Dragon Age - Gamasutra's GotY
 

Dragon Age takes top honours from Gamasutra's choice games of 2009.
More information.

Interestingly they had Cryostasis as their #1 overlooked game of the year!

It was overlooked for good reason. :)

I finished DA last night - I didn't really feel compelled to hammer away at it until I was done, unlike Drakensang, the Witcher, and Risen. While the game was 'good' I felt the game mechanics left much to be desired - these deficiencies have been enumerated by others elsewhere so I won't rehash then. But together they left me with a 'thank god its done now I can move on' feeling. For me the problems stems from the system they came up with to replace D&D/d20 - I think it was second rate and dull, and that filters through the game as a whole. Yes, the character interactions were good, the voice overs impressive etc, but if I was only interested in that I'd read a book or play IF.

Glad to know I wasn't the only one… :)

Sorry booboo, I have to disagree with you on Risen and Drakensaang being better in terms of interesting systems. I found both of them to be rather dry. Risen was overly simplistic, and wasn't very compelling in terms of wanting to try out different combinations of skills and powers, and Drakensaang was just an overload of skills, stats and powers. I didn't think Dragon Age's system was that great to be honest, but I definitely thought it was better than those two. Is there some history with Gothic on this blog, it seems that everyone here just drools over Risen. I found it fun to an extent, but quickly boring in it's simplicity, and the length to which you had to go to carve out the class you wanted to play.

I honestly don't understand where you came up with that. Most of the posters here rated Risen anywhere from a 6.5 to an 8.5. Not what I would consider "drooling" over something. I thought Risen was great except for the ending, but I'm not blind to its flaws either, I would rate it around 80%.

Same here. By the time I was on the last subquest, I was tired of the game and just wanted it to be over. Sidequests dragged on, the game was extremely linear, and the story was dull. It wasn't a bad game, but I've enjoyed every other game I've played from Bioware more.

It was a lot better than KotOR imo, and I also liked it more than Jade Empire. Having said that, I still think it's vastly overrated by most people.

Well I think it was a great game, much better the risen, wish felt like a fan made mod for gothic 2.

I'm just digging into DA now and my impression is that it's a game done with a rare level of 'granularity', in that it has a huge range of options, a massive amount of content, complex systems and a long playtime.

What I would not say is that the game is 'surprisingly unique'. It seems to me that it follows previous Bioware games fairly closely and makes use of the usual RPG tropes - a medieval world populated by monsters, shopkeepers and questgivers, menaced by unspeakable evil and eveybody clunks around in full armour as though they're on the set of Excalibur. Although it's all done very well, I do wish reviewers would start to actively ping a game like this for its rather retrograde reliance on tired gameworld cliches and not write that it's 'surpisingly unique'.

I probably liked KOTOR more. That was the first Bioware game I played. I remember feeling more satisfied with my ability to control my party members, in KOTOR.

I played DA on the 360, which no doubt affected my opinion. The control scheme felt awkward. You could not position members individually or effectively, you could not place them on hold individually, selecting skills required multiple button presses, and you could only program one action per character. What that meant was you had to constantly and endlessly micromanage your party's behavior, especially at the higher difficulty levels. I could've used the Tactics, I suppose, but I never really got into that aspect.

Anyhow, combat started to feel tedious around hour 50, and I turned the difficulty down because I got tired of the constant micromanagement and just wanted the game to be over already.

The linearity of it was also a big negative for me. I prefer a more open world design. Not that Bioware games are ever open world. But they usually trade off the open world for an engrossing and well-paced main quest story, which was (imo) absent here.

Boy, I sound grumpy. I'm probably sounding too harsh. It wasn't a bad game by any stretch. I'd give it an 8.0. Good, not great.

You really need to upgrade your PC Anderson. ;)

I like Dragon Age more than about half of Bioware's games … somewhat more than KotOR, way more than Jade Empire, and way, way more than Mass Effect …

No way, man. I'll never give in to the dark side.

A matter of taste, obviously, but I enjoyed the story in DA considerably more than any other Bio game. The overarching plot was simple but each location told a wonderful tale.

I just finished replaying Orzammar today; Branka and the surrounding story is just fantastic.

It seems opinion (as always) is divided on just how great DA was ;-) Personally I like 'dry' rule systems, if by that you mean ones with lots of build options. TDE seems interesting - my only gripe there was the lack of explanation. Risen was simplistic at times - but enjoyable nonetheless. The single biggest DA:O irritation for me was the lack of PC scaling with level. example: I specialized as a shape-shifter. The top power was changing into a 'dire bear' (kind of) - achieved at low level. There was no scaling of that power after that point (or if there was, it was almost non-existent). I stopped using it, because at higher levels even a 'hurlock grunt' could take the punishment this creature delivered while doing considerable damage back. That is just pathetic. Why not have the power grow in level, especially since they doled out skill points so stingily? How about shifting into a dragon thrall or some such at level 20? A waste of 4 skill points. I also felt the power of spells did not scale well, and there were way too few of them (unless you optimized your spells combos or used well known exploits). Of course, a large part of this was level scaling crap, but I never felt that way in the old BG titles - when you had potent magic, it truly was potent and you would scythe through lesser foes. And don't even get me started on the pathetic 'armies' you can summon at the end. That was a piss-poor implementation of tactics - clearly an afterthought. There were other things too, but overall I would have preferred an updated BG3 with the budget they allocated to this title. Finally, Yes I *did* enjoy large parts of the game, some were quite interesting and well executed, but overall I was somewhat disappointed.

I really enjoyed the game.

My favourite aspect was the characters. But I am playing it for a third time and find myself appreciating some of the mid game locations more.

