Dragon Age™: Origins - Ultimate Edition

I always replay it. ALWAYS!

All DLC items and add-ons you can download for free (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Downloadable_content_%28Origins%29#Location_of_downloadable_content_packages)

The last great Dragon Age game. You're missing something if you haven't played this.

I spent 12h playing, wondering whether it was wasted. The game has too many things to take care of (I may be a control freak, though). Inventory (no stash yet, only expensive backpacks), approval of you party members, gift mechanism, choices (this is of course at the heart of a RPG, so not so much a problem). Combat mechanism: ARPG with pause (some people seem to know the game enough and be quick enough to play without pause), where you control a team of 4 (why not 6 by the way or even 8?). Control is supported by a rule-based system : you can edit complex rules that the AI will use to take control of the party members (even the main player). However, you don't have enough slots (around 5, more by spending leveling points). Nevertheless, when your choice of rules (i.e., programming robots) come to a hole, your party members run like chicken here and there, and area magic becomes inapplicable. Of course I may have not played enough to fully appreciate the model, but this is a matter of choice of gameplay; I preferred to invest points in Intelligence for a mage or strength for a warrior, and disable the automatic control. Then it becomes a feast of pauses during combats (e.g. to prevent the warrior to nevertheless run into combat while the fireball is being cast). Then you also have to fully understand the skills of everyone. This quickly ruins some of the fun. Party management: morale+gift to balance the effects of certain choices. (not enough room here to expand). Do you need, for completing the game to nurture all you 5-10 potential party members or can you take care of only 3 at the risk that your progression will be blocked. You get the point: when engaging in a 60-90 hours of gameplay, you would like to get some reassurance that time will not be wasted. Bugs: random crashes while playing on Windows 10. Changed parameters, affinity set to 1, to finally no avail. My last save does not reload, and do not want to waste more time with support (if any).

Dragon Age: Origins is now a classic cRPG game. It is decent and has captivating moments (particularly at the beginning and at the end) but it also has a ton of problems. Some things are well done: - The game does archers and warriors with shields enjoyably overall which was quite unusual at the time. - Dialogues and VOs are superbl. Expect a lot of witty banter amongst party members. - The RPG system, although restricted to only 3 base classes, is surprisingly flexible and offers good character customization. - The origin stories are well done and seamlessly blend into the game. You will really have a bit different experience depending on which origin story you played. Some of the (not so small) problems: - The story is "heavily influenced" ( = borderline criminal robbery ) by The Witcher universe. Sadly, it doesn't nearly have similar quality. - The game hasn't aged well in both technical and mechanic terms - for example, the combat often feels clunky and there are identical trash fights everywhere. Unmodded graphics were painful to look at then and are painful to look at now. - QoL improvements RPGs had for years now are non-existent here, unless you use mods. - The engine is horrible and has memory leaks that will force you to restart the game periodically to avoid crashing. In the endgame, you will be doing this every hour or so. With texture mods, ~1/2 hour. - It has extremely long and tedious parts that are mandatory and anti-fun (Deep Roads, Fade). - It has lots of boring back-tracking. - Loot is useless and exist only for you to sell it so you can buy the best stuff. - When you want to loot something you will often unwillingly initiate a dialogue with your party member due to the stupid camera and pathfinding system. - Camera is a mix of third-party and isometric perspectives and does neither well. TL;DR: Wait for sale if you must have a nostalgia injection of DA:O. Otherwise there are better RPGs to buy.