Too good for consoles...

User Rating: 9 | Dragon Age: Origins X360
It should be said that if you own this for the xbox360 don't play the game without installing it. It will resolve all the slow-down or choppiness you might encounter. This was tested. Not sure why GS didn't mention it. Also another good tip is save often. I never thought I'd see the day when a PC role-playing game, the true-blue-good-stuff, would make its way to a console. It's almost insulting really for it to be in the realm of people that think that Final Fantasy is an rpg. Whether you like the story or not, this is how storytelling is done. Don't get me wrong it is a simplified version of Neverwinter Nights, albeit one with fewer bugs and streamlined. (As in all of Bioware's pc rpg's DA is something like 16 gigs on the pc, the type of game that no matter how beefy your system is will make it choke, blame it on poor coding). The character creation is nowhere as vast as NWN2's with fixed preset sliders, adjust jaw here, eyes there. Mass Effects was more in-depth in that department.

The spell and abilities are dumbed-down severely from its D&D inspirations. Though the classes are varied you don't have the breadth of freedom that you had in Neverwinter and it's expansions. Just the basic "need-to-have" abilities. Even the attribute system seem stripped down or i should say streamlined. Stripped down makes it sound negative and believe me it actually works. The game also has some of the pitfalls of those games, AI party behavior is strange at times, sometimes your party members wont path to you correctly leaving you to get killed. Or they simply won't attack. All problems Neverwinter nights had which seem fixed in Dragon age but happen occasionally.

Play it on nightmare! Seriously get your money's worth and don't be a pansy. It will significantly increase your playtime. Also no longer casting fire-and-forget spells like traditional rpg's is just awesome. On nightmare, friendly fire is on, meaning if your not careful you can hurt your party-members. And this works on the AI too, if that big guy loves to cast big AOE spells maneuver his minions into them. Which gives the combat a strategic aspect. Personally i would just leave the party members in a room, make them hold position, set all the ranged at the far end of the room. Have a "tank" character go around the map and pull the creatures to them ambush. The MMO tank, healer, dps set up works wonders in this game allowing you to strategically fight bosses with moderate success even with high difficulty.

I won't go into the story which needless to say, you can start it six different ways and your race/class combination has an impact on your adventure. So its re-playable. One thing i disliked, Mass Effect was such a huge-leap in storytelling narrative it was disappointing to return to the silent main-character. I got used to Shepard's smart-ass comments. The dialogue is good, and you have a lot of dialogue options but its a huge disconnect when you don't see the main-character act it out. He just stands there blankly while everyone else talks and shows emotion. There's always Mass Effect 2 to return us to form. In any case the 360 uses low-res textures but it runs smoother (if you install it) the PC looks the best. I opted the 360 version over ps3, because quite frankly i have more achievement points on xboxlive and still don't care for trophies. Stop looking at peoples opinions and go pick this up, no matter which platform. :)