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Showing reviews 21-25 of 223
 Another BioWare Classic February 12, 2010
L. Dugie
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Ever since first meeting BioWare in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, I was blown away not just by their attention to creating an immersive environment with finely-crafted tactical combat and design, but also by the grappling story and depth of the party characters. This was repeated in their dark science fiction game, Mass Effect, with groundbreaking detailwork that made each character even more alive and gave a pulse-pounding story.
This track is again repeated in Dragon Age: Origins. Simply from the opening cinematic of the game, it's obvious this is no ordinary RPG. With a deep, rich background and tense plot, Dragon Age gives players a unique experience difficult to beat. Add to this Lord of the Rings-grade combat and characters that are difficult to forget, I would not be surprised if a Dragon Age movie were soon to come.
 More Like Aged Dragon! February 11, 2010
Friend of Fantasy (Toronto, Ontario Canada)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Gameplay
Role playing games (RPG) on the computer or gaming platform owe much to the classic Dungeons and Dragons pantheon played by gamers decades ago. Successful RPGs incorporate battles with the intricacies of character development and story arcs. Sadly, "Dragon Age: Origins" feels more like something D&D gamers would have played on a 1980s Atari rather than a 21st century PS3. So much of the introductory dialogue and character definitions could have been undertaken with a simple GUI screen than all the pointless running around. Although I wanted to play as a "good" character, my frustration at wasted game time almost led me to act "evil", just to get to the good stuff. However, there isn't much good stuff to be had. The huge world is hardly interactive: entire sections are unavailable, including simple things like the underside of bridges (where you'd think some juicy enemies with treasures would hide) and more obvious things like wandering off a path.
The player menu is just simply unintuitive and ridiculous. Party-control takes up way too much time, completely eclipsing the time it takes to actually fight the battle! Early on, all you'll really be doing is mashing the pre-set button for healing potions. I understand the desire to make game play realistic, including friendly-fire issues, but the battle felt like something out of an old 25-cent arcade game. Most of the time I couldn't even see the enemies on a 46" TV, with the ranged attacks occurring far beyond visual range.
The countless auto saves are frustrating, as the game takes considerable time to save anything, no matter how complex. You've left a village, and taken one step beyond the gates and BAM, rotating gaelic wheel of death stops the game as "Dragon Age: Origins" saves another useless time point.
And don't even get me started on how party members (usually) die in engagements, only to pop-up, fully healed and lacking equipment damage, after another battle. What's the deal with enemies standing is a field only steps away from a village or town?! Perhaps they're thinking, "Wow, how did I get here in such a pixelated, Atari form?" Consequently, the AI is poor, at best, and akin more to a RPG on a D&D board than a PS3.
Story Line
It was hard for me to get into any of the stories given the over-whelming volume of useless NPCs. You spend most of your time going from one useless encounter to another, hoping to stumble across someone who will give you a quest. Sure, the voice acting is nice, but if that's the best reason to play a PS3 game, then I'll watch a movie and save myself the money. In the end, the endless dialogue resulted in my skipping through entire story-lines just to get to the point; that's not good game design. Also, cut scenes are awful, looking completely different from gameplay, unlike other, better realized games.
Graphics
Poor, poor, poor. Characters look like marionettes as their words fail to synch to their mouths throughout game play. Heavily pixelated, boxy environments further detract from game-play, giving the world a look like something slightly more sophisticated than a 1980s fantasy game created for an Atari. And what is the deal with the scantily clad female characters, who look more like strippers than warriors, mages, or other battle-ready veterans, with their gravity-defying body parts?! Everything about the graphics is just plain amateurish, from the environment through the character faces to the character dress and movements.
Verdict
If this is the cutting edge of RPGs on the PS3, then we've been duped. My recent purchase is going to someone else, as it is a frustrating rather than enjoyable gaming experience.
i played twice February 11, 2010
Heather Murray (Bethlehem, PA USA)
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
I have long been a fan of eastern style RPGs--lunar, the final fantasy series--stuff like that. However, I've never been able to get into a western rpg. I guess I was mostly just set in my ways as to how a game should look, feel, and control.
And at first I was wary of Dragon Age. My bf bought it and after seeing him make his character I had a rather girly "ooh pretty" moment and made one for myself as well. Over the next two weeks my bf played about two hours of the game. I logged in at closer to 30.
