Quote Originally Posted by Meneldil View Post
The game was advertised as the new Baldur's Gate, and well, it fails to deliver. Hard.
That, and the role playing part of the game is still very much Black&White (TM). Some dialogue options don't make sense at all.
Furthermore the whole "original fantasy setting inspired by G Martin's books" is a total fail. Sure, there are some original stuffs, such as the way dwarves and elves are regarded, but that's about it. At no point during the game I thought something like "Wow, that's cool" or "Really nice plot here". And the way the supposedly grimdark universe and useless gore are down on your throat is silly as hell. Please Bioware, do not do that anymore, ever.
I'm not finished with the game yet, so I'll have to wait and see what the ending is like before commenting, but so far I do feel like DA:O is worthy of being ranked with Baldur's Gate in the RPG Hall of Fame. No, the game does not have quite the same number of dialog options as, say, PS:T or FO1/2, but I do feel it's on-par with the BG series. There are a lot of different sides to take, a lot of morally ambiguous choices to make, and the game allows you to justify your actions in ways which are far, far more varied than most RPGs ever allow.

I'm particularly impressed as well with how this game has handled two subjects that have been almost totally taboo in gaming: homosexuality and mental handicaps. The game is very up-front about the former, and the adopted dwarf sidekick of the merchant in your camp is extremely visible for the latter. Not even PS:T or FO delved into these areas much at all. Even the high-controversial Mass Effect female-alien romance option was handled with gloves by saying the alien wasn't actual female, but was both genders. Bioware should be applauded, IMHO, for handling the romance options in DA:O the way they did.

The battles are very tactical in nature and remind me greatly of the BG series (I am doing a TON of reloading, and that's just in normal difficulty). The character classes can use a bit of polishing, but all in all its not too bad. The DA universe may not be George Martin, but it's certainly a nice change of pace from the usual Forgotten Realms setting, and I'm interested to see them explore it more. I'm also very impressed with the amount of dialog and backstory that we're provided with. This isn't a Bethsoft game, where every NPC reply is 5 words long. There are some meaty conversations in this game, and that doesn't even include the monstrous Codex entries, which are very interesting to read.

Again, I'm not done with the game yet, so this is still a 'tentative' review, but so far this game gets two thumbs up for me. If it continues the way it has been so far, I do expect to end up ranking this game up there with the BG series. Keep in mind that this is just the first game in a planned series. It would be inappropriate to compare DA:O to BG/TotSC/BG2/ToB. To get a proper comparison, you should compare DA:O to BG1 vanilla. On that level, I might even put DA:O over the top.