Baldur's Gate 2 was the king of RPGs for me, and still is. While, Dragon Age Origins is enjoyable and gripping, a voice inside me tells something is amiss. It's a great RPG, closest thing to BG2 in this age, but not the new king I'm afraid. I think I'm getting old. :)

Or go play a diablo-clone/mmorpg? ;) Anyways I couldnt agree more story and dialog is important. The only diablo-clone I ever liked even was divinity1 and that was just because it had lots of story & dialog.

Hmm, yes, I would say it's the best in the last 5 years*, but best ever… well for one thing it's just too early to make that call. I would want to complete a game like the 2 or 3 times and let it sink in a bit, let the 'new game euphoria' (I like that term, and it's so true) calm down a bit, and think it over.

*Actually, I just checked, and Bloodlines' fifth aniversary was just a few days ago, so it sneaks in as being within 5 years of DA, so that muddies those waters just a bit for me. You'd be very, very hard pressed to argue that a rough gem like Bloodlines was a *better* game, but in terms of enjoyment… Well I've played Bloodlines 4 times to completion and few other times to muck around with some things.

Anyway, big call. Just that people can reasonably consider DA:O for this title says plenty. Definitely top 5 for me, anyway.

NWN2 is also a great RPG. But, it is so dialog heavy and quite linear that when I played it I just wanted to skip dialogs sometimes, and dive right into the action. And, so easy too, even in very hard difficulty. But, the NPCs in it are so memorable. It can definitely continues Black Isle tradion. At least, DA is a difficult game enough.

LOL honestly if not for dialogue, the game would be awfully empty with all those small & cramped areas. Dialogue IS RPG. It always made me wander why H&S games even get classified as RPG, as they have nothing except the mechanics, which is not a sufficient condition for RPG (storytelling?).

I dont understand all the small and cramped areas if they originally planned this game for pc only. Only consoles are usually limited to such areas. I guess they did the game with consoles in mind from the start.

But if you take all story elements away from any rpg there is not much left in any of them beyond the killing and levelling…perhaps som puzzles but thats it.

Dismiss?!? I don't think ANYONE is dismissing it - and that is why I said I think that it could easily be in a debate of what is best in the past several years. Aside from The Witcher, and Mask of the Betrayer, I don't see anything else at the same level in the past ~7 years.

I wouldn't consider Dragon Age the best game of the last 5 years since that belongs to Bloodlines. I wouldn't even consider it the best recently released game since (for me) that belongs to Divinity 2. I would consider it the best Bioware game I have played and a very good game overall.

Quite so. A good RPG, but there are many I found much better.

Bloodlines is now outside of the 5 year window (by a week) … but still one of my all-time fave RPGs!

It depends on the five year period being discussed. If it's 2005 - 2009, then DA:O is clearly the best, and I'd have MotB second. If it's games released within five years of DA:O, then it's still DA:O but Bloodlines is up there as well.

In any event, it's a stunningly awesome game. It's up there with Bioshock for new game euphoria, but it sustains it for much longer. If they had made Bioshock an RPG, and made the last 2 or 3 levels as good as the first 4, I wonder how this discussion would pan out…

Time to play some Dragon Age, now :D

I've played Bloodlines twice and it was a good game. I think DA is better though. I've finished it once as a human warrior and I've started my second run through
as a elve mage. Restarting a game right after I finish is something I very rarely do.
I don't think it's perfect. The compromises they had to make for console play make the world seem a little cramped and it's not anywhere near the most beautiful world I've seen.

That being said the ending really caught me. Bioware has done an amazing job of getting rid of the black and whitecharactors you see in most games. I can't go into detail without risking spoilers but this is an amazing game.

Absolutely brilliant game. No, not the best - but well up there.

Well I for one agree. It is the best ever.

I have been playing RPGs since the Ultima, Kings Quest days and I like this better than any other game ever. Better than Baldurs Gate 1&2Arena, Morrowind, Oblivion, NWN, NWN2, Witcher. I guess I'm a fanboi now.

I like it alot, but I still don't think its significantly better than Drakensang as a whole. It does have better combat overall and higher production values, but in the end the games are remarkably similar and the fun factor roughly equivalent.

The differance for me over DA and drakensang is that I did not feel for any of the characters at all in drakensang. Dragon age does a very good job giving personality to the characters….I just love Shale…one of the better npc's in a game ina long time…(although gotta admit I'm a sucker for dry humor.)

Even graphically they look the same in the style but dragon age doers a very good job of making it feel epic. I play rpg's for the story and dragon age does that quite well, I would say brilliantly.

I thought it was a good game but it never reached the lvl of Baldur's gate imo.
I didn't feel the story really got me immersed and I think its the sandbox style of play that did that.
The fact you had access to everything from the start and with the lvl scaling could do everything in whatever order detached me a bit from the story.

I would have liked if more areas would be locked from start and then opened as you progressed the main quest. In that way the developers would be able to make it more story driven and more fun for me.

It just means you are an RPG fan with an opinion, as are we all … the fact that we are having this discussion is a VERY GOOD THING!

It's very very good, but still doesn't have a place in my heart like the CRPG's in my sig…..

DA:O is the best Bioware game since BG2, and one of the best RPGs in a long time. But the competition in that department is not really big. In last few years only RPGs worth of mention were Risen, Witcher and MotB. And in my opinion both Witcher and MotB are better games.