Dragon Age: Origins

 Xbox 360
User Score
8.0

Generally favorable reviews- based on 863 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 666 out of 863
  2. Mixed: 100 out of 863
  3. Negative: 97 out of 863
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  1. Deusex
    Mar 3, 2014
    3
    Pros:
    Good choices.
    Good back story for each race.
    Good story, not great.
    Good voice acting.

    Cons:
    Worst gameplay ever.
    Horrible graphics.
    Bad facial animations.
  2. sceptic
    Nov 5, 2009
    3
    Incredibly poor graphics,combat,spells etc.I was expecting a better version of an Oblivion type game but instead forced myself to sit through this generic rubbish.I thought they had stopped making this type of crap years ago.It makes sacred:fallen angel look good;and it was rubbish too.Points for the awesome trailers.
  3. BrandonW
    Dec 6, 2009
    1
    The first eight hours of play where fun. After that mark the game went from fun and easy to retarded and not fun. They monsters advance way to fast for you to keep up with. The massive amount of npc talk gets very boring very quick. I was disappointed in the game.
  4. Boltfrowah
    Jul 4, 2011
    1
    Just terrible. In my years of playing RPG's, this game was delightfully devoid of most control concepts, most notably the battle system. Once you engage an enemy, the game pretty much takes over for you and has the characters doing their own thing, for better or for worse. And no, I don't care to know every AI character's backstory which ends up reading about 10000 lines of informationJust terrible. In my years of playing RPG's, this game was delightfully devoid of most control concepts, most notably the battle system. Once you engage an enemy, the game pretty much takes over for you and has the characters doing their own thing, for better or for worse. And no, I don't care to know every AI character's backstory which ends up reading about 10000 lines of information that has nothing to do with game play. I stopped playing this after 10 hours, and it's the reason I opened a Goozex account. BLECH.… Expand
  5. MKing
    Feb 18, 2010
    4
    I have to say the game started off well but quickly lost it's appeal. It was insanely boring and tedious as another review stated. Also, in my opinion, having additional party members is required to survive the sheer number of enemies at time but when you're playing different classes and need time to position yourself, you quickly find yourself missing out on the action by the I have to say the game started off well but quickly lost it's appeal. It was insanely boring and tedious as another review stated. Also, in my opinion, having additional party members is required to survive the sheer number of enemies at time but when you're playing different classes and need time to position yourself, you quickly find yourself missing out on the action by the time you get there.… Expand
  6. MaxGayLord
    May 16, 2013
    0
    Just about everything about this damn game is terrible. The story and narrative are one giant cliche, the setting is uninspiring, the music is entirely bland, the characters are quite one dimensional, combat is sluggish, the interface is clunky, the visuals are a mess, level design is utter garbage, but the voice acting is pretty good.
  7. brisbanesimon
    May 17, 2011
    0
    this is such a bad game,absolutely pathetic attempt at creating an rpg,shame on you bioware,i will be never ever ever again purchasing any of your products after this abomination of a game
  8. Mesk
    Jun 21, 2011
    0
    After playing about three hours of Dragon Age I stoped. Just don´t understand what all you guys have with this Bioware. Mainly I did not like the graphics-realy bad.
  9. rogerr.
    Nov 4, 2009
    1
    Not the fast action game advertised. Turn based chess like game with wildy varying level confrontations, even with similar enemies throughout. Great story though. Buy lord of the rings dvds and reset DVD player randomly as you watch to replicate experience
  10. canardmou
    Mar 19, 2011
    3
    Dragon Age II is a failed attempt to build a story set into the world developed in Dragon Age Origins. I will briefly describe and rate different aspects of the game.

    Graphics: The graphics aren't bad but they by no mean redefine the industry's standards like some critics claimed. 7 / 10 Gameplay: The combats are interesting and compelling but the game's mechanics are tarnished by a few    Dragon Age II is a failed attempt to build a story set into the world developed in Dragon Age Origins. I will briefly describe and rate different aspects of the game.

