Dragon Age Origins specifications:

Description:
Platform: PC&nbsp,&nbsp,Edition: Standard

Reviews:

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127 of 136 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of five stars Kind of like a cross between Witcher and KOTOR 2,
November 4, 2009
By&nbsp,backfromspace “backfromspace” Berkeley, CA USA See all my reviews Fun:5.0 out of five stars&nbsp, Dragon Age is a kind of game that’s becoming increasingly rare: a immersive single player RPG with an interface obviously intended for the PC. It is easy to sling around the word “immersive” at any game that looks pretty, but DA is not messing around the world of Ferelden shows a unified sense of design and depth that blows famously vast games like Oblivion out of the water. Coupled with steadily excellent writing and across the board quality character design down to comparatively unimportant NPCs, the game really does feel like it is reacting to your choices dynamically from the beginning, and how you play your character can have surprisingly subtle effects on the way the story unfolds.

Graphically, the game’s a little uneven. All the design elements are there, and it has lots of high quality textures and strong environmental visuals especially fire effects. The polygons themselves, especially on character faces, are a little simpler than you’d expect from a 2009 game. In general, the game looks about on level with Oblivion, though the visual distinctiveness and design ethic of regions and characters are considerably better. Animation stands out as a strong suit here, especially throughout the game’s recurrent dialog sequences, with none of the dead eyed staring or strange walk cycles that plagued other RPGs like Fallout 3.

Gameplay is pretty straightforward, and much in keeping with last Bioware titles like Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect. You control a party of up to four characters, each of whom develops a plethora of useful abilities to keep track of. The inclusion of a minor programming element very much in keeping with the gambit system from last Fantasy XII will let you set up some default actions on each character so you are not stuck frantically switching between them to be sure they drink their curative potions, but battles usually require many degree of tactical planning. Setting up ambushes and planning your party approach to play to strengths is needed to get through many tougher regions. The interface is, shockingly, obviously tailor made for the PC the console variants have their own interfaces intended from the bottom up and are seemingly easier games to let for the sacrifice in easy access to skills. You have an crazy number of quick access slots, and almost the complete keyboard is bound to one thing or another. It is the kind of interface that has not been in vogue since before the PS2 came out. The game is very linear, though the recurrent and varied dialog alternatives give it the feel of a more free roaming game, and it is tempting to go back and replay big chunks of the game just to see how the complex and dynamic conversations will play out. The major downside is that there is no easy way to level grind, which is to the game’s advantage to a point no tedious circling around killing wolves but sometimes means you may be able to get in over your head.

What the game sacrifices by sandbox free roaming it more than makes up with in the excellent writing and characterization. An absurd attention to detail and across the board excellent voice acting breathes many of life into the game’s conversations, which make up a important chunk of gameplay. Characters are very varied and the interplay between them is a big draw, a trademark of Bioware’s games, but Dragon Age has many of the most likable characters I have ever seen in a video game and the excellent performances from talents like Tim Curry, Kate Mulgrew and Claudia Black really put the game a notch above. The game’s pretty generic on the surface fantasy world is livened up by some important details as an example, the elves in Dragon Age are a big underclass of servants.

It’s really hard to find things to level complaints against in this game. One petty gripe is Morrigan’s visual design her character is one of the game’s strongest, and she’s great personality and many smart writing, but visually she’s a pair of giant breasts with a cloth dressed improbably over them. Other women in the game are treated with a bit more restraint, though, and female armor is gratifyingly sensible. Another issue is that it may be hard to manage battles on the fly, and precisely aiming at enemies with expertise usually requires tactical pausing just to line the cursor up over their comparatively small active regions. It is a petty annoyance, but the game obviously was not supposed to be played Diablo style anyway.

A not many other things to know about the game:
The game is usually DRM free, and ships only with a simple disc check. EA has a repute for fouling up its customers’ computers with DRM malware, but DA looks to be free of those problems.
If Dragon Age were a movie, it could be rated R. I do not remember ever seeing any swearing, oddly, but the game is rife with violent imagery, very black themes and frank sexuality including a few of comparatively tasteful sex scenes and sporadic demonic nudity. The game handles all of it with maturity and depth, but it is obviously not meant for kids, and parents of younger teens should be cautious.

Overall, Dragon Age is one of the strongest games to come out in recent memory, and is another installment in Bioware’s rising resume of superbly written RPGs. Players looking for a fast paced hack and slash “rpg” should look elsewhere, but anybody who likes deep and elegant plot development, memorable characters and excellent role playing will love this game.

