Dragon Age™: Origins - Ultimate Edition

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.

Morrigan = Hottest goth woman in video gaming history. Dragon Age Origins: You can sleep with her (for a plot reason too, not just for fun). Dragon Age Inquisition, 2 and Veilguard: Morrigan looks nice in each game but cannot be slept with. Therefore, Dragon Age Origins is the best game in the entire series.

Got this at the summer sale, and boy is that a bargain. Been playing it non-stop since. In my opinion this game is still worth a full price. But, if I have to be negative, I'd bring up an occasional audio bug where the sound just stops working, a story chapter that involves a lot of annoying crying in a fake accent and a pretty dull run around type mission. Also, the swords floating in the air behind the characters backs. Over all the game is a bit chatty, in the spirit of KotorII one might say. But those are minor things compared to the epic RP and sweet dungeon crawling action. If sweet dungeon crawls are your thing, don't miss this.

While I love this game, it is notoriously buggy and filled with glitches and compatibility issues that were absolutely NOT resolved by GOG. Corrupted save files and game-breaking crashes abound. I wanted to believe that when GOG indicates functionality with Windows 10 that I could believe it. I was wrong. GOG openly lies about compatibility and will likely not be getting any more of my money. Don't get taken advantage of by these con artists.