Been playing again. I never finished when I first got the game, due to crazy work and the game taking forever. I'm already 35 hours in, and will soon be ready for the big square-off at the Bann meeting. This game is a heck of a lot of fun, if you have the time to just work through it.

Quote from: danbuter;413806Been playing again. I never finished when I first got the game, due to crazy work and the game taking forever. I'm already 35 hours in, and will soon be ready for the big square-off at the Bann meeting. This game is a heck of a lot of fun, if you have the time to just work through it.

I did enjoy playing it.  I even started a second character and got about halfway through again.  Even so, I was dissapointed at the game's lack of polish; it never seemed to live up to Mass Effect for me.

I've never played Mass Effect. I really should.

You really should. At the very least so you can then play Mass Effect 2. The sequel improves on everything the first one did right. Together, they are a really satisfying RPG experience.

Interest in the story is the only thing holding Dragon Age together.  The game play itself gets pretty repetitive, pretty vast and boarding tediousness by the half way mark.  I never got into the story, hated Allister and that I couldn't kill him.  The rest of the NPC's plights for the most part were unbelievable.  All in all I felt like I was playing it through out of obligation.  Right to the bitter end.  With everything Bioware could have learned from past endeavors they dropped the ball in so many areas with Dragon Age that it's shameful.

I was originally took in with Dragon Age because the intro stories are actually really good.  I ignored the data graphics and clunky game play (on the xbox, the PC version is much better admittedly) and kept hoping that the story would live up to the intros.  But it never did.  It just turned into same old Bioware games.  Games where the story wasn't important at all to your choices.  The game just played out by the numbers and spoon fed you the whole way.

I agree, Kryyst. I was so amped up during the intro (so much so, I went back and started another character to try another one out before I even began the main storyline) that the nuts and bolts of the rest of the story just felt cold and boring.

It's even a pretty clear ripoff of George R. R. Martin's Ice and Fire series (at least, as far as I got, which I guess might be half-way through), which I like, just not nearly as cleverly done. The gameplay was marred by the most interesting characters being the least useful to bring along in your party.

It just failed to grab me -- left me uninterested.

Mass Effect (risking repeating myself) and the sequel, on the other hand, got shit right.

I have admit that I only use Morrigan, Wynne, and Alister, as all the other characters just aren't as good. I'd love to have the team of Morrigan, Leliana, and Sten, but that would make the game much harder to play.

Quote from: kryyst;413894Interest in the story is the only thing holding Dragon Age together.  The game play itself gets pretty repetitive, pretty vast and boarding tediousness by the half way mark.

True, but I think folks have different tolerances for repetition.

For example, it seems to me that Force Unleashed is a damn simple, repetitive game, but I enjoyed the hell out of it. I convinced my friend, who hasn't really played computer games much before, to try Dragon Age and she's addicted. I doubt she much notices it's nature...

Seanchai

Finished up a bit ago. Got the Ultimate Sacrifice merit. The ending wasn't really what I was expecting, at least with no big scenes showing all my followers, just Alister giving a speech. And I admit, I was ready for the game to be over after umpteen hundred combats. But it was fun.