PROVISO/DISCLAIMER: This review is based on PC version of Dragon Age Origins only, I cannot say anything for other platforms, if you find any mistake or exclusion in this regard please do inform me and I'll update my review, thanks.
The Good:
- Long and complex system of attributes, skills and talents.
- Deep and satisfying story.
- Huge cast of memorable characters.
- Lots of enemies to face.
- Easy inventory, armor and weapon management system.
- Wide variety of places to visit.
- Lots of gear items to purchase and loot.
- Nice graphics.
- Stunning voice acting.
- Some difficult situations and decisions that have different consequences.
- Magnificent epic feeling.
- Different difficulty modes.
- Great replay value.
- Loading time is a bit nuisance.
- Quest journal could use a bit of polishing.
- There is no armor or weapon crafting option.
- Graphics could have been better.
- Minor performance issues and quest glitches.
Bioware is known for some of its legendary games and with Dragon Age Origins it marked another huge success. It is a debut game from Bioware with a brand new story and characters that will remain in your minds for a long time if not forever. The story of game revolves around traditional good versus bad thing but Bioware used a lot of creativity in this regard and gave this good versus bad thing a whole new look and feel. I’ll try to keep the spoilers at minimum but also give you a sneak peak at the story which will work as hors d'oeuvre that will drive those towards the game who didn’t played it before.
There are many ways to start the story of this game since it’s an RPG game with good replay value but I cannot cover all those stories in this review so I’ll start with the warrior story. It revolves around a normal prince, son of a duke who faced a sudden change in his life when his father called him and told that he and his elder brother is leaving for war on king’s calling to fight against demonic hordes of evils known as the darkspawn who are coming to destroy Ferelden, the country on which the game is based. Later the prince facing unexpected circumstances got no option but to join the grey wardens, the last hope of Ferelden against darkspawn and from there you embark on a journey of heroism, love, survival and of course world saving stuff…
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[FONT="]What shall I do now? …….. Just save the world.
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On this screen you can assign several traditional RPG related stats like strength, stamina, dexterity etc… All of which have different effects on your character abilities. In start you can only spend five points on your stats. You’ll get a chance to spend more points later in the game once your character levels up. After that you’ll assign your character different skills. Skills range from trap making to herbalist, combat training, combat tactics and many more. You’ll discover a diverse variety of skills once you play the game yourself.
After that move forward to talents screen, where you can spend points on a lot of talents that will make your character unique and powerful in many ways. Like skills you’ll see a huge collection of talents. You’ll also unlock new talents during the game once you learn different specializations. At first these talents will confuse you but soon you’ll understand them and then you’ll like Dragon Age Origins even more. After all of this you can start your game and jump into the heart action…
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[FONT="]You’ll feel proud of yourself once you’ll see castle Cousland.
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The game also boast a variety of places to visit, you’ll start in Castle Cousland and make your way into the outer world. Traveling is done using world map, on which all you have to do is to click on a location and your party start their travel to that location, remember you can only have four members in your team including you and some places are unlocked once you progress further into the game. Of course traveling can be boring thing but Dragon Age Origins took care of that matter, hence you’ll encounter various challenges in-between your travels like encountering a lonely merchant or a sudden fight so it’s always a good idea to remain prepared.
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Map of Ferelden is big and interesting.
It is obvious that constant traveling and visiting places make you bored and tired so there must be a place where you can take a break and do other stuff as well, in Dragon Age Origins you camp anytime and in that camp you do a lot of stuff like leveling up your main character in peace, buy new armor from your camp merchant, talk with party members etc…
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Ahhhh… camp sweet camp.
