Dragon Age - Reviews @ Gamespot, Eurogamer, Giant Bomb

The review flood has begun. Here are a few reviews for Dragon Age: Origins that have already surfaced.

The first is from Gamespot 9.5. You can read the review or watch their video review. The reviewer felt that this is the RPG we've been waiting for. To best sum up Gamespot's take on Dragon Age all you need to do is look at what they thought was good and bad:

The Good

* Intricate, involving storytelling
* Amazing dialogue and voice acting bring characters to life
* Rich fantasy world filled with interesting lore
* Enjoyable questing with plenty of twists and surprises
* Lots of spells and abilities make combat fun.

The Bad

* A few glitches.

In contrast we now have Eurogamer 8/10. This review is a little confusing. After reading it I thought the score would be much lower. The reviewer didn't like the standard cliché roles, the vast differences between easy and normal difficulty levels, the wooden scripts for the main characters, their lifeless animation and contrived storylines, and many more complaints. There were a few kind words for Dragon Age, but mostly I would of expected a much lower score after reading this review. Here is a snippet from the beginning that sums up the general theme of the review:

Somewhere in its journey back to its roots, BioWare has got lost in the dense tangle of what it was trying to accomplish. It hasn't been able to see the wood for the trees. It has summoned an entire world into existence in the most meticulous detail, but failed to give it an identity beyond the blandest cliché. It has created living characters that respond like humans, but speak like dictionaries and move like mannequins. It has engineered solidly absorbing RPG gameplay and character progression and stranded them in a succession of hackneyed and hide-bound scenarios.

The last review comes from Giant Bomb 5/5 stars. Giant Bomb also has a video review or a written one for you. It's a very positive review highlighting the story and gameplay. Here is a snippet from the review:

In the end, Dragon Age: Origins feels like a real throwback to the good old days of PC role-playing epics. It also feels like exactly what you expect the makers of Baldur's Gate to come up with as a follow-up to that classic. While that means you could rightfully fault the game for not being especially innovative, it's this adherence to a classic style of gameplay that will ensure that it's welcomed by the legions of nostalgic RPG players that make up this genre's core audience. That said, this is definitely not the game for those frightened of the idea of micromanaging a game to the point where a large portion of it will be spent in a pause screen. However, as the sort of guy that has lovingly played an Infinity Engine game at least once every year for the past decade, I can think of no higher praise for this throwback than to say that Dragon Age: Origins leaves me feeling fairly confident I won't need to dig out the classics for this ritual next year.