Dragon Age is one of the newest releases of Bioware and EA games. EA games have turned their evil eye upon the usually very talented Bioware team to demand that they make a cheap EA game title for them. Will Bioware succumb to EA's evil plan or will they triumph over the biggest and most evil game company that ever cursed the earth?
Unfortunately they succumbed. Bioware did their best but Dragon age is definitely one of their worst titles.
The game takes place in Ferelden. You can choose an "origin" from where your character originates from, then you choose a class and your abilities.
Apparently the world was infested by some sort of monster called Darkspawn which were created because some mages were trying to break into heaven but then punished because of their actions.
Personally I didn't like this game. Mainly because it's damn short, playing through the game can be done under 30 hours pretty easily.
And while some games do have a sewer level or a lot of conversations in order to flesh out their game, Dragon Age says: Fuck that - I'm going to make the player die until he stops playing. And that seems to be the game's strategy throughout the whole game. I die, die, die, die and did I mention that I die? Dying is some of the most common aliments in this game.
Your characters are very weak in almost every way - partly because the tactics system is so flawed beyond imagination (I can seriously create better scripts in Baldur's Gate 2 for crying out loud), but also because you constantly run out of stamina and mana! Using lighter armour doesn't help much as you keep running out of mana. Sure you can try being conservative with your abilities and pay more attention to the mana/stamina bar instead of the cooldown but does that really suit every player. Then the game turns into a strategy game and while I do enjoy many strategy games like Dawn of War and Supreme Commander I must say that this is a RPG and is not suited for a strategy game. Due to the relatively weak effects of the abilities they do not seem that powerful and thus the player is fooled into thinking them normal attacks.
The stat system also bugs me because instead of a familiar stat system where you put 18 point in strength you need to keep spending points in strength in order to wear the best armour in the game.
That makes me wonder why the characters can't wear these armours before they spend 30 points in strength. Do they start out as strong as a 5 year old kid? Are they suffering from a medicinal condition that makes their muscles rot and the constant levelling turns out to be the best medicine against their most uncommon aliment?
As the game progresses you may come over other kinds of loot that may look exactly like your previous loot except in another colour! Yeah, instead of green gloves you may now have red gloves. Come on! And I do hate it when the colour of the gloves or boots doesn't match the colour of the rest of my armour.
There's a lot of very protective armour to get but when are you going to want to waste your time in acquiring these things then? I'd rather grind copper ore in WoW instead of doing the uninspiring side quests in this game! And the reasons why they're so uninspiring is partly because there's no story telling involved in them. I go to a sign where they set tasks that they need stupid people like the player to do like clearing out some bandits that spawn when you accept the mission or getting them some items. These are pretty lame quests and I have never liked doing these in any games. Playing World of Warcraft these quests were the ones I hated the most and I think almost anyone can agree with me on this. In The Witcher there were similar quests but the graphics were better, the combat less challenging and... it didn't suck! Besides: The Witcher had some interesting side quests. Like going into a cave full of echinops to find the dead body of a friend of a merchant. He tells you to bury his friend (the merchant not the body) and when you do you encounter a spirit. That is story telling that Dragon Age could have had but it would seem that the developers were too lazy for that or the publishers didn't want a good game as much as they wanted a profitable game.
It shows that Bioware were extremely cheap with this game. No doubt because of EA games involvement, but even so they should have done SOMETHING with this game. There are actually games that I could replay. I replayed Final Fantasy VII, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night last year and Baldur's Gate 2 this year. These are old games with many flaws and horrible graphics but still they do have the important aspect of gameplay value. Something Dragon Age lacks!
Many of the characters in this game are pretty uninspiring as well. It felt like I only picked up assholes. In fact, even from the start the NPCs started to act as assholes towards me. No one listened to me and nobody cared about me despite me being a bloody noble! Although some NPC do react in pretty interesting ways most of them don't. And the characters seem to follow a "theme" which is pretty good to represent strong personalities but it's still a pretty simple character development then. Alistar for example behaves either as a humorous comedy relief or a wimpy, annoying, child. He was one of the strongest personalities in the game. Where it really hits rock bottom is Sten which seems to have the gimmick of not having a personality at all and it's even blatantly expressed in his name: "Sten" which means Rock in Swedish. Yeah, talk about the personality of a rock. The only character that truly steal the show is Morrigan and they did a pretty decent job at presenting Morrigan to the player. Unfortunately you don't get to know her for an especially long time. During the game she doesn't say much or do much despite having the most interesting back story of any NPC. She does also have the most interesting personality.
And while I'm still ranting on about the NPCs why not address the fact that the darkspawn in the game look ridiculous?! They do not look the least bit intimidating, ferocious and every time I fought them I constantly became reminded of every time I fought Duegar (Dark Dwarves) in Neverwinter Nights 2. The Darkspawn Ogre does look very intimidating at first but soon becomes more and more common and more easy to kill. This makes the first so epic kill animations of him so less epic. Especially since it's one single death animation and it's displayed almost every time you kill a bloody Ogre!
