I just finished it. I was pretty disappointed. They did NOT playtest the game properly. (PLOT SPOILERS BELOW)

1) The game was absurdly easy. Like RIDICULOUSLY easy. I played on nightmare (started off on hard with my imported level 21 guy and a ton of eq and 200 gold, switched to nightmare after about 10 minutes); I started the game with 27 greater health potions and 27 greater lyrium potions and I ended it with about 15 each without buying any potions. Maybe I should try it starting with a level 18 guy. In comparison, hard in DAO was HARD for the first half and then easy for the second half, but even switching to nightmare the high dragon battles were impossible on nightmare. And in the original I couldn't even use a rogue on nightmare because I needed 3 tanks and the bosses just kept going after my mages. In the expansion, I took down the spectral dragon in like 5 minutes with a dual wielder hero, oghren, nathaniel, and Anders on impossible.

Anders is waaaaaaaaaaay overpowered. He was a sick healer and had maxed out fireball and ice. The mage buffs are awesome but super overpowered. The aura where you knock back melee makes you basically invincible...any time your mage is in trouble you can just run back and kill him on the ground. It also makes the bard captivating song useless (captivating song is how I got through most of the end game of the original on nightmare, since almost all battles were close quarters you could fight 20 melee guys no problem).

2) Sooo many quests are 'hunt the pixel quests'. Find 8 silk carpets, find 5 statues, blah blah blah. BORING. The original never had these quests.

3) This goes hand in hand with number 2, but the quests and choices were way too drastic and not finding a certain thing has devastating consequences. For instance, I paid the guy 80 gold to fix up the walls, then he says he needs a block of granite. I combed every forest and pixel hunted like crazy and could not find granite ore. Don't I at least get some credit for asking him to build up the defenses and for giving wade silverite ore and iron ore? At least in Mass Effect 2 the choices were big but made sense and you don't have to go searching halfway across the galaxy for the thanix cannon and it rewards you for actually PLAYING (doing loyalty quests) as opposed to finding random-ass items.

Also,

Not as drastic, but certain choices like...I missed killing one guy in the fade so that means a chest doesn't drop which means I can never complete a set of armor....lame. Or the fact that I gave the iron ore to wade to build weapons for the troops and 10 minutes later he says 'oh by the way I needed that to make golem armor'. Or

4) Speaking of random-ass items and playtesting, the armors and weapons are way way way overpowered. When things are that unbalanced it takes away so much of the RPG fun. One of the great things in the first game was you could save up your gold and buy one or two crazy items at the stores. This time around, you trip and fall over and find super fantastic dragonplate tier 9 which makes all your previous eq obsolete. I found a random bow in a chest (misery, I think) that was equal or more powerful to the that you have to pixel hunt to make. Makes no sense.

5) They implemented a few cool new things but the game was too short to use them. Runecrafting is one of the coolest things ever in DA. However, I didn't get Mastercrafting until near the end of the game, and I didn't realize you had to build up runes (work your way up from novice, journeyman, etc) to get to paragon runes. By the time I realized this, .

The good parts were very good though. The Justice quest was great. Scenes with Illusionist were well-done. Battle AI seems to have improved a bit. Some of the special abilities were SUPER cool.

Overall, I would give DA origins an A+++++++ and Awakenings a C+. I am usually such a sucker for expansion packs too.

i crushed origins on nightmare all the way, surprised you thought it was near impossible.

I guess I probably wont buy the expack becuase of this review, thx

I played through as a dual wielding warrior on nightmare in origins on my second playthrough, and it was generally not too bad, but I was having major issues with dragon knockback. Sten and Alistair were fine, but my hero kept getting smacked around because afaik there is no anti-knockback for dual wielders. I could not beat the high dragon on the mountain on impossible; I tried like 20 times. I will try again at some point but I just crushed him on hard and changed it back to nightmare afterwards.

It might be a lot harder if you don't import your character so it's worth a shot (he would be 3 levels below with no special gear). Kinda defeats the purpose of an expansion pack, though.

i always used only one warrior with 2 mages and leliana as archer.

Finished it last night and I'm more disappointed in the lack of story carryovers, etc rather than game mechanics. I read the calling before DA came out so I probably liked it a little more given that there was some Emissary/Utha resolution.

Granite -




That said I still liked it a lot but I'm fairly noncritical of stuff like this, definitely thought it was worth the buy though.

theres nothing at all about morrigan?



waiting for dragon age 2 maybe?

comes back for 30 seconds in Amaranthine to give you an indirect pixel hunting quest (find this person in the woods and then find her flower that I didn't end up finding). Then she disappears and you never hear what happens after the end game.

If you in DAO he comes back for 2 minutes in the beginning.

Oghren who was my least used character in DAO (not because he wasn't a great character, but I just got to him so late and you get Sten from the beginning who is basically the same) is around the whole time.



There is a 5 second mention of your love interest from the last game at your end game.

That's it from the first game.

Oh, and Oghren's favor is back to 0 so if you spent all game getting his approval to 100 then you have to do it all over again this time.

theyre definitely keeping her for something big then

I enjoyed DA:O well enough but am really not feeling the desire to stick with the series. Too much dungeon-slogging and linearity and the game world feels a little stale.