Only been playing for a couple of nights, and what an impressive game. I must admit I was a big fan of the Black Isle games back in the day, but that seems so long ago; I've really given up hope of ever playing another game in that style, but Dragon Age really harks back to the great dialog and combat systems in these games.

Top stuff, going to play some more! Haven't really been reading the entire thread, but have I downloaded it off Steam, $54 was a bargain and didn't have any issues. So thumbs up in that regard, hope the people who are having problems get them sorted soon.

Cheers.

I also got it off STEAM, at the time convenience was all that mattered, but recently ordered the collectors edition as well just to have a hard copy - games like this deserve a copy in hand

Toolkit out:D
Now to wait for some good downloads:D

It's true... you... you really do buy every game ever.

30 hours in, 19% of the game completed, this is just nuts...

Two of the four 'major' areas done.

I worked out what was wrong, in case anyone runs into similar problems. It was my anti-virus! When I started up my computer the day after I got it, my AV had gone weird. As soon as I replaced Norton Internet Security with Avast, Dragon Age worked fine again.

I rather like the voice acting. Having come off Uncharted 2 a few weeks ago, it was somewhat amusing and reassuring at once to hear Flynn aka Alistair and Chloe aka Morrigan again.
In fact, Alistair's a lot like a good-guy version of Flynn. Flynn minus the backstabbing snake part, even though you find out about some crazy, WTF facts. I'm really loving the dog.

The level scaling is pretty annoying.

Challenge is good and all, but it's always fun to affirm your power by incinerating a band of silly thugs with a single fireball. The bandits in Dragon Age can walk through burning grease, Inferno, a fireball blast and a swarm of angry bees before coming out with most of their health intact. For me the most challenging encounters have been skeletons, common thugs and wolves - funnily enough the dragons and bosses have given me no trouble (and the orcsDarkspawn are a pushover), but level scaled wolves are capable of surrounding and tearing apart your godly adventurers in seconds.

Also, the tactics menu is nice and all, but it's missing a lot of useful options such as 'don't walk into detected traps' and 'don't stand in infernos/blizzards/tempests'. It's also incredibly annoying that whenever I find a note, I need to go to the Codex to read it instead of... reading the note.

As for quests and moral choices, I've come across two or three instances that were really interesting and well designed, but most of them are mediocre if not laughable. Dialogue varies but it's never superb. Most of the player dialogue is fake options which lead to exactly the same response, and despite all the 'moral grey' they're on about the game's massively skewered towards the good side - there are plenty of instances where you could do something of dubious morality to further your power (which of course can be argued to be beneficial overall since you're fighting the Blight), but the game forces you to be a paladin. I haven't seen any truly 'evil' options either - it edges from good to neutral in most cases. Most of the party banters are also pretty horrible compared to BG2 and none of the party members are particularly interesting. Magical items aren't nearly as interesting as they were in BG2 either (backstory, power, difficulty of obtaining etc).

If this is a spiritual successor its predecessor is much, much better. Can't say I'm not enjoying it though.

Also: DLC still utterly broken even with new patch. I am disappoint.

Fired it up today, was *just* going to create a character and check out combat then go play some co-op Borderlands.......5 hours later

The archery isn't pathetic like in NWN2. Hooray

sigh..1.01 patch broke it, wont start the game lots of other on bioware forums are reporting this too

Hmm no problems here. You tried reverifying the files? I had to ditch Steamwatch to get it to finish updating too.

Great game but i was just about go see the Arl or Redcliff and i keep getting STUCK IN AN ENDLESS LOADING SCREEN, thats right after what'shisname tells you hes the hier to the throne. Then it won't finish loading. Just sits there and flashes *loading* its running minimised right now, never crashes...WTF!

Spectacular, RPG of the decade.

Finally got him down - time to make some armor ...

Spoiler Pic:

http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/6233/daoj.jpg

You need to go download the x86 Microsoft C++ framework redistributable again I believe. That's what fixed it for me.