DAO

This review is for Dragon Age: Origins, released by Bioware.
There are two things Bioware does fantastically - story and dialogue.

This game has a great story. The country of Fereldan is under threat of invasion from the Darkspawn hordes, a group of baddies from hell, basically. Sure that's usually the story in fantast rpg games, but this one has a slight twist. Instead of being expected to deal with your threat on your own, you spend a significant part of the game gathering other armies to help you fight.
The story unfolds the way a book might. As you meet people and perform tasks for them, their true motives become clearer. You can choose to trust some of the people you come in contact, or not. These decisions will affect the outcome of the game in sometimes drastic ways, so it is very important to pick and choose your battles.
Speaking of battles, one thing this game is positively terrible for is a battle. It has the least flow I've ever seen in a game. Your average battle starts when you see baddies on the horizon. Your first reaction, as the player, is to pause the game. That way you can issue commands to your party members. However this type of directing continues throughout the battle. The AI is really stupid and doesn't make choices very well. As a result, you need to pause the game every five seconds to reissue commands.

The fights themselves aren't very good even if you get the commands thing down. The character animations are jerky and simple. Their power moves are the only thing that do actual damage, but you cannot stop a character in the middle of a power move or spell in case they are suddenly in harm's way. This means that you are always in harm's way and always being hit by things while you are preparing to do a move.
I liked the idea that if a character dies during combat, they are merely knocked unconscious and get back up at the end of battle but with a permanent injury. This was a great idea-- but injury kits are hard to come by in this game. The levels are extremely long and there is no way to fast travel back to camp to heal all of your teammates. So it's either keep going with a severely damaged party, or turn around and limp all the way back which can take a really long time.
The dialogue for this game, on the other hand, is fantastic. What I always expect from a bioware game is great dialogue. I read somewhere that this game has over nine novels worth of dialogue and information. I highly praise any company that would spend that much time writing so much information. The story and characters are very deep with personal back stories. They approve or dissapprove of the player based on the decisions you make or paths you take. Even their dialogue changes based on how well they like you. not to mention the fact that Steve Valentine has a gorgeous voice and was perfect for Alistair...

Overall, I enjoyed this game. It had great replay value, fun characters, and a great overall good versus evil storyline. This review is the first of a two parter. I'll be reviewing the second dragon age next to compare between the two. Thanks for watching!

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• DAO