A few things that I loved! The origin quests. There are so many games out there where they really don't give your character any background. Also, the different origin quests make replaying the game a little more fun and give a different feel to the game everytime you play.
The romance options. I'm a girl and my first character I made to look like me and then named after myself (which I later regretted because it was kinda awkward). I really enjoyed talking to the other characters and giving gifts and such. It just made it all more intense as a player.
The story overall. There is so much depth to the story in this game. In the past the story lines were one of my main reasons for liking the eastern rpgs so much, but after this I'm much more willing to give other games a try.
I played on PC and I really liked being able to control most stuff with the keyboard. The real-time battles were a little bit difficult to get the hang of for me, but by the time they get really challenging, they've given you plenty of easier stuff to get the hang of it with.
Overall I just really loved this game! I beat it once and then wanted to do some stuff differently and so made another character and played the whole thing through again. I even made my bf buy the extra quests.
 Good, Not Great February 9, 2010
Leotol Stoy
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
I am writing this review for one reason: to pose a counter-argument to all the five-star reviews for this mediocre game.
Some information about myself up-front: my favorite computer role-playing game (cRPG) is Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (BGII). For those of you who are not avid cRPG fans, that game was also made by Bioware, and is considered the "spiritual father" of Dragon Age: Origins (DA:O). Other cRPGs I have played include Fallout 2 and 3, the Witcher, Eschalon, Mass Effect, Morrowind, Oblivion and the original Baldur's Gate. I say all this so you know that DA:O is one in a long line of cRPGs I have taken the time to play.
Dragon Age is an ambitious game, and my review will reflect this. I have divided the game into three sections - presentation, gameplay and story. Presentation will cover the graphics, music and sound. Gameplay will cover the camera and combat system. Finally, story will cover the writing, from the overarching plot (the Blight) to the four major quests, six origins and numerous subquests.
Before I begin, I would like to summarize my review. The game is well-made, but that does not make it a great game. Where DA:O falls flat is the story.
*Presentation*
Graphically, DA:O has good-quality textures and resolution, but a disappointingly small number of character models for a project its size. As other reviewers have pointed out, there is no difference in body types between models (dwarves have two, one male and female, and so do the elves and humans), so the only noticeable difference between characters is the facial model used.
Sound/music-wise, DA:O also does a good job. Sound effects are appropriate, and the music sets the appropriate mood for the various scenes. The voice-over work in particular is very well-done, with the voice-actors playing their roles more than competently. I don't recall cringing at any of the performances, which is a definite step up from many other games.
*Gameplay*
While the overall presentation is good, gameplay is the first area where DA:O really begins to suffer.
The camera system, while not broken, could use a fix or two. There are two primary viewpoints, "tactical overhead" and generic third person. The "tactical overhead" view in particular has some problems, which amount to it getting stuck on some other model in the game (usually an overhead arch of some sort). The third-person viewpoint works well until combat begins, at which point it usually becomes necessary to switch to the tactical viewpoint in order to give commands to party-members.
Combat itself is reminiscent of BGII at first, but soon the differences begin to crop up. Combat unfolds in real time, although you have the ability to pause at any time, issue commands, and then unpause the game and allow the action to continue. You can control all of your party members (you can have up to four), although the game allows you to passively control your party members' actions through its tactics system. The tactics system allows you to set conditions for certain actions to be taken by your party members. It works well enough in combat against weak enemies, but in any difficult battle (and even most of the moderately difficult ones) you're better off disabling it and taking direct control of your entire party. The reason for this is simple - the tactics system simply can't cover the countless combat situations in which you will find yourself.
Combat is repetitive (at least on Normal) because the mechanics driving the combat engine itself lack balance. Unlike BGII, where knowledge of enemy tactics and abilities are vital to success, DA:O only requires that you have enough patience, and use enough health potions, to persevere. The mechanics are such that there are no abilities that truly offset one another (such as evil-vs-good in BGII), and you will rarely encounter an enemy that makes your equipment decisions, or your choice of spells, seem like they matter (aside from the: more damage/armor is better).
Overall, gameplay suffers because the combat system has a weak foundation. While BGII had numerous quests that required thought and not brute force, in DA:O there are only a handful of quests that do the same. The game plays more like a tactical Diablo than the spiritual successor to BGII.