Since it’s a Bioware game party members play an important role and your relation with them can trigger many interesting events in the course of story. You can ask them about their past life, tell them about your own and did I mention gifts? Yes in Dragon Age Origins you can give gifts to party members and thus improve your relations with them… Be careful though party members are very intelligent they won’t like just any gift you throw at them so always think before you present a gift for example you can’t expect your girlfriend to become happy if you give her a bone that should be given to your dog instead. Your good relations with party members will also increase their trust on you and hence they’ll tell you some of their secrets which will allow you to better understand their background and offer solutions to their problems, they can also ask for your favor or help in a personal matter or quest related to their past life.
There are also ways in which you can improve relation with party members, some members just inspire from your leadership while others begin to like you and finally love you. You can also develop sexual relationship with them as well and ahem… Oh well there is some male to male and female to female stuff in this game as well if you understand what I mean, well if Bioware does not feel ashamed making it then why do I feel ashamed just mentioning it. Love triangles also happen in this game but don’t just get happy there… things get rough pretty soon once they'll find out you’re playing with them.
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Talking is….. comfortable, isn’t it?
Managing inventory is also a very important factor in Dragon Age Origins; remember there are limited spaces in your backpack so don’t just blindly pick up stuff from ground and if you like doing it then sale it to Merchants for currency. You can also increase the amount of spaces in your backpack by purchasing additional spaces from merchants. It’s always a good idea to visit merchants periodically because they update their stuff so you can find new items if you visit them.
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Merchant interface is streamlined and easy to navigate.
Combat is one very prominent feature of Dragon Age Origins, you can do combat from two camera perspectives, one is RTS like camera which gives you much better command of the battlefield and the other is traditional TPS type of camera through which you can see all the action in full glory. Although I like the TPS camera all the time some might prefer better overview of traveling and especially combat. Before starting a fight or during a fight you have a chance to pause the game and analyze the situation, during this pause mode you can issue new commands to party members, change their tactics, change their weapons and armor etc…
In combat all you have to do is to click on an enemy and your currently controlled character will start fighting with it but it is not done here because this is the time during which you can use your talents that I mentioned before such as “Pommel Strike”, using this ability will allow your character to hit enemy with the back of his/her sword and thus knockdown him/her for a short period. Remember that using teamwork and talents are the keys to success in combat. There is an action bar in this game which can be used to keep your favorite talents so that you can access them quickly. Combat is based on melee, ranged and magical fights. To avoid frequent defeats in combat, it is always a wise decision to make a more versatile party by using the abilities of warriors, archers, rouges and magicians, however if you are feeling that a particular fight is too hard for you then you can adjust game difficulty anytime via options and then game settings.
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[FONT="]Combat can be fun in Dragon Age Origins but equally challenging as well.
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Magicians can give you vantage point in combat, don’t expect your melee fighters to win every fight you throw at them, for some fights you need to have magicians in your party to do the fancy stuff like weakening a powerful boss or burning all the enemies in surrounding using an inferno. Like melee, magicians have their own talent tree; giving you access to a wide array of powerful spells to teach.
Similarly rogues can be trained into stealth fighters or archers. Remember rogues are supporting fighters they cannot be considered as melee fighters or tankers. Think it this way a melee fighter can directly engage a powerful foe and rouge can help him/her in quickly finishing the foe by making use of back stabbing or armor shattering arrows. Rouges are equally useful in stuff like pick pocketing and lock picking.
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It’s always good to have skilled rouge in your party.
You can also use trap and poison making talents to make handy traps and poisons, they can give you an upper edge in combat, what’s a better way to surprise an opponent than a well placed trap or what’s a better way to hit your opponents than a sword coated with acidic poison. Think about it.
In case you or one of your party members falls in combat, the combat continues until either all enemies are wiped out or all of your party members fall which means game over. If for example one of your party member fell during combat and rest of your party members manage to finish the fight successfully, the unconscious party member gain consciousness again but he'll also get an injury penalty. There are many injury penalties in the game for example broken bone, cracked skull and so on… All of these penalties take away part of your attributes for example decrease in strength, stamina, resistance, attack etc… You can heal your injuries either by camping or using injury kits that you’ll find on your travels and from merchants.
