Fri Dec 9. 2022
With the larger portion of the RPG genre moving towards online play, we're always very eager to see a new game that's designed entirely with single player in mind. It doesn't happen often these days, so we usually enjoy whatever comes our way – but when you get a single player RPG that's also done with as much care as Dragon Age: Origins, you can't help but fall in love.
Gameplay
The game is set in a classic medieval fantasy world, with dragons playing an important part in the plot. The player is tasked with gathering the kingdom together in order to repel an impending invasion from the Underworld. At the beginning of the game, you'll have to create your own character by defining its race and “origin”.
The origin is a new concept introduced by the game, where you'll have to go through a short (for the length of the game, more on that below) series of levels where your character's background story is defined – you play this part of the game as usual, and its end leads up to the actual events of the game.
The number of hours you can spend on Dragon Age is very large – if you're new to the game (and/or the RPG genre as a whole), your first-time play may last over 50 hours. And if you decide to go for all of the additional quests and bonus rewards, you're looking at several hundred hours of solid gameplay – none of that repetitive, monotonous grind that most RPGs tend to put in there, giving way to quantity over quality.
Graphics and System Requirements
Dragon Age is not only well-executed in its gameplay, it's simply a marvel to look at, too – you'll explore lush forests, cities with interesting architecture, and meet all kinds of highly detailed characters. Your own avatar can look quite differently as well, depending on your choices initially – and as a whole, the game's graphics add to its already great variety a lot.
The vast worlds that Dragon Age spans over need a powerful computer to be rendered properly though. The recommended system requirements are a Core 2 Duo running at 2.4 GHz, as well as 2 GB of RAM (3, if you're on Vista or above), and a Radeon HD 3850 with 512 MB of RAM powering your graphics rendering. Mac users will need to have at least version 10.6.2. of their OSX in order to play.
Other
Before buying Dragon Age, we advise you to make sure you have a small vacation coming up ahead of you – the game not only takes a long time to complete on the first go (seriously, divide the 50 hour minimum over however you spend in front of the computer daily), but its replay value is tremendous as well, and your first playthrough will leave so many questions and so many things you'll want to see, that you'll feel weak against your desire to go through it again.
Conclusion
A true blessing for classic, old-school RPG lovers, Dragon Age: Origins is a game that will be talked about for a long time.