Leaping Lizards Dragon Age Orgins Review

[leapinglizard]

Leaping Lizards Review of Biowares - Dragon Age Origins.

 

Short Description of Game ripped and chopped from Bioware site

 

Dragon Age: Origins is a dark heroic rpg fantasy set in the kingdom of Ferelden. The kingdom lies in the far southeast portion of the continent known as Thedas. As the spiritual successor of BioWare's popular Baldur's Gate series of games, it uses a pause-and-play tactical combat system. The gameplay revolves around your party of of up to four characters as they battle enemies and interact with npcs and the rest of the gameworld. Class options are mage, warrior or rogue and races are human, elf and dwarf. The game offers a new feature called Origin Stories that shapes the way the world sees you and the way you will see the world. Each origin determines the player's motivations, shapes his or her experience, and renders a unique prelude, path, and ending to the game.

 

 

Here is my intial impression review . Ive been playing the game for the past two days.

 

Things i like

 

- deep and involving story line that from what ive experienced so far is well written and immerses you in the game world.

The main quest line while linear is multipathed and you can choose in what order you complete main quest stages for the most part.

 

- lots of well written and voiced dialogue

 

- well done and numerous cut scenes that really draw you into the gameworld (its almost like there is a cut scene for every quest in the game)

 

- the sheer amount and length of quests. (the one thing i disliked about fallout - not enough quests). Id say as a rough estimate there is a 80 to 100+ hours

gameplay in Dragon Age Origins.

 

- most quests are high to very high quality and range from small kill bandit jobs to epic dungeon crawls with titanic final battles.

 

- the excellent magic system that features visually spectacular special effects.

 

- combat is brutal and visceral, lots of blood flying everywhere and there is dismemberment via automaticly completed finishing moves.

 

- tactical system. You can program how your party members react to certain situations. eg once a member gets below 25% health you can tell them to

automaticly use a health potion/bandage or you could instuct your warrior to use a certain move/talent if they get surrounded by enemies or use a shield

talent if they get fired at by a archer. the tactic options are numerous and allow 100s of different instructions you can give to your party members

 

- most of the building architecture was well done (with a few exceptions eg home castle at start of the human noble path/origin).

Things that some may not like

 

- difficulty spikes. Some sections of quests are extremely difficult even played on a easy setting. This is mainly when battling the final stage of the quest bosses. (constantly reloading gets annoying after a while) Although you do get a huge buzz when you finally defeat the ogre or other monster that was giving you problems. There is one quest area that once you go in you cant leave until you finish it. Its a massive quest (like 5 real life hours) but the end boss was incredibly tough. I had to load a save from 8 hours ago (before i started the quest) because i couldn't kill the boss to finish the quest line and as mentioned above couldn't leave the tower until the quest completed. The first patch (which i havent got yet) adjusts the difficulty for the easy and normal modes so maybe that boss can be more easily defeated now...

 

(combat strategies - After a more of a play Ive noticed that having mages that can freeze / or stun or otherwise disable a target/s help greatly in battles especially early on. As does the force field option which you can use to save a near death ally or keep a nasty enemy out of the fight until you deal with his friends). Use doorways to prevent your party from getting surrounded and stun/freeze enemies as they come through the doorway. (the cone of ice works really well here) ok enough hints !)

 

 

Things i didn't like

 

- the very low res textures that are applied to some objects. (someone said that it might be a bug. I was told some low res tex got mixed up with the high res texture set, not sure how such a mistake could have been made though.)

 

- the environments are not as good as oblivion or fallout and are static. eg no moving trees, shadows are not as well done. the sky is static eg no dynamic change as time passes or any weather that ive noticed. In fact once you enter a environment eg a town or wilderness area their is no passing of time, so the sky will remain at sunset or midday etc even if you spend 5 real time hours at the location.

 

- most of the npc just stand still (no schedules etc).

 

- the environments are a little cluttered. Walking outside one of the towns i saw 3 groups of bad guys all within 150 metres of each other. they weren't related to each other, they represented hostiles that linked in with various quests.

 

- the party hold button is hard to use. Needs a more dedicated attack from current position command.

