It’s incredibly frustrating that a game this old—and still being sold—barely runs without major crashes. Dragon Age: Origins constantly crashes on my PC, and I’m far from the only one. A quick search shows years' worth of forum threads and community fixes just to get the game to launch or stay running.

I shouldn’t have to dig through forums, modify files, or apply unofficial patches just to play something I paid for. If a company is still actively selling a game, they should be responsible for maintaining basic compatibility or at least clearly warning buyers of the issues.

The game itself might be great, but I can’t even play it long enough to find out. Until these issues are addressed officially, I can’t recommend buying it.

wonderful game but with the amount of issues out of the box that require you to fix yourself make this game unable to be a recommend, the story is a bit basic being a lot like other old school bioware games with some fun tactics on the harder difficulties, the graphics are starting to show their age and the game can be a bit clunky and awkward with its terrain navigation, sometimes allies and enemies will just stand still during combat and the companions do require a bit of tuning to get them to play how you would actually want them to but its pretty alright, its a wonderful nostalgic game for me but technical issues have made it very hard to love

Basics:
Gameplay 5/10
Music/Art design 7/10
Worldbuilding 10/10
Story 9/10
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Synopsis:
'Standard fantasy adventure # 2834 - evil army has fallen on the land, you are the chosen one and you must slay the big bad sending said army out.'; And if that sounds dull to you, I assure you, the game is going to be sitting right beside you telling black-comedy jokes about it.
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Cons:
Let's get what few I can muster out first, the game-play is slow and clunky, the battles are very much 1, draw weapon, 2 go close enough to fight foe, 3 swing your arms around or wait for special effects to load enough times to kill enemy, 4 repeat until all enemies are dead. And you feel every single one of those steps.
Aside from the battle system feeling drawn out, the graphics are not great - don't get me wrong, they are good enough, and not just in a "well it was alright for the time' way, no everyone is blocky and lighting sticks to them like moss to a stone statue
And there are a couple of missions, or intended options that do not work - requiring console commands to fix, and that's IF you have a head for that sort of thing....
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Pros
Everything else.
The story is compelling, basic, but compelling.
The characters have good chemistry - whether that chemistry is explosive or not depends entirely on which two you are combining; The f with each other, make snarky comments about the other's life/outlook periodically, re-enforce each other's view point or challenge it depending on who is traveling with you as you go forth.
The Origins are the real seller, I can restart a game and keep myself entranced just by going through the game with a new RP position until each origin might as well be it's own character ranging from thug for hire, a prince/princess born with a silver spoon in your mouth, imprisoned in Catholic- Dah I mean "Mage" School, Peeved off druid and Pre-Revolution France that's giving the guillotine some longing looks with how the nobles are acting, Your characters can be saint level good ranging to cruel if still pragmatic jerk with a heart of, well silver at least. You can shape societies, endear or spite yourself to your allies. And have up to 4 different battle specialties for each of your base jobs - Warrior, Rogue or Mage.
The World Building is easily the best - even if the story doesn't sell you, being dropped in a world where you don't know how much of what you hear is fact and how much is bull keeps you guessing, dialogue is top notch everyone speaks with old-world inflections even when they are sticking it to stereotypes. We have a secondary bad guy who wants to rule the world and is using the apocalypse as an opening to play chicken with the kingdom so no one opposes him while the hoard is coming this way.
Romance options are available and you can be gay/lesbian, bi, asexual and/or chaste - but the thing is, certain characters have certain preference - like the gal who is into men and women but mostly leans to woman, or the extreme omni-sexual guy, or the fun-loving straight as an arrow knight, or the mage who's only into men, though even she doesn't think love is anything more than an excuse for sex. Without spoiling plot you can conceive up to two kids depending on your run, or none at all.
Your actions affect the characters - extended to the level of possibly having to kill them if you do something truly opposed to their ethics.
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Extra Content/ULTIMATE Edition
I recommend the Ultimate Edition for all the content - Awakening is much much shorter than Origins but still a fun followup. Witch-Hunt is a capper particularly if you had a romantic relationship with said "love doesn't exist" mage, and even the lesser ones like the Dwarf search-and-rescue or the What-If your character never existed scenario are all fun and interesting. Now, the game was made before Bioware had fine-toned the transferring data/world development, so it exists apart from the EA server for preserving your Dragon Age choices... which I am putting in Pros because the less I need to go to an EA server the better!
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Standard EA F Ups
But it does mean some of your choices don't get processed right - like make sure when you beat Awakening the character Nathan is in your party or else the game presumes he died even if you saved him - as just one example of the data transfer F***ery.
Even if you save your friend Jowan you can never get resolution on his second chance because the quest is bugged,
One of the major bosses can be fought over and over again if you don't loot his body.
If you go with mage gal in Witch-Hunt the game transfer registers that as "Your character died" even though you very explicitly do not.
An NPC will give you xp and money every time you hand here 10 traps but the game forgets to discontinue said NPC's quest so you can just KEEP giving her 10 traps including using the pay out each time to buy more trap components creating an endless laundering system for xp and cash.
There is an item duplication exploit, and when pairing that with the books that give you free abilities, and stats, you can make yourself like unto a god - not a complaint, just a notation of F ups.
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Conclusion: The game has graphically aged, but the story is capable of so many turns based on your choices it has great replay value. The combat kinda sucks, but the dynamics are so engaging the combat feels like just what you need to put up with until the next story bit. I have played the other Dragon Age games, and I have to say, this is the one I keep replaying the most.
Highly recommend.