So there's been a slew of new games, but I was wondering if there were any massassians still playing it?

I'm on the last leg of my first play through, 70 hours in. Its been one hell of a great experience and its been long, long years since a game enthralled me so. The craziest part is that my character's "Heroic Achievements" only states that I've completed around 38% of Dragon Age. While I'm almost done with the main storyline, it is clear that there is a lot of content that I've missed out on.

While I originally kicked things off with an Xbox copy, I finally opted for the PC version and never looked back. Sure the game isn't cutting edge visual technology, but it still looks mighty fine and its appearance serves well to convey the dark and gritty atmosphere of the game.

Already, I am plotting a second playthrough, this one on Nightmare instead of Hard. I look forward to seeing how this second adventure will span. I've been chatting with others who played the game, sharing our experiences, only to discover just how drastically different they were. We found differences in places we least expected.

Overall, who's still playing? How are you doing with it? What class and race?

I played on normal, then dropped it to easy when I got to a battle that was stupidly difficult compared to everything that came before (and it wasn't even a major battle). I completed every quest I became aware of, including most character sidequests (exceptions were Stubborn and Shorty), I didn't do the assassin quests either.

I was an elven rogue and had lesbian times with Leliana.

I thought the game was pretty enjoyable, but nowhere near the standard of either Baldurs Gate 2, Planescape: Torment, Mass Effect, Fallout or Fallout 2 (Henceforth known as the Big Five)

I never would have put mass effect in with those.

I got dragon age from gamefly, but it's still sitting in the package. Despite loving Assassin's Creed 2 to death, the siren call of MW2 multiplayer keeps dragging me in.

Still playing it. I think I'm somewhere mid-way through, almost done with Orzemmar. All ready got the Radcliffe dudes and the mages. Still have to do the elves.

My first playthrough took about 50 hours, seeing as much of the game as I could. I've done quite a lot on my second playthrough (this time with a mage), and I've got my third and fourth characters past the Joining at least (rogue and a different spec warrior). I'd show them off but the Bioware social site only has my original character uploaded (and at level 4, which was weeks ago) despite all my achievements being uploaded pretty quickly after getting them.

What can I say? I got absolutely addicted to playing this. There's a chance I won't finish the saves I'm currently juggling but I do want to see all the endings and find out more about the followers I haven't used yet, since I used Alistair, Leilana and Wynne pretty much exclusively the first time through. Absolutely love the game, could probably talk all day about it. But my dinner is ready and I have an episode of Life to watch, so this shall suffice for now

Still playing it as a human mage who is with Leliana and Morrigan. I've only completed 1 of the 4 main quests to get people on your side. Too many other games to focus on right now. MW2, Assassins Creed 2 (which is ****ing awesome), Borderlands, ect. By the way my gamertag is jj1325 if anyone wants to play MW2 or Borderlands.

Borderlands im a 42 hunter

Oh, I thought I'd ask this as well, despite looking elsewhere and finding nothing. Does anyone know if there's any intention on Bioware's part of releasing the full soundtrack? I know there's a (limited) collection of songs that was released with a special edition of the game, but I love the music and would really like to have it on CD.

I suprised myself too, but the last hour of the game was beyond epic, and the choice it asked of you was far more difficult than anything Dragon Age asked of me.

(the reason I say this is because every time Dragon Age gave me what could be an impossible dilemma, it threw in a third option that allowed everything to be okay)

I'm on my 2nd playthrough. This time as a Dalish Rogue. Still just as enjoyable. I found myself disappointed on my first playthrough as I expected it to be like Oblivion in that I could finish the main storyline and then go back to mop up 100% completion. That is not the case, so I have been playing more slowly this time around.

Actually, you can, if you reload the Epilogue save game, it will tell you that the game is set chronologically before the March to Denerim, and you can go around to complete all you've missed.

I've completed my first playthrough last night with my human noble warrior. I finished with 72h playtime, with only 42% of content completed and 87% of the world explored. On Hard setting. This warrants at least another playthrough.

Avira (antivirus) sabotaged my ending by popping me out of game right in the middle of ending video to plaster its stupid daily ad on my desktop. I returned to the game but it had efficiently skipped the video. *sigh*

I'm torn between playing a ruthless human mage or an elven rogue next.

In the long run, I intend another playthrough with a human noble warrior on Nightmare setting. Likely a two-hander Reaver/Berserker spec if it works nicely. That playthrough will be done without Wynne if it is possible at all, without turning the game into a constant health potion guzzling fest.

I still find the character choices limiting, you're still pretty much just given the choice of hero, jerk and psycho. I dunno, it'd just be nice if there was a game which gave you the party dynamic of say Artemis Entreri and Jarlaxle, rather than a bunch of NPCs that cave to your every whim as long as you boost their affinity high enough.

