Dragon Age Origins Review
Great RPG? Or Greatest RPG?
Okay, I will admit that saying this is the greatest RPG ever might be taking it a little too far, but only a little. In this incredible adventure you can expect to have epic battles, slay endless amounts of enemies, solve plenty of riddles, and have complete free will. With this, you can also expect to face the consequences of even your most minor actions. Thankfully, there are quite a few different ways to get around every task at hand, which is what makes this game so great in my eyes.
This is definitely not the first game to incorporate free will, and multiple ways to play through the game, including multiple endings. But I have to say that this is the best that I have played.
In this game there are 6 origin stories, which are the beginning of your game. After you play through the origin story you begin the main quest line. Your origin story decides, for the most part, how the other NPCs in the game will react to you, some characters may hate you for who you are, and others will have much in common with you. There are no boundaries in this game, you can go wherever you want, betray whoever you want, or just go out and look for things to kill. This freedom makes you feel like you are actually controlling the world you are playing in, every action you make will have a reaction on the world. If you save someone’s life, you will probably see them again later. If you kill someone, there will probably be consequences for it later.
One thing that’s for sure about this game is that you will never need to mindlessly grind for experience. There is always a new quest to go on, and the quests are refreshingly original too. It’s not your average go to _______, kill 10 _________, then turn in the quest. You are constantly meeting new people, trying to find new party members, making decisions on who you want to be your friends, and who you want to be your enemies. This is one of the most appealing parts of this game to me.
This game was released for PS3, PC, and Xbox 360. I have only played the 360 version, and I was very impressed with the control system. It is surprisingly easy to navigate and get the hang of, even for new players. Although a lot of the concepts may be a little overwhelming for first-time RPGers, this game has 4 levels of difficulty, the lowest will be very adequate for any player. I would also like to mention that this is not a game for children. Not only is there incredible amounts of blood, and (if you choose) sexual themes, there are a lot of riddles and puzzles to solve, and a few of them were even challenging for me. In other words, for once I actually agree with the ESRB on the rating.
This game is a perfect combination of Bioware genius. They implement the great RPG styles of Baldurs Gate, and the free will styling of Mass Effect. It also implemented a lot of the greatness of Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, and had a really interesting (however, slightly cliche) storyline. You can get a minimum of 40 hours of quality game play out of this.
The Scores (out of 10, 10 being the highest)
Playability: 9 Very impressive for such an in-depth game to actually be easy to control on a console platform. However, it is not perfect. It would still be very convenient to be able to have every spell available in a bar at the bottom of your screen.
Graphics: 7.5 Okay, the graphics in this game are not the most quality graphics I’ve seen. Bioware did what they had to do to create this massive game. A 7.5 is not a bad score though, the characters mouths move in correct patterns for words, and it’s not a pain to look at, it could be a LOT better though.
Storyline: 9.5 With it’s origin stories to start the game off, all the way through the entire epic adventure of assembling an army, this game has a fantastic storyline. Some say it is cliche, however it didn’t stop me from feeling like I was in the game saving the world.
Replay Value: 9 This game has an incredible replay value, because you can always start over as a new race/class/origin story, and play through the whole game making different decisions and finding out alternative ways to have defeated every quest.
OVERALL SCORE:
9.25
With a surprise around every corner, and game-altering consequences behind every action, Dragon Age Origins will keep you coming back for more. This will definitely be a memorable game in Bioware’s archive, and for role playing games as a whole.