An amazing game which fooled my expectations. Interesting, fun and engaging, a must play! [Long review i
The origin stories are very well done and interesting. Playing through each different origin is definitely worth the hassle, and according to which background and race you chose, your feelings towards certain people in the game can change drastically. My favourite origin as of yet has been the Rogue City Elf, and I can honestly say I had steam coming out of my ears 3/4 through the origin quest. Anyone who has played it knows why, and I shall not spoil anything here.
The races in this game consisted of the generic trio: humans, elves and dwarves, and at first I thought this would be the reason I wouldn't buy the game. Glad I was wrong. The Dwarven caste system and politics is probably the most interesting part of the game, I didn't expect the Dwarven society to be that way. Not to mention the lady Dwarves actually look different, instead of using a male dwarven body and changing the voice! The city elves are also interesting; the way they are set aside and literally left to live in the slumps. I haven't had much interaction with the Dalish elves, but I did not fancy them much. Found them a bit boring to be honest. There's not much to say about humans, you'd expect the usual, and that's what you get: some good fellows, merciless tyrants, hot queens and proud nobles.
The story itself is nothing out of this world, but the fact that the blight serves as a catalyst for a lot of other things happening in the world is a good thing. I had thought I'd spend the whole game just running after the darkspawn horde. There isn't much to discuss here without spoiling anything, but let's just say it was satisfying going after certain important figures and conversing and then battling them, especially after everything you have to go through to. Building an army and actually using it in the end part of the game was a nice touch, especially since their armour and weaponry depended on how much stuff you offered the alliance boxes.
There are three classes to choose from: Warrior, Rogue and Mage. I have extensively used the warrior for over 50 hours, so I've got a pretty good grasp on this class. First off, in future games, the warrior class definitely needs MORE talents and skills. For the talents, I did not find the two handed talents interesting or versatile enough, although the shield+weapon talents weren't so bad. More diverse talents to create more diverse warrior builds is a must, it just wasn't so fun to play with a warrior. On the bright side there were loads of heavy/massive armour to choose from, with the repercussion that there wasn't so much unique light and medium armours. In fact there was barely anything at all in comparison to the h/m armours. Skills must have been my biggest gripe, seeing as how only two tiers interested me (persuasion and combat skills), and I actually had to invest points in skills I'd never need/don't make sense for my character. Rogues on the other hand are a very fun build, although I haven't used them enough to justify me criticising them. And from what I have seen from mages, they have a LOT of spells to choose from - entropy spells being my favourite.....and cone of cold being the most overpowered.
I had feared that the combat would be another reason why I would not enjoy the game, but that's not the case. Although the combat is nothing special (real time with pause), it is at least tactical, and you can't just let the computer do all the work (unless you fiddle around in the tactics screen), especially when you face powerful enemies and bosses. The one thing I didn't like was that combat was the only really viable option; yes you can intimidate/persuade your way through a couple of encounters, but you never profited as much as if you killed them. It's like the game wants you to just kill everyone. And other thing which bothered me was that the game followed this formula: dialogue, combat, more combat, cut scene, boss, reward. I knew what I had to expect everytime I entered a ruin, or a cavern, or anywhere else. I hope to see something different if DA2 ever comes out. It just isn't fun going through the game knowing I have to face all those combat encounters. I know some people still managed to beat the game a couple of times, but, well, I can never do that in this game. I can't just go though the whole game again.
Anyway, let's move on to the writing. Voice acting was pretty solid most of the time, and it wasn't an issue definitely. It was sometimes excellent, sometimes corny, yet most of the time decent. Dialogue writing and codex entries were pretty much top notch in my opinion, I can't complain about the writing, bar 2-3 times where I thought companions acted very unnaturally, or someone reacted in a very weird way. They just stood out in an otherwise very natural...world? Can't seem to think of a good word right now.
The graphics were average, nothing to write home about. I installed some HD Textures myself, which made quite a bit of a difference. I can't really comment much on this aspect since I honestly don't care for graphics in games. The art style for most interior buildings was very nice though, especially when viewed from a top-down perspective.
There have been complaints due to technical issues with the game, but I've had none of these. Loading times went up to around 1 minute once, due to a memory leak, and I had to quit and load up the game again for me to solve this issue. Apart from that, everything went smooth, and loading times were about 3-10 seconds, depending on the area et cetera.
All in all, a very fine game, and definitely on my top 10 lists of RPGs. I found it very interesting, engaging and fun. It has its downsides, but which game doesn't? My score: 9/10. I damn well hope for a sequel, and which improves over this first game (think AC2 over AC1, but the only difference is that DA:O can't be compared to Assassin's Creed 1 in terms of shoddiness!).
PS: Interesting that, along with The Witcher, it's the only RPG who made it to my top 10 these past few years.