BioWare games tend to be very flawed pieces of work, that I generally enjoy. They're hard for me to hate on too much, as they manage to still capture a general aesthetic all the way through, and there's a considerable amount of nerdy worldbuilding they generate. Usually inspired by background politics and ideas lifted elsewhere, Dragon Age Origins is a rusty example of such applied to dark fantasy. And thankfully, I managed to enjoy myself despite the ridiculous amounts of issues and other valleys I was forced to cross over.
To get this out of the way, DA:O is still a buggy mess and unoptimized, to where I still managed to have the game crash years after this game's release, as well as run into some other unsavory bugs. Nothing game breaking, but certainly a shitton of flow interruption.
The game's biggest flaw though stems from its lackluster combat. It has some strategic depth to it for sure, and some encounters on the highest difficulty make use of the systems intertwined here, but none of it is interesting to use past the first couple hours. DA:O also breaks under several several exploits, to a point where combat becomes a chore the vast majority of time, and only being tolerable when it's at its best. Rogues and Mages just decimate anything in their way to the point of disbelief. To make matters worse, the game makes you do a lot of combat, way more than anyone should have to, especially for a game of its type. Clearly the darkspawn should be terrified as soon as they see the MC considering his body count in the span of a fucking couple weeks.
That being said, past these combat issues there's a good amount of worldbuilding to enjoy, and especially great characters to get to know. There's a couple of misses on either side, but overall what you're generally treated to is an excellently moving series of character-specific stories tied neatly to the main story. Each of them deal with a central political or personal theme that I found engaging, and in fact, found the main story to be engaging as it used its concept of this all-ending Blight pushed off by politicians worrying about their own issues. At the time of this review, COVID has us all in quarantine, and the politics above the stairs are having their own quibbles as people don't get the things they need. So, I honestly found the story to be more realistic than I think the writers had in mind. The characters especially are my favorite part, with Alistair and Morrigan's banter being the big highlights of the journey through Fereldin.
Dragon Age: Origins also ends on a high note, with the last couple missions holding the most meat in terms of story and character content as well as political drama, while also revealing interesting and legitimate motivations for the antagonists. It managed to right itself as a good game in my book, although one I have to carefully recommend, because there are still several issues that could end the appeal right then and there.
If you can get past some bugs, bleh music, several downturns of boring content, many disappointing missteps, you'll find a western RPG that I think holds up quite decently.
To get this out of the way, DA:O is still a buggy mess and unoptimized, to where I still managed to have the game crash years after this game's release, as well as run into some other unsavory bugs. Nothing game breaking, but certainly a shitton of flow interruption.
The game's biggest flaw though stems from its lackluster combat. It has some strategic depth to it for sure, and some encounters on the highest difficulty make use of the systems intertwined here, but none of it is interesting to use past the first couple hours. DA:O also breaks under several several exploits, to a point where combat becomes a chore the vast majority of time, and only being tolerable when it's at its best. Rogues and Mages just decimate anything in their way to the point of disbelief. To make matters worse, the game makes you do a lot of combat, way more than anyone should have to, especially for a game of its type. Clearly the darkspawn should be terrified as soon as they see the MC considering his body count in the span of a fucking couple weeks.
That being said, past these combat issues there's a good amount of worldbuilding to enjoy, and especially great characters to get to know. There's a couple of misses on either side, but overall what you're generally treated to is an excellently moving series of character-specific stories tied neatly to the main story. Each of them deal with a central political or personal theme that I found engaging, and in fact, found the main story to be engaging as it used its concept of this all-ending Blight pushed off by politicians worrying about their own issues. At the time of this review, COVID has us all in quarantine, and the politics above the stairs are having their own quibbles as people don't get the things they need. So, I honestly found the story to be more realistic than I think the writers had in mind. The characters especially are my favorite part, with Alistair and Morrigan's banter being the big highlights of the journey through Fereldin.
Dragon Age: Origins also ends on a high note, with the last couple missions holding the most meat in terms of story and character content as well as political drama, while also revealing interesting and legitimate motivations for the antagonists. It managed to right itself as a good game in my book, although one I have to carefully recommend, because there are still several issues that could end the appeal right then and there.
If you can get past some bugs, bleh music, several downturns of boring content, many disappointing missteps, you'll find a western RPG that I think holds up quite decently.