Dragon Age: Origins

A considerable amount of people I know have told me to play BioWare games, mainly Mass Effect and Dragon Age. I figured since I'm more of a fan of fantasy, I'd go with Dragon Age, see if I liked it, and if I did, move on to Mass Effect. So with that in mind, I started Dragon Age: Origins today, and it went about as well as I expected.

Dragon Age seems to be a pretty standard RPG in terms of overall build. You get a selection of a few races, a few classes, and a few starting stories to shape your overall character. Assign stat points, select skills, talents, and whatnot... But what surprised me, and not in a good way, was that Dragon Age wasn't an action RPG, but more like a pause-based RTS. Like Pillars of Eternity or Tyranny, which I had played before. Of course, that comparison is backward, since Dragon age came out about 5 years earlier.

Further, I didn't feel like any of the game's systems was particularly well made. Micromanaging everyone was tiresome due to various reasons such as: Equipment management was for one character at a time - no quick way to switch between them or get an overview of who has or needs what. Activating skills took some odd amount of time and had poor indicators, meaning I couldn't understand what in the world my party was doing. AI sometimes felt the need to assert its own decisions over mine. More so, it was rather poor at that, failing to path around units, failing to understand it needed to attack something, or that maybe it was trying to shoot arrows through a wall. As for other systems, none of the skills and abilities seemed interesting either. Very plain, basic, and boring. While normally I would say for RPGs that they're just not my thing, I'd actually say this one is rather poorly made. If I wanted to play something just like this but better, one of Obsidian's RPGs would be fitting.

As mentioned in previous reviews though, I don't wish to play something like this. I'm not a fan of most RPGs for the simple reason I'll repeat yet again. I play games for their gameplay. RPGs tend to have a lot of segments that don't have gameplay - the story and dialogue bits. While I can appreciate a good story, books or other dedicated story-based entertainment does a better job most always. I'd reckon the reason behind that might be that they're focused on that bit. RPGs also have to worry about gameplay, and thus they suffer two-fold - a bad story due to effort on gameplay, and bad gameplay due to effort on story. That's not a rule, but it is very common. Not that I think games should forsake any story components altogether, not at all. A little bit of story, or rather, lore, can give much-needed meaning to gameplay and immerse the player more. All of this is just my preference though, as I know a lot of people love RPGs, as well as other games with a split between story and gameplay.

From my experiences with this game, I wouldn't recommend it even if you do like RPGs. Myself, I won't be checking if either of sequels is better, since Origins was disappointing, and the whole I-don't-really-like-RPGs thing.