Dragon Age™: Origins - Ultimate Edition

I have never played through this entire game and I am having a lot of fun getting into it with my city elf warrior. I saw the travesty that is Veilguard and decided to finally give this game the chance it deserves. No regrets here, I am enjoying my time in this game. That being said, it is old and there have been a litany of techinical issues I have faced. I tried many different settings configurations along with changing to windowed from fullscreen and those did not help. What DID help was going into my task manager and ending the task for Nahimic (I have no idea what this his honestly). The weird graphical issues and crashing I was having stopped once I did that.

With the fixes that GOG has done for this game, it runs soooo smooth

Yes it's old and a bit clunky by modern standards, but it's still one of the most awesome games I've ever played. Immersive world and a superb storyline.

What I like: 1. I like the way you equip companions in origins. Basically, if their class allows it they can wear whatever you find, allowing you to mix and match all kinds of stuff unlike the most recent DA game where you can only upgrade or modify existing gear. 2. I know I am in the minority here but I like the fact that it isn't truely "open world". The reason is because if I can go there, then I feel compelled to do so because if I don't I worry I will miss something. As a result I burn a lot of time trying not to miss anything instead of just actually playing. The fact that I can't move past an invisible wall actually is good for me, it tells me that there is nothing there anyway so don't waste your time. Granted this may only be helpful to us OCD types. 3. At "normal" difficulty level you can't just rush in all the time. There were times I got beat repeatedly until I stopped to think it through which is one of the reasons why we like these kind of games. 3. The world is fleshed out so well in terms of story and it's history. I love the concepts of the veil, the conflict between mages and templar knights, the interesting plight of the elves etc. I have never played a game that did this as well as DA:O. Often times in other games the story feels "tacked" on, it's nothing more than an excuse for the fighting, but after playing DA, I felt like I had read a novel. The other two DA games are pretty good but they fail to find the magic of the first.

The story and the dialogue are well written, but the rest is typical BioWare. Pros: + deep lore (mostly hidden in a codex) + some well written dialogue + different camera perspectives (isometric and third-person view) + combat combos + a.i. scripts adjustable + voice acting is good + party members reaction to players choices Cons: - repetitive combat (fighting the same enemies in a dungeon over and over) - mmo style quests (quest givers with exclamation mark above head) - mmo style combat with rare difficulty spikes (on hard difficulty no tactics, strategy or skill are required) - enemies and objects spawning (in an explored area) after taking a quest - small dungeons/rooms seperated by loading screens - lifeless world - silent protagonist - generic fantasy story - too few interesting characters - generic art style (armor, weapons, loot, levels)