i need to preface this review with some information. one, i played this game around release. maybe not like the YEAR it came out but i played it probably like 2010, definitely before DAII came out. secondly, i have done four full playthroughs of this game (one on nightmare, half on PC and half on PS3) and am in the process of finishing 3 simultaneous nightmare playthroughs (yes, i lack control). i have put several hundreds of hours into this game. i have a fairly large portion of the dialogue committed to memory, if only in snippets. i have put in time, effort, and dedication to this singular game by itself, no less the entire series as well.

so, with that in mind, let me just outright state that the combat in this game is fucking atrocious. i am going to use the adjective "dysfunctional" in its most literal interpretation, because combat in this game does not work at all how it is supposed to.

the problem with combat is that the AI in DAO is just not very good at all. 2009 may have been a different time, but FFXII demonstrated that having AI patterns set up for party members works very well when executed correctly, and that was 4 years and a console ago. i don't know what's going on here, but sometimes the AI just bugs out and goes in the opposite direction of enemies. sometimes it will cycle through all possible subroutines too quickly to do anything so it will just stand still while the character's actions flash rapidly through each of its options. sometimes, most bafflingly, you will directly control a character and tell them to do an action, but they will just refuse to do it for reasons unknown to the cosmos themselves.

maybe some of this could've been alleviated if you had access to all the possible tactics slots for a character, but for another confounding reason, the game decides to drip feed you those slots by making you waste skill points on them. is there genuinely ANY good reason to do this? in XII, gambit slots were trivially easy to obtain so it was more a matter of "get these as you need them". here skill points are fucking scarce, especially if the character is not a rogue. what is the point of this? to artificially create a sense of growth by spiting the player in early to midgame (read: the bulk of the game)? what is the design philosophy here?

and keep in mind, the limitation of the AI seems to not extend to the enemy forces, not at all. rarely will you see an enemy experiencing the exact problems you and your companions face with AI. and the pathfinding, christ almighty. i have very strong memories of each encounter where, if left to their own devices, the AI will absolutely be incapable of navigating around an obstacle without being directly controlled. fuck, i could dedicate an entire paragraph to how pathfinding in this game is genuinely broken and does not work. but you get my point by now, right?

i think if you toss aside the AI issues of combat, combat itself just isn't fun at best and at worst is frustrating because of poor game design. there's kill animations that stop your character from doing anything of value, leave them vulnerable to attacks, cannot be canceled, and can last as long as several seconds. a fair amount of encounters (most notably ones like marjolaine and gaxkang) take place in extremely cramped interiors that were very poorly considered for combat involving five-nine different characters. several enemies have attacks that they can do at their leisure where they will incapacitate a character by either grabbing them, rushing them to the ground, etc. and that character will be incapable of doing anything but lay on their back and be beaten. you CAN in theory switch to another character and use a skill to interrupt the enemy, but what if the skill you need is on cooldown? or what if you only have one character with that type of skill and they're the one being victimized? or what if they're just very far away from the character in question? or, what the skill trapping the character in question is magic and thus can only be freed by using the Dispel Magic talent and the character being trapped is your only mage? too fucking bad! enjoy eating all that damage, and, almost certainly on higher difficulties, most likely losing that character until they're revived or the end of the encounter.

i know it may sound like i'm beating a dead horse here but i really need you to understand that a core and fundamental part of gameplay is just outright horrid and i still somehow like this game. that alone is testament to the fact that i love the characters in this game, enjoy the narrative, and find the lore compelling (at times, at least). the character interactions are also head and shoulders above the rest of bioware's catalog as far as i'm concerned. your characters will react to situations in organic and sensible ways, with each having their own unique and personalized perspective. the approval system is nice too, if video game-y. i don't love that gifts exist in the game because it means that if i give morrigan enough shiny objects, she will overcome the fact that we have irreconcilable personality differences and still think of me as a dear friend. but, for what we got, i really do appreciate the time and care that was put into making these characters feel as though they were in a lived-in universe with beliefs, motivations, and ideas that are messy and conflict and blend together in compelling ways.

i'm sure if you trivialize the combat by switching to casual, you can probably have a blast with this game. there's a reason i have revisited this game 7 times. i have my problems with the story side of things, believe me (a lot of the choices are binary or "two bad endings or a third option with no cost and resolves the problem for all parties", and the mages v. templar theme is so embarrassingly executed that i cannot fathom how it became a central theme of the series). but this is a game with a world that feels gigantic and storied, even if it cuts a lot of corners to get to that feeling.

it's weird revisiting this because for the longest time this used to be one of my favorite games of all time. at one point, i think i had this rated as a 5.0/5.0 game. part of it is maturity in seeing that the story is not the completely layered and complex narrative that i used to think it was, but another part of me wonders just how the hell i stomached the combat of this game. it does genuinely make me melancholy that such a special game has aged so terribly for me. i still like this game, but christ, i miss what i used to think it was.

Never have I ever played a 3D platformer that gave me such a visceral reaction as this game did. I thought I just didn't like 3D platformers anymore because of it. Everything in this game is the epitome of obnoxious, between absolute garbage level design, camera and controls functioning as well as trying to run on a treadmill on ice while being sprayed with water in the face, to the entire game having the sound design of slapstick kids commercial for the newest Slime Toy TM. If you give this game anything above 3 stars I genuinely feel bad for you of how you lie to yourself. Just go play Mario 64 if you want a good platformer from that era.

An overall good game, love the graphics, love the story and acting, love the missions, only downsides I can think of are 1- its too short, I WANT MORE! 2- there isn't really anything to do other than the main story, I found myself just playing the main story like a linear game all the time, then uninstalling the game as soon as I was done with it because I had nothing to do at all, I'm not a fan of having an overly massive world with too much stuff that you forget the main story, but a somewhat lifeless world isn't good either, hope they can make the world more alive in next sequels.

A much needed remake of a classic start to a franchise, Mafia manages to feel modern in its gameplay while not differing from the overall themes of the series like Mafia 3 did. the Story is arguably the strongest out of the franchise, being much more Godfather compared to Mafia 2's Goodfellas vibe. the third person shooting isnt revolutionary and the driving is sometimes a little too realistic for comfort but overall this has quickly overtaken Mafia 2 as my favorite in the franchise and a solid recommendation to anyone with PS Now or just a fan of Mafia film and games