Dragon Age™: Origins - Ultimate Edition

This game may have been something fantastic if the gameplay and engagements were lucky enough to receive just a fraction of the attention that the cinematics, lore and voice acting were gifted. Those areas shine and if my review was for a movie rather then a video game, I would give it stars. But... it isnt. Taking a look at the combat, it is a five star, four alarm holy righteous journey down fuck up lane. The scripting is a nightmare for characters not being directly controlled by the player, and I found that the second I moved from one character to another the AI was doing something totally stupid and not even close to what I had laid out in its script. The combat itself is boring, 2 dimensional and repetitive. The game gives you "companions" that have already been leveled up to some degree with skills and spells that dont even work, or if they do, its not what you need as a player for the build your looking for, and no way in game without mods to change any of it. This is just the very very short list. Skills and spells: Another disaster. Most of them dont work at all (15 years down the road from release...???) so this is yet another example of devs dropping the ball midway though and expecting the player base to band aid all of their screwups with modding. The majority of the skills serve little to no purpose. They put crafting in the game as an afterthought as most everything you can craft is sold or drops in game anyway. I could go on for days. Gameplay: No autorun?? Dungeons and instances that you cant leave that go on for hours so you cant sell anything from your inventory when it fills, then you have to run all the fuck back to the entrance by holding down the run key. Not too bright. Some quests update as you progress through the list of "things to do" .. .some just dont. All in all it was another example of half ass, sub par mediocre effort in major areas of the game that ruined the enjoyment of my experience during play through.

The controls sure have aged like cottage cheese alongside the graphics. Most of the time is just walking around empty lifeless corridors with nothing to do. Then you engage in 90's MMORPG combat. Its just not engaging nor fun. Regretful purchase. Old does NOT mean gold.

The response is slow, the controls are confusing, and the gameplay is not that exciting. Even on sale for $4.99, I want my money back.

Did not enjoy.

Don't buy the hype. It's a polished turd revered by weirdos who use it as a dating sim, but there's bits of it worth salvaging that would actually take inspiration from if I were put in charge of designing an RPG. Let's start with the good: The camera allows you to play from either an over-the-shoulder or isometric perspective, allowing you to choose between immersive exploration and tactical control, although the isometric perspective would be better if it weren't tied to a character. Different starting stories and location based on character's race and class is a great idea. Unlocking prestige classes through in-game decisions is pretty neat, although it kind of sucks when you want to replay with a specific build in mind but can't execute it if you haven't made the right choice in any previous playthroughs. Morrigan is one of my favorite companions ever written, and her and Alistair have great banter with each other. Now the bad: The most generic dark fantasy setting ever devised. There's only 3 base classes to choose from (warrior, rogue, mage), although they essentially have 2-3 subclasses each (archer vs daggers, two-handed vs board and sword). Enemies are also made up of those same 3 classes. You will be fighting groups of Darkspawn rogues, warriors, and mages with the same skills as you again, and again, and again. In addition to wave after wave of the same boring old enemies, the MMO combat itself is shallow and repetitive, mostly revolving around knockdowns and stun lock. Art style is terrible. The graphics themselves probably hold up pretty well, but the game is just hideous. It's very drab and brown. Even the magical dream world is just nothing but brown with goop everywhere. I could go on, but I'm out of characters. It's a boring slog, but it's the best the series has to offer. If it's on sale for super cheap (or even free on Origin) you might be able to get some enjoyment out of it, but the love affair is completely undeserved.