First off let me preface with saying that I own the 360 version, that is what this review is based upon and does not reflect the PC version at all. I have not even seen anything about the PC version and I frankly don't care, as I'm not ever going to use my PC for gaming.
Now, Dragon Age: Origins is an interesting creature. It boasts some similarity with Mass Effect and KOTOR, perfecting their party systems and their menus... while delving into a different realm of fantasy and fiction, which makes certain things get left behind. Judging this game based upon mechanics, replay value, presentation, and graphics... that is how I get my score.
Always down to business first, I like to see how a game handle. If the game isn't fun to play, then no ammount of story or "replayability" or character work is going to want to make me play it. I cannot force myself into beating my head against a wall with faulty mechanics... a mascochist I am not--which is why I praise the gods of gaming for DA:O and it's combat system. You can pause battle completely with the left trigger and access everything, and I do mean everything about each character via a circular menu. You can give every party member orders, you can nullify their tactics and change them, you can view your surroundings... even if the odds are stacked against you and the number of enemies overwhelming, you can pause and just take a breath. This works two ways as well... you can use the default which makes the menu stay up as long as you hold the trigger, or you can change the options to where one click of LT brings it up, and another takes you back to combat... it makes this combat easily undertaken... that does not mean that combat is easy. Rather it is quite intense, and with four different difficulty levels (which can be changed at any given time) you'll find a place for this in your comfort zone. Me? I'm a realist... and thus when I see that I'm playing as a mage, I want to have my powers believable to me... I want consequence for them. By playing on hard or the intensive difficulty above it, you do party damage (friendly fire) and the enemies damage is no longer scaled. I chose to play on hard so that if I hit a friend... they could die. This makes it to where each and every battle, if I don't do my job as leader... I could lose. When you forget to save and rely only on the autosave feature, this can be a catastrophic loss. This is a nice turn into one of the problems with the mechanics... the autosave feature is a bizzare creature that you have no idea when it will kick in, causing you to have to save often manually... which sometimes (and frequently if you get caught up in the story) you will forget to do. When losing and going back may cause you to reface a difficult room or foe... this is aggrivating and annoying. Solution: save often yourself. There is little to complain about this game's mechanics... traveling from town to location to town is done via a map... which you can sometimes have "random" encounters on that will spice up your adventure. These encounters can be some of the most difficult in the game, often causing much grief for you if your party is set up for doing a certain mission and this encounter throws a completely different kind of enemy against you. All in all it is executed rather well on the whole.
The story of this game is its selling point; however, and it is on this point that you will want to play and play again. There are six different beginning stories... each with their own achievement (and if you are the achievement *** that I am... you'll be playing all of them), and each of these starts will affect your entire game. The story is immersive, with the chance to be different every time... and each beginning story can be played several different ways. With random item drops, random encounters, different party options to be had... there is a great chance of playing this game for several hundred hours.
DA:O presents most of the story via cut scenes in which you will either watch, or you will navigate dialogue options to put your own will into the story itself. I've played for several hours now and the tailoring of these options to make your own character (or to be yourself) is wide and it makes me wonder how some of these encounters might have turned out if I was to act differently. The 360 game has a tendency to glitch at times during conversation, often making words come after the mouth moves, or sometimes not speaking for several long seconds. This can often cause a break in the sensations that were felt as you pushed through and fought to get to a certain place in the story... and the fact that your character will NEVER speak during these cut scene will often make you feel like an outsider to the story (unless you decided to voice your own lines... I'm not doing that so I have a beef with this). All in all this goes hand in hand with the graphical presentation which just seems to be stuck in last year... more likely 2007. The combat this isn't as noticable... but i an cut scene when someone's hair is stiff, wooden and polygon-pixelated-matte... bleh... you tend to wonder where the effort was made? Hair doesn't move, fabrid looks 2-D at times... and it all just makes you go when did I plug in my old Xbox? Thankfully it doesn't detract much from the overall experience, because the voice acting is top notch... and I haven't checked credits yet, but I believe I heard Liam Neeson and Tim Curry several times (though that could be wishful thinking).
Taken as a whole, the game is amazing and I will be guilty of wasting part of my life playing it... I just wish that Bioware would have take a little more time to flesh out the experience and make it... more vibrant and polished, seeing as how this will only be experienced alone.
Very very very awesome review. Your sales pitch was great too lol.
I've heard the game is better on the PC. However my strong dislike for BioWare games will keep me from playing this.
The general consensus is that DA:O is indeed better on PC. It potentially looks and runs the best, and certainly enjoys the tightest control setup. However, the differences between the PC and console versions are more than just technical. DA:O on the PC *plays* very differently when compared to its counterparts, to the point that its almost a different game. To elaborate, the console versions may accurately be described as a pair of enjoyable hack n' slash games with some decent strategic elements, though the PC game is in a lot of ways the inverse. In this latter version, on tougher battles (and even some basic ones), you'll need to regularly pause the action to issue specific commands to each party member. Failure to do so allows you to quickly be divided and conquered. To facilitate the emphasis on strategy, you'll spend a lot of time in the full overhead view, which isn't even included in the console versions due to a lack of need. For a point of reference, it plays a bit like old school WoW, except it's single player and you're controlling all of the characters, including the one who shoots arrows. (No more randomly shooting everything! Yayyyy!)
Does this key difference in focus make the PC game "better"? In the technical sense its superiority is undeniable, but your preferred playstyle will largely dictate whether or not you'll want to go this route if its available to you or pick up a console version anyway. If you want more hands on fighting, the console action is hotter, faster paced, and simpler...but if you want the strategy focus, your decision should already be made.
As an addendum, I realize that I strongly imply numerous times but fail to explicitly state that the difficulty in the PC version of DA:O is considerably more punishing than that of the console versions...hence the necessary focus on the strategy elements.
Great review, think I just might have to get this game.