Let’s not kid ourselves, eh? You know me. I know me. This is gonna be a long post. Get comfy, grab the beverage of your choosing, and gather round for some opinions.

The Short Version

It is unquestionably worth playing if you like Role-Playing Games (RPGs, for the uninitiated).  Get it for the COMPUTER, if your hardware can handle it.

The long version…is considerably longer.

Console Versus Computer

My husband and I (more the fool we) purchased the game for the XBOX360.

This was foolish.

This was foolish because the computer version actually comes with developer tools.

This was foolish because it’s likely that computers of the future will still be able to play the game, while consoles of the future are not likely to be able to play the 360 version.

This was foolish because the game really isn’t pretty enough to need big-screen graphics display.

FOREMOST and above all, this was foolish because the game was MADE FOR COMPUTER PLAY and only PORTED to the console system.

What does that mean? That means the original gameplay intended that you, the player, have access to things like a MOUSE and a KEYBOARD.

This means they expected you to map oft-used spells and keys to your keyboard, and that they intended you to click on things to select them.

This means that the console player, mouse and keyboardless, gets the shaft.

They made the “wheel” UI for the console and it sucks =THIS BAD=. Seriously, it’s like they met a guy on the bus and said “Hey, we’re going to port this game to the xbox and likely other consoles, can your kid throw together a UI for us? For pay, we can offer $15 and this old Bruce Lee poster.”

The UI wheel in battle is ridiculously clunky to try and use (especially over and over and over again), and moreso when you realize just how easy it’d be if you were clicking with your mouse.

The UI for the PC version is much like the standard MMO UI.

Worst of all, console players can’t actually TARGET MOBS.

Oh yes, you heard that right. What you CAN do is sort of aim your character in the general direction of a mob and pray to a god who mocks you. There is no way to scroll between possible targets that I’m aware of. You just…run at things and hope your character finds them.

Let’s not even discuss the pain and suffering involved with trying to position an AOE ability. Let’s just…*pinches the bridge of her nose*…no, let’s just not.

If you haven’t bought this yet, buy it for the computer and save yourself some very very very very painfully stupid porting problems.

The Game Guide

Yes, I’m one of those people that like to buy the game guide, particularly if it has pretty pictures in it. Yes, it’s expensive.

In the case of Dragon Age, I’d say the game guide is well worth the money if you, like me, don’t want to miss things. All the subquests are included, as well as some pretty useful information about each of your companion – gifts they like, how to unlock their personal quests, hints on starting a romance with them…

There’s ALSO a guide in there on how to achieve four-way in-game nookie if you’re interested. Not that you are, of course.

Moving on.

The guide, however, was obviously written by people who know the game well, and I’d be surprised to find they actually gave the guide to someone new to the game and said “use this to play!” and took notes to improve it.

Because in a lot of ways, it really sucks for usability.

The side-quests for each area are in a separate section at the back of the book, NOT included in the section of the book with the area they are in. So if I want to work through the main quest line AND the subquests at the same time, I have to keep flipping back and forth between the pages on the book. Heck, even if I’m only doing sidequests, they refer to maps that are only in the front of the book.

Besideswhich, sometimes the quest walkthroughs are impossibly vague. I ran through ALL of Orzammar looking for a female dwarf with a particular name to steal from (hey, she stole first!) because she wasn’t on any maps, the character didn’t tell me where she was, and the walkthrough just said “steal from her”. I was…underwhelmed.

Also, there are gifts in the game which aren’t in the game guide. If I wanted to GUESS, I wouldn’t have bought the game guide! *flail*

Aside from that, the pictures are VERY pretty, and it beats the pants off of not having the game guide. I just wish it were a BETTER game guide. I’m still pleased with the purchase.

Enough About All That, What Is The Game?

Okay, okay. Quick rundown of the game. If you’ve ever played Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, you’re familiar with the basic premise, but I’ll lay it out here for anyone who hasn’t.

