traditional Good / Evil mechanics where your choices yield predictable outcomes, now you must make far more complex choices many of which affects how much your party likes you and changes their behaviour accordingly. If a party member disapproves of your actions enough they can even end up leaving your party! On the other end of the scale you can get them to like you enough that you can end up with romance between characters and unlock some saucy bonus scenes (and achievements). Its nothing too spectacular but balancing your relationships with the other characters makes for an interesting diversion. Some of the choices that you are faces with in the game are extremely tough and have no real right or wrong answer. Many times I felt that I had made a choice knowing that it would irreversibly change the course of the game for me. This gives the game a real scope for repeat plays and I’m already looking forward to my next playthrough to see how things work out next time.

The graphics in the game are adequate without being spectacular, the art direction throughout is superb and this goes a long way towards selling the game and creating the realistic world. The spell effects are varied and look great, the textures look fine from a distance but are pretty ropey close up, not a particularly good thing in a game where you spend a lot of time zoomed in on characters faces talking to them. There are also a number of bugs and glitches which although not game breaking do break your immersion in the world from time to time. My favourite is the one which keeps and spell effects on your character active after a battle regularly leading to my protagonist calmly talking to an npc after a boss battle whilst on fire! The audio is superb throughout with convincing voice acting, great sound effects and a good musical score that helps to bring the world to life.

Dragon Age: Origins Review - A Bioware game 07_ogr11

Another thing worth mentioning would be the difficulty, I would consider myself to be an experienced RPG player and played on the normal difficulty setting but still found myself coming unstuck on a number of occasions due to some of the encounters that the game threw at me. I’m not just talking boss battles either, sometimes a general encounter while traversing the world map can end up as an epic war of attrition where you end up burning through stacks of potions and health kits just to survive. And that is with a well set up group with a defined healer, tank as well as ranged and melee dps, I found these encounters to be challenging and fun but I could imagine them being pretty soul destroying to an RPG novice.

In conclusion I think that Dragon Age: Origins is a great game and is the best fantasy RPG I have played for a long time, I think it falls just short of being a true classic but the greatest compliment I can pay the game is that after 40 hours of playing I am already considering my next character and what I will be doing differently on my next play through.

Overall 8.5/10

**KENT HAMMER** Thu Nov 19, 2009 6:12 pm

Great review of a great game!

Good work mate.

**Tricky34** Thu Nov 19, 2009 10:00 pm

The more i see and read about this game the more interested i'm getting.

Giving serious consideration to it being my next game purchased!

Great review by the way!

Hendo 259 Mon Nov 23, 2009 11:09 am

Great Review mate, im looking forward to getting stuck in to this one!!!

Guest Mon Dec 07, 2009 11:27 pm

Am absolutely epic game with a great ending. Roll on the DLC Very Happy

Exhausted Dad Sat Jan 02, 2010 3:13 pm

Nice review for an epic game.

**KENT HAMMER** Sat Sep 18, 2010 6:55 pm

I am just about to start this game for the first time today!
Hope its as good as advertised.
Feel free to give me some tips! Very Happy

Guest Sat Sep 18, 2010 7:00 pm

You will probably find a rogue elf or a warrior human the best characters to play with. Probably the best bit of advice to give is to really spend a lot of time getting to grips with the tactics system once you have party members. Its invaluable to micro manage their every response to any given situation. Also don't be afraid to be constantly intervening in combat by pausing the action with the shoulder button.

finally if you wanna level up quickly there was a glitch I used to get characters up to level 20 in 30 minutes, its a boring grind but it worked. I didnt do it on any genuine play throughs but used it to mop up some achievements Very Happy

**Tricky34** Sat Sep 18, 2010 7:23 pm

I really should go back and play this properly, only played it for a couple of hours and then got sidetracked!

TreeMunky Wed Feb 20, 2013 4:10 pm

Went into town today for some lunch and popped into our Heart Foundation shop and picked up the ultimate edition of this which includes all the DLC for 99p Smile

Happy days. Reading through Bassett's review I'm really looking forward to playing it now Smile

Guest Wed Feb 20, 2013 4:33 pm

lol

thats a true bargain Smile

TreeMunky Wed Feb 20, 2013 4:37 pm

Everton wrote:lol

thats a true bargain

Well chuffed fella. Just looked at the DLC comes to 5760m$p in total that is nuts.

Waggly Bean Wed Feb 20, 2013 6:46 pm

TreeMunky wrote:Went into town today for some lunch and popped into our Heart Foundation shop and picked up the ultimate edition of this which includes all the DLC for 99p Happy days. Reading through Bassett's review I'm really looking forward to playing it now

That's an amazing deal! Is it all on disc then and not redemption codes?

TreeMunky Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:11 pm

Waggly Bean wrote:
TreeMunky wrote:Went into town today for some lunch and popped into our Heart Foundation shop and picked up the ultimate edition of this which includes all the DLC for 99p Happy days. Reading through Bassett's review I'm really looking forward to playing it now

That's an amazing deal! Is it all on disc then and not redemption codes?

Yes mate two discs well happy Smile

plenty hours to be had.

**Tricky34** Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:55 pm

Looking further up the thread there's a comment from me saying I really must Play this properly.

Well over 2 years later I still haven't...

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Dragon Age: Origins Review - A Bioware game

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Re: Dragon Age: Origins Review - A Bioware game

Re: Dragon Age: Origins Review - A Bioware game

Re: Dragon Age: Origins Review - A Bioware game

Re: Dragon Age: Origins Review - A Bioware game

Re: Dragon Age: Origins Review - A Bioware game

Re: Dragon Age: Origins Review - A Bioware game

Re: Dragon Age: Origins Review - A Bioware game

Re: Dragon Age: Origins Review - A Bioware game

Re: Dragon Age: Origins Review - A Bioware game

Re: Dragon Age: Origins Review - A Bioware game

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