Spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate is a great, at times challenging, and very enjoyable RPG
After finish those other games (including Assassin's Creed 2 & Ratchet & Clank), I gave Dragon Age its due. It took awhile, as I was struggling to figure out how exactly I wanted to play it, as you have quite a few choices on how to play. Once I figured that out though, I was hooked. That happened last weekend, where I put in probably 15-20 hours in a two day span. Pretty easy to guess that I enjoyed it or I wouldn't have played so much in two days. But it was not easy. BioWare crafted a game with some challenging fights that test your mettle. I think its the hardest RPG I've ever played (granted I haven't tried Demon's Souls yet), but still, it was worth it.
In the land of Ferelden, slightly reminiscent of Middle Earth, an evil is threatening, called the Darkspawn, lead by the Archdemon, a huge dragon. Once before in Ferelden's history, a Blight occurred where the Darkspawn attacked. The Grey Wardens, a group of powerful soldiers (like Mass Effect's Spectres), are the ones meant to slay the Archdemon to end a Blight. Well, the Darkspawn are threatening, and another Blight is on the horizon when Dragon Age kicks off. There are 6 Origin stories that you can choose from, all with their own story which does come into play during the rest of the game. You can choose from 3 races, and 3 c1asses which make up the 6 origins. At the end of each, you are recruited to become a Grey Warden, where the game takes off. Along the way, like any RPG, you'll meet up with people willing to tag along and help out in your adventures. Not counting the DLC character, golem Shale, you eventually can have a party of at least 9, possibly 10. You can then take 4 party members into battle. Speaking of battle...
If you played Baldur's Gate, or Neverwinter Nights, or even Knights of the Old Republic, you should be familiar with the combat in Dragon Age. Not so basically, you control one person's actions, can setup tactics (like Final Fantasy XII's Gambits) to govern the other 3 AI party members, and battle enemies. Unlike FFXIIs Gambits, you fully control whomever you are, usually your character, but having proper tactics in place for your other members is crucial. This is where I had some early troubles, as the default ones are okay, but you should set your own. There are plenty of possibilities, like targeting specific classes first, or attacking an enemy that's attacking you, or using an ability at a specific time, etc. In battle, at least on the consoles, its all real time like in Mass Effect. On the 360, you can hold the Left trigger to open up a Radial menu where you can use potions or items or cast a spell/talent (you can assign 6 spells/talents to X, Y, B with the Right trigger giving you the other set), but that's the only way to pause combat on the consoles. On PC, like BioWare's previous RPGs (besides ME), you can actually pause combat to issue commands. Oddly, despite the fact that Knights had that functionality, its not present in Dragon Age. By that token, Knights even let you queue up attacks, which is also strangely not present. Still, you can use the radial menu to issue commands in a pinch.
Battles do tend to have a World of Warcraft feel, as my party had a tank, a ranged DPS, caster and healer. There are plenty of other plausible party configurations, but having a tank and healer is optimal, so an enemy doesn't come at your healer or mage, as the tank can soak up that damage. The tougher battles, and ones involving lots of guys, can get crazy. This is where having good tactics comes into play, especially for your healer, so you don't have party members dying. What is great is that if a party member dies in battle, so long as you win the battle, they will be automatically revived, and health/mana/stamina regenerates after each battle to help you move onto the next one. If a party member does die in battle, there is a penalty for that that an item can cure, or spell you can learn later on.
In terms of c1asses, you have your standard three, Warrior, Rogue, Mage. Each have 4 different specializations you can learn during the game, which add spells/talents you can then learn. Each c1ass has a few paths you can take. Warriors can dual wield, or go sword & shield, or two handed weapons. Rogues can go stealthy or archery, and mages have a huge spellbook they can learn. The same goes for your party members too, so long as you recruit them early in the game. Like all BioWare's games, you can level characters up yourself, or let the game do it for you. Don't let the game do it for you. Its better that way. As you can see, there is fair amount of customizing you have at your disposal here, which means you may need to play and replay to figure out how you would then want to play.
Myself, I was thinking of playing all the origins, but after playing other games and returning to Dragon Age, I just wanted to play through the game. My first character was an Elf Mage, and I finished the Mage origin. I then started a Dwarf Noble Warrior, but never finished the origin. When I came back to the game, I started a Human Noble Warrior and just continued with that character. I made it a decent ways into the game before realizing that maybe Warrior wasn't the c1ass for me. So I returned to my mage, and continued from there. My mage character was the one I finished the game with, with the Spirit Healer and Arcane Warrior specializations. My party consisted of a sword/shield tank (Alistair), ranged archer DPS (Leliana), a dedicated healer (Wynne), and myself as DPS/backup healer. This configuration worked very well for me, as I had two healers, a ranged attacker, and a tank to occupy the enemies attention. After many tough fights, and at least 45 hours of gameplay, I finished Dragon Age. There were a number of side quests I missed or didn't finish, not to mention all the different possibilities for your main character and party configuration. There is definitely reasons to replaying the game.
As far as the graphics and audio are concerned, the audio fares better, as it usually does in a BioWare game. That's not to say the graphics are terrible, its just that the other areas of the game take precedent. There's a lot of spoken dialogue in the game, and I don't recall any voice actor that sounded bad. There wasn't a ton of music, but when it did come up, it was good, although a song used in the credits was odd to hear (30 Seconds to Mars??).
I would definitely recommend Dragon Age: Origins, but not to anybody. There were some real tough sections of the game that may anger people. Still, Dragon Age tells a good story, with very good characters along the way. There's plenty of inspiration, but its crafted so well, like every BioWare game it seems, that it didn't matter to me. I really enjoyed the game and believe it stands up to the other BioWare games I have played.