Whether you play as a human, elf or dwarf, a rogue, warrior or mage, a noble or a commoner, Dragon Age requires smart use of your wits and weapons.It’s a form of self-created turn-based play that encourages enormous involvement.This is a story of humans, elves, dwarves and mages building a tenuous alliance in the face of a terrible evil.A superbly useful talent for a Rogue is Ranger, which allows you to call an animal to join your party.Your first two hours playing as a human noble have almost nothing in common with those of a dwarf commoner or Dalish elf.Those demonstrating magical skills are separated from their families as children and sent to a Mages’ Circle.The treatment of the elves by humans is (if you’ll pardon the pun) dwarfed by the attitude this underground race show to their own casteless kin.
They must live under the control of the soldiers of the Chantry, the presiding human and city-elf religion, serving in the army.The game’s unfriendly difficulty settings (more on this later) don’t leave much room for a gang that doesn’t have at least one healer, a couple of strong melee fighters, and someone capable of combat both at range and close up.Combat is a combination of real-time fighting and turn-based handing out of orders.Bitter and vengeful, they kill all humans who wander into their territory.It’s most useful for getting members to self-heal at the right times, heal each other, and switch from range to melee weapons in particular circumstances.Choose Normal, and you’ll have to make consistent use of the Spacebar to pause and jump between characters, lining up their next move.Larger enemies, which include the titular dragons, lead to a more frantic assault, where you’re chipping away at a mighty health bar.At this point all six beginnings converge.Which would be you.Each character has a limited number of these slots (expanded through levelling up and choosing particular skills) to which you can assign specific actions to be performed in specific conditions, using cascading menus.You can approach combat in a couple of ways, depending upon your personal preferences and the difficulty level to which you’ve set the game.Back to those six possible beginnings.But this isn’t a case of a couple of hours of unique story before being dumped on the same path as all the others.The former encourages smartness in your tactics, firing arrows to draw smaller groups away, tricking opponents into traps, and so on.This is where balance in your party is essential.Ideally this will be fixed with a patch, with a more realistic ‘Easy’ setting for those who want to play in a genuine real-time way, and a ‘Normal’ for those who want a reasonable challenge.Life’s always better when there’s a three-foot spider fighting at your side.It begins in six completely different ways, and each of these can be met with a wildly different approach.Party members can gain further skills simply through your character’s relationship with them.No matter how you approach Dragon Age, combat will be your constant companion.Later on, any class can hold their own with enough skills.Most extraordinary about this opening choice is the incredible sense of being of that race, and the part that race plays in history.It is said it was the hubris of man that brought the Darkspawn into the world: a rampaging evil, swelling up from underground, that attacks without mercy or purpose.It all makes combat more involving, without being overwhelming.You have control of all in your current party (which has a maximum of four characters), as well as an elaborate Combat Tactics system that enables you to all but program your team’s AI.While there are many encounters a silver tongue can end peacefully, you aren’t going to be reasoning with the Darkspawn, enraged demons, or bandits and assassins.And so on.Select a city elf (either rogue or warrior) and you play through a tale of wedding-day excitement, terrifying attacks, and rape.Play as a casteless dwarf, or the son or daughter of the dwarven king, and the contrast is dramatic.A mage might opt for shapeshifting, allowing her to morph into an animal during battle.However, in a game with few flaws, there’s one flailing giant one when it comes to difficulty settings.It’s about sacrifice, death, passion, death, adventure, battle and more death.This is not a game that can be simply explained.It has been over four hundred years since the last Blight, but even those who remember believe there will never be another.An excellent portion of the game to relate would be my adventures in the dwarven city of Orzammar, except there’s little chance that you will experience the same events in the same way when you get there.Further to this are the Combat Tactics.He is seeking new members to join this most elite band of fighters, for it is only the Grey Wardens who can defeat the Archdemon at the centre