While all this combat sounds interesting, we have seen this kind of combat before so what makes the combat of Dragon Age Origins special you ask? Well it is what they call tactics. Bioware has revolutionized the way in which you can fine tune the A.I of your party members. Tactics are basically A.I of your party members broken down into triggers and actions. You can set specific triggers on which your party members take specific decisions/actions and those actions can prove very useful in combat. A very basic example of this is like you can set a trigger that whenever an ally’s health drop below 50% a party member capable of healing should immediately perform healing magic and heal the affected party member. Similarly you can set a trigger that whenever a party member see the most healthy opponent he/she should use “Shield bash” talent on that opponent. This makes the combat extremely interesting and different every time you do it. Be very creative and test different tactics to find out which works best for you. You can also use preset tactics such as archer or scrapper; these presets have predefined triggers along with their actions respectively. In addition to tactics you can also set behavior of party members like defensive, aggressive, passive etc… These behaviors determine how party members respond to enemies such as aggressive behavior allow your party members to follow and attack enemies as soon as they become visible while defensive behavior restrict your party members so that they cannot follow enemies and will only fight back if they are attacked.
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[FONT="]Things get messy after combat.
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[FONT="]Is my armor shinning? ... Yeah it is, because you’re wearing a set.
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Beside main storyline, you’ll also get a lot of side quests from NPCs, notice boards etc… Completing these small quests give you nice rewards like weapons, armors, accessories and currency that can help you buy better quality gear. We say that you don’t just skip these quests because they'll also help you level up your character and party members. Side quest is not the only thing you’ll get from NPC, talking to them is always beneficial as they can tell you valuable information as well as teach you different specializations. Specializations are sets of talents that you can use during combat, for example Templar specialization can let you use a talent through which you can cleanse an area full of unpleasant magic.
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Can you help us? … Maybe, I have to think about that.
[FONT="]The main storyline is also long and satisfying, there are many twists and turns that will really surprise you and suck you further into the heart of story, and your decisions will have consequences on story, party members and enemies. To complete the story you have to visit some places in order to trigger new set of events. However there is no hurry you can always stop doing quests anytime and start just roaming around to experience the beautiful world of Ferelden. You can also revisit places that you have explored before to talk with NPCs, getting side quests or just for exploration, it’s up to you.
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Ostagar is a sight to view.
Conclusion
What I say more about Dragon Age Origins, I am speechless. It is a game that speaks for itself. With beautiful story, lots of memorable characters, complex dialog trees, adjustable difficulty, good graphics, great voice, sound, music and replay value. It hardly missed any RPG element that you love and demand in every RPG game. Every RPG lover can feel pride in saying that he/she has Dragon Age Origins in his/her collection. While I tried my level best to mention all the details about this game I think some games deserve more justice then just a review and that justice can only be done by playing them.
I hope you enjoyed reading it as I did writing it.
Value/Worth: 10/10
Dragon Age Origins is one huge game; you can do a lot of stuff in this game and it has tons of replay value which makes it one of the best RPG of its kind.
Graphics: 8.5/10
I cannot say anything about console versions but PC version looks stunning, it could have been a little better but still it’s an impressive show.
Sound: 9.5/10
Dragon Age Origins takes pride in having rich voice acting which grace you with life like interactions and remarkable dialog delivery absorb you into every conversation. The beautiful Music also draws you into the atmosphere.
Gameplay: 10/10
Impressive gameplay mechanics, a lot of things to do and a wide variety of side quests leave you craving for more.
Multiplayer: N/A
Lasting Appeal: 9.5/10
Dragon Age Origins leave you wondering about it for a long time and you'll find yourself in need of it's sequel.
Overall: 9.5/10
Some games are worthy enough to attract others to look at your shelf or collection of games. Dragon Age Origins is one such game, a very promising title indeed.
Review compiled by: Black Viper
Thanks to GoldenHawk for allowing my first review.
NOTE: For PakGamers use only.
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