Were you disappointed with Dragon Age: Origins?

[psicat]

Dragon Age: Origins was definitely one of the dullest RPGs I've ever played on a console. At least Dragon Age 2 was more fun, but then it was also buggy and had to many repetitive environments.

 

[Rawne1980]

I quite enjoy DA:O.

It's a nice tactical RPG with a decent story. I like to micro manage the big fights, it keeps me occupied so I have fun.

 

[Zhukov]

I think you went into the game expecting it to be something much different to what it actually was. If your impression was garnered from watching the trailers then this understandable. As is common in trailers, they made it look a lot more fun than it really was.

This is a Dragon Age: Origins trailer:

This is actual gameplay:

You may have noticed a slight difference there. One looks like exciting fantasy action. The other looks like World of fucking Warcraft.

Personally... eh, I'm ambivalent. I absolutely loved the characters. Morrigan, Alistair, Sten and Leliana were awesome. The combat was alright, I enjoyed having to coordinate party members, but it was extremely repetitive and I ended up getting really sick of it by about halfway through the game. I found the story lame and generic. The details were interesting, but the overarching plot was just... nothing. Kill the demon-dragon, stop the orcs darkspawn, try to stay awake.

 

[twistedmic]

First I tried out playing as a mage and I couldn't believe how uninteresting the spells were, almost all of them were about slowing down your enemies or giving bonuses to your teammates. Isn't this game supposed to be some sort of bloody dark fantasy epic? Were are all the neat spells like summoning a squad of floating ghost swords to fight for you or creating giant exploding fireballs?
All it has (so far) is a electric/flamethrower spell and this other one thats supposed to make your enemies blow up.

You get the more powerful spells at higher levels, provided you upgrade the correct aspects. And you have tostart out with the weaker fire spells before you can get access to the bigger spells.

When I saw the first cinematic trailer it showed Morrigan kicking ass left to right, I wasnt expecting the gameplay to be anything like the trailer but I was at least expected to feel like some sort of badass mage...

Game trailers/cinematics are notorious for showing characters super-powered or pulling off moves that are impossible to replicate in game, just watch some of the cutscenes in a Devil May Cry game. Also, the Morrigan in the trailer/cinematic was probably a high-level mage.

 

[theevilgenius60]

I love Dragon Age: Origin. When I play it I lose all track of myself(Ed) in the room playing a game and feel immersed in the game(as Magnus, my rogue warden). The trick is to know which party members to keep with you. Morrigan, for one, minds the camp the whole game. I can understand her being selfish as she was raised alone, but if you don't take side quests, you don't get as much xp. I just want to sit her down and ask her what she has against leveling up. " You know that virulent walking bomb spell we got you? I know you like it because you cast it at the beginning of every fight. We were able to get it because of all those random people we helped out, so stop bitching about that. No, I'm not doing it to help them, I'm doing it to help us." Other than that, no qualms about the game. It plays like it's supposed to, and is one of my top five. Where is that game again?...

You get yourself fully immersed in the game, and yet you do things for gameplay reasons rather than for character reasons?

Huh. Your version of immersion and my version of immersion are two very different things.

Heh... version of immersion... lolrhymes.

Anyways, I keep Morrigan with me because it makes sense for the character I built. He's a dwarf, so he has this morbid curiosity on all forms of magic, a curiosity that sometimes gets the better of him (the final choice to make with Morrigan). Plus, he respects her on combat. Everything else, he just tells her to shut it. Though they do end on a very bittersweet note in the end.

Nah, I don't do things specifically for xp, but that is how I would explain things to Morrigan. I use the xp argument on her b/c she's selfish and I could explain(as I did in the quote above) to her that she's being counterproductive to her own cause. As for me, I do side quests because that is in the nature of my warden. He basically tries to live up to a modified version of Superman's creed,"truth, justice and the Fereldan way". Yeah, I made a rogue who is also a boyscout. I don't like doing evil playthroughs, yet am a naturally sneaky dude.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

I was pleasantly surprised with DA:O. It's one of the best games made in the last 10 years that's for sure.

 

[uzo]

I thought it was great. Dragon Age on PC made me all nostalgic for Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale; I could play it with the super zoomed-out mode for the battles (I loved the tactical aspect - a game where I can pause (omg!) and queue up a series of brutal, coordinated attacks (wargasm!) is always fantastic in my opinion).

Dragon Age on PS3 was, to me, a bitterly disappointing and frustrating exercise. The storyline and characters were still fantastic ... but the interface sucked donkey cock harder than Zevran in the navy.

EDIT: That said ... what system are you playing it on? If it's on the consoles, I feel your pain.

 

[DanielBrown]

A bit. It kept me entertained, but I expected a 100+ hour long game. Think I beat it in 27 hours or less(easiest setting, but that's how I roll, damnit!).

Holy fuck.

If I do everything available for that game, it takes me 80+ hours. Either you have literally NO DLC, or you're just doing something wrong.