of the onslaught.I know much about the elves, the dwarves and the mages: I’ve been to their homelands, experienced their cultures, influenced their lives and been influenced by them.Once recruited, you arrive in Ostagar with Duncan, meet king Cailan Theirin, and begin the ritual of becoming a Grey Warden.The relationships you have, your allies and enemies, your party – they all form an experience unique to you.How does it begin?Hundreds of years ago each race signed an accord to provide armies on demand should the Darkspawn rise again, and Duncan is asking people to make good on that promise.Fortunately you’ve no shortage of suitable candidates.These tough fights might involve facing a huge number of enemies at once, or facing beasts of enormous size.What will be common to all is the combination of dialogue and combat.As you and your party level up, at levels 7 and 14 you get a point to spend on a sub-specialism that opens up new talent trees.The dwarves live in the Frostback Mountains, fiercely independent and embroiled in their own complex politics and caste system.Until a few hundred years ago elves were the slaves of humans.But unless you’re a mage with a cluster of healing spells, you must be prepared to spam health poultices to get through many tough encounters.There’s an awful lot of death.Inspired by your leadership, they may gain boosts in cunning, or constitution that contribute to passive and activated tools in battle.Select a mage (either human or elf – dwarves have no affinity with mana) and you must go through the Harrowing – the test all mages must face before leaving their apprenticeship.And about killing dragons with swords.This is about politics, moral philosophy and love.But I’ve no idea what it’s like to be a Dalish elf.Similarly, if you choose to play a dwarf rogue, you’ll find yourself forced to pick Easy during the opening moments of the game because you’re simply incapable of surviving battles otherwise.With at least five or six slots available for each character, this enables you to set up an elaborate array of specific behaviours so that your party can enact your will without constant babysitting.One man disagrees.In theory, setting it to Easy should let you fight in real-time, where you select opponents and issue instructions from a row of tiled attacks, spells and special items familiar to any MMO player, as the fight happens.Humans are the dominant race in Ferelden.It’s an unashamed high-fantasy RPG, rooted in the most traditional soil, yet set in a highly original world.But there’s also an entire realm to explore, and a central, overwhelming theme of acculturation within its many towns and races.A small number of elves broke away to live in the Dales; these ‘Dalish’ elves are attempting to recover their lost culture.These can be as simple as picking ‘Self’ then ‘Health’, then ‘is < 25%’ then ‘Use health poultice: least powerful’.What each opening eventually has in common is the arrival of Duncan, a Grey Warden attempting to recruit armies to join the fight against the Blight.Hit Space again, watch those moves play out, then pause once more.Thus begins Dragon Age, one of the most enormous and astonishing of games.Dominant in some extremely unpleasant ways.Your race and your social position have an enormous impact throughout the 80-hour long game.Once you’re through the ritual, your goal is to visit the elves, dwarves, humans and mages to convince them to send their armies to fight the Blight.Along the way, a promising candidate for the Wardens themselves catches his eye.Mages are feared and loathed by all.Or as complex as ‘if party member Leliana’ is ‘Being attacked by melee attack’, then ‘Deactivate mode: Powerful swings’.In theory they have been freed, but those who live in cities remain second-class citizens, forced to live in slums, either begging or finding menial work in human houses.This might be to heal themselves, change target, use a particular special attack, or aid another.A human noble faces terrible loss, while a Dalish elf gets hands-on experience with the Darkspawn.
This involves entering the spirit world of the Fade to do battle with dreams and demons.There are difficulty spikes at certain points where getting through a battle on Easy becomes stunningly hard, and requires frenetic fine-tuning.While you’re taught the basics of combat, and introduced to party mechanics, the rest is unique.It is from this cauldron of tension and hostility that you select your character.A warrior, for instance, can choose to be a berserker or champion, among others.Duncan, head of the Grey Wardens in the nation of Ferelden, sees all the signs of a coming Blight.The pop-up text suggesting that switching to Easy will remove the need for micromanagement during fights is lying.A mage is vulnerable to possession by demons, or to the allure of deadly Blood Magic.