Dragon Age: Origins Replayability

Only once, but I have great intentions to play it again. Note the key word is intentions.

 

I've only played it only once and I probably won't play it again anytime soon. I really enjoyed it very much but somehow there is no urge to play it again.

 

I'm early on a 4th playthrough... so I voted 3 (completed plays).

 

I've had more than a few "false" starts until I finally had the right character and finished the game. So, I voted 1.
I don't know... I was all psyched out about this game before it came out. Since I finished it, it's like - OK...
Been playing other games like Tutu. Thinking of adding mods I haven't played yet.

 

I haven't tried it, though my neighbor's kid did install it onto my PC so he could try it. I have been back and forth on whether to play it or not. I prefer gameplay, not graphics in my games.

 

Well Blades DAO is not just about eye candy (it could probably look better as some textures look a bit rushed although the art direction itself is pretty good).

Gameplay wise it offers a very convenient interface (I've played it on the PC) and you can switch between different views (zoomed out which is a lot like the view in BG or IWD or zoomed in for a closer view -which I've found is great when playing with a gamepad).

It's a really good game. Plenty of dialogue, interesting choices can be made, decent fights, not too many hack and slash sequences. Some players don't like the story and say it's cliched. It's pretty standard fantasy fare that much is true but there are some interesting twists nevertheless and the world is well developed.

I'm currently fighting my addiction (voted 6 to 10 and I have many more unfinished games).

 

Voted 3 times, though technically I'm not done yet with the 3rd playthrough.

In the wake of open-ended games like Elder Scrolls and MMOs, I find it harder to remain interested in linear story-based games after a couple of playthroughs. In the D&D games I had a lot of fun by creating different characters and parties, but the much simpler system in DAO means that I have a smaller margin in that respect. I'm hoping the potential sequel will offer more character options, 3 classes with lacklustre specialisations didn't quite cut it for me.

 

I have played it four times. Dwarf Rogue, Elf Mage, Forest Elf warrior. oops, that is only three. I have done most of the Origins. Human Noble rogue/assassin went pretty far with that one.

 

I've finished it once with an archer. I've started loads of other ones but got noone near finishing. I need some ideas.

 

Hope I can sneak this in here ... how accessible is DA? Is it fairly easy to get into by someone with primarily D&D experience as far as CRPGs go? I've been thinking about playing it, but I don't want to spend eight weeks learning the system first.

 

I found this game extremely difficult to engage with. I've only reached the final battle once, and there was some form of bug where one of the archdemon's moves consistently crashed my game, after this point I haven't bothered playing it again, and have no intentions to.

 

@Gaear: DAO looks daunting at first but the talents and skills are not that hard to get used to.

IMO D&D is not complex -but it is complicated (the basis is fairly simple it gets complicated when you start taking into account the rest of the ruleset).

It seems experiences differ. I've played countless hours of DAO most of them while running many mods and I only ran into a few crashes (the Lothering Chantry CTD mainly, and most of my problems happened after I updated my game to 1.03 -it went pretty smoothly before).

 

For me, the more I play Dragon Age, the more I love it. I enjoy the game play, the battles, heck, I plum enjoy being in Thedas. Looking at the landscapes, the music, interacting with the NPCs, experimenting with different party combos and character builds.... The game has really grown on me. More and more mods are becoming available to add diversity, though most are fairly subtle changes at this point.

I have very high hopes that Dragon Age 2 will push the bar even further in terms of immersion, story, and creating a huge, highly addictive game. I absolutely loved Baldur's Gate when it came out, and played it to excess and somewhat to the detriment of other responsibilities. But over the top infatuation really started for me when Baldur's Gate 2 was released.

I hope that DA2 does for DA what BG2 did for BG. I also hope that I've grown a lot better at controlling my OCD related to DA2 in the many years since BG2 was released!

 

Thanks guys. Ironically I have a tougher time getting used to weird interfaces (Dungeon Seige 2: right-click to attack!) than internalizing long lists of feats and stuff like that.

