Dragon Age: Origins mini review

If you've like the old-school Dungeons & Dragons type RPG's such as Baldur's Gate or more recently, Knights of the old Republic, Dragon Age should be right up your alley, but if you missed out on those old gems, then Dragon Age should be the game to kick start you love for the genre. This is a hardcore esque RPG, where your characters' stats determine their hit ratio and damage and victory in battle has more to do with positioning and managing your team's abilities than having dexterous fingers.

It sound cumbersome, and truly, it is. Fortunately, Dragon Age remains accessible to everyone, from the newest of newbies to the stalwart dungeon crawlers thanks to the different difficulty options you can choose from. The game also has a really interesting, if not entirely original story, but unlike most other games where you're just there for the roller-coaster ride, in Dragon Age you take roller-coaster where you want to go. The sheer amount of interactive story elements in the game is astounding and this ultimately lends itself to making the story extremely immersive and also personal. I don't think there's been a finer RPG than Dragon Age in a good long while. Truly, this is the age of great video games.

The Good:

• Multiple character classes and races to choose from, each with different origins story and and various skill sets to choose from.
• Highly interactive story allowing you to shape the fiction to your whims.
• Interesting companion characters who has their own motivations to follow you on your quest. Some of which you can even flirt with, if that's your thing.
  
• Outstanding voice work overall. Especially loved the dialogue with the companion characters.
  
• A fully realized fictional world. Hundreds of codex entries to help you better understand the world you're living in, or you can simply ignore. Your choice
• Satisfyingly long, though how long depends on you play style. I played and finished it at the 65 hour mark, doing almost every side-quest I discovered (at 75% completion), including the time I spent reading every single codex entry I found, which was mountain loads.

The Not-so-good

• No voice work for the player character during conversations.
• A lot of the different monsters make the same, annoying noise.
• Lack of ability to respec your characters. I'f you screwed up leveling your characters, you're pretty much screwed.
  
• The 360 version's quality of pre-rendered videos suffer from what looks like an overly compressed video. I can't say for the PC and PS3 version.
• It will consume a lot of your time, which unless you are a student or unemployed, is not a very good thing.