Dragon Age: Origins is an epic fantasy role-playing game featuring a rich story, personality-driven characters, and tactical, bloody combat. It is considered a spiritual successor to the Baldur's Gate series.
Dragon Age Origins Darkspawn Chronicles Review: Broken mess
The Darkspawn chronicles was a great concept: replay the ending of Origins but in a changed history where the hero of Fereldan died during the joining and Alistair had lead the defense of Denerim. You play not as the noble heroes, but as the darkspawn themselves. This great concept has been utterly wasted in this miserable add on for Origins.
The action starts out in the city as you take control of a Hurlock Vanguard fighter, a Darkspawn with a fancy helmet and the ability to enthrall, or forcibly recruit, others. This is how you assemble a four-person party, enthralling Genlock archers, Hurlock warriors, magic slinging Emissaries, and even Shrieks and Ogres. The whole pack is a combat crawl through the streets of the burning city. The meat of the pack is in fighting and killing the characters from the main game. This has a real impact as you have spent hours with these characters and know them quite well. Its also interesting to see how the characters fared without the warden, and suffice to say its a tragic take on the events of the main story.
The problems with Darkspawn chronicles are mainly a combination of bugs that ruin the combat. I have gotten stuck in corners playing this on several occasions. There is a point where you lose a part of your party and it can be impossible to get them back. The powers do not work as intended and the pack has frame rate hitches. The pack has nothing outside of its combat, no moral decisions, no dialogue and no exploration.
Darkspawn chronicles the short length, lack of customization options, and absence of any real character interaction make it a waste of time. Its numerous technical problems and sheer boredom factor combined with the fact that a great concept was this badly botched make this dlc revolting and desirable to avoid.
Pros:
A saddening take on events without the warden
Killing characters you have spent dozens of hours with has an impact
Cons:
Too short for its price
Riddled with technical issues
Load times are awful
Combat is boring
No decisions, conversations or branching paths
Devoid of meaningful content
A good concept was ruined
Wtf:
Oghren leads a band of drunkards, and Herren is a demon
Darkspawn Chronicles(Xbox 360) by dudacles on February 09, 2011
If there's anything Homer's Iliad has taught us, it's probably that every conflict has two sides to it. Both men wielding the blade against one another on the battlefield have their own reasons for doing so, and it is important not to diabolise either party until you have a full understanding of their respective ideologies. Dragon Age: Origins featured an excellent story that saw you, a valiant Grey Warden, beat off the threat of the Darkspawn. However, the question of what drives the Darkspaw...
Darkspawn Chronicles(Xbox 360) by berezov on July 06, 2010
Wanting to get back into Dragon Age: Origins I popped the disc into my 360 to find some downloadable content, so I see something called “The Darkspawn Chronicles”, the description reads “Play as the Darkspawn” I thought “sweet!”, 400MB later I was met with what has to be the most disappointing DLC I have played since Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot. As soon as you boot up the Darkspawn Chronicles you watch the a brief opening scene showing the main character, a Hurlock Vanguard, with no customisation...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful.
This edit will also create new pages on Giant Bomb for:
Beware, you are proposing to add brand new pages to the wiki along
with your edits. Make sure this is what you intended. This will likely
increase the time it takes for your changes to go live.
Comment and Save
Until you earn 1000 points all your submissions need to be vetted by other
Giant Bomb users. This process takes no more than a few hours and we'll
send you an email once approved.
0 Comments