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58 of 63 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of five stars The best RPG of 2009,
November 10, 2009
By&nbsp,VA Gamer Norfolk, VA See all my reviews Fun:5.0 out of five stars&nbsp, Before diving into the review, a brief summary: Dragon Age origin is the epic role playing game that many of us have been waiting for since we 1st fell in love with the genre with the classic Baldur’s Gate. It drops the player into an immersive fantasy world rich with lore and compelling settings. The aesthetics and score are as pleasing and engrossing as a good cinematic feature or novel. And while it’s spectacular in just about every way, it isn’t without its faults mostly technical in nature, and affects players with particular computer hardware as far as I can tell I will explain more later. In short, if you are a fan of the genre you’ll do yourself a favor by buying and experiencing this game. I have never felt more comfy proposing a RPG to the Internet at large as I do now with Dragon Age. I’ll swear upon whatever holy text you favor that it is the best single player RPG to come along since Fallout 3. If you are not a theist, I suppose I could place my hand upon a photograph of Carl Sagan before making the same solemn vow. But I digress. Onto the review. Parts I found positive are preceded by a +, negative parts a .


GAME PLAY
+ Dragon Age hereby called “DA” plays like a perfect hybrid of turn based and real time RPGs of yore. The controls are a mash up of overhead tactical maneuvering ala Baldur’s Gate and the third person RTS like mechanics found in Knights of the Old Republic. You control character motion with either the WASD keyboard directions familiar to MMO and FPS players, or via mouse click navigation concurrently. You may be able to play from a third person perspective to get a full view of the world around you, or zoom out into an overhead tactical view to aid in unit placement and positioning in which the graphics take on the painted look and feel of Baldur’s Gate a nice touch. The camera can be controlled with either the keyboard or mouse. All around, stellar.

+ The UI makes a powerful and elegant use of economy of space it fits many into a little, all while looking and playing very well

+ Character customization is as rich if not richer than any other RPG hybrid or pure RPG on the market present or past. You have standard archetypes warrior, mage, rogue which alone have different “trees” or avenues of progression focusing upon things like weapon preference sword + shield, dual wield, two handed, etc or general and crafting expertise. Also there are expert classes that excel at particular vocations such as the mage nullifying Templar, form changing mage, or crit happy Duelist to name a few. Over this, special abilities and vocations can be unlocked by finding rare things or special quests often a mix of both

+ Combat is greatly tactical, taking into account elevation, range, “crowd control” mechanics, and vast synergy between the abilities of your party members

+ A deep plans system may be utilized, in which you assign a custom AI to each of your characters established upon a range of requirements and situations. As an example, you may be able to tell your mage that every time they are bordering by two or more melee mobs, they cast some crowd control spell. If a party member has less than 50 health, heal them. Or have your tank taunt mobs that attack the mage. Or have the rogue stun the mobs your major character is fighting. Etc.

Melee centric characters draw from a pool of stamina to do their different abilities and group enhancing expertise. This pool feels restricted, when you invest heavily into the stat that fundings more stamina. It is more hampered by injuries that your characters will sustain, on occasion, while fighting which are treated with injury kits or with resting at your camp. Hopefully this will be tweaked in a future patch.


STORY, PRESENTATION, & SETTING
+ The apparently hackneyed story youre the last in a long line of sacred warriors who’s mission is to vanquish a specific foe quickly unfolds into a compelling, immersive, and interesting tale that competitors those found in quality fantasy novels and movies. Each race, town, city, and region are wholly distinctive and diverse from the political intrigue of Dwarven society to the juxtaposition of the city and forest Elves and the layers of complexity involved therein. I can not go too much into this without possibly spoiling the many excellent stories. Suffice to it is superb.

+ While the world is not theoretically “open”, being divided into many instanced zones if you will, it’s still really vast. Most regions are considerably big. There’s no bound to draw distance: your looking at distance is generally to infinity, and most zones may be completely explored to the smallest nook and cranny and it pays to do so. You unlock more regions as the game progresses and the regions differ depending upon your origin and choices, and there is a complete underground zone also to the zone all non Dwarves start inside.

+ The story is generally evolving and changing. Your most minor, or big, decisions about plot or character interactions will have lasting repercussions that may not come to fruition for many time. You may be able to build intimate relationships with characters, and being an active participant in the dialogue and lore pay big dividends in the end

+ Replayability is high due mainly to the aforementioned dynamic story, also as the “Origins” part of the DA title: different race and class mixes have different starting stories, and merge into the in general arc in different ways and at different times


PERFORMANCE
+ The games looks, sounds, and plays perfectly well on middling hardware

If you own a dual or quad core AMD CPU, expect slowly rising load times as your session time increases the longer you play and the more you transition between zones, the longer the load times become. From five to seven seconds at 1st, upwards of five minutes after 45 minutes to an hour of play. This may be resolved by restarting the game, which literally only takes about 20 seconds. But still, it is frustrating, and many people are reporting it on the official forums. Hopefully it’ll be patched.

The 1st PC patch was some a goof: the new build included a newer variant of the Visual C++ 2005 runtime, while the retail variant had an older build. The result was that many people could not launch the game after patching. A trivial issue for the computer savvy I just checked my event logs and saw the issue then patched, but the lay person could dont have idea what is going on. After days Bioware has still to react officially with the evident fix, leaving it to the community to resolve. That behavior and communication casts doubt upon the level of commitment Bioware has in regards to DA from a technical support perspective.


