Hours and Hours of delving reveals a memorable RPG with more than enough room to grow.
If you come into Dragon Age expecting the same old system that pervaded the Baldur's Gate series, you'll be immediately let down. Dragon Age is its own beast, and while it sometimes stumbles, it never truly falls. Some of the things gamers of yor have loved about fantasy RPG's are indeed here: There are untold hours of gameplay to be had here-easily surpassing forty or fifty hours on a thorough play through. The characters that the Warden can interact with are all fully fleshed out and fantastic, and the main story arc builds the epic tension you might expect from a game which shares more than a few goblinoids with an intellectual property like Lord of the Rings.
Indeed, the game is rife with attempts at epic story-telling, and for the most part, succeeds. You'll be drawn into the world, battling off everything from lowly Darkspawn who deserve no better than cold steel, all the way up to high-dragons who require a lot more than simple steel, and themselves are liable to grab and devour your party members in a single-swipe of their fanged maws. Dragon Age is a tale worthy of film; rife with battle, emotion, sacrifice, hardship, victory-and even love. It weaves a tale so grand, and is path is so twisting that you'll surely be drawn in. Granted, it's a slow starter, but even the best films need to lay the ground-work from time to time!
Concept and plot aside however, don't expect yourself to be entirely immersed in this epic straight from the get-go. While the characters are beautifully imagined, much less can be said of the games visuals, and indeed, its polish as a whole. In fact, it's rather shocking that Dragon Age looks as muddled as it does on the 360; textures are bland and flat on most surfaces, and even accessories like necklaces or buttons seem simply drawn onto the clothes of both high-profile character and passer-by alike. While the sweeping score and chance for choice will surely carry you away, you'll certainly be looking at a lot of 'ugly' while you go. That said too, the animations themselves might be better. In some game-rendered cut scenes, characters will hardly make an action believable, especially, for example, when they hand you an item but visually offer an empty hand-or when a giant golem makes blows with a hammer that produce no sound when they make contact with the anvil. Granted, these are minor gripes, but they are immersion breakers for most gamers out there who want to be utterly sucked in.
Less minor are more of the glitches you'll find throughout the game-one in particular had the speaking NPC at the end of the game entirely missing, such that I was being addressed by an empty throne in the final cut-scenes. Again, specifics or not, what matters is that a lack of polish like this can often make even the most epic story or heart-wrenching sacrifice almost comedic. It is hard to take matters seriously when it can all look so rigid and poorly animated.
The combat however, is generally great. The AI of your party is passable enough, but it's the addition of the tactics platform that allows the Xbox 360 version to stand a little closer to that of the PC in terms of control and management. While it can be frustrating not to be able to place your allies exactly where you want them like the abilities of the mouse, trust me when I say that by the 10th hour of the game it hardly matters. Things pick up with such a head of steam that you'll hardly notice when it was that the radial wheel and other console controls became second nature to you. Regardless, with your AI partners conducting their assigned tactics, for a good deal of the game you'll simply get to enjoy quelling the Darkspawn taint one decapitation at a time. That is, unless you play a mage.
Speaking of mages, the class and spell system takes a drastic turn from the age-old rules of Baldur's Gate. Here, you simply choose one of three classes, which can later by specialized in minor ways by selecting up to two of four sub-classes per character. Yes, there are only three classes, and four "sub-classes" and you can choose two of those. The limited sets here don't leave much room for customization of class, and because the "sub-classes" only open up an extra row of skills, and two of the four can be taken by each party member, things start to overlap after awhile. Granted, one warrior can play drastically different than another by a difference in skills and ability scores, even if they've taken the same sub-classes. The case in point here is that while there isn't anywhere near as much depth (or breadth) to the class systems as Dragon Age's classic lineage, what is here is a much more streamlined and straight-forward approach to character building.
In further regard to the characters, it needs to be said too that the game comes with some rather excellent voice-overs. While it's obviously disappointing to not have the main character voiced after the strides made by the original Mass Effect, it's understandable that, given the diversity of origin and race choice, -and the size of the game as a whole- that it simply wouldn't be feasible. Instead, nearly every last bit of dialogue other than your own is voiced, and done well, which is quite the treat for RPG fanatics. From the screams of dying Darkspawn to the witty banter between Morrigan and Alistair, the world seems full of character and life, and most importantly, believability. When Duncan tells you of the doom that is impending you can feel just how dire things really are.
So what do we have in Dragon Age when we gather it all together? This is an epic, no doubt. It's a work of character, choice, action, engagement, and breadth. It's a long journey, and a rather moving one. It's a world teeming with peril, and the story of a heroes and villains. In many ways it's a classic tale-like any classic epic film-and in these many ways it succeeds. However, it also falters. No doubt it's grand scale helped put a damper on the polish that we would otherwise expect from a Bioware game, and it's just a shame that these things couldn't be addressed sooner. Granted, when whole armies come to clash, and you find yourself slaying Darkspawn in droves outside the gates of a ruined tower, flanked by your favourite party and a mass of Dwarves at your side the many flaws aren't what will end up sticking with you.
Final thought: Hours and hours of delving into Dragon Age reveals a distinctly memorable RPG with more than enough room to grow.
8.4/10