Before diving into the review, a brief summary: Dragon Age Origins is the epic role playing game that many of us have been waiting for since we first fell in love with the genre with the classic Baldur's Gate. It drops the player into an immersive fantasy world rich with lore and compelling settings. The aesthetics and score are as pleasing and engrossing as a good cinematic feature or novel. And while it is spectacular in just about every way, it is not without its faults (mostly technical in nature, and affects players with very specific computer hardware as far as I can tell - I'll explain more later). In short, if you're a fan of the genre you will do yourself a favor by purchasing and experiencing this game. I have never felt more comfortable suggesting a RPG to the Internet-at-large as I do right now with Dragon Age. I will swear upon whatever holy text you prefer that it's the best single-player RPG to come along since Fallout 3. If you're not a theist, I suppose I could place my hand upon a photograph of Carl Sagan before making the same solemn vow. But I digress. Onto the review. Aspects I found positive are preceded by a (+), negative aspects a (-).
GAME PLAY
(+) Dragon Age (hereby referred to as "DA") plays like a perfect hybrid of turn-based and real-time RPGs of yore. The controls are a mash up of overhead tactical maneuvering ala Baldur's Gate and the third-person RTS-like mechanics found in Knights of the Old Republic. You control character movement with either the WASD keyboard directions familiar to MMO and FPS players, or via mouse-click navigation (concurrently). You can play from a third-person perspective to get a full view of the world around you, or zoom out into an overhead tactical view to aid in unit placement and positioning (in which the graphics take on the painted look and feel of Baldur's Gate - a nice touch). The camera may be controlled with either the keyboard or mouse. All around, stellar.
(+) The UI makes a powerful and elegant use of economy of space (it fits a lot into a little, all while looking and playing extremely well)
(+) Character customization is as rich if not richer than any other RPG hybrid or pure RPG on the market - past or present. You have standard archetypes (warrior, mage, rogue) which alone have various "trees" or avenues of progression focusing upon things like weapon preference (sword + shield, dual wield, two-handed, etc) or general and crafting skills. In addition there are specialist classes that excel at specific vocations (such as the mage-nullifying Templar, shape shifting mage, or crit-happy Duelist - to name a few). On top of this, special abilities and vocations may be unlocked by finding rare items or special quests (often a combination of both)
(+) Combat is highly tactical, taking into account elevation, range, "crowd control" mechanics, and vast synergy between the abilities of your party members
(+) A deep tactics system can be utilized, in which you assign a custom AI to each of your characters based upon a variety of criteria and situations. For example, you can tell your mage that every time they're surrounding by two or more melee mobs, they cast a certain crowd control spell. If a party member has less than 50% health, heal them. Or have your tank taunt mobs that attack the mage. Or have the rogue stun the mobs your main character is fighting. Etc.
(-) Melee-centric characters draw from a pool of stamina to perform their various abilities and group-enhancing skills. This pool feels very limited, even when you invest heavily into the stat that grants more stamina. It's further hampered by injuries that your characters will sustain, on occasion, while fighting (which are treated with injury kits or by resting at your camp). Hopefully this will be tweaked in a future patch.
STORY, PRESENTATION, & SETTING
(+) The seemingly hackneyed story (you`re the last in a long line of sacred warriors who's mission is to vanquish a very particular foe) quickly unfolds into a compelling, immersive, and interesting tale that rivals those found in quality fantasy novels and movies. Each race, town, city, and region are wholly unique and diverse - from the political intrigue of Dwarven society to the juxtaposition of the city and forest Elves (and the layers of complexity involved therein). I can't go too much into this without potentially spoiling the many excellent stories. Suffice to say, it's superb.
(+) While the world isn't technically "open", being divided into many instanced zones (if you will), it is nevertheless truly vast. Most areas are substantially large. There is no limit to draw distance: your viewing distance is essentially to infinity, and most zones can be fully explored to the smallest nook and cranny (and it pays to do so). You unlock more areas as the game progresses (and the areas vary depending upon your origin and choices), and there's a complete underground zone in addition to the zone all non-Dwarves start within.
(+) The story is always evolving and changing. Your most minor, or major, decisions regarding plot or character interactions will have lasting repercussions that may not come to fruition for some time. You can build intimate relationships with characters, and being an active participant in the dialogue and lore pay huge dividends in the end
(+) Replayability is very high - due largely to the aforementioned dynamic story, as well as the "Origins" part of the DA title: different race and class combinations have different starting stories, and merge into the overall arc in different ways and at different times
PERFORMANCE
(+) The games looks, sounds, and plays perfectly well on middling hardware
(-) If you own a dual or quad core AMD CPU, expect gradually increasing load times as your session time increases (the longer you play and the more you transition between zones, the longer the load times become). From 5 to 7 seconds at first, upwards of 5 minutes after 45 minutes to an hour of play. This can be resolved by restarting the game, which literally only takes about 20 seconds. But still, it's frustrating, and many people are reporting it on the official forums. Hopefully it will be patched.
(-) The first PC patch was a bit of a goof: the new build included a newer version of the Visual C++ 2005 runtime, while the retail version had an older build. The result was that many people couldn't launch the game after patching. A trivial issue for the computer savvy (I just checked my event logs and saw the issue then patched), but the lay person would have no idea what's going on. After days Bioware has yet to respond officially with the obvious fix, leaving it to the community to resolve. That behavior and communication casts doubt upon the level of commitment Bioware has in regards to DA from a technical support perspective.
Overall, the few technical issues are far outweighed by the overall quality of the game. I would provide a more in-depth review, but I am honestly afraid that I'll accidentally spoil something, as this game is ridiculously vast. Buy this game. You will not be disappointed.