Overall, the not many technical issues are far outweighed by the in general quality of the game. I could supply a more in depth review, but I’m honestly scared that I will accidentally spoil something, as this game is ridiculously vast. Purchase this game. You won’t be disappointed.

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121 of 137 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of five stars THE RETURN TO the era of THE CLASSICS!,
November 3, 2009
By&nbsp,NeuroSplicer Freeside, in geosynchronous orbit See all my reviews
TOP 500 REVIEWER &nbsp,&nbsp, Fun:5.0 out of five stars&nbsp, 1st things first: in the past I chastised EA some times for its release of cookie cutter games, crippled with atrocious DRM schemes. In all fairness, I now have to say this: DRAGON AGE: origin IS A GAMER’s DREAM! it’s an excellent game and it comes FREE of any DRM insanity. Thank you EA for listening to your customers let’s only hope this new trend holds..

This is one of those games that are easy to control, a delight to roam through and fun to play at no end.
I am a big cRPG fan and can not remember such a great companion/squad cRPG since the Baldur’s Gate Saga. And to tell you the truth, this is the game I dreamed of being able to play one day while playing BG yeah, by now we all know that NEVERWINTER NIGHTS never delivered.

There are about a dozen gender/race/class/background choices and a great many mixes in forming your party. The armor and the weapons are very made and everything shows on your characters. And the graphics are really beautiful! you must see the generating of flames to believe them.
Nevertheless, what really stands out is the gameplay. Every fight is a puzzle to be solved, pausing ever so frequently to reallocate enemies to the best suited party members a feature I loved in BG!. Of course one can generally turn off the autopause feature and let the AI take over the rest of your party and turn the game into an hack&slash action RPG not exactly my cup of tea but, hey, it is still nice to know it is there.

Finally, this is a game made just like the classics in many ways, as well as length. I’m now playing the game for over 20 hours and I feel that I barely scraped the surface! DRAGON AGE: origin is one satisfying RPG!

My only gripe is this: I didn’t appreciate such short dialogue alternatives. Most fit a single line and more frequently than not they comprise of a couple of words. I like my RPGs to be wordy and challenging to my spoken imagination also and I want my characters to partake in the humor, not just provoke it or react to it. Remember the long dialogue alternatives in BG? Well, expect to find DRAGON AGE: origin more laconic.
I guess ten years of fast paced FPS and blitzkrieging RTS do take their toll.

The blood sprays, the swords clang and the spells explode. The animations are beautifully made and add many to both enjoyment and immersion. There’s a verse in Homer’s Iliad I love: “the warrior fell and his armor echoed around him” and I has been reminded of it many a times during the game.

This game will stay with you. Don’t miss on it.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

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20 Responses to “dragon age origins”

1. Lora Says: May 1, 2009 at 0:24 pm

   Buy it at amazon, has free shipping over $50, i think

2. Basil Says: May 2, 2009 at 5:59 pm

   price of dragon age is a great deal for software

3. Grant Says: May 3, 2009 at 6:51 pm

   Will check local outlet for any discounted deals on

4. Ray P Says: May 4, 2009 at 1:50 pm

   Walmart had it for sale

5. Rod Says: May 5, 2009 at 2:28 pm

   Does Walmart offer free shipping?

6. Mary M. Says: May 6, 2009 at 4:35 pm

   Your best bet is to compare dragon age origins prices on ebay

7. Vance Says: May 7, 2009 at 9:42 pm

   Well wholesale may have it cheaper than Frye Electronics or Ebay

8. Garth Says: May 8, 2009 at 10:50 pm

   Check Amazon reviews

9. Ernest R Says: May 9, 2009 at 11:31 pm

   i buy it at Staples store that had a lowest price, but usually online deals are better

10. Barry O Says: May 10, 2009 at 5:34 pm

    Compare online prices, dont bother with store price

11. Alexander B Says: May 11, 2009 at 6:31 pm

    It’s one of the better software out there. Good Pricing.

12. Julia K. Says: May 12, 2009 at 9:23 pm

    My local store in Ebay had a closeout sale, but online pricing was still better

13. Joshua77 Says: May 13, 2009 at 3:32 pm

    Those are mostly specs, but is there a review?

14. Jacob C Says: May 14, 2009 at 7:56 pm

    Amazon used to offer free shipping

15. Juan F Says: May 15, 2009 at 10:19 pm

    Not a bad price and usually you can find it discounted in outlet stores.

16. Ann R. Says: May 16, 2009 at 8:20 pm

    Amazon or Ebay generaly have a low price than an outlet

17. Brandon F Says: May 17, 2009 at 2:31 pm

    wouldnt want to get this one refurbished haha

18. Roberta Says: May 18, 2009 at 10:52 pm

    Where can you get it used online?

19. Christa Says: May 19, 2009 at 10:55 pm

    I think Frye Electronics may have free shipping

20. Nicholas O Says: May 20, 2009 at 9:40 pm

    What’s dragon age compared to other software?