*Story*
The greatest disappointment in DA:O is the story, and rightfully so. Bioware has told many great stories in the past, beginning first and foremost with Baldur's Gate. They know how to do it, so it is that much more disappointing that DA:O fails to deliver. I feel the primary problem with the story is a lack of focus. I think that the creative team behind DA:O couldn't decide whether they wanted an idea-based game (in which the focus would be the world they created) or a character-based game (in which the focus would be the characters that populate that world - BGII is an example of a character-based game). In the end, the creative staff's inability to decide between the two basic concepts of storytelling is what led to the story's mediocrity.
To summarize, the basic plot of the game is this: evil demonic creatures are invading the nation of Ferelden (an event known as the Blight). An organization of warriors known as the Grey Wardens exists specifically to fight the leader of the Blight, a dragon called the Archdemon, but they are few and must rely on the nation's standing forces to face the Blight's lesser demons in battle. The player is one of the Grey Wardens, and must take the lead in organizing the army that will eventually meet the Blight in battle.
The world Bioware has created, while attempting to combat the "typical" fantasy cliché, becomes a cliché itself. DA:O features dwarves more concerned with politics and internal squabbles than their own survival and elves who are the class-equivalent of slaves. However, even with these "differences," all the clichés are still there: dwarves are strong, stout-hearted blacksmiths, while elves are artistic, bow-wielding rangers. Humans occupy the middle ground with swords and adaptability on their side. What it all boils down to is that, in attempting to escape from the Dungeons and Dragons theme, DA:O essentially remains the same world, with just a little bit more blood and sex than the other.
In-game, DA:O suffers from long-winded NPCs more inclined to impart encyclopedic information than sound like they could possibly be a real person. In text-form (like BGII or older Japanese RPGs) the problem would not be so apparent, but thanks to the voice-overs, the game's dialogue becomes even more monotonous. Even the Origins stories so highly-touted by Bioware are more style than substance. In real life, such differences in origin would engender a different response from more than just a fraction of the world's denizens. In the game, such distinctions are rare, and rightfully so - to do so would require at least twice as much dialogue as there currently is within the game.
*Final Thoughts*
It's so difficult to properly review Dragon Age, because it is so ambitious. The game attempts to introduce a brand-new world, with a "unique" take on traditional fantasy norms. It attempts to give the player power to make meaningful choices, with meaningful consequences. It attempts to make your character's background matter through the six origin stories. It attempts to revive tactical combat in a mass-market RPG.
As you already know, I believe it succeeds at none of these things, and the reason behind that is because it tries to do so many of them. The world they created fails to excite the imagination. The choices and consequences are offset by the poor writing and lack of truly interesting, likeable characters. The origins required too much additional writing to be implemented effectively - in the end, they feel like a poorly-tacked-on "feature." And the combat is like the rest of the product, bland and repetitive.
It's not that I think Dragon Age is terrible - it isn't. It's just not great, as so many others would have you believe. If you need an RPG to satiate your appetite, then it will suit your needs, but don't expect it to change your life and have your children...or deliver a 5-star gaming experience.
Excellent game February 8, 2010
bashirdr (Ohiopyle, PA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This game has beautiful graphics, atmospheres, sound, music, effects, and so on. Totally engages your senses. But whatever. What really makes a good game is (shock!) gameplay! And DA:O has unbelievable gameplay. Your choices really affect the outcome of the game, and even affect events as you progress. Combat is truly sweet. A fantastic real-time engine that's the most realistic I've ever seen. The ability to pause and issue commands opens up incredible strategic opportunities. My one gripe? It's easier to control combat from the zoomed-out overhead view, but so tempting to watch it unfold zoomed in because the fights look so cool!
The origins are really good. They are fun and interesting and propel you into the main story, which itself is epic and consuming. The origins also add replay - each time you play with a different origin, you really feel a new perspective on the events of the game.
My one word of advice: don't sweat your choices! Bioware has made it so you can complete the game on normal difficulty with any build of any character, no matter what choices you make. It's a role playing game, so make whatever choice seems best to you. I'm not saying this game is easy - some sections certainly offer a good challenge - but it's very hard to screw yourself over. Just play and have fun!
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