Review: Dragon Age Origins

This past weekend was a huge accomplishment for me.  I beat my very first RPG since Super Mario RPG for SNES.  Granted, I was 18 years old the first time I beat Super Mario RPG.  I'm not the most devoted gamer, especially when it comes to RPGs.  I will play until I get stuck, give up for months, and then come back again and feel the need to restart because I went without playing for so long.  It is a vicious, endless cycle.  Well, back on topic, I beat Dragon Age this weekend.  I had been playing this game quiet a bit, fighting it out with my fiance over who could play next.  This game was just amazing in my opinion.  Read on for the full review.

Review

Now, the sole fact that such a poorly skilled gamer as myself managed to beat Dragon Age: Origins on my own might deter the more hardcore gaming crowd.  Fear not, as there are three higher levels of difficulty, and they do make the difference.  My fiance finds himself struggling with battles that I managed with little difficulty.  This was fine for me.  A mild challenge is all I need to enjoy a game, assuming the story is good, and this one was.  

I had never played a game created by BioWare before, as Knights of the Old Republic had frustrated me right at the beginning.  I was familiar with the concept behind KotOR before I began DAO.  I found myself deeply emersed in the story from the start.  The fact that the actions I made affected the story was a major bonus.  There was more excitement out of what happened in the game, especially when I knew something I had done beforehand had caused it.  I loved the way that I could interact with the members of the party, and had fun just talking to them until I had exhausted all of my options. 

The graphics of the game were fairly good.  I read in a review on IGN that one complaint was that the blood spatters would appear on the ranged characters, even though they never got close to the battle.  I found the opposite effect when I played, so I wonder if the program had been altered prior to the full release.  There were a couple glitches, such as somebody's head being in the way during the conversation screens, and at one point I remember seeing the head of a wolf I had summoned poking through the chest of an NPC I was conversing with.  I was able the shrug these issues off.

Upon finishing the game, I was already planning my next character, and the way I would approach the game a second time.  There are multiple endings, and I plan to try for a happier one this time around.  The ability to choose your actions allows for the replay of this game to be fairly high.  I can't imagine the conversations being boring as well, as you have the capability to control the direction the conversations can go.  This was a fine video game, and probably the best RPG to have been released in 2009.  5 out of 5 stars.