As a child Role playing games were always my favourite huge adventures which went on for hours and hours, sadly this genre is not what it once was most games now are completable within 30 hours, not the 70 that once was the case. Still as I grew older and got more responsibilities I did not have a lot of time for games at all.

Then I discovered Dragon Age, a epic and relatively free roaming role playing game. You play a hero from one of six different backgrounds all with their own unique origins story, which in turn can be one of three races, human, elf or dwarf . The story is a very typical one: There are demons from the underground called Darkspawn that come up from the earth and try to destroy the world ever century or two. They are only stopped by an order known as the Grey Wardens who exist solely to stop this from happening by killing the Darkspawn leader The Archdemon.

Throughout the game you meet various characters which you can recruit to form part of your party and like in all RPG's they expand and grow alongside you. Often you can choose to fall out with them or even in some cases fight and kill them, I have no idea why you would want to do such a thing but if that tickles your fancy then I guess it is a plus. With each of your party members conversation is the key, each character has their own background and viewpoints and often your party members with conflict and cause havoc with one another. The more you do them right the greater rewards you will receive, such as items, new abilities and even in a few cases a chance to "Take them to your tent" and go beyond friendship.

The dialogue throughout the game does sway the story in very different directions, however most of the time you will either side with one group of people or their opposition, still this is a much greater freedom than in most games. In terms of an RPG dialogue is the core and Dragon Age much like its Sci Fi counterpart does this fantastically and almost without equal, however where Dragon Age does lack a little is in the combat. If you play on the easier difficulties you will simply highlight the person you wish to attack in real time and your party will hit it. You can select abilities and attacks but basically it is pretty straight forward and after a while repetitive, only if you play the game on the hardest setting does the game combat get a bit more interesting. On hard you can pause the game and select tactics with some greater thought, but even then it is the same repetitive hack and slash structure. Even if you do find the combat repetitive there are a relatively large amount of play styles that you can choose between and the different abilities do mix it up a little.

Generally I found myself totally hooked on the games story so the combat did not matter so much and when it did occur it was fuelled by my love of the story and characters so I did not care. The character relationships, the large expansive areas and the central storyline are all superb. There is always a wide range of choices to keep you active mentally and keep your heart in the game.

The first time I played through the game it took me 43 hours, which in my books is a long time to be playing one game but not once did I question it. The story and adventure are both extremely solid. I am on my second play though and I am loving every moment all over again having given it about a years break due to my xbox dying.

If the game does hold up to two playthroughs as solidly as I can imagine it too you are looking at at least a good 70+ hours of brilliant game play that is well worth the £10 - £15 that you can buy it for now in most shops, as it is indeed an older game. Despite the fact that it is an older game you can still access new downloadable content that is being released, so far the game has five extra parts, a couple are standalone but the rest add things to the original game, allowing your character to go up another ten levels and a chance to meet another five potential allies.

Dragon Age is definitely one of the most solid RPGs out there and if adventure is your thing then it is indeed a must buy.