Quote Originally Posted by Prussian Iron View Post
how is it? i'm thinking about it, but ive never played one of their games before and the commercial offers very little.
The DA:O gameplay thread offers a lot of spoiler free impressions from people here so it would be worth a look.

The easiest comparison is to other Bioware games, so if you haven't played any of them it's a bit harder to describe; Bioware and the studios which have worked with them dominate the list of western style RPGs. The Witcher or Drakensang are the two most recent non-Bioware games that I can think of to compare it to. If you've played and liked either of them then you probably will like DA:O.

It's got decent RPG character building, some great companion characters with excellent dialogue, a passable fantasy tosh storyline, and a large world to explore. It's challenging, and not for everyone. You've got to have patience, and be willing to watch your party get splattered and then try again with a new approach. It takes ~40 hours to finish the main plot, and it's worth playing through more than once because you can't see everything with just one character. There are two ways to end each part of the main quest for a start, and different reactions for male and female player characters. You're going to spend a lot of time in dialogue screens, listening to conversations.

I like it, for all that I seem to be complaining endlessly about it. Better than Baldur's Gate II, not as good as my ruling favourites Planescape: Torment and Mass Effect.