Dragon Age Origins

Pete reviews Dragon Age Origins.

Micro-managing the micro-management.

Those of you who've played Knights of the Old Republic will settle into this game quickly.
There's no Jedi and Lightsabers but there's pretty much everything else.

GRAPHICS - 8/10:
The characters are the shining point of the games graphics. Facial animation is near
perfect and it's easy spot which of your characters are frowning at your latest decision
to threaten a Priest or laugh at a small child that can't find his mother.
Every character that joins your party is very detailed and stands out amongst the commoners
but the commoners and village-folk all appear to be made from the same 4 or 5 templates.
But there's so many villagers and citizens in the game that you soon let it slide. The
enviroments also look pretty bland but most of the time you're too busy looking for a certain
path, object, NPC, whatever, to focus too much on that.



SOUND - 7/10:
The music is mostly uneventful and dull. But the voice-acting is good and combat seems
to have dozens of sounds ranging from swords clanging together to enemies shattering after
being encased in ice. The Mabari attack dogs are a great addition and add greatly to the
atmosphere as well as the story.

GAMEPLAY - 8/10:
It's mostly smooth sailing when it comes to controling your party and navigating menus.
The path-finding leaves something to desired though. Watching your Melee characters attempting
to close the gap to the enemy when there's an object in the way is borderline idiotic. 90% of the time
you'll have to manually take control of that character, close the gap, re-issue combat orders
and then switch back. It doesn't happen very often but when it does it can cost time and attacks,
which will ultimately result in someone taking too much damage or dying.
Party members who die in combat are eventually revived irregardless of weather there's a caster present
when combat is completed. This is fine until you notice that the resurrected player has an "Injury".
Said injuries reduce a random stat for that party member. In a game as stat-heavy as this, any reductions
are going to impact combat effectiveness in a large way. The only way (that I know of) to remove an
injury is to use an "Injury Kit". Everytime you talk to a vendor you'll automatically look to see if
they have any kits for sale and immediately buy as many as possible. Your stats are just too important.

MECHANICS + FEATURES - 8/10:
The amount of time spent in menus micro-managing your characters and their abilities is a bit
daunting. Keeping the armour, weapon, skills, and talents in check for one character is tough enough.
But doing it for four (and more) people whose abilities have to be carefully planned out is difficult.
I've had to restart my game at least twice because my tanking character had dual-weapon abilities...
which is effectively a waste of points seeing as tanks carry one weapon a shield. Resetting stats and
skills simply isn't possible.

Dragon Age Origins' "Tactics" screen is a lot like Final Fantasy XII's "Gambit" system. You set certain
conditions and certain actions. When a condition is met, the action is performed. For example, you
can set up something like this: IF (My Health) IS LESS THAN (25%) THEN (use weakest available health potion).
The Mages tend to save certain spells for certain combat conditions, such as:
IF (Enemy Target Health) IS LESS THAN (25%) THEN (Cast Ice Shatter). It's a good (if slightly confusing at
first) system that makes a huge difference in combat when set-up properly. Sure it's also a way for your
AI controlled party members to burn through Health Potions but thats the price you have to pay to keep
them alive.



If you choose to play on the NORMAL difficulty or higher then you'll notice the game warning you about
certain spells and abilities. The warning basically says to watch out for friendly-fire. Which is a
huge pain if you've got Mages in your group. Levelling a Mage and choose their spells becomes tricky
because Mages tend to stay at the back of group, keeping a distance during combat. So if you're casting
Fire Ball at the enemy and your team-mates are between yourself and the target (which 90% of the time
they are) expect your team-mates to take a chuck of damage too.
This wouldn't be so bad if it only affected a small amount of Mage spells, but the fact of the matter is
that 70% of your Mages' abilities will come at a price. The only way to avoid this friendly fire issue
is to play on the EASY difficulty setting.



Which brings me nicely to the games' next feature. If you can call it that.
If a battle is proving too be too difficult for you for whatever reason (lack of potions, injured party, etc)
then you can pause the game and reduce the difficulty, changing it back whenever you please.
The first patch actually made the "Easy Mode easier", due to normal mode being pretty tricky at times.

Those of you with a Logitech G15 keyboard will be pleasantly surprised to see that the game automatically
recognizes your keyboard and uses the LCD to display your character health and energy/stamina.
(Which is a very nice touch! Usually G15 owners like myself have to go hunting on obscure forums for such
LCD applets and programs.)

FINAL THOUGHTS:
I like this game, it's got lots of GOOD qualities but I'm yet to find one I consider to be GREAT.
The story is mostly capable of keeping my attention but at times it's easy to forget what's going
on where and why. Don't get me wrong, it's an interesting story but we've seen it all before in
other fantasy books, films and games. The only noteable difference is that the Elves in this game
are actually quite short (not as short as Dwarves but not as tall as Humans) and they're a race born
into slavery. There's plenty of quests to do but activating them can be a pain. Certain responses
are required when chatting to villagers or that exclaimation mark will simply float over their
heads until you get the chat just-right.
At one point in the game I was asked to clear of village of bandits, I was about to accept when
I saw the words "PREMIUM CONTENT" on the screen. The game is barely a week old but there's
already 11 download content packs... each with a price tag. I'm in favour of expanding games to
get your moneys-worth but having ingame salesmen completely ruins the immersion. It's a shameless cash-cow
that Bioware will probably be beating to death over the next six months or so.
If you're looking for a 30+ hour RPG title to keep you engrossed until Left 4 Dead 2 or Assassin's
Creed 2 you could a hell of a lot worse than Dragon Age Origins. If you're in no rush then hold off
for a Collector's Edition that'll probably have all the extra content and patches etc on an disc.

So... all in all, a good game, recommended but only if you're in dire need of a lengthy RPG and you've
finished the likes of Oblivion, Dark Messiah and Torchlight.

13th November 2009, 22:52

14th November 2009, 10:29