Dragon Age™: Origins - Ultimate Edition

A ,ot of reviews call it a modern Baldurs Gate. And that would indeed be beautiful - if it were true. It's not Baldurs Gate. It's colorful, and has very decent graphics even on a mobile system (unlike certain other games of that genre - I'm looking at you, Gerald) But that's about all the positive I can say about the game. The player has very little freedom in his decisions, the only 'nonlinear' thing about the game is that you can decide which area to visit first. More often than not you are forced to choose between two options that no remotely sane person would pick. If you're lucky enough to actually get two options. More than once you will watch in disbelive as the discussion unfolds like this: Game: Let's go do something totally insane "You": No, I don't think so Game: But we have to "You": I said no! It's insane, it's wrong, it is absolutely unnecessary, and nobody can force us) Game: Ok, so it is decided, we do it And once the illusion of free will is gone (or you decide you are good with playing the worlds dumbest, most shortsighted and infuriating Hero imaginable - and yes, that includes Jar Jar Bings) what remains of Dragon Age? Boring fights that take way too long, but are mostly identical. Maps that are to big to run errands (and you have to run errands. A lot.), but way to small to explore. If you really need to compare this game to the classics, it is much closer to TOEE than to BG or Planescape:Torment. So, talking about good old games... If you want freedom, play Morrowind If you want story, play Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, or P:T If you want to play in a consistent world, play Gothic If you want all that DA:O promises, play Baldurs Gate. If you're ok with just killing thousands of similar Monsters with a lame story and a railroad plot, at least do it the fun way and play Diablo.

After one hour of play. Just ran a magician in the tower and did courier work. Where is the action movie? Where are the fights? Why can't you miss all this shit? I bought a game to run a magician and bring down enemies! For an hour I had to just run around and do stupid errands. No action.

They still haven't added controller support! It is a game also on consoles there is NO excuse for such a big company to add it. I have a disability which makes playing on a gamepad laying down easier.

Oh boy, I remember that one. Long story short, it's a really sub-par title masquerading as a complex crpg. On the surface, it might fool you, and unfortunately most of the players' insight stopped at said surface. Good interface, manipulative character systems and a neat option to script your allied AI gave me hopes back in the day, that indeed we can yet again see a real role playing game of olde's made by a big developer and publisher. Unfortunately the good but basic concept fell short in confrontation with reality. It's not even a case of "wide as an ocean, but one feet deep". And the reality is that this game starts out promising with introductory segments that even give you impression of a plot going on in the background, but after the actual game starts, the illusion breaks. The real gameworthy content can be summed up in a few hours of main quest missions (they're decent enough). The rest of the game is an awful trash mob combat filler, of the worst type. MMO-style hubs with quest givers/boards with WoW's exclamation marks, using the same places of generic "walk-through" areas for many different quests, and just an awful encounter design. I hope you enjoy having the same fight against the same trash mob enemies in one corridor twenty times in a row. Because that's the 80% of the gameplay time in this game. At the top of that all, there are awfully written companions, their sub-plots and romances. "I don't think I rolled my eyes so much since that demonic possession" is the way to describe my experience in this game if it comes to character/story content. Yeah, you have few interesting and involving enough quests and boss fights (warewolves, a dragon I cannot recall right now...) and a basic concept that's good on paper, but, eh... It's a flat puddle that appeared magnificent from the distance, but upon a closer inspection turned out to be just a flat, dirty puddle with an old penny in it you might even pick up, but get dirt on your hand in the process.