Dragon Age™: Origins - Ultimate Edition

Dragon Age: Origins excels in what I look for in an RPG: A well-written story Consequential story choices Interactive companions with character arcs Meaningful tension between characters and factions To me, stories are character-driven. Well-written companions with internal and external struggles make the journey worth it. Character highlights are Alistair, Morrigan, Leliana, and Shale. The range of choices and backgrounds even allows the player character to feel meaningful and developed, which is something that many RPGs struggle with.

Ive played this 44 times, and will probably play it another 40 times throughout the rest of my life

Bioware set out to create a game with the narrative richness of Baldur's Gate, the cinematic presentation of Knights of the Old Republic, and the community support of Neverwinter Nights. They didn't succeed. But they did create one of the best CRPGs ever made, if you give it a little bit of love and time this game will shine. It's by no means perfect-- the graphics weren't great on release, the DLC varies in quality from essential to passable to so bad it breaks the game. Go ahead and download Qwinn's Fixpack and Dain's Fixes at least. But what this game does have is an incredible setting, a dramatic narrative that mixes political, gothic, and high fantasy, compelling characters that to this day BioWare has struggled to reach the same heights of, and engaging, tactical combat that feels rewarding and challenging, along with a character progression system that rewards roleplaying (and is a bit underbaked.) This game built an entire franchise of games around it that, regardless of their quality, sit firmly in its shadow. In so many ways, Baldur's Gate III is the game Dragon Age Origins wanted to be. Yet, I think it still stands on its own as a unique experience, one important for the history of the industry and this medium as so many BioWare titles are, but also because I think very few RPGs have delivered better on the promise of "video games as DMs" that Origins has, unless, of course, it's made by Larian. It's a shame that so many people overlook this one-- if you like any Larian or BioWare game, play this. You'll love it. Oh, and take Walking Bomb.

Notes on this release:- 1. The game is completely DRM free. Yes you can log into your account in game but that is completely optional. 2. The game might fail to launch at first by saying “Error initialising PhysX.” If this error occurs just reinstall the latest PhysX drivers from Nvidia’s Website and you should be up and running. 3. From my observations there have been no performance issues. The game itself:- If you haven’t played this game before do yourself a favour please play this game. It’s masterful story telling combined with excellent gameplay, a beautifully world to explore and learn about and great lore. If you like RPGs this is a must play in my opinion.

Played it on Windows 10: 1 Crash every 3 hours until reaching the big city of Denerim (where it crashed every 10 minutes!). In order to be able to enjoy this program without any technical problems you need to install "4GB Patch - NTCore". About the game itself: The story and character interactions were in a good way cheesy back in 2009 and so it is now. Ridiculous figures. The rest of it is pretty much beyond reproach. P.S.: It's meant to be played on Nightmare-difficulty.