Dragon Age™: Origins - Ultimate Edition

The narrative captivates with its depth and moral ambiguity. The world of Thedas is meticulously crafted, featuring political intrigue, ancient mysteries, and a rich lore that envelops players in a compelling epic. Choices matter, shaping the storyline and fostering a sense of agency rarely seen in gaming. The character development is unparalleled. Each party member feels like a living, breathing entity with a unique personality, backstories, and motivations. The relationships you forge are as crucial as the battles you fight, creating an emotional investment that resonates throughout the game. In terms of gameplay, excels with its tactical combat system. Balancing real-time action and strategic planning, battles demand thoughtful decision-making. The inclusion of an isometric view adds depth, allowing players to orchestrate battles with precision. Visually, the game has aged gracefully, with an art style that remains timeless. The attention to detail in character design, landscapes, and architecture contributes to a visually stunning experience. A symphonic masterpiece, the soundtrack complements the game's atmosphere, enhancing emotional moments and immersing players in the world of Thedas. DA:O serves as a benchmark for storytelling in gaming. Its combination of a riveting narrative, unforgettable characters, strategic gameplay, and a wealth of content solidifies its status as a 5/5 classic that stands the test of time.

Dragon Age Origins is by far one of my favorite games of all time. It's the third time that I bought the game (One physical copy, Origin and now GOG) and I don't regret it! I freaking love this game

So allow me to talk about the elephant in the room. The game does crash at complete random, but it isn't GOGs fault or necessarily the developer's. It's an old stitched together engine, that wasn't fully future proofed. GOG tried their best and it's commendable, with the patches even more so it's more stable than the Origin/EA Play and Steam versions. Either crashing at boot up, at the start or after playing for 8 hours straight and the game's application just kills itself on the task manager AKA crash to desktop. So let that be a fair warning that on surface level crashing of some type is to be expecting, but in my case to a rare degree since the team on site tried their best, but will fluctuate to everyone's PC for what the problem is (Thank god fan patches if you need them). (Bonus of not needing to login in to third party software, bless DRM-Free cause that helps a lot).

I own all 3 Dragon Age games on Origin and love them all, however, I think Dragon Age Origins is my personal favourite due to the interesting characters and backstory. If you're looking for a game that is as engrossing as the Baldurs Gate series I think this is probably the closest you can get. Ok - it doesn't quite have the lore of the Forgotten Realms (but what RPG does?) but as a "spiritual successor" and an original storyline its pretty damn close if you ask me. For the time the graphics are great (remember this game is 13 years old) and the soundtrack and voice acting is sublime. Game mechanics are straight-forward and easy to grasp making it a great game to pick up and play - but I don't think I've played a Bioware RPG that that hasn't been the case. If you haven't yet played this game (or even if you have) - at this price its a fricking steal!

Firstly, this game definitely deserves its 91 Metacritic score. The setting, story, mechanics and everything else is top notch. And that's coming from a guy that hasn't played Baldur's gate or anything similar yet, let's say Diablo I & II are the most similar I've played. Graphics, sound, scenery are all great. Personally I would have liked a bit more voice acting done for your character (who is silent except for a few phrases in combat and similar). Gameplay wise, your party consists of you and up to 3 other characters, and the best gameplay feature for me is setting tactics for every party member, which means you can set behaviour for all of them and mainly play as your own character, taking control over other characters only if they're in a pinch and you have to manually override their behaviour. I love the story - medieval fantasy. Lots of sidequests, approval mechanics for your companions, romancing, dungeon clearing... And all of that backed up by a great 'save the kingdom/world' story which has tens of possible endings depending on your choices and RPG style. Now, the only stuff this game doesn't have going for it are bugs. Okay, there is a memory leak so the game gets sluggish after playing a couple of hours, just restart the game and it will be ok. Okay, sometimes the game randomly crashes, there is a quicksave feature so if you spam F5 you never lose more than a couple of minutes of gameplay. Okay, some quests are bugged so you have to use workarounds to make them work properly (the Wiki on this game is really good). But the worst thing is when you invest 70+ hours in your character and then a quest in the Awakening expansion decides to delete every piece of OP equipment you have been collecting for your character. I'm playing this 10 years after its release and they never got around to fixing that, so that's definitely the biggest grudge I have against this game. So be wary and make separate manual saves often! Other than that, fantastic game.