# Dragon Age: Origins

9 Hacker News commenters recommended Dragon Age: Origins and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 2 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Praised as BioWare's last great game and a well-regarded party-based RPG. Critics find the real-time-with-pause combat clunky and it scales poorly on 4K monitors.

## Why people recommend it

- BioWare's last great game (2 comments): "The last impressive things they shipped were Mass Effect and DA:O." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50185616)) "Their last really good game was Dragon Age: Origins." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50185385))
- Well-regarded Dragon Age series entry (2 comments): "dragon age origins and dragon age 2 had the spirit of it, and felt like a party-based tactical RPG" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50185276)) "The first dragon's age was absolutely ace too." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50187039))

## What people warn about

- Clunky combat and RPG design (2 comments): "Realtime with pause is a horrible monstrosity. It combines the worst parts of action and turn based." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50186461)) "The first game is really clunky as an RPG and is really mostly saved by the characters and story." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49539181))
- Poor scaling on 4K monitors (1 comments): "it doesn't scale very good on a 