I want to start off with this review saying that this game has aged both poorly and badly, some parts of the game is clunky and some parts work fine. The game is so poorly optimize that I have to go look for a 4gb patch to prevent more memory leaks where especially at Ostagar and Denerim where it uses a lot of memory ends up crashing my game at multiple occasions and other bugs that halt my progress aside I can only give it 4 stars for this reason.

While the negatives I have are out of the way this game is really amazing and I truly love it, it is an rpg in its truest form and I had a lot of fun playing it in the replay in anticipation of Dreadwolf and throughout the run I took the liberty to read every entry (yes and it took a while) and I feel like my knowledge of the game is up to snuff. Lord entry aside I played as a Mage warden and after many runs with human warrior and elven rogue, Mage class was truly overpowered to the point where by the time I went to Ostagar I could easily solo the game and this is on hard difficulty, the game really does make you feel very powerful in this game as a mage that it is a shame that they are needed by the subsequent entries.

Outside of gameplay I do love the story and the companions you can talk through in the game, they are the strong point in the series much like the choices you make and it does ends up being so great that I even neglected my health because I was too invested at some points, I love everyone and yes even the perverted drunk Oghren and Loghain and they’re all good characters. The story is amazing and I do love some of the visuals we have here although I don’t like that the majority of said visuals are on a different shade of brown much like the times where it is a common occurrence in most games released around this time. It is truly a great game I do recommend people to play it, I had a blast and it’s worth your time when it took me over 145 hours and yes that is the reading included.

As for my choices I went pretty dark here:
-Killed a child
-Templars as my war asset
-Branka with the anvil not destroyed
-Alistair king while Loghain lives
- Wynne left (I didn’t like the old bat anyways)
-Vigils Keep saved, Amaranthine fallen

These are just the few choices I decided to change from a normal run I had previously but it is an interesting change of pace nonetheless

The combat system is deep, but in my opinion, there's far too much of it. Hours of this game will be spent fighting grunt enemies in long dungeons that you will have no chance to lose against 80% of the time. There's mods to skip the fade and deep roads areas, which are the worst offenders for this. I'd recommend getting them even on a first playthrough, I didn't and I really suffered for it.
Melee classes really aren't fun as their gameplay will mostly consist of watching your character slowly autoattack like their joints got replaced with tar and their muscles have atrophied from a 100 year coma. Play as a mage.

The real strength in this game is the dialogue. The freedom of choice is wider than in any other rpg I've played yet. Especially in the main quests, the variety of what can happen from your choices is impressive.
It's pretty hard to get a very good ending your first time, but that's what makes it interesting. I love Mass Effect, but the dialogue system handholds you, and you can assume the paragon dialogue option will lead to a good outcome 95% of the time. In DAO, being the stubbornly honorable nice guy can blow up in your face, just as it might in real life.

A lot of the flirting dialogue is incel-tier, and I don't think the writers for this game ever talked to women before. I can forgive that though because until ~2014 Michael Kirkbride was the singular game developer in the world who even knew what sex is.

This is one of my all time favorite games and I hope more people will be exposed to it. I played this for hundreds of hours on PS3, and now am racking up hours on PC. If you're an RPG fan who loves player choice, good characters, and a unique story every playthrough you have to get this. Dragon Age's world feels real and well thought out, character creation isn't just an aesthethic choice like in Elder Scrolls with maybe a few greeting lines changed. Character creation in this can change the entire beginning of your game, and give you different insights on things you wouldn't have before. Tons of lines of dialogue are changed depending on your Origin, Class, Gender, and choices. Every Origin has an entirely new prequel mission to play through and they're all fantastic. My favorites being Human/Elf Mage, Human Noble, and Dwarven Noble. But there's others as well, City Elf, Dalish Elf, and Dwarf commoner. This game is fantastic with tons of replayability, a great story, fantastic characters, missions, and locations.

Ahh man, I set my expectations way too high and while it didn't exactly fall flat for me, I'm not gonna talk about it like it's the greatest thing ever. First off, I can see why many people praise DA:O. The gameplay is damn good. That is what kept me coming back. The different branches for the mage class is chef's kiss. I went with entropy and Death Hex is my favorite spell. What fell flat what was the world-building and story. World-building was okay but it was the story that disappointed me the most. At the beginning I was a big fan of getting things going QUICKLY. No idea where the plot was gonna go but as I played on, that was all it was as told in the beginning. I don't have much to say about the characters either since they didn't have an impact unless they left and even then, still didn't care as much. Gonna keep playing as I still have the DLC left (awakening is starting with an interesting premise so maybe my thoughts will change after that) and the gameplay is just that good.

After BG3, I recall a game from over ten years ago that attempted a similar approach to Larian's, aiming to create a more accessible RPG with ample romance elements for a broader audience. It emerged during the darkest periods for RPG games and managed to preserve most of the essence of a good RPG.
this is the fourth time that I replayed this game, and it continues to hold up well, bringing back fond memories.
I still have a deep affection for it after all these years, and arguably, it excels in many aspects when compared to BG3. It successfully polishes the game to appeal to a broader audience, simplifies the character-building and combat systems for a more accessible experience, and maintains BioWare's signature companion writing.
Alas, BioWare is officially dead now and Larian is making all that money.
BTW it is long, actually somehow much longer than I remembered.