Review Score:

Bioware goes back to their “origins” in this epic tale showing that not every hero is pure. When I first played Dragon Age: Origins I can honestly say that I was quite impressed from the very first cutscene. This game has a very movie-esque dialogue system similar to bioware’s other games (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect). From the witty lines from companion characters to the breathetaking environments. The experience just draws you into the wonderful world of Fereldan.

Combat in Dragon Age is very similar to Neverwinter Nights, with activated abilities, sustained abilities, and a very easy spell casting system. Pausing to switch between party members to select their abilities or spells is something you’ll find yourself doing quite frequently. You can also edit their default combat style to your liking, even telling your mage to heal your main character when your health is below a certain percentage(which is extremely helpful when you don’t want your main character dying).

Creating potions, poisons, and enchanting objects in Dragon Age is extremely simple. Creating a potion or posion is as simple as finding a place that sells the recipe for a poison or potion that you want and purchasing it. After you have the recipe for it, you just need the ingredients. There’s no “chance of failure” or anything annoying like that. So creating a ton of potions for your party is not only easy but relatively cheap. When you want to enchant an object, you are only required to have 2 items. An item to enchant, and a rune to enchant the selected item. After that you go to a certain dwarf at your campsite and you’re in business. It seems like this part of the game is more tailered to fit a casual style of gameplay, but in the best way possible.

Each origin story is different in Dragon Age, from a high class dwarf, to a lower class elf. All stories are very specific and you will be treated differently throughout your time in Fereldan based on your origins. You will find yourself with a rather large party if you play your cards right, but pleasing every party member is a task in itself. Each companion has an approval rating of you, which you can see under their inventory screen. This rating is effected by many things, the choices you make while being with them, the way you talk to them, and even the chance to give them gifts. The ability to give a companion character a gift really makes the approval system a lot easier, so after giving a few alchoholic beverages to a dwarf in your party, you’ll be best friends in no time.

There are a few bugs in the game however that really got to me. If you are obsessed with graphics you will notice a few low res textures when you’re playing on the highest setting, Bioware confesses that a few of the low resolution textures were mixed into the high setting folder. The combat, even when playing on easy was pretty difficult at first. I found myself dying quite a bit. Bioware since has released a patch to make the easy and medium difficulties more balanced.

After playing through the game twice already, the replay value isn’t as high as I thought it would be. Each beginning story is great and very different, but the way you are treated by others isn’t different enough for me. Every time you begin the game, you will eventually become a grey warden and fight for the salvation of Fereldan. In the end Dragon Age: Origins brings a healthy dose of story with great voice acting and cinimatics to a genre of generally poorly written by other game developers. It’s easy enough to follow for a casual player, but there’s enough side quests and secret items to keep the hardcore gamers interested. You would be foolish to pass up this amazing RPG title.