    Graphics: The graphics aren't bad but they by no mean redefine the industry's standards like some critics claimed. 7 / 10

    Gameplay: The combats are interesting and compelling but the game's mechanics are tarnished by a few problems that really hurt the fun factor. Mostly, you just walk around in town and endless waves of weak humans attack without real reason (they are some civilians walking around with no reaction). The fights are too fast for the player to really set in strategies. Also, the difficulty of the fights isn't fluid. Most of the fights are way too easy on normal difficulty you will want to set the game to hard until your champion meets a real challenge that kills him in a few hits. Many people also criticized the threat system (how enemies pick their target) not without reason. Aside from a short expedition into the deep roads, where you actually kill real enemies and bosses, the fights offer no surprise. Finally, the player will also spend a great amount of time moving from places to places on the city map to talk to characters that has uninteresting things to say and tiring quests to give.
    6/10

    Interface: The big improvement compared to Origins is there. Cycling through the menu is less of a pain and everything is set and explained fine except for a few details. The crafting is now done at specific shops (or Hawke's house for convenience) and doesn't require learned skills. I thought it was a big improvement over Origins, where I felt many character and inventory tweaking were unnecessarily complicated. The skill tree is also vastly improved and many useless skills were removed or combined to reduce possible skills to a compelling amount. 8 / 10

    Story: The player embarks into the quest of Hawke, a refugee from the dark spawn invasion triggering the events of Origins. Unlike all games, there is no real quest here but the underlying veil of social ascension punctuated by an infinite pile of uninteresting and mostly incoherent side-quests. The story, which spans over ten years played through four acts, is boring, dull, and shows nothing to hide the fact that the game is just about button smashing your way through side-quests. The champion eventually attempts to bring down the Chantry (mostly a dubious sketch of medieval Christianity) but it wasn't the mission or the intend of the game from until very late into the story and it still feels as artificial and a pretense to kill easy targets as the rest of the quests. This makes the whole game deprived from the very single touch of epicness, a big strength of Origins. An RPG, with no story, come on. 0 / 10

    Role-playing: Upon playing an RPG, you are usually expecting two things: playing a role and building a character. Since there is no story, the role playing can only be provided throughout the dialogues where you to get to select an answer between three dialogue patterns: Kneeling **** idiot clown and jackass. Note that the considerable margin between the written tab and the ensuing vocal dialogue made many people consider themselves as Hawke's schizophrenic soul. Furthermore, the three options always lead to the actions after a line or two of stereotypical **** Character customization has been simplified, following the trend of Mass effect and american boys' brain. The warrior can no longer wield two swords and dual wielding rogues can only use daggers, thus forcing the damage scale on dexterity. Inventory items require two set of attributes now. Warrior weapons and armors need strength and hp , rogues need dexterity and critical damage and mages magic and mp. There is, therefore, no way of customizing your character aside from the skills selection. 2 / 10.

    Level design: Except from the short expedition in deep roads, where the game designers even dare to send you back for side-quests, all you get (and by that i mean ALL you get) is a mountain, a mine, a town, a foundry, a backstreet a little keep and an Island. Every area has to be visited about an hundred times to complete the mostly mandatory side-quests and all of the what the game designers thought to make is seem different is to block some paths with gray walls. The rest of the level even shows on the minimap! Sometimes, the game will pretend it's a different place which makes it all very confusing and downright insulting the mine accessible is the same as the tunnels accessible from town. 1 / 10