Try it on normal or hard. It's a lot more fun.

Don't know how you manage to pull that off. I did all the side quests/jobs I could find and I have all DLC but Witch Hunt afaik. Didn't read any codex' though... but I don't consider reading random entries well spent time when I'm playing a game.
Might push up the difficulty if I ever play it again, but I'm swamped with games to replay at the moment so it won't be anytime soon.

 

[loukasmaki]

Dragon Age Origins was a very positive experience for me. I had quite fun in the battles even if they sometimes can be ridiculisly hard. My own character is a rouge but I find myself spending more time micromanaging Morrigan or that other female mage. And yes it has many similarities with the role the diffrent classes in a MMORPG like WOW. (Kinda funny since I hate WOW)
The story was what really got to me. It's one of the few games where I care about the characters. One thing though that annoys me is the false illusion of choice you get in the conversations. Quite often it doesn't matter what choice you take in the conversations since the answer you get is the same.

I just finished the first Fable game and goddamn that game got on my nerves. Annoying NPC's and repetitive and unengaging combat "Hack, hack hack, block and hack again". Or spam an area-of-effect spell. And the story was quite dull though with some intresting moments.

 

[Epona]

I thought it was alright, not the second coming of Christ or anything. My problem was that I was constantly comparing it to Oblivion and the invisible walls were pissing me off. The ability system was boring compared to leveling your skills (and by extension, stats). The graphics and game field were more like Diablo than a 3D RPG like Morrowind or Oblivion.

I ruined my own experience by comparing it to Oblivion but when I bought Dragon Age: Origins, I was looking for a game like Oblivion but I couldn't replay Oblivion for the 10th time. Also, I remember playing around with the "Gambits" and thinking, Final Fantasy 12 did this so much better.

After playing Dragon Age for while it does grow on you but it never completely pulls you in.

 

[Bostur]

I was pleasantly surprised and thought it was one of the best games of the decade. It was a return to the old tactical RPGs using much of the same mechanics as the old Black Isle games Baldur's Gate and Planescape:Torment.

The overarching story may be a bit bland, which is often the case in western high fantasy. It serves as a backdrop for the evolution of the characters. The story is in the journey the end result is simply an excuse for that journey.

If it reminds people of WoW it's probably because MMOs were heavily inspired by some of the old computer RPGs. ;-)

I can imagine it got poorly ported to consoles. Point and click interfaces probably don't work well without a mouse.

Unfortunately this was probably the last AAA game of that genre. Us old fans will have to look towards indy developers for this in the future.

 

[Alaster Angelo]

It wasn't bad, I rather liked it. The reason I'm underwhelmed with Dragon Age as a whole is because I keep comparing it to Mass Effect, which I should really stop doing.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

absolutely loved it, while i do love games like fable and stuff,i will alway prefer a nice setup of throwback combat/gameplay like DA:O and kotor, i could play it for every game forever and not get tired of it. (hence my 50+ playthrough's of kotor and 10+ playthroughs of DA:O)

 

[The-Epicly-Named-Man]

No, I was dissapointed with dragon age 2, Dragon age origins was a good foundation for a series not a good game. It set up a universe that could be expanded upon in an infinite number of ways, but the actual game was lacking.

I second this. Interesting universe, terribly boring in every other way.

 

[Sinathor]

I enjoyed the first several hours of the game when there was an actual storyline. After that it went to the typical bioware bullshit as does their every game for the past recent years. Meaning, fuck plot, let's put more boring and badly designed combat here, yay.

I could see past these things if there would be some atmosphere in the game. But the level design is atrocious (since when has a forest been a canyon?) and the massive amounts of invisible walls just make me sad.

I also tried Dragon Age 2. For about an hour. Yeah.

So I guess I go back to the late nineties, when bioware knew how to make games. If only they would've also known how to program pathfinding ^_^

 

[The Hero Killer]

I was at first but then I got the PC version with a truck load of mods and now its my 2nd favorite Bioware game behind Mass Effect 2.

 

[2733]

I kinda liked it up until the end when my duel wielding elf warrior was left smacking most foes for almost no damage because they all had enough DR to stop a freight train. so I was left dropping the difficulty down to easy and smacking the last boss with a big old two handed hammer I had no skill with, not the best way to end a game.

 

[AdeptaSororitas]

It was honestly a bit of a let down for me. It had really excellent characters with fun dialogue, and the random talking that happened while strolling about made them feel alive. However I agree, the combat felt slow and plodding. And while some of the special attacks were helpful, they didn't liven up the battles extraordinarily. I also felt my level of immersion slip far to frequently as I had to switch from me, a proud Dalish Elf back and forth into my party members. I never stayed "in character" because I wasn't able to stay in character during the fights. I enjoy telling my allies what to do but I much prefer to do it AS my character rather then feeling more like a poltergeist leaping from body to body, guiding them with a, clearing 4th wall breaking, hand. It was rather frustrating after playing Mass Effect, where I constantly felt in character because I STAYED in character.