They did a good thing by removing the good/evil bar, but they need to remove the love/hate bar as well. I want a character to betray me, and have it genuinely surprise me (yet make sense in retrospect). Sten had huge potential to be an interesting character, but it never really played out because he didn't like me much (and by all accounts he wasn't interesting anyway). When a character disliked you, it effectively just cut your dialog choices, rather than creating new and interesting ones.

I didn't know that, but I just found it nestled with the several saves I have on my finished playthrough. Nice touch.

Take Morrigan and teach her how to heal >.>

Also, Sten is a dick. Never taking him to Haven again.

I know this has already been said, but no way would Mass Effect get in my big 5, in fact, I'm slotting this game in as part of the 5.
Mass Effect however, meh, that might make my top 50 pc rpg's.

(oh, and on topic: reason I haven't posted in a while is because I sleep, I eat, I dragon-age)

The problem with Dragon Age (and Fable 2 for that matter) is that the world/country just felt inconsequential, like the events didn't fit into part of a bigger story. Mass Effect had many failings, but immersiveness was not one of them.

Even Planescape: Torment, which was by its very nature a small and personal story, managed to feel make me feel like my actions mattered more than Dragon Age did.

I'm having a very different experience with dragon age, quite the opposite of what you say in fact (I even disagree with the immersiveness of Mass Effect too)

Just about to finish playing through with my human mage. Typical party started out as PC, Alistair, Leliana, and Wynne, but I swapped Wynne for Sten once my mage was able to handle both damage and healing. Great game, though I can't for the life of me figure out how anyone stretches it to more than about 60 hours. Jep, are you sure about those numbers? I got the Traveler achievement after 50-odd hours, and I'll finish just a couple levels short of the maximum.

I'm pretty certain. The Heroic Achievements window states 72 hours.

Just finished with Orzammar, and overheard a town crier shout, "Lord Bhelen attacks the assembly and is ignominiously slain. Epic fail." Made me chuckle.

Hey guys, it's $37 for this game on Steam right now during the sale!

you save $13!

I was more surprised by the percentage. 38% scarcely seems possible if you've completed most of the main plotline.

You know, thats what I thought too, so maybe it bugged out. But I know I've skipped out a great many sidequests. I did very few sidequests in Orzammar, didn't do the Chanter Boards, nor the Mercenary or Mage Chests, and I probably skipped on many quests post Lorthering.

Could be that the DLC bugged that %

How come you missed out on all that stuff? I was obsessive over getting Chanters board/Blackstone Irregulars/etc. quests done.

They felt like bad mmo-type fluff

I'll complete them on my next run through. I'm still considering which character to create though.

The Chanters Board and (as far as I completed them) the Mages Collective quests are simple "do this, get a reward" jobs. But the Blackstone Irregulars actually develops a bit at the end. I'm hoping something similar will come from the "Connected Barman" in Denerim.

If you agree to take those quests, it's pretty much impossible not to complete them because most of them just throw a 'random' encounter into the world map that all but completes the quest for you. There's a few that require actual work, mostly the Connected Barman ones, but most of them you'll complete just by going through the game.

Really? I accepted all the ones from Redcliff and unless I moved to specific spots on the map they wouldn't get completed.

In the end I had all the merc and mage chest quests from Redcliff and Lake Calenhad and I didn't encounter most of them. Or maybe I didn't accept them in the end, I'm uncertain.

I think they're partly governed by the area of the map that you're travelling along. For example, I've only encountered the adventurers carrying the message* along the northern coast road (I think their direction of travel is mentioned in the quest entry). Some of them do just add a new map marker, all you need to do for those is travel there and usually kill some things.

* Trying to be as non-specific as possible, but they're incorrectly reporting a blood mage sighting and you're asked to stop them.

I read a review that said "If you loved Baulder's Gate 2 and Neverwinter Nights, you'll love this."

I couldn't get into either of those because they were too complicated.

Is this game more like those, or more like Kotor-style gameplay?

I'd say Dragon Age is a more tactical experience than KOTOR. In my eyes its closer to Baldur's Gate 2 and NWN 2 (NWN1 only allowed for 2-men party, and required little tactics)

The console version had more twitch-oriented gameplay à la KOTOR, while the PC version is more tactical, à la Baldur's Gate

Just started playing it today, thanks to the Steam sale.

I'm not looking forward to maintaining party members (I much prefer RPGs where I can focus on myself), but the storyline is pretty nice, the graphics are decent, and it's a fresh experience.

Just started playing today. Its pretty awesome so far. Noble Human Warrior.

If you play on Easy or Normal settings, you can easily get by with setting up tactics for your companions. For example, once (and if) you get Wynne into your party, set her to 'Healer' setting in the Tactic screens and let her fly solo. You shouldn't have trouble surviving.

Hard and Nightmare are going to require more tactical micromanaging though.