We always see fantasy worlds at their worst. Ferelden, the setting for Dragon Age: Origins, is no different. The darkspawn have again arisen from the underworld to spread their Blight. Once more the Grey Wardens assembled an army to crush them, but this time the confrontation ends disastrously — to the extent that the rightful leadership of Ferelden is now in question.

As one of the remaining Grey Wardens, it falls on you to end the Blight. Doing so will require unifying a country on the brink of civil war and convincing the dwarves, elves and mages to honor ancient treaties. How did you get to be so lucky?

Answering that question is one of Dragon Age’s strengths. After character creation — matching an elf, human or dwarf with fighting, thieving or magic using abilities — you begin your adventure along one of six paths. Whether starting as an apprentice in the Circle of Magi or running errands for Orzammar’s shadier citizens as a casteless dwarf, you get to explore your background before moving on to the esteemed ranks of the Grey Wardens.

Showcasing your origin story sets the tone for your character, and the choices you make here have ramifications throughout the entire game. This also makes replaying the game more palatable by bypassing the early level repetition of most RPGs. Even if you tend not to replay games, it’s worth exploring some of the other origins — side characters in one storyline are major characters in another and something as simple as a skeleton in a prison can take on poignant meaning.

After go from rookie to last, best hope, the game loses its rails and opens the world map to you. Here you travel by clicking on a location and watching the meandering path your party takes – punctuated by random encounters and scripted events (combat!).

Dragon Age: Origins uses a real time battle system. While you can switch between the four party members to micromanage them in combat, it isn’t required. Each character has several default profiles (which balance aggression against self preservation), but you can tweak the profiles to get the responses you want.

It’s an amazing level of control ranging from simply telling characters to heal themselves to ordering one of your fighters to drop everything and stun the enemy attacking you. It’s a bit of a learning curve, but it’s also the game’s best feature.

While your party is doing what you’ve programmed to do, your own actions depend on your character type. On my first playthrough, I was a rogue who lured enemies into traps before picking them off one by one. The second time around I was a mage who launched fireballs into crowds and summoned blizzards to freeze my enemies. Customization extends beyond the three main classes with specializations you can learn. Fighters, for instance, can range from noble Templars to demonic Reavers.

Overall, I was impressed with Origins’ controls. Most of your character’s abilities can be mapped to the face buttons and lesser used abilities and inventory are easily accessed from a radial menu which — thankfully — pauses the action. Although the combat is real time, I found it often required a level of strategy reserved for turn-based games. And it helps to maintain that tactical level of thinking, even when an ogre lifts your character off the ground and starts pummeling him.

Unlike Bethesda’s RPGs which are exploration-driven, BioWare’s are quest-driven. I prefer the immersive feeling of Cyrodiil, with its day/night cycles and Radiant AI-powered NPCs, but none of Dragon Age’s 60-hour play time is consumed by simply walking from one town to another or stopping to enjoy a sunset over a lake. Every area in Dragon Age is packed with content and filled with dialogue.

I was amazed at how quickly events could turn, based on my conversations. While recruiting the Circle of Magi, I reloaded an earlier save after a poor choice of words led my party to go Order 66 on them. Yes, Alistair, even the younglings.

Gathering elves, dwarves and men to face the forces of darkness may sound a bit Lord of the Rings to you, but Dragon Age earns points for its focus on Fellowship. As you progress through the game, you gain followers. Each character has a different motivation for joining with you and not all of them are there willingly.

Instead of opting for the traditional good/evil meter, Dragon Age tracks how much your party members like you. On the surface, good actions make them like you more, evil actions less – but Dragon Age throws significant moral quandaries your way and you’ll find that you can’t keep everyone happy. I’ve had party members abandon me, challenge me in combat and betray me.

Of course there’s also love. Taking an interest in someone’s life, giving them gifts and fulfilling their wishes (side-quests) may lead to romantic opportunities. I’m talking about sex – or what passes for sex. It’s really a short montage of partially clothed erotic (or homoerotic) poses. A minute later and you’re ready to hit the road again.

Dragon Age: Origins has amazing music (composed by legendary Inon Zur) and ambient audio brings life to environments which are visually stagnant. If you find yourself emotionally affected by the game’s events, it’s due to the superb voice acting. The cast is literally a who’s who of notable voice actors and almost feels like a Star Trek: Voyager reunion. The amount of dialogue in the game is stunning, both in terms of writing and delivery.

Graphically, the game is a disappointment. Textures are muddy. Environments are lifeless. Faces are unexpressive. And there is no convincing facial hair anywhere in the game. Now I’m not usually a graphics whore, but since BioWare elevated digital acting with Mass Effect, I came to Dragon Age with high expectations. Main characters have their beards sink into their chests. Armor digs into characters’ heads during conversations. Characters will be spattered in blood for no reason and will appear in several different outfits during a single cutscene. Most egregious is a major cinematic at game’s end which is so poorly compressed it’s like watching something on YouTube. It comes down to a lack of polish.

This lack of polish carries over to an overly complicated menu system which keeps poor track of quests and an ever expanding codex. You shouldn’t have to hit three different tabs to find all the information you need on a quest. With the level of content in the game, bugged quests are expected but I was happy with the overall stability in the game and the fact that game breaking bugs were rarely encountered.

Swap Grey Wardens for Spectres, darkspawn for the geth, and the Dalish longbow for the HMWA VII Assault Rifle and you might wonder what BioWare is doing here that they didn’t do in Mass Effect.

What they’ve done is reworked the party dynamic so your fellow adventurers are more than mindless followers. They’ve given gamers a compelling reason to visit and revisit the game by offering multiple starting points and a wealth of paths to explore in-game. And they’ve taken what could be a generic fantasy setting and infused it with hundreds of years of its own history. Dragon Age: Origins is another impressive example of BioWare’s world-building even if the world feels unfinished. Let’s call it a Large Flawed Ice Crystal.

Xbox 360 version reviewed. Also available for the PS3, PC, and Mac.