Creating a Character

You create YOUR unique character in any race/class/background allowed. Races are dwarf, human, and elf. Dwarves cannot be mages. Classes are Mage, Warrior, Rogue. Mages only get one background – the Circle Tower. There are upper class and lower class versions of the human/dwarf races, and the elves can be either lower class or Dalish, which are the prancing about in the woods variety of elves.

Background determines your story. You actually work through your background quests before getting into the true meat of the story, and some of the things you do in your background quest will determine things that happen later. This is actually a key element of what makes this game so fun – your choices have consequences, and for every choice you make (and you make a LOT of them, from tiny decisions on whether or not to give a beef bone to the dog through whether you’ll slaughter elves or werewolves) there are a handful of choices you did NOT make. If you’re like me, not knowing what happens behind the choices you didn’t make will be maddening.

Anyrate, an example of a background story choice coming back to haunt you is if you are a male dwarf from the nobility (see how all three choices matter?) and you decide to sleep with a particular dwarf female before you go to the Deep Roads, when you come BACK to Orzammar later, she will have your child and demand that you regain your lost honor so the child can be raised as a noble.

So, you choose your race, class, and background. Your background story ALWAYS ends up with you running off with a guy named Duncan to become a Grey Warden, one of a group of people dedicated to protecting the land from the Darkspawn Blight, which is about to happen (lucky you).

Your Party

You become a Grey Warden, the Darkspawn overrun the land, and when the dust clears, you find yourself with yourself, Alastair (a young, handsome, noble Grey Warden with a great sense of humor and the cutest little scar in his lip…wait, where were we? *cough*), and Morrigan (a cynical mage) as your companions. If you played your cards right, you either have or will soon have the cheerful Dog (whom you can rename and who is a pseudo-warrior), a shoe-loving rogue named Leilana, and a grouchy dps warrior named Sten. From there, your journey’s path is up to you – which area you go to next will determine which characters become available to join your party, but you gain the option of a healing mage named Wynne, a smart-mouthed assassin named Zevran, a dry-witted golem-warrior named Shale (downloaded content only), a dwarf named Oghren, and a few other miscellaneous characters as well.

You can only have four characters in your party at one time, and one of those characters is always YOU. So you must build and choose your party wisely. When you or any other character, for that matter, level up, can can spend stat points, ability points, and skill points to shape your characters in whatever way you like.

You go about your merry way, gathering support from various groups for the coming battle to stop the Blight.

Battle

Battle kinda sucks. It sucks more because of the stuff I mentioned up in the console rant, but I think it’d kinda suck anyway. You can set up each character to have pretty detailed AI choices – everything from telling them they’re supposed to be ranged fighters to detailing that Wynne should use a particular healing spell on a specific party member if he is under a certain percentage of health.

Even with all that control…it kinda sucks.

Wynne constantly runs up and begs the mobs to smack her in the mouth. Rogue characters refuse to stay behind the mobs for backstabbing. They’re frustrating to control, and can’t be trusted on their own. Choosing spells or abilities to use isn’t really much fun, either.

So yeah. In my highly biased opinion, battles aren’t any fun. Either they’re ridiculously easy or stupidly impossible, and there doesn’t seem to be a happy middle road.

Lucky for the game, the battle is the ONLY thing that sucks, but unlucky for the game, it kinda takes up a large portion of what you’re expected to do. You know. What with it being a battle-based RPG and all.

The developers appear to be under the bizarre impression that adding friendly fire will ensure replayability (seriously? As frustrating as it is to control battle, you think making me be worried I may kill my own people is going to make this MORE fun for me?) and have left in some options to make the game “harder” by adding it. I do not intend to play on those settings.

Music

Music and sounds in the game are great. Not quite on par with World of Warcraft or Aion, but subtle and very well done.

Voice acting is well above par in almost every case. Fantastic job.

Controls

Controls for the character are pretty decent, although I constantly chose the wrong lever or trigger to hit when trying to move inside of the menus on the console version. I LONG for a mouse pointer.

