If you're a fan of KOTOR, New Vegas, or any Choice & Consequence RPG, Dragon Age: Origins is pretty much a must play title. The depth of Role Play through your character Choices, Dialogue, and Gameplay is astounding. Be a Holy Knight seeking order and the restraint of mages, be a Dread Knight who (through Arcane Warrior) uses magic and strength to bring the world under your heel, be a blood mage seeking to further their own power and authority. The game is incredible! That said, its old. KOTOR itself is known for crashing and is an older game, but DA:O outshines it here by miles. You will crash constantly and bugs that are literally eleven years old remain. For instance, one companion (Shayle) literally has an ability that does not work in the game as packaged and must be modded to function. At one point, I broke an encounter in the Awakening DLC by using a spell to turn an enemy to fight with the party, but after the fight was over they didn't attack when the spell wore off and my character literally walked through the world as the game didn't know what to do with itself. SAVE OFTEN, but its worth the fight for this masterpiece that puts modern games to shame. No game since this era of New Vegas and DA:O has come close to being a true C&C RPG. Fair warning, the first 2-4 hours of this game are abysmal. Don't judge the game off that, just push through until you get to truly explore the world map and the writing has a chance to shine.
Gwent released basically the same as in the Witcher 3, obviously not great for a Online TCG, but CD Projekt Red built up from there. They rapidly released new cards with interesting effects and changed old ones and rules in order to evolve Gwent slowly into a perfect TCG! A TCG so good it honestly rivaled the likes of the two greats: Magic: The Gathering and Duel Monsters(Yu-Gi-Oh). Every game was like a rush of adrenaline as you played your cards one after the other to counter and keep up with your opponent all the while minding your hand and preparing your next skillful move to force them to pass and win the round. Then what was believed, at the time, to be the worse mistep possible occured. Despite being told numerous times before release that cards with RNG were bad for the game CDPR ignored the community and released the Mid-Winter update. Besides general distaste for the RNG this update also made the game far more cartoon-like and resembled Hearthstone more than Gwent's dark slavic atmosphere. Additionally numerous cards had their effects simplified without any good reason besides to appeal to casual players and cards text were similiarly changed from things such as "[Insert Skelligan Clan Name] Raider" to just "Skelligan Raider." Then in an move that baffles all who learned of it, CDPR decided that instead of listening to the community and rolling back to pre-midwinter they would not update the game for 6-months then fully release it. So, when they ruined the game from not listening to feed back they decided it was wise to try that, but on a half-year scale. Worse yet, they would call it "Homecoming" in order to make it seem as though they were returning to Gwent's roots. Their could be nothing farther from the truth. In Homecoming they simplified EVEN MORE cards than in Midwinter taking away card effects that had been beloved since Witcher 3 Gwent. Homecoming was a disaster. Making Gwent even less like Gwent than Midwinter. TL;DR- Don't touch this.
