Dragon Age: Origins Review (Spoilers?)

What I liked about it

• To be honest, when I first thought about playing this game, I really didn’t think I would like the “choose your own dialogue” / story-based type of game. Once I got going however, I found it to be quite enjoyable.
• Some of the quirky character dialogue (Both while walking around and during the one on one talks) was quite enjoyable. There was one point where Morigan said something to Sten that sounded like she was into him, and he responded with something like “First you need more armor, and some weapons. I like to snuggle sometimes, so you’ll need an iron bar to pry me away. Make sure to heat it up nice and hot, or I might just ignore it.” It was hilarious! I especially love Zevran!
• I LOVE the 300-esc slow motion “cutscenes” when a big monster dies and one of your party members kills them in a cool way.
• My favorite part of this game was that at the end, your whole entire party (Not just 4 members) fights all at once. I thought this was such a cool idea, and it really made that battle epic.

What could use some improvement

• Even though I said that I liked the dialogue, I found myself skipping it towards the end just to beat the game. I guess the game droned on a little bit too long for my liking.
• Throughout the game, I felt that there really wasn’t enough equipment upgrading. I found myself always checking to see if new armor was better, only to find that the only thing the new stuff was good for was making a few sovereign. Players like to upgrade, it gives them a sense of accomplishment. If you “reward” them with equipment that’s worse than the stuff they’re already wearing, it’s not much of a reward now is it? It would be like rewarding a child that already has a cookie with a stalk of broccoli.
• In my opinion, this game needs quite a bit more epic boss battles. I was only impressed by two battles – The dragon before the Urn of Sacred Ashes, and the final boss battle. Even the Broodmother was pretty weak. Why couldn’t there have been anything epic like this in the game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iFrHRaH0Os
• Why in the world would they make spells do friendly fire damage? That is just ridiculous! I understand that this game gets its roots from D & D, but when the only good spells are AoE spells, it’s not fun to have to move your party out of them before you cast.
• The ending is pretty anticlimactic. I mean, sure, as I said, the final boss battle is pretty epic, but after that, the game pretty much just ends. The Darkspawn are defeated, shouldn’t everyone rejoice and party or something?
• This one is for “choose your own dialogue” games in general. I hate it when the game gives you a choice of good and evil, but in the end, you’re forced to do good. What I mean is, while you’re given a choice, you are inevitably trying to save the world anyway, making you a good person.
• Um… can I get multiple bars for my skills please? Come on devs, it’s not that hard! Add a few variables and voila! With as many spells as the game has, how could they not think of this?!
• Finally, I know this was meant to be a story-based single player game, but it would have been pretty awesome if there was a multiplayer.