Still, opening chests and whatnot is pretty easy, though I accidentally engage my party members in conversation too often when I’m trying to loot bodies. Remember, on the console, all I can do is sort of POINT my character at the thing I want them to interact with. My party members keep walking all over the bleedin’ corpses. No, I do NOT want to have a chat with you right now, Shale. I am trying to rifle these corpses for goodies. Kindly remove your GIANT STONE FOOT from their heads.

Visuals

Visuals are…eh.

The cut scenes are very well done, but the graphics engine looks…old. Aion is gorgeous. Dragon Age is…presentable. Models look awkward when they run and character creation is easy – there aren’t many options that don’t look ugly or silly or worse. I might not feel quite so negative about it if I hadn’t been introduced to Dragon Age by  some of the VERY gorgeous videos released by their marketing department, depicting realistic and vivid character faces and movements. The difference between the two is…unfortunate.

So…Um…

If I’m not playing it for the visuals, or the music, or the controls, or the BATTLE, why the heck AM I playing it?

The STORY. The characters. The world.

Oh, my word, it’s incredible.

There is SO. MUCH. STORY here.

Romance

Love to play matchmaker? Most (not all, but most) of the possible party members can be romanced – and some can be romanced by characters of either gender.

That’s right. This game allows cross-gender romancing (Leilana and Zevran, if you’re interested).

Also, to the menfolk looking for female love out there? I recommend making a female character and romancing Alastair. Take notes. HOLY SWOON, Batman. I’ve yet to meet a more endearing game hero. I swear, I actually blushed the first time his character kissed mine.  I know I’m not the only female gamer on my twitter list half in love with those pixels.

Characters

Even beyond just romance, all of the characters are so interesting. Talking to them will reveal some great details about the world and their characters. Your responses with either improve your standing with them, or piss them off. Characters that like you more will have more interesting and personal dialogue choices.

Also, the characters will banter with each other as you walk around town, doing quests. They interact with each OTHER, which is often hilarious. Oghren the dwarf finds an unlikely friend in Wynne, who shows an unexpected appreciation for fine ale and wine. Shale is always good for a plaintive request that you go back to squishing the heads of things. Wynne teases Alastair about his affection for you (assuming you’re in a romance with him). Morrigan smarts off at…everyone.

It’s just plain fun.

Well, except when it’s frustrating. Many of the dialogue choices have a (Persuade) or (Cunning) note in front of them. Some of them could do with a (Playful) as well. Too often, I make a dialogue choice that pisses off one of the characters I’m trying to make friends with, and I haven’t a clue why.

Random

There are also some silly/random things that I just adore. “Distinctive Landmarks” appear throughout the zones. If you control Dog and inspect them, he’ll mark his territory and invoke “Mabari Dominance”, which gives him a bonus to armor and attack for that zone. Shale (the golem) will stomp any pigeons he finds. He also calls all of your party members “it” when speaking directly to you. Zevran flirts with everyone. Dog will “fetch” things for you – gifts for other characters, cake, wine, notes…small children…

Tragedy

The story is also full of tragedy and horror. Sure, the fights are bloody (and your characters walk around covered in blood spatter), and killing any of the ogres nets you a slow-motion awesome death scene…

…but sometimes the storylines just break your heart, too. Can there be such a thing as a right and good choice? The writers certainly don’t make it easy on you.

The bone-chilling chant of the lost dwarf in the Deep Roads still gives me goosebumps, and the truth behind the manufacture of golems and Caridan’s choice take my breath away.

What would you be willing to do in order to stop the Darkspawn?

Summary

I really wish the gameplay or the graphics were stunning enough for me to replay this multiple times, through as many scenarios and group compositions as possible. As it is, I think I’ll settle for once as a good guy (human female noble has a chance to become queen!)  and once as a total jerk. Sometimes, being nice to these people just sticks in my craw, and I can’t wait to get my elf to tell them what’s REALLY on my mind.

As it is, maybe one replay is all I’ll get. Battle is just too clunky, especially on the console. The story is fun, but once I know the story, the HOURS of gameplay weigh heavily on my time.

I’ll rate this one as an extremely strong, but temporary diversion. I expect I’ll be back to Aion before the year is out, but I am enjoying my time in the world of Ferelden while I have it.