Dragon Age: Origins Review

I've played Dragon Age for about twenty hours now. Not even the smallest dent in the crust. But I have an understanding of the game and are now ready to tell you whether or not to buy it. Expect an update on this once I "finish" the game, or "finish" my first campaign.

You pick all sorts of different "origins" in the beginning. Mine happened to be a young man named Epicphoenix - a noble prince trained in the art of the warrior. When the city is vulnerable, one of your former alliances attacks you. You escape with a Grey Warden, leaving your father and mother behind to die. A Grey Warden is an ancient order designed to destroy some zombies. Well, technically they're darkspawn, but they're zombies. The Grey Wardens are the policemen of the Dragon Age world, and the darkspawn are the "bad kids".

The main idea of the game is the use of pausing, controlling various characters, and questing. You walk around collecting tasks and quests and such, and you complete them. You earn experience. Standard, easy, you know the drill stuff. But then, there is pausing. You can control any character in your party and use their special skills as if they are your own character. Now, if you're playing your character and let the AI control your party mates, you will die, suck and fail. However, if you pause every so often, control each character and assign them to do a certain task, win!

Imagine playing in live action. You stand there, button mashing. The AI controlling your five party mates auto-attack with their staves. Or you can pause, make the mage cast a fireball, the "paladin" shield slam, and the dog bark, and voila! You win the game. DAMN IT. Sorry, I just lost the game by thinking of winning the game.

In the end, buy the game. Just do it. You can buy Brutal Legend (great game) and get six hours of fun. Maybe more if you play the RTS online. Or, you can buy Dragon Age: Origins for the same price and get, quite literally, over 300 hours of fun. Make the right choice.