    It's like the game was made by two teams: one designing the interface and the gameplay, which didn't fail even it if wasn't perfect, while the other one dedicated itself into producing the worst story ever ported to a screen. Final score: 3 / 10    … Expand
  11. birdmannavy
    Jun 11, 2013
    4
    Yeah, so 4 apparently doesn't put this game in the red. Well, shucks. I gave Dragon Age 2 an 8, but since that review was basically just bashing this game, I figured I'd flesh out my bashing a little more. First of all, what did I like? The city elf origin story (I am told I would like the casteless dwarf story too), king Cailan, the dog--whom I named Yarlan--and, um, nothing else. Oh,Yeah, so 4 apparently doesn't put this game in the red. Well, shucks. I gave Dragon Age 2 an 8, but since that review was basically just bashing this game, I figured I'd flesh out my bashing a little more. First of all, what did I like? The city elf origin story (I am told I would like the casteless dwarf story too), king Cailan, the dog--whom I named Yarlan--and, um, nothing else. Oh, I guess the conflict of interests at the landsmeet was pretty cool too. Oh, hell, I also liked queen Anora. There. Wait, one more, the drama of Isolde killing her own son was pretty gripping and, well, awesome. Everything else--Boring! Stupid! Ugly! A pain to listen to! I mean really--"My warden sense is tingling"? "It's either you or me and it isn't going to be me"? C'mon! People bought this?! A generic the-world's-gonna-end plot involving ogres? I mean darkspawn--could've call them the Flood for all I care. That's what there is to offer? Did y'all really think the story was epic? Have you seen the map? There are only a handful of places to go to and the game can be beaten in 20 hours including the side quests. If it takes longer than that it is because hacking through every enemy--which you have to do to build experience since they don't respawn (places look like desolate wastelands when you revisit them)--is so damn tedious. Have you played an epic RPG lately? Diablo? Dragon Quest? Final Fantasy? Hmm? Does the game really give you that many options? I'm talking about good ones. I mean, how many ways can you tell Wynn she's an old hag with big boobs? That ought to be exciting. Does anything I do change the fate of the city elves? Nope! And would I really care since all the choices in the game basically add up to cue cards at the end? And Ogren. Awful. Maybe not the worst, most annoying NPC ever, but up there.… Expand
  12. OpaSamuel
    Nov 11, 2013
    2
    Dragon Age:Origins is the worst game of all time. People seem to confuse dirt for diamonds in today's face paced world where information is gushing at your brain like a sewage pipe full of knowledge just burst. But honestly how can anyone find any sort of depth here? The dialogue that is so praised by critics is at best standard fair and nothing to the point it could convince me alone toDragon Age:Origins is the worst game of all time. People seem to confuse dirt for diamonds in today's face paced world where information is gushing at your brain like a sewage pipe full of knowledge just burst. But honestly how can anyone find any sort of depth here? The dialogue that is so praised by critics is at best standard fair and nothing to the point it could convince me alone to buy the game, worst yet all bit of dialogue is spoken by weird alien looking people that look like they could past for CGI mannequins from a 90's film. The combat mechanics are pretty much like every other Bioware game and somehow seem even worse then what they were in KOTOR times, The characters are half assed archetypes I had no interest in knowing much less keeping alive, in fact half the time I wished I could feed Alistair to my dog, the Dog was more memorable then your companions. I can't even remember one line of dialogue from them and I just finished the damn game. The story is at best a slightly worse knock off Tolkein, it feels drab and uninspired. Any grand and memorable vistas? Any interesting areas? NOPE! The game generally keeps it's same, dark, depressing grimdark look through out the game making almost every environment feel the same. Also why is it the game even called Dragon Age? Why not Dark Spawn:Origins. The only damn dragon I saw in the game was slightly bigger then my character and easy as hell to kill. Wait a minute, why did I even play this worthless game? I might as well have gone and read Tolkeins books, I'd still get the same story minus the ****ty uninspired enviroments, the ripped off story elements, the horrid combat, the linear and pointless adventure that makes you feel like you really accomplished nothing but unite a bunch of fantasy stereotypes. In short the game is awful don't buy it.… Expand
  13. bigchocolate69
    Jun 28, 2022
    4
    Did my first (and only) playthrough as a mage and it was hard to get into. Gameplay was annoying as hell at times with too much missable stuff and no chance to go back.

Awards & Rankings

18
#18 Best Xbox 360 Game of 2009
7
#7 Most Discussed Xbox 360 Game of 2009
6
#6 Most Shared Xbox 360 Game of 2009

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
86

Generally favorable reviews - based on 68 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 65 out of 68
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 68
  3. Negative: 0 out of 68
  1. IGN AU
    84
    It's a delight to give into a fantasy setting with such a dense back story, even if the gameplay still rarely breaks away from conventions established a decade ago.
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  2. 3DJuegos
    87
    Despite its lack of innovation Dragon Age: Origins is the best RPG in 2009. Its great value and addictive gameplay are among its main highlights.
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  3. GameSpot
    85
    Incredible storytelling, great characters, and exciting battles are just a few of the things that make this fantasy role-playing game so great.
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