Flantics Reviews Dragon Age: Origins

Hi thar! I’m Flantics if you didn’t already know and I’ll be reviewing a little game known as Dragon Age: Origins for you all today. Grab your bibs and utensils; this one is perfect for diving into!

GRAPHICS:

The graphics are nothing short of brilliant. If you play it on the X-Box 360 or PS3 it’ll likely be a little smooth in some places but the computer version is flawlessly textured and looks almost like a movie in some spots. The battle scenes are executed very well and the spell effects are dazzling and captivating.

Graphics receives a 4.5 out of 5.

STORY:

The story is, for lack of a better phrase, perfect. It’s the standard epic role-playing game that involves going through an immense world where you are the last being alive that can stop the oncoming apocalypse. I won’t give any spoilers here, but no matter what path you take you’ll always find something interesting. Literally fun around every corner. And depending on the background you pick the story even shifts slightly to work with your past!

Story gets a massive 5 out of 5!

GAMEPLAY:

Gameplay is a little stiff sometimes…point, click, hit/miss, rinse, repeat. It gets stale in some parts but the level dependent enemies make sure that you ALWAYS receive a challenge. Even when the overall mechanics are stale, the battles are never so. They keep you guessing and even when you feel you’re too strong to ever fall, a new enemy comes along and drills you into the ground. It’s that slap of reality that makes things fun.

Gameplay = 4 out of 5

OVERALL:

All and all, this game is brilliant. I would suggest it to ANYONE that likes medieval action RPGs.

Very interesting. As a RPG type of guy, I can always appreciate a good RPG. My favorite series include Final Fantasy, Harvest Moon, Kingdom Hearts, Pokemon, Sonic, Klonoa, Xenosaga and Disgaea. Yes, not all of those are exactly RPG's, but they are to me. Anyway, this game seems very interesting, based on your reviews. Thanks for giving us another game that we can possibly look into; you're a nice person.

I try ^_^

Fairly good review, but there's a reason why I don't play this game anymore.

LOAD TIMES.

Really it's a fun game but the load times can take up to 10 minutes sometimes. I have a good PC and the game does not lag at all for me, it's just those damn load times. The thing that really did it for me was at this wizard tower. I went downstairs and waited ages for it to load. I walked forwared and there was nothing but a door here. I tried to open it and it was locked...I went back and it took just as long to load the previous area. It took so long that I closed the game using Alt Ctrl Del. I have never played a game that EVER took that long to load a single place up before.

Another annoying thing is ememy looting. From the time they die to the time they sparkle to show they have an item is totally random. Sometimes you wait 5 seconds, sometimes it's 50. I'll search every corpse and then leave, come back and suddenly ALL of them have items I nearly missed out on because of their buggy system.

They were smart to add the auto-pause and such to it, because it can be hard enough to click on an enemy even when they are still, but when they move it's a big challenge.

But besides that I agree with your review. However I'd have given the story a 6/5.

If you stop playing a game for load time alone then you'll never truly find a game worth playing (at least one that's long and has a good story). Take Oblivion (or the whole Elder Scrolls series for that matter) for example. Great game...awesome in nearly every account. Until you started talking about the load times. It could take ten min. to do a quest and DOUBLE that time to load the damn areas needed to do it. DESPITE that, the game was still ridiculously awesome! Dragon Age is the same. While the load times are a bitch, they are still part of the game. Imagine how BUGGY it would be withOUT the load times.

Flashlight Antics wrote:If you stop playing a game for load time alone then you'll never truly find a game worth playing (at least one that's long and has a good story). Take Oblivion (or the whole Elder Scrolls series for that matter) for example. Great game...awesome in nearly every account. Until you started talking about the load times. It could take ten min. to do a quest and DOUBLE that time to load the damn areas needed to do it. DESPITE that, the game was still ridiculously awesome! Dragon Age is the same. While the load times are a bitch, they are still part of the game. Imagine how BUGGY it would be withOUT the load times.

But Oblivion has great load times... I can quickload and it takes me 3 seconds roughly. Re-entering an area takes the same amount of time. Entering a new area takes about 10 seconds. Also I'm talking about Oblivion for the PC. The only other game to have such long load times was Fable2 for the 360 which is not even half as bad as DragonAge. Though I stopped playing that as Microsoft likes to screw me over constantly. I lost ALL exp and gold and renown on my saved game of Fable2. I also go stuck in a house forever. My daughter got stuck. My wife did not even spawn until about 10 plays...oh wait I'm getting off-topic.

So yeah, Dragonage, also on PC, is insanely slow at loading and Oblivion is one of the fastest loading games I have. Sims2 with every single addon is the only thing that beats DragonAge for load times for me. Next time I play Dragonage I'm going to time the load times.