(annoyingly long-winded review ahead.)
before starting: i have a massive love-hate relationship with this game, series as a whole, and its worldbuilding. i can't in good faith recommend people play this game (maybe back in 2014 or whenever i first picked this game up), but if you were to play any dragon age i'd definitely say to start here.
the good. in concept, this game is wonderful. it was a massive stepping stone for the RPG genre, with handling a more "adult" topic with a graphic depiction of fantasy.
i think the story is the strongest point in both this game and the series as a whole. i would even believe that this is one of the best bioware games to date because of this alone. this is one of my favorite games, and i love gushing about the story and even the characters. i find the characters a bit lackluster (especially when compared to the rest of the series), but overall they're charming and funny, and i adore the fact that they just have conversations with each other. they COULD be better, but i'm also glad that they're not - there's more important things to do in this world than to make friends, even if making actual friends is still an important thing to do.
this game IS outdated, but i'm actually a fan of that. this game doesn't look good but it's not supposed to (and i find the graphics incredibly charming as well) and this game doesn't do combat well but i think that is entirely fine. i don't actually think these are the core issues of this game anyways, even if i didn't like them because, to me, they're not really cores of the game even if they're a constant.
the bad. because of dragon age's "mature" themes, it WANTS to tackle subjects that it doesn't know how to tackle. it's confused as to what to do with their elves (trying to be "subversive" while also playing into real world stereotypes and retractive ideas), nothing really interesting happens with the circle, and it wanted to do dwarven politics because, of course it's still a fantasy game, but even those seem half-baked. it's worse in the later games, but origins is a game from 2009 and it shows very heavily in its worldbuilding and storytelling.
this game doesn't know when to pull the player out a level as well. i get so fed up with sections of this game halfway through doing it that replaying it, as much as i like doing that, is also just a slog to walk through. i feel like i enjoy the idea of playing it more than actually playing it, because there are sections of this game i will avoid until they become unavoidable (i'm trying to keep this spoiler free - but all of the deep roads sections can suck it). i know there's still a story to be told, and randomly being pulled out of a level can take you out of this story, but there are sections that i will sometimes completely backtrack through just to go talk to my companions for a little bit as a breather.
the ugly. i'm done talking about the actual meat of this game, but the technical side leaves a LOT to be desired. not the graphics, but the actual software this game runs on is complete and total ass. on console, it's mostly fine - but on PC, this game does not like being played.
it is incredibly difficult to play on any graphical setting higher than low or medium due to a plethora of issues. this game crashes CONSTANTLY, and there are so many bugs and issues that i had to literally cheat to complete a few quests (which broke my quest journal). if you don't want to mod your game, there is no way around these issues at all.
before starting: i have a massive love-hate relationship with this game, series as a whole, and its worldbuilding. i can't in good faith recommend people play this game (maybe back in 2014 or whenever i first picked this game up), but if you were to play any dragon age i'd definitely say to start here.
the good. in concept, this game is wonderful. it was a massive stepping stone for the RPG genre, with handling a more "adult" topic with a graphic depiction of fantasy.
i think the story is the strongest point in both this game and the series as a whole. i would even believe that this is one of the best bioware games to date because of this alone. this is one of my favorite games, and i love gushing about the story and even the characters. i find the characters a bit lackluster (especially when compared to the rest of the series), but overall they're charming and funny, and i adore the fact that they just have conversations with each other. they COULD be better, but i'm also glad that they're not - there's more important things to do in this world than to make friends, even if making actual friends is still an important thing to do.
this game IS outdated, but i'm actually a fan of that. this game doesn't look good but it's not supposed to (and i find the graphics incredibly charming as well) and this game doesn't do combat well but i think that is entirely fine. i don't actually think these are the core issues of this game anyways, even if i didn't like them because, to me, they're not really cores of the game even if they're a constant.
the bad. because of dragon age's "mature" themes, it WANTS to tackle subjects that it doesn't know how to tackle. it's confused as to what to do with their elves (trying to be "subversive" while also playing into real world stereotypes and retractive ideas), nothing really interesting happens with the circle, and it wanted to do dwarven politics because, of course it's still a fantasy game, but even those seem half-baked. it's worse in the later games, but origins is a game from 2009 and it shows very heavily in its worldbuilding and storytelling.
this game doesn't know when to pull the player out a level as well. i get so fed up with sections of this game halfway through doing it that replaying it, as much as i like doing that, is also just a slog to walk through. i feel like i enjoy the idea of playing it more than actually playing it, because there are sections of this game i will avoid until they become unavoidable (i'm trying to keep this spoiler free - but all of the deep roads sections can suck it). i know there's still a story to be told, and randomly being pulled out of a level can take you out of this story, but there are sections that i will sometimes completely backtrack through just to go talk to my companions for a little bit as a breather.
the ugly. i'm done talking about the actual meat of this game, but the technical side leaves a LOT to be desired. not the graphics, but the actual software this game runs on is complete and total ass. on console, it's mostly fine - but on PC, this game does not like being played.
it is incredibly difficult to play on any graphical setting higher than low or medium due to a plethora of issues. this game crashes CONSTANTLY, and there are so many bugs and issues that i had to literally cheat to complete a few quests (which broke my quest journal). if you don't want to mod your game, there is no way around these issues at all.