To wrap this up. Dragon Age is an uninpired game that is way too short to be a true RPG game. And while I did enjoy Dragon Age... sometimes..... I just cannot recommend it unless you're truly desperate for an RPG.
PC version is deemed a common 3/6 - Average Game thus not worth your hard earned money.
The game takes place in Ferelden. You can choose an "origin" from where your character originates from, then you choose a class and your abilities.
Apparently the world was infested by some sort of monster called Darkspawn which were created because some mages were trying to break into heaven but then punished because of their actions.
Personally I didn't like this game. Mainly because it's damn short, playing through the game can be done under 30 hours pretty easily.
And while some games do have a sewer level or a lot of conversations in order to flesh out their game, Dragon Age says: Fuck that - I'm going to make the player die until he stops playing. And that seems to be the game's strategy throughout the whole game. I die, die, die, die and did I mention that I die? Dying is some of the most common aliments in this game.
Your characters are very weak in almost every way - partly because the tactics system is so flawed beyond imagination (I can seriously create better scripts in Baldur's Gate 2 for crying out loud), but also because you constantly run out of stamina and mana! Using lighter armour doesn't help much as you keep running out of mana. Sure you can try being conservative with your abilities and pay more attention to the mana/stamina bar instead of the cooldown but does that really suit every player. Then the game turns into a strategy game and while I do enjoy many strategy games like Dawn of War and Supreme Commander I must say that this is a RPG and is not suited for a strategy game. Due to the relatively weak effects of the abilities they do not seem that powerful and thus the player is fooled into thinking them normal attacks.
The stat system also bugs me because instead of a familiar stat system where you put 18 point in strength you need to keep spending points in strength in order to wear the best armour in the game.
That makes me wonder why the characters can't wear these armours before they spend 30 points in strength. Do they start out as strong as a 5 year old kid? Are they suffering from a medicinal condition that makes their muscles rot and the constant levelling turns out to be the best medicine against their most uncommon aliment?
As the game progresses you may come over other kinds of loot that may look exactly like your previous loot except in another colour! Yeah, instead of green gloves you may now have red gloves. Come on! And I do hate it when the colour of the gloves or boots doesn't match the colour of the rest of my armour.
There's a lot of very protective armour to get but when are you going to want to waste your time in acquiring these things then? I'd rather grind copper ore in WoW instead of doing the uninspiring side quests in this game! And the reasons why they're so uninspiring is partly because there's no story telling involved in them. I go to a sign where they set tasks that they need stupid people like the player to do like clearing out some bandits that spawn when you accept the mission or getting them some items. These are pretty lame quests and I have never liked doing these in any games. Playing World of Warcraft these quests were the ones I hated the most and I think almost anyone can agree with me on this. In The Witcher there were similar quests but the graphics were better, the combat less challenging and... it didn't suck! Besides: The Witcher had some interesting side quests. Like going into a cave full of echinops to find the dead body of a friend of a merchant. He tells you to bury his friend (the merchant not the body) and when you do you encounter a spirit. That is story telling that Dragon Age could have had but it would seem that the developers were too lazy for that or the publishers didn't want a good game as much as they wanted a profitable game.
It shows that Bioware were extremely cheap with this game. No doubt because of EA games involvement, but even so they should have done SOMETHING with this game. There are actually games that I could replay. I replayed Final Fantasy VII, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night last year and Baldur's Gate 2 this year. These are old games with many flaws and horrible graphics but still they do have the important aspect of gameplay value. Something Dragon Age lacks!
Many of the characters in this game are pretty uninspiring as well. It felt like I only picked up assholes. In fact, even from the start the NPCs started to act as assholes towards me. No one listened to me and nobody cared about me despite me being a bloody noble! Although some NPC do react in pretty interesting ways most of them don't. And the characters seem to follow a "theme" which is pretty good to represent strong personalities but it's still a pretty simple character development then. Alistar for example behaves either as a humorous comedy relief or a wimpy, annoying, child. He was one of the strongest personalities in the game. Where it really hits rock bottom is Sten which seems to have the gimmick of not having a personality at all and it's even blatantly expressed in his name: "Sten" which means Rock in Swedish. Yeah, talk about the personality of a rock. The only character that truly steal the show is Morrigan and they did a pretty decent job at presenting Morrigan to the player. Unfortunately you don't get to know her for an especially long time. During the game she doesn't say much or do much despite having the most interesting back story of any NPC. She does also have the most interesting personality.
And while I'm still ranting on about the NPCs why not address the fact that the darkspawn in the game look ridiculous?! They do not look the least bit intimidating, ferocious and every time I fought them I constantly became reminded of every time I fought Duegar (Dark Dwarves) in Neverwinter Nights 2. The Darkspawn Ogre does look very intimidating at first but soon becomes more and more common and more easy to kill. This makes the first so epic kill animations of him so less epic. Especially since it's one single death animation and it's displayed almost every time you kill a bloody Ogre!
To wrap this up. Dragon Age is an uninpired game that is way too short to be a true RPG game. And while I did enjoy Dragon Age... sometimes..... I just cannot recommend it unless you're truly desperate for an RPG.
PC version is deemed a common 3/6 - Average Game thus not worth your hard earned money.
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