Frustration

My recent lack of posts it mostly due to my new found obsession with Bioware's Dragon Age: Origins. The game seems to have taken my advice and eliminated good-bad scores (but they still have popularity scores with your allies) and it is filled with fun characters and scenarios. But, for all its solid storytelling I found myself drawn back to the game with its extremely difficult gameplay. Even the most common of random encounters can wipe you out, and leveling your characters requires some serious thought and effort. What makes the game so difficult though is its deep tactical combat. Each encounter requires a lot of thought and a deep understanding of how your party performs. You have to be able to use each character's abilities in conjunction with all of the others so that you can maximize the amount of pain your party can lay down. Even with mostly picture perfect tactics you can get wiped out just for not paying attention for a few seconds.

And that makes it awesome. It's so rewarding when you finally manage to survive and encounter you've been playing for the last half hour, or when you discover a new talent that gives your character a supreme edge. Every time I sign off I want to jump right back on in order to practice my tactics and bring my skills up to speed. Dragon Age frustrates you to be sure, but it does so in a way that makes you want to keep playing it so that you can get better and better. Now if you'll excuse me I've got some darkspawn to slay.... Damn. TPK.