Dragon Age: Origins (Xbox 360)Dragon Age: Origins (Xbox 360)

If you love role play games with puzzles then this is for you. It does take a bit of getting into I wasnt convinced when I first started but was soon addicted
The add ons you can buy make this a game that will last.
Definantly worth a buy!

The best: The story
The worst: The Graphics
The pretty: Morrigan
The ugly: The Brecilian Forest

As everybody know, Bioware is kind of a demigod in the videogame industry, so when they announced the "spiritual successor" to Baldur's Gate, we knew we were in for a wonderful title.

Now we finally got hands on the Xbox 360 version of Dragon Age: Origins and we can say with all confidence, that it is one of the best console RPG's to see the light since The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in 2006. In a nutshell, the game is incredibly huge, with really long quests, a plethora of places to explore, thousands of pieces of armor, weapons and runes to enchant them, a very deep and satisfying role-playing experience, a very interesting story with tough decisions, dragons and lots of blood.

Dragon Age: Origins tells the story of a new recruit in the order of the Grey Wardens - a group of people who basically have the task of saving the world every time it is needed. You can choose one of six different origins, and doing so will affect how people react to you the entire game, what class you can be, and in some cases, the ending. So, if you choose to be a City Elf, people will mostly have a lot of prejudice towards you, thinking you are a messenger or a servant, and if you run into some Dalish Elves, they will think you're just an insignificant version of the shemlen (humans) who lost your culture. The origins mission are pretty varied and mostly interesting, and once you end them, the quest to end the "Blight" starts. It is never completely explained what a Blight is, but you'll know it happens when the Darkspawn -the main villains- awake an Archdemon and start marching to the surface to taint the land. I have beaten the game a couple of times and know a LOT of the background story of Ferelden, and I can tell you it is incredibly rich and complex. Here's hoping you take a little time to read all the codex entries the game has.

Besides the origin, you can choose one of three possible classes -Rogue, Warrior and Mage. They play quite similar but with some key differences. As a Warrior you are the classic "tank", you'll be at the frontlines slaughtering the enemies with brute force. As a Rogue, you'll be able to open locks, create and disarm traps, make yourself invisible, and have a knack for "hitting weak spots for massive damage". Finally, I found playing as a Mage as the most satisfying of the three; you are a ranged attacker with low defense but have at your disposal a lot of spectacular and powerful spells, who can freeze, burn and weaken enemies, as well as heal and strengthen your party members. All of the classes have several ways of customization, so if you want, you can make your Rogue a powerful archer, or a two-handed bastard, or a combination of both.

On top of this you can learn some "specializations", which will customize even more the performance of your characters. For example, your Warrior could become a Templar, so he can neutralize magic, and your Rogue can be a Ranger so he can summon powerful wild animals. These are just a couple of examples to the plethora of choices you can have when customizing your main character and party members.

All of this customization serves one purpose: Combat. Every time you know you're engaging in combat you'll have to think about what party member to bring along and what strategy to use. The game has a very complete strategy menu that will probably never be touched by most gamers, and will overwhelm some people, but it is integral at higher difficulties. In this menu you can order your characters to act according to the situation, so if a Mage sees a warrior being attacked by more than two people, he is obligated to use "Heal" constantly on the warrior, or maybe freeze the enemies around him, that is up to you. The combat system is technically real time, but you'll want to usually pause the game with your left trigger so you can order you party members specific actions. This level of control you have over the battles is pretty satisfying, and after you kill a dragon you will feel great for being such a badass.

Of course, not everything is dungeon crawling and slaughtering darkspawn, you also get to explore, talk to people and interact with the world of Ferelden. Making choices is an integral part of Dragon Age: Origins. You'll be faced with very difficult decisions along the game. Are you willing to support a corrupt guy who's bringing progress and equality to the dwarves, or a nice and honest guy who want to keep the clearly unfair dwarves traditions?. Not only the situations will have you thinking about the best course of action, but your party members usually react to your decisions, either approving / disapproving you, or simply leaving your party; and you'll find you won't be able to keep everyone happy in your party. How you interact with the world around you, and affect it, is one of the highlights of playing Dragon Age: Origins.

Unfortunately the game is not perfect, and in fact, the first impression I had was definitely not positive at all. First of all, the graphics are way too outdated, specially considering such Bioware's graphic showcases like Mass Effect, one has to wonder what the hell happened with Dragon Age. Not everything is bad-looking though, the facial expressions are pretty well done, the art direction is good, but a lot of the textures are N64-like, there is a lot of pop-up and, in places like the Brecilian Forest, everything just looks incredibly plain. The game is indeed huge, and that could be pretty much a reason for the lack of good graphics, but hey, do you remember Oblivion? That game was huge too.

The second gripe I have is the design of some of the quests. I'm talking about the classic "sorry Mario, the princess is in another castle" structure, which considering this is a current generation game, is quite disturbing. This is specially obvious in the quest involving the dwarves, where you get to look for someone and keep moving from one location to another all the time. Because of this, the game do get boring at some points.

The third issue is the combat system. I've previously stated that the level of strategy is deep and well done, but the game also works like an old-school RPG, so if you press A to attack, the game rolls a "virtual dice" and chances are, you can "Miss" your attack. I completely understand how this works, but I feel a more "Demon's Soul-ish" approach would work better for a game like this.

The fourth and final complain I have is the interface. You see, Mass Effect had an incredibly innovative conversation system. When you play Dragon Age: Origins for the first time, it feels incredibly outdated. For instance, your character never speaks any of the answers, there is never a "cinematic" reaction (apart from some well done expressions), you usually get a lot of possible answers lined up, and sometimes they are very long and boring to read. This affects negatively the pace of the game, and you can't help but wonder why Dragon Age: Origins is so inferior to Mass Effect 2 in this aspect.

CONCLUSION

Dragon Age: Origins has its fair share of shortcomings. But once you get deep into the game, those grips will only be "little things", as the game still boasts an interesting and mature-themed story, a fantastic soundtrack, a deep level of customization, epic battles, a great sense of strategy and role-playing and overall, one of the finest gaming experiences this year.