Dragon Age: Origins Review

This was the game I’ve been anticipating this year and now that it’s out, I’ve been playing it for a couple of weeks now. They called it the spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate and in anticipation for this game, I even played through Baldur’s Gate II and it’s expansion(yes I’m that hardcore :P). So how does it live up to the classic Baldur’s Gate?

Quite well I would say. To be completely fair, Dragon Age is it’s own beast. It does go back to the much more tactical combat that the Baldur’s Gate series was known for while improving a lot of little minor gripes about the old Bioware games.

Dragon Age: Origins takes place in the fantasy world of Ferelden(an original Bioware creation). There are the usual humans, elves, dwarves and yes Dragons. The land is besieged with conflict as the Dark Spawn(evil creatures that originate from the underground) have been growing its forces and spreading on land.

All these may sound typical fantasy fiction fare but Bioware has made Dragon Age more darker and there are a lot of unexpected turn of events that will shock and surprise you. Expect the unexpected in Dragon Age. This is a long, epic, old school RPG.

You start with a choice of selecting your main character, your origin as they say. Different races will get their own prologue story(an origin story that you play) and you will get many situations that may have new options opened to you that are different if you played a different race or class.

You have the born with a silver spoon human nobles, poverty stricken city elves, isolationist Dalish elves, impoverished Dwarven commoner and conflict ridden Dwarven noble origin stories. All completely different in how they play out and your entire game will differ based on this starting choice.

I cannot stress just how many different branching paths you can take with the story in Dragon Age. You’d probably find other players having taken completely different solutions to quests that you never knew you could do it that way. There are tonnes of dialogue in this game and the writing is very good. A lot of funny and quite disturbing plots in the game main story and side quests.

Aside from the story and dialogues, you will also spend a lot of your time in Dragon Age in combat. Bioware has moved away from the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules and crafted their own ruleset for Dragon Age. You may find that they might have dropped certain aspect you might have liked from their older fantasy games(like day night cycles, spell memorizations, resting and a couple more mechanics) but everything was done to make the game flow better and keep you focused on the core aspects of the game(combat and story).

One of the biggest pains in their older games were the inventory system. You’ll be glad to find that items do not have a weight to them any longer and there is a unified inventory space for all your characters. However you’d find the 70 slot quickly filled up as you progress in the game. Sadly, you can’t drop items(you need to destroy them to make space in the inventory). You will have the opportunity to upgrade your inventory space(by increments of 10) from certain traders. You could also download a helpful treasure chest mod that will give a chest to store items in your main party camp.

Combat is an absolute blast in Dragon Age . With the ability to zoom out and view the battle field in an isometric/top down view, you'd be able to pause the game and plan your attacks efficiently. In fact, you WILL have to do this if you want to get past some of the tougher battles(and there are plenty of tough battles).

Magic uses a mana based system now and they regenerate out of combat (removing the need to rest). Party members that fall in combat are not permanently dead. They resurrect automatically after combat is ended and get an injury status. These injuries give a negative effect on your stats until an injury kit is used or you go to your party encampment.

A major addition now to Dragon Age is the ability to gain bonus damage for flanks or rear attacks. At last, a staple of strategy games is brought to an RPG game. Of course rogues have better ability to do this and get an added damage bonus for backstabs. In lieu of this, you also need to keep an eye on your parties rear and flanks since you’ll be outnumbered most of the time.

You can start as a mage, warrior or rogue and specialise into sub classes when you hit level 7 and 14(giving you the option to make your favourite classic class like Ranger, Assassin, Arcane Warrior and many more). You have to keep in mind that you won’t be able to pick locks without a rogue with the lock picking skill. Dragon Age removes the lock bashing ability of fighters and mages lock removing spells. You will get a rogue in game not too far in so don’t worry if you’re not able to open locks in the beginning.

You can only bring along four party members(all the NPC’s recruited will stay at your party camp but you can only bring 4 along) which is a pity since they are all well voiced and interesting. Just like in Baldur’s Gate, some of the best moments in game were playing through their specific quests and bonding with them(you learn their story).

Dragon Age is the best PC game this year(I’ll release my list later this month)! It’s epic, memorable, and has an insane amount of replayability. It just goes to show that an old school fantasy based RPG can still be successful and be a deep RPG game(without the need of oversimplifying things). Dragon Age is a great homage to traditional RPG gamers and we salute Bioware for a job well done! You’ll be playing this one for a long, long time.

PS : Bioware’s also released the development toolkit for Dragon Age. So you can expect a lot of user made content and modules(as well as Bioware made DLC’s) just like NeverWinter Nights did.

Pros:

• Great story
• Extremely long
• Very replayable
• A lot of strategic and tactical battles
• Memorable characters
• Very polished game with hardly any game ending bug
• It's hard to come by a game of such scale these days

Cons:

• Graphics aren't the sharpest when compared to other triple AAA games(but good considering the scope it offers)
• You still run out of inventory space for your party which is irritating

Rating : 9/10

Price : RM138

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