Dragon Age: Origins ate my life.

I started playing Dragon Age: Origins recently and it took control of my life and devoured my time. Though I had plenty of free time to soak up, this was kind of frightening. The game was so good that I literally started losing chunks of time without even realizing it.

At first I wanted to give the Rogue class a try, so I did. After spending some time with the class and consulting with the wiki page I decided that I should start over again. I was only 6 or 8 hours in and hadn't really done much, so why not? I had got the controls down well enough and figured that I had some of the basic mechanics down. I gave it another shot with the help of a small guide with a better explanation of the Rogue's role within this game. I got to around the same point and then stopped. Playing through the Rogue twice at low levels had made me want something different.

A Mage! That is what I'd want to play, obviously. I started my Mage and went on my way. Spell slinging sure is fun and in Dragon Age it is an absolute blast. The spell combos and interesting ways to use spells is immediately apparent and a whole lot of fun. I, however, hurt myself by reading that wiki. I looked up some of the "specialties" available in this game and saw that Blood Magic looked interesting. I took a straight shot toward it and was disappointed. I had a bit of a save issue and had to start farther back than I wanted because I found Blood Magic to be less fun than I had anticipated. So, I had to replay through some things to get back to where I was and then decided that I had really wanted to go an entirely different way. Should I go back to the Rogue? Should I stick with the Mage since I had recovered from my early mistake with Blood Magic?

NO! I should try a Warrior out. This time I went back to the wiki page, looked up some

information and decided that maybe a Warrior wasn't for me. Maybe the Rogue would really be more my style. Back to the Rogue it is. I was hoping to get some time in playing that character again tonight, but I decided to go out and hang with a friend for a while, instead. Social interaction is always nice. We discussed life stuff, like buying houses and what area my girlfriend and I should move to in the future. The friend I went out with was actually the person who let me borrow the game. Seems odd that I would pass up such a great game to hang with him, huh? =P He of all people should understand.

Though I haven't finished the game yet and I've bounced between characters, I am very pleased with the game. It is very fun and the combat system is relatively simple. It feels like a shiny Baldur's Gate and my brother calls it "KoToR 2 in fairy land". Both work. The game is fantastic and I look forward to playing it again and I look forward to completing the main mission even more. I plan to get it eventually and probably pick up the expansion and some DLC (downloadable content). Why would I want downloadable content after ripping open Activision's asshole over it? Because this content is very cheap, actually adds NEW things to the game and is going to enhance and expand my game.

Dragon Age is great. I just hope I can break it's spell on me before another 10 days goes by.