I’ve been spending a lot of time with Dragon Age recently. I think I’ve figured out the basics of combat, and I’ve gotten mostly used to the camera. I’m going to relate my thoughts on the game so far, and if I seem to be overly vague at times, it’s only because I want everybody to be able to read this without worrying about spoilers.

As is normal for me with these games, my first playthrough is being done with a good guy character. I do like that Dragon Age has no strict character alignments – my human noble thief isn’t “neutral good”. But the way I’m playing him would likely translate that way in D&D terms. Still, Dragon Age cares more about characters’ opinions of you than about whether any given action is good or evil. Because of this, I find myself thinking about how various NPCs would react to various actions before I take them. Forcing the player to consider the feelings of an NPC is a great way to make the characters feel more lifelike.

As I play, I find myself really feeling like my main character Johann and the other Grey Warden Alistair have a bond. They’re in this together alone, and they only have each other to count on. I feel like they’re best friends, and I consciously role-play to that effect during conversations. When I configure my party and it doesn’t include Alistair, I find myself feeling a bit guilty that Johann is leaving his best friend behind. I’ve never seen a video game come this close to true role-playing. Similarly, Morrigan continually rubbed me the wrong way. When she finally asked something of me that I felt my character wouldn’t have been comfortable with, I let Morrigan leave rather than cater to her less than ethical whims.

I love the fact that each NPC has an approval rating, and when that approval rating rises enough, the characters gain a new in-game skill that improves attributes, ostensibly due to my character’s leadership.

I’ve realized at this point that the game consists of standard gameplay punctuated by crushingly difficult battles. Whereas my Baldur’s Gate games generally found me with a surplus of potions and other single-use items that I never got around to using, the potions, poisons, traps, and grenades in Dragon Age need to be carefully rationed for the more difficult fights. During my most recent battle against a Revenant, it would have been so nice to have a fire bomb. Just one. The skeletons were grouped so perfectly, and Johann could have easily used stealth to get within range and bomb the hell out of them before they had a chance to move. But I didn’t have one. And that fight was hard. The hardest fight I’ve found yet is the defense of Redcliff against a nighttime assault from the undead. Healing the NPC militia members was helpful, but ultimately it only delayed the inevitable – they still died. My party died too. At least 6 or 7 times. Using a fighter, a thief, a healer, and an archer ended up being the best way to go, although keeping the healer and archer out of harm’s way was difficult. The Mabari War hound’s stunning howl ability was also a big help, and I had to continually move my thief into backstab positions with a poisoned dagger. Meanwhile, the healer was downing lyrium potions like a raging alcoholic to keep healing the militia, and throwing stone fists strategically to keep my fighters from being flanked too badly.

Thankfully, I haven’t had to switch to “easy” difficulty yet to get through a fight, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to finish the entire game that way, based on what I’ve heard of how the difficulty ramps up later in the game. Switching my thief from sword-and-dagger to two daggers paid off bigtime, as his attack speed seems to have doubled, and I’m finding that the dog is a better tank than any of the humans I’ve got. I haven’t yet found archery to be the most useful option, and I have yet to pick up most of the area of effect spells I’d like – those should help quite a bit.

I’ll likely be writing more about Dragon Age in the weeks to come. I’m loving it.