 

- you cant tell how much an item is worth until you visit a store. which is annoying when you need to make decisions on what to keep or destroy when your inventory gets full. (you cant store things in containers etc). Edit. you can right click an item and press examine (eye) to find out the value. You still cant however compare one items value against another easily. (thanks to Dracomies for pointing out the examine option)

 

 

Things i hated.

 

- your party runs everywhere ! :wallbash:

Im a role player, i liked to pretend im actually the one completing the quests and interacting with the environment so it almost ruined the game experience for me having my party running constantly running through a town or running through a castle hall. (game is all 3rd person view so you always see your character) It just shouted that this is game designed for people who just want to go quickly from one set of combat to another. Footsteps sounds are tied to the overall environment sound level so you hear your armoured party clucking about loudly as they run.

You can set your lead party member to walk but the other 3 party members will still run behind him/her. What they do is stop and then once they are a certain distance away they run to keep up and stop and then run again. Zooming in to the lead party member minimises this although you still see your other party members flash into your view every few seconds as they run and stop behind you.

 

there is no way to disable this behaviour. ( and it was confirmed by a dev that they wont be patching to fix it) Im just hoping for a mod.

 

 

Conclusion

 

Overall Dragons Age Orgins is an excellent game that is let down badly by a few small but incredibly annoying things. The party always runs behaviour is the

most annoying but some may find the low res textures and enemy encounters grouped so closely together also bothersome if they like to pretend that they are in a real breathing world rather than a game entertainment environment.

 

Id give it 9.5 out of 10 if the above annoyances were not present. As is i can only give it 8.5/10.

 

edit. grr spelled origins wrong in topic title, but cant fix.

[kevinwastaken]

I agree with most of what you said. There is an overarching theme to the gripes about the game: inconsistency.

 

Inconsistency in difficulty: Or difficulty spikes as you mentioned. Everyone likes a good challenge, but most games give warning and allow the player to prepare for these tougher situations.

 

Inconsistency in graphical detail: Why are some textures of such high quality and others appear to be from a 6 or 7 year old game?

[Florimel]

I also agree with a lot of what you say. Regarding the "everbody runs" issue, however, I felt the same way, but found that I absolutely could toggle between walk and run. I'm not sure if the originally mapped key control worked, but I mapped it to "R" and it works perfectly.

 

Hope this helps a bit.

[leapinglizard]

Hi florimel. im pretty sure you can only have your main character walk. your party still runs and stops and runs again behind you.

 

but il try remapping the key again. (i already remapped it but il try it again cause im desperate to stop the running)

 

thanks for the replies guys

[Dracomies]

You can actually check the prices of your items by using examine on it.

 

I didn't find out until much later. So even if you are nowhere near a merchant, but you see a leather armor on the ground you can use the "eye" on it and it will tell you how much the retail cost is of the item.

[leapinglizard]

@Dracomies Thanks for pointing that out. Its still not ideal, eg you cant easily compare one item vs another but its better than just random guessing !

 

 

I updated the review with a few combat strategies that helped me get through some of the tough battles. Careful spell selection is the key and use natural obstacles to

channel your enemies down one path and stun/ freeze them as they approach to prevent getting surrounded.

[Mlai]

You can set your lead party member to walk but the other 3 party members will still run behind him/her. What they do is stop and then once they are a certain distance away they run to keep up and stop and then run again.... there is no way to disable this behaviour. ( and it was confirmed by a dev that they wont be patching to fix it)

Obviously the people at Bioware do not like Reservoir Dogs. I no longer respect them as human beings until they change their ways.

[rebalious]

Obviously the people at Bioware do not like Reservoir Dogs. I no longer respect them as human beings until they change their ways.

 

Now I can't get the image of Alistair, Zevran, Ohgren and Sten in black suits and sunglasses slo-mo walking out of my head.

 

Hmm Zevran is Mr Pink and Sten is Mr Blonde.

[Lookimscared]

I was annoyed at the bodies turning into a heap of bones after looting them,

and also the blood that comes out from a character when they die,

especially with a dragon or an ogre;

I think that's relevant to the whole poorly done graphics of some things.