Dragon Age: Origins is a beautifully designed RPG with one or two minor letdowns.
The combat as I said stands alone of real-time/tactical combat to many other games that use this approach. You spend most of your time firing spells and abilities as fast as your fingers and press a button. You can still pause the game to give orders and tactics but it's more about action than strategies. Probably because of the lack of your isometric camera which I think is sorely lacking from this title. You do get a chance to set up your parties tactics for certain events that take place on the battlefield but these are more for use with mages and rogues.
Powers and abilites can be mapped to buttons which works wonders when you are a tank. You just run headlong into the horde of enemies, use your abilities, and while you wait for the cooldown on your spells just hack and lash at the enemy. Battles or much more flowing with the shift from the pause and play styles of Neverwinter Nights and the such, when you set up your allies abilities before the battles start. You do get a sense of emotion with your created character because you play more with them than the party as a whole.
One thing I didn't like about the game because it was streamlining for the console generation, is the extremely easy difficulty of the game. It's very very easy in combat. Even when you have it dialed all the way up to the top it gets difficult but it still isn't as hard as the PC version. Friendly fire is disabled for the most part so you can just fire off massive elemental spells and your party will be fine. Who thought that was a good idea? To be honest it can get a little funny. I actually laughed out loud when I cast 'Inferno' into a group of baddies and nothing happened to my party. It was most excellent but it felt like I cheated to win. But that's the problem I have with the game. It doesn't test your meddle. You don't a sense of accomplishment when you get past a particularly special battle because it was just too damned easy. It just doesn't feel the same after you mowed down a few dozen darkspawn, you don't' feel like you won that battle because of your genius, just a dumb AI set up.
The only other problem I really had with the game is the user interface and inventory set up. You get a camp and what do you normally get in a camp is a chest to store all your loot. You don't get that unless you fork over more money to get the Warden's Keep add on. I hate it when developers do that. I'm getting whored you bastards! Just put it in the game it's a standard for this type of game and I don't want to pay to get it after I already forked over sixty bucks. And for those of you that like the to read the literature in games you are in for a rude awakening. You can't tell which ones you've read and which ones you haven't which is a major pain. The same thing happens with the inventory you can't tell which ones you just looted and when you scroll down the list. That is something that should've been remedied.
But despite all of these difference and annoyances you really don't get sucked into a large and stunningly beautiful world of Ferelden. The choices you make in the game also warrant how it will play out and and really make you wonder about the morality in video games.