Dragon Age follows what has become a pretty standard format for BioWare RPGs; you create a single character of a class of some kind, recruit party members that you can interact with (and romance), and work your way through both story and side quests. While it shares a lot of similarities with Mass Effect it's also VERY different in a lot of ways. Having played Mass Effect and Dragon Age back-to-back, comparing the two games is inevitable, so expect me to do so quite liberally as I discuss the strengths and weaknesses.
Loved
- BioWare at its best. Lots of people have said that this is one of the best RPGs of the last few years and even BioWare's best RPG ever. While I don't necessarily agree with a statement that strong, Dragon Age is without a doubt BioWare doing what BioWare does best: epic RPGs. I found the game very familiar and easy to pick up having played previous game. In lots of ways, it's a super charged version of Neverwinter Nights and that is a good thing.
- Origins. One of the big selling points in Dragon Age are the various origin stories. There are 6 in all (dwarf noble, dwarf commoner, human noble, mage, Dalish elf, and city elf), each of which provide a unique starting experience depending on the character you create. While I haven't had a chance to play through them all (all the way through 1 and part of the way through 2 others), I'm very impressed with the uniqueness each provide. All of them present you with some great history for the race in question and set you up for the rest of the game. I'd even dare say that the best and most interesting writing in the whole game occurs in those first few hours.
- Game play. If there is one thing that Dragon Age has really going for it, it's the core game play. Dragon Age is just a fun game to play. There is lots of world to explore, the combat is nearly always satisfying, and there are plenty of loot drops. While the game definitely leans toward the too difficult side, all in all the challenge for most of the game was about right.
Hated
- Loading. I can't remember a single game I've ever played where the loading times were so long and painful as they are in Dragon Age. Just walking into a house could take 15-30 seconds. I had times where a random encounter would happen while traveling and it would take the game almost a full minute to display the crossed swords signifying the random encounter, i.e. I would just stop moving across the map and the game would flash loading. If I hadn't known what was going on, I would have thought the game had crashed. The game also seemed to take longer to load the longer you played it consecutively; it got to a point where I would keep my iPhone next to my computer so I had something to do while waiting through the screens.
- Silent protagonist. After playing Mass Effect and falling in love with the very vocal Shepherd, not hearing anything come out of my characters mouth was almost unforgivable. The dialog system in Dragon Age feels like a huge step backwards in comparison to Mass Effect, I literally just don't know what they were thinking. While the dialog choices were quite varied and interesting, I REALLY missed not hearing my character speak. Others I talked to didn't seem to notice it as much, but it was actually distracting for me and was a huge break in the immersion.
- Generic setting. Where Mass Effect felt really interesting and unique, Dragon Age does not. At all. The setting is Tolkienesque at its best: the elves have pointy ears and shoot bows; the dwarves are short, have axes, and live in caves; and the humans think they are better than everyone and are slowly taking over. Additionally, the writers took normal English words and changed them in minor ways; e.g., Earl becomes Arl and Sir becomes Ser. What was supposed to be interesting and give the world depth just came off as feeling super cheesy to me. As usual, the game is absolutely brimming with codex entries that provide back story and interesting information about the world, but for the life of me I just couldn't make myself care. The world just wasn't interesting enough.
- Pointless loot. I had the collectors edition of Dragon Age which meant that I started the game with both the Warden's Keep and the Stone Prisoner DLC. At the advice of a friend, I did these two pieces of content first. While I'm glad I did, they sort of trivialized the entire game; the loot that they contained (and companion) were leagues better than just about anything else I ever found. That in general was a problem in and of itself, while the game throws a lot of loot at you, the VAST majority of it is completely worthless. In all fairness, the first Mass Effect definitely had this problem too, but for some reason it felt a lot more in my face here. I guess I just wished that I would have seen my gear upgrade more frequently; if your game takes over 56 hours to complete, don't make me use the same staff for 30 of them.
- Length. Dragon Age is too long. WAY too long. Games like this that so strongly encourage multiple playthroughs via choice decisions, origins, etc really need to be short enough to make a second playthrough feasible. By the time I finished my massive 56ish hour playthrough, I was just completely done with the game. The game should have been at least half as long if not more. If this game would have been 20-25 hours, I'm almost positive I would have done two back-to-back playthroughs (if not three). As it is, I'm unsure if I'll ever play the game all the way through again.
While I would definitely say that I enjoyed Dragon Age, and I'd probably even recommend it to RPG fans, I don't think it's as good as so many other people seem to think it is. It just isn't better than Mass Effect. At all. It also shouldn't be anywhere even close to contention for game of the year for 2009. While it has a lot of good things going for it, there were just way too many details that seemed to push my buttons the wrong way. Play it if you are a fan of the genre, a fan of BioWare, or really like fantasy games. Skip it if you are anybody else... you probably won't finish it anyway.
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