 

@Gaear

Just to add my 2 cents -- I too felt DA was very accessible. If you're used to playing BG, DA should feel pretty similar in terms of party control, except that its 3D and looks MUCH better. There are similarities to ToEE as well, although combat is not turn based. There are a lot of finer details that you can key in on that are different in DA, but you can pick those up as you go for the most part.

My playthroughs have consisted of a human noble rogue (dual wielder), a dwarven commoner rogue (another dual wielder, but this time I capitalized on a high cunning build), a human mage (arcane warrior/battlemage) and I'm currently messing around with a dalish elf rogue (archer, ranger, bard).

I clearly enjoy playing rogues. I *wanted* to play a warrior in my current runthrough, and actually started one, but I absolutely fell in love with the idea of playing a Dalish ranger specialized in archery. So I killed the warrior while I was still in my origin story, and started yet another rogue. This is the first time I'm playing a female PC, just to see how the world interacts differently with a female, and to see the Alistair romance for the first time. Maybe one day I'll play a warrior, maybe....

I've also played all of the origin stories. I'd say I most enjoyed playing the Dwarven noble, since I finally got to see how things actually happened in house Aeducan.

 

Thank you. DA's 'immershun' sounds like its most attractive feature, honestly. Combat systems and the like come and go, but an involving, engaging story can be hard to find.

 

Yeah, it's hard to find a game with a personality all its own these days, and Dragon Age is fill to the brim with personality. In my opinion the potential that this series has is simply enormous.

Bioware did what they set out to do. They created a great D&D-like game, in a dense, well fleshed out world. Characters are memorable. The stories are engaging. AND - since this is their own IP, they don't have to deal with all the red-tape and royalties that seemed to make game developers' lives hell when creating games in the D&D universe.

And what's more, the initial release was surprisingly low on bugs. They are off to a good start.

 

Not to dampen your enthusiasm Marceror (it's refreshing) but they sure messed things up with patch 1.03... A patch that is required to run Awakening (that only makes matters worse).

And I have serious misgivings about DLCs. The ones that were shipped with the game are still the best (by far) and the most recent DLCs don't bring much to the game itself.

As far as Dragon Age 2, we will see what direction they take. I hope they won't go for the Awakening approach as companions were very important in the original game (I really like most Awakening companions but the way the system is implemented makes it almost impossible to get to know them like the ones in the original game).

I also hope that PC users will get decent textures in the unmodded game (PC players shouldn't have to add more than 3 gigabytes of reworked textures for the game not to look blurred).

Ditching out the D&D ruleset was a really good move. They should have done it before. I like D&D rules for purely nostalgic reasons (there are much better systems around and systems that are much better suited to CRPGs).

I don't want to sound too negative though as what I like best in DAO is to be found in little things. For instance the fact that Rogues finally get to be a powerful class (CRPGs often short-changed the Rogue class whereas Rogues can definitely be among the most -if not the most- important characters in a pnp game). The way they departed from clichéd high fantasy Elves is refreshing and allows the game to explore society, segregation and ostracism in a mature way that goes beyond the simple "Dwarves and Elves hate each other" inherited from LOTR (which was justified in the Middle-Earth setting but too often just taken for granted in D&D settings). Magic users and Templars offer yet another perspective into segregation (based on magic ability this time) and Dwarven society is also a perfect example of this aspect (castes vs the brands, the casteless).

DAO is also a great game not only for making Rogues one of the best class (as it should be) but also for making Dwarves really badass characters instead of going for the tired old Snow White cliché (just like DAO Elves have nothing in common with Santa's little helpers). Not only that but female Dwarves don't necessarily look bad and Dwarves of both genders are certainly the most impressive fighters in the game (think about the Provings, the Silent Sisters or the Legion of the Dead).

I also like the way they've implemented accents in DAO (British accents for Ferelden humans, French for Orlesians, Spanish for Antivans and mainly American accents for Elves and Dwarves, it's actually a relief not to have Dwarves with pseudo-Scottish accents). Now, if we could get more Orlesian villains in Dragon Age 2 then it'd be perfect.