Dragon Age™: Origins - Ultimate Edition

No way to pass through grey warden initiation. Game rendering breaks when MC drinks blood, only black screen from that point. You can save the game during black screen, but loading it will crash. GOG charges $15 for a game that doesn't even work. Don't buy it.

If you want a high-quality RPG, then you should draw your attention to other RPGs. Otherwise prepare to waste a lot of time. Setting and Lore Writers have failed to present an engaging fantasy. From struggling nations to religious metaphysics, all is shallow and primitive. One only wants to compare it with D&D. Characters, Quests, Writing I dare to say all of characters are flat plastic dolls. One encounters huge amounts of whiny infantile men, female soldiers and who knows what else. Quests are in the tradition of MMORPGs - mindless grinding and killing. Writing is mediocre at best and abhorrent at worst. Absence of style - no difference between a veteran general and a dumb elven lass in plate armor. It is painful to read it. Gameplay It is shitty offline MMORPG with autolevelling. Mindless, dull repetitive combat is a half of total content. Instead of presenting compelling story and roleplaying, developer mocks the player and gives him chambers full of mindless dolls to kill. [I mean what i said, one needs 50 hours to complete it, and 25 hours are diablo-like grinding] Technical Realization Overall, average perfomance. Style of graphics makes one's eye to bleed. Occasional crashes, especially in overcrowded combat due to engine overloading. Roleplaying/Freedom Now, one has come to the core. Roleplaying is the choices one makes in dialogues of linear quest. Consequences for your actions (and crimes) are absent. An illustration of both points: one comes to a clan of barbaric nomad xenophobic elves. There he meets a local, an infantile whiny virgin boy, and learns of boy's desired lass. Then, because he can, he seduces her (or simply rapes) to mock the boy. A grievous insult. Which every knifeear ignores. Absolutely. Later, one decides to genocide all the treelovers, including the virgin and the lass. Even a sociopath would not enjoy this because of unrealistic story and plastic character behaviour. Conclusion Buy something better, support other developers.

Almost good as Baldur's Gate. Almost.f

I remember when this came out that I was still busy modding and enjoying Bioware's Neverwinter Nights. I continued to play NWN and never got round to Dragon Age till now. I can only assume that the glowing 5-star reviews come from brain-dead fanboys without any critical reasoning ability. The game uses a desaturated palette which I suppose suits the backstory, but it also makes the game much less attractive than NWN. Textures and animations are a bit smoother than NWN, which is an improvement. But NWN started you in a hospital, and making your way through the hospital to learn your mission and exit was in fact a very deep tutorial in which you learned how to do everything in the game. DA:O doesn't have anything like that. After a text description of the world situation, you're deposited in your bedroom in the palace. You're told a ceremony will be held to celebrate your being appointed commander in chief or something, but that that's hours away and you're expected to tour the merchant district in the meantime. But on going there, you're almost immediately confronted by your brothers, who demand to know why you aren't at the ceremony. Return to palace, no ceremony. Return to outside, see the same half-dozen merchants, only half of whom have inventories, but despite being a royal prince you have no money with which to buy anything. A guard tells you he was appointed to give you an escort to a gladiatorial match. Wait, why the shame-fest about not being at a ceremony that hasn't started yet if I'm supposed to be watching bloodsports? But going to the games results in staring at two no-names bashing each other in which no one ever loses health, the match goes on forever, no NPC has anything for me to do, there's STILL nothing on at the palace... Two hours spent and it still doesn't feel like an adventure game. There are no other options... except to quit the game. Call me Joshua, but I fail to see what the big deal was about this.

Decided to play for the first time since I skipped it on release somehow. Now I remember why I did. Worst let down and the begging of the end for bioware due to pursuit for the "mass market" player. Combat and progression system? MMO-esque worse version of Diablo, and literally plays itself on hard even in boss fights Quest design? here is a fetch quest, travel to a tiny location, kill everything, get reward Reactivity? almost absent outside of specific triggers. There isn't even use for stealth outside combat Level design? hope you like the same linear-path tower layout reused for levels, because you'll be seeing that a lot Writing? ..well at least it's always short, don't want to bore the midwit... akhm the average player. Here is another token "moral dilemma", in an otherwise completely linear quest, how inspired! (no.) I know this game gets a lot of praise, but it's far from deserved and only because bioware succeeded at appealing to mass-market crowd. Is it an alright game? probably. Is it a good crpg? No.