Dragon Age™: Origins - Ultimate Edition

...but crashes all the time. i5 7300, 16 ram, gtx 1050ti. Crashing in game, crashing when loading saves. This is so sad coz this game is a gem (played it many years ago and wanted to refresh my experience). :-(

Enjoyed my time with it; the characters are great with good characterisation, humour and ethos. Progression can be a bit random as you aren't directed from point A to B then C, rather its up to you to find your way, which is good, but there are some areas that you get locked in (Mages Tower I think) that once you enter you are there until you succeed, and if you are under stat - and haven't thrown down a save before entering - will give you a nose bleed as you bang you head against a wall, or lose a lot of progress. The combat is functional, but as I've not played other isometric party games I can't comment much, other than the 'tactics' option of setting your characters behaviour is meh. Easier to hammer the pause and play each character during combat. I only played what felt like 2/3s(?) of the game and on a sudden had enough in Deep Roads (I call it the "Open World Blues" - oh another quest - and more combat and another and more and oh god kill me now). This is a very subjective thing but these days I prefer mid-sized game that doesn't overstay its welcome rather than an hundred hour great value game. Overall I'd recommend it. Great game to sit down occasionally and chill for a bit.

Played this for hundreds of hours on both console and steam and via the origins portal. I am so sick of it, because I have played it to death, but I still like to come back to it. That says a lot. Of all the DA games, this one has the absolute best dialogue, the writing is truly superb, and I know that is something that other people easily say about many games of this category, but this particular installment is in a league of its own. The characters are not always likeable, sometimes you just want them to shut up, or be more empathetic and not so cruel and tactless, but you still love them for their good sides and their positive properties, like we do with real people in the real world. These characters are not monochromatic, and they will surprise you with their personalities, backgrounds and how they react to your choices and the world events and story. My god it is good. The voice actors are also utterly perfect, some of the best voice actors in the business are in this game, they shine. I don't know what to say... I own it for several platforms already, but I really would love a completely DRM free version on here as well. You can never have too much of a good thing, as people say. The graphics and some mechanics are dated, for sure, and there are segments to the game that are beginning to drive me nuts, partly because of design and all because of my super completionist nature and tendency to replay games I like over and over, like I have with this one. It can be tedious at times, but I feel what it gives in return is incredible. It is lacking in some QOL implementation, but it's all good, because this games strongest points are strong enough, you don't need to be handheld. I also love the lore and world-building aspects of this game, the story is great, the concepts are interesting and this has become one of my favourite dark fantasy worlds, but then I do love hundreds of them...

TLDR: Buy it. It's the RPG of a decade with sky-high immersion, detail replay value. If your friends recommended Baldurs Gate, NWN or Icewind Dale and you thought they looked promising, but oh so ugly, this is it, the best tactical RPG of the 21st century that isn't a Win 98 eyesore . It plays wonderfully as a standard RPG with deep follower interaction on easier difficulties without ever touching the pause button, and features intricate combat tactics and substantially different story outcomes for your replay, and your replays after that, and even for that playthrough where you romance Zev. It is the only game you will go through Orzammar for again (and for the love of Andraste, don't choose that as your initial deployment on your first playthrough...). Last tip for beginners: learn to love the TAB key, to highlight all interactive objects.

The game feels pretty bland (it's some generic fantasy world one couldn't care less about, and the same could be said about the characters that will accompany you) and its difficulty is all over the place. There are battles that will force you to use half of your healing potions, and some that will just annoy the hell out of you. The king's heir is wearing his armor, but a random mercenary captain can easily kill him if you're not careful...seriously? Also, until a healer joins your party (somewhere halfway through the game, depending on how you play), even on 'Easy', the game can be pretty difficult and quite often frustrating, but that's when the battles start to become annoying and pretty much "filler material". To then become quite difficult again, towards the end of the game. The Fade: aka the infamous, tedious mission that will force you to do a lot of backtracking. Since you don't have any of your companions with you, it is difficult and frustrating as hell, given that you will quickly run out of poultices, and once that happens, you're fucked. There is even a mod called "Skip The Fade", get it, that's how I completed the game; I was seriously about to give up. Without the mod, I would have given DAO a 2-star review. The Landsmeet: from what I understand, it's the kind of "switcher puzzle" already seen in Jade Empire in the Outlander mission, with the huge difference that is not central to the game's plot and therefore a lot more charming; which is lame, since there is no in-depth discussion of all of the arguments and counter-arguments that you are presented with; give the wrong answer, and if the majority of the characters is not on your side, you're screwed and get brutally humiliated. Seriously? This is frustrating beyond belief, because if what you're saying is true, then you do have a much stronger case than one of the villains, but no chance to prove otherwise; it should have been a longer verbal confrontation divided into stages. Disappointing.