I think it has a different story structure than recent Bioware games. There is more focus on the stories that are happening in the huge mid game locations. Rather than being tightly focused on the main plotline.

Well, I can't speak for the shapechanging because I just didn't use it but the spells in DA do scale, with a damage multiplayer drawn from the Magic stat. You must have played a different D&D to me because I was forever forced to choose addition low level spells I never used. Drakensang's magic system was spectacularly dull; if you dared to play a non-human mage, you didn't even get one, single AoE damage spell, which is the staple of most mages.

shape change was useless at higher levels - although arcane warrior may have scaled - I didn't have enough skill points to try both, even though I went to the trouble of unlocking that via a quest. Well, I ended up with a magic stat of 48 or so - which was not unreasonable. lightning storm did 15 points of damage a round (I could see the number scrolling up) to the average hurlock/genlock 'grunt' when I was at 20th level. Many of them (especially the archer types) were also able to resist my earthquake spell - they should all have been rolling around like skittles if they were weak canon fodder. Another problem: armour/defense. The optiosn for boosting your AC were very limited (AW may have allowed more, but as I said, not enough skill points to try that). My AC in D&D as a wizard was almost as good as a fighter and with protection from spells etc, you could be truly formidable. in DA:O. even grunts hit me way too often. My AC/defense hardly changed from level 10 to level 20, even though my magic stat increased a lot. I only had two AC/defense spells (rock armour and some mage specialist defense spell) which were always on. If there were other options, I didn't have the skill points to exploit them.

As for D&D - sure there were many obscure spells - the point though is that as a wizard I could have all 100+ spells in my spell book (eventually - find or buy), and choose which ones were sensible for an upcoming combat e.g. going against undead. Here, I had one skill point per level and that had to go in training a specialist class OR getting one measly spell which led to a commensurately limited set of spells. For me, at least, that was a poor trade-off, perhaps as a pure fighter it didn't matter, but as a mage that limited my play style hugely - you ended up finding a 'winning' strategy and you pretty much had to keep using it because you had such limited choice of spells. I never played a non-human mage in DSang so I have no idea about those limits - I assume there is some game/ruleset specific reason for that? But as a human mage, I had a great deal of fun fiddling with an entirely new magic system which hadn't been whittled down to something simplistic. Yes, the game had it's faults (plot was derivative etc), but on the whole I felt more of an inclination to go back and finish it. with DA:O I ran out of steam 75% of the way through.

Agree 100% about the Shapeshifting issue, it was definitely underpowered, especially for a specialization based skill. It's a shame because it really is a fun skill to use, it's just not very effecive in the latter half of the game.

I also didn't care for the linear skill trees in DA. Why should a mage be forced to learn Stonefist before Quake, or Frost Weapons before Cone of Cold? What if I don't want those spells at all? I can understand the linear progression for physical skills, but I wish they had done something different for the spell system.

I played it on the PS3 and loved it. Tactics is an absolute must, at least on the console version when played on hard. I can hardly imagine playing the game without it, so I understand that you would get tired of micromanagement. :)

I enjoyed the story a lot, especially the parts related to some companions like Morrigan and Alistair.

If I had to complain about something (and it looks like I do) it's too much inventory management (a problem shared with many RPGs, but still) and a bit too much combat in some parts of the game.

DA is game of the year for me, definitely better than Risen, although I enjoyed Risen too.

Too much inventory management.

I have to agree there. It REALLY takes away from my game when I have to worry about what to keep and what to sell simply because I don't have enough room to carry stuff. Not "fun" by any stretch of the imagination. But for those who want realistic sims, perhaps it is….

I prefer infinite capacity like Gothic 2.

Definitely. I missed the backpacks in Ostagar, and it haunted me for the entire remainder of the game. Poor planning by the devs imo.

That… or games with no crap loot. I really wish there'd be more RPGs where the mobs you kill just drop gold (or whatever the currency may be) and that items would be rare and special. The whole "let's fill up the player's inventory with useless crap loot after 25% through the dungeon so he needs to go back to town and so we can artificially extend the playtime of our !epic! game" routine needs to go. Fast.

I thought there was too little inventory management. None that mattered, anyway. Just a big list of items and yeah, most of them crap. If they want to put a limit on inventory size they should make the whole thing more interesting, not completely arbitrary filler material. Less crap loot, bigger icons or graphics, varying size and all that. I prefer better defined limits so I can make choices that actually make a difference.

I liked the inventory limits in Baldur's Gate (weight and size) and particularly Diablo (size, pretty graphics, different item types made unique sounds!) and others.

Yep, and the fact that every party member had their own inventory.

Inventory management in the original Baldur´s Gate was tedious at best and seriously detractive to the experience due to stack limitations and lack of containers for scrolls etc.
I bet majority of players spent half of the playtime juggling in the inventory screen, especially when playing with more ranged oriented characters.
And it´s not like the first game was overflowing with interesting items either.
Don´t kid yourselves here, guys :).

It definitely got better in the second game but it still was far from smooth sailing.
Of course, mods increasing stacking limits and adding item containers largely remedied this.

DA´s implementation of backpacks is really silly, especially pricewise and its overall inventory system is nothing to call home about but in comparison with vanilla BG it´s heaps better still. Just sell all the crap you don´t need before venturing to dungeons and problem is solved.
Game´s relatively boring itemization is certainly an issue.

I vastly prefered the Baldur's Gate system to DA. I like as much realism in my game as possible, and I didn't care for the shared inventory in DA, or the lack of encumbrance. I quite enjoyed the "juggling" of items in BG, and I liked how you actually had to have a healing potion in 'your' inventory to use it.

Worst of all, the fact that you can't even drop items in DA is downright laughable.

All those features that you describe I find tedious and boring. But to each his own. :)