I picked up Dragon Age for the PS3 over the weekend. I started out as a Human Warrior, but I ended up being dissatisfied with Sword & Shield early on. Mostly due to what I perceived as an inability to "tank" enemies and my party members getting squashed quite often. I tried a human mage, which was fun, but I ended up sticking with a Human Rogue.

The game seems fun and it's pretty beautiful (even with being shackled to crappier graphics by the XBox 360). The game does feel to have a heavy KOTOR influence when it comes to party interactions. I do love the dialogue that takes place between Morrigan and Alistair.

Anyway, I'd like to hear what you all think of the game if you've played it.

i've started with the human warrior also, though went for the two handed weapon route. Then I started the other night a dwarven noble rogue, interesting stuff, I really like the different origins.

I think I need to mess about with the tactics so that Alistair uses poultices when he gets low in health. I kept him in Sword & Shield and have been improving his defense and tanking stats where possible, but I still need to switch to him to use poultices to heal him. That's frustrating! I'm curious if I give Morrigan a healing spell, will she use it on her own?

You'll probably need to mess with the tactics stuff some more, there's actually quite a bit of stuff you can put in the commands for the npc's to do. My roommate is much further along in the game and he had an extensive list of command stuff for the npcs. It's actually not too bad, and yes, the mages if they have healing magic will use them if they had the commands to do so.

Ugh, I was hoping they wouldn't need to be commanded to do so.

The graphics aren't that much worse on the 360. I have it on my PS3 and it's still pretty medeocre. I think they did it like that so it would be easy to port over all the systems it was available on.

Fun game, kept me playing none stop. I was unimpressed by the epilogue you get for romancing Morrigan, and there were some minor things that bothered me(such as only having one unique human origin), but I loved it. My only regret is that I didn't get the blood dragon armor, cause I got a used copy of the game.

God, this game is addictive. Everywhere I turn there's a new wrinkle. In the middle of the Dead Trenches at 1 in the morning, I click talk on Dog just for fun, and off he goes and fetches something back. I mean I wasn't expecting anything except may a "woof!"

I started off with a human rogue and it's been fun so far. I started another character - an elf mage but I am having too much fun with my rogue to pursue that campaign, I've only completed the origin story.

I have completed the 4 "get your allies" quests and Soldier's Peak, and for my next trick, I'm returning to Ostagar.

Yeah. I just dealt with the Anvil of the Void. I was really put off by the beginning of the Orzammar story. I hate political squabbles in games because too often they end up with you being an over glorified errand boy. It really served to be a huge block to my progression through the story.

My rogue is around 17 or 18 now and I still need to get the elves on my side.

I'm really looking forward to finishing this game so I can make my male wizard so I can sex up Morrigan. Since I made a human female rogue I had to suffice with Leliana.

She won't have to be commanded to do so, but party members won't do anything that isn't in their tactics. So if you give Morrigan a healing spell she won't use it unless you add the tactics for her using it (though I think the game adds in some tactics for you automatically like using a healing spell)

I went through the game as an elven blood mage. Was exceedingly fun throwing up a massive AoE damage/paralyze effect with blood magic and then firestorming the area. Gave Alister fireproof armor so he could wade into combat without me having to worry about catching him with a fireball.

Only real problem I had was I did way too much damage to way too many people to keep agro off of me. Thankfully most stuff died before it had a chance to agro me, but still.

My main team was me ('combat' mage with some healing for good measure), what's her name the mage from the tower (For massive healing of my teammates after I'd done a blood sacrifice from them, or reviving anyone that had fallen), Alister (To stand between me and stuff), and Leilana (For her added bard buffs and some decent DPS with her bow).

We had good times fighting scripted battles in which we were supposed to have a dozen people helping us but they failed to script into combat properly, as well as generally obliterating anything that decided to hurt us.

Motherf--king DAO! Damn you corrupted files...

Ahem, I completed Orzammar but I had some loose up ends that needed tying up like Shale's personal quest... But no... the saves were corrupted at some point during the Carta raid and I am getting weird ass interactions when I try to talk to Shale. God, I spent a whole week of full day gaming to clear Orzammar and the Soldier's Peak. Goddamnit! And all I wanted was the Dead Thaig Shanker.

The more I think about DAO, the more I am disapointed. It has strong points - the story was intelligent, the politics realistic and well thought out, the voice over excellent, the characters good.

The combat system blows goat nads. It's simplistic and uninteresting, and buggy. My warrior constantly tried to move by himself instead of just standing still and whacking away. The graphics were ordinary. I didn't feel especially drawn into the story. The word has potential, but it was badly delivered cause I don't feel especially attached to it. The monsters were uninteresting. Your conversation choices have hardly any impact, except getting or losing favour with your team mates.

I mean, from a minor studio, I would have been satisfied. But this is fucking Bioware. Have you seen Mass Effect 2? This game feels like it was put together with the exra 10$ left over from Mass Effect 2's budget.

I think the combat system is alright. The part I dislike is the all or nothing "move freely" or "hold position" for the entire group. It would be better if some could hold and others moved freely. But the corrupted files... argh... should I delete those corrupted saves and restart from a good save or go play another character and hope they will address the issue...

To solve the Shale problem, I think the recommended fix is to remove the shale DLC, then re-install it. This means you have to go get shale again, but at least she'll talk now.

Thanks CB, but I just bit the bullet and deleted the corrupted ones and redid the quests in Orzammar.