Just what's going on here anyway?
Ah, the dragon-slaying story. There's a long history behind these, including Tolkien, Dungeons and Dragons, Dragonlance, World of Warcraft, and now Dragon Age, which testifies to the immense popularity of this sort of adventure story. It's a medieval kind of theme, but with less of the open sewers and high infant mortality rate and more of the magic and giant swords.
Is it FUN?!
Magic and giant swords are fun, yeah? This game has nice graphics as well, so you get to see your Arcane Bolts in all their glorious colourful splendour. There are the usual assortment of enemies, from giant spiders right up to dragons. The spells, as with the rest of the game, are nothing groundbreaking, but it's always fun to knock a large group of enemies on their asses with an enormous fireball. Also, you have the option to play as a dog.
Is it interesting?
Here's where I have a problem with this game. Sure, it's interesting if you like this style of game... but it's like World of Warcraft lite. Which is fine for a recovering WoW addict like myself. A similar game with less time commitment. Fantastic. The thing is that this game really adds nothing new to the genre. You play a human, elf or dwarf and can be a mage, warrior or rogue. The storyline is fine, but again, nothing new. You have a few moral choices to make and your party members will approve or disapprove of those choices. (Personal pet peeve here: I don't want to have to worry about currying favour with people in video games. There's enough of that kind of ridiculous drama in real life.) I like video games that allow you different choices that will affect how your game progresses. They make it more interesting and add to the replay value. It would have been nice if this game allowed more of those decisions to have an effect on the storyline; in most cases in this game, any option only leads to a different dialogue where you then get forced into the only outcome allowed by the story.
Will it make me want to throw my controller across the room... again?
Some of the controls were not terribly intuitive, for me, but basically it's not that difficult and you have your main spells mapped out for you in the bottom right corner of the screen so that you can't possibly forget which button does what. You will want to play around a lot with the radial menu (brought up by left trigger on the XBox) as there's a lot in there that's not immediately obvious.
One thing you need to know is that this game does NOT autosave nearly often enough and if you forget to save on your own, you're going to end up having to do a lot of stuff over after you got jumped by that group of mages twenty rooms after the last autosave.
The game does have different difficulty settings and you can switch between them mid-game if you're really getting your ass kicked. During battle you play whichever character you want and the others will fight automatically. If you choose to use it, you can have an enormous amount of control over their fighting styles via the tactics option, or if you're more coordinated than I, you can switch between them during the fight. Or you can just play a warrior, set the game to "casual", and enjoy the adventure without having to worry too much about anything more than bashing away with your sword.
Will this game consume my life?
It can. It's one of those things where you can always go just a little farther, just play for five more minutes... and then before you know it, you have to get up for work and you haven't even been to bed yet. Still, it's better than a WoW addiction.
Do I want to spend that much of my life with these people?
I did enjoy the characters in this game. They actually have some, for a start. Plus they mostly have sexy English accents and Alistair is totally doable. The girls look pretty sexy too, but you'll have to ask the Hatter or the Caterpillar if you want a really credible opinion on that matter. You have a lot of options to customize your character's appearance, you can name them whatever you like, and you can play as a man or a woman of whatever colour you desire. That's cool.
The characters on your team all have their own unique personalities and will comment on things happening in the game or have little conversations with each other while you're just wandering around. That's cool, and it makes the game a lot more engaging.
Is it worth it?
You've heard the phrase "nothing new under the sun"? Yeah. Like I said before, this is WoW lite. If you want something WoW-ish without the time commitment, this game just might do it for you. Again, nothing groundbreaking, but definitely a solid addition to the "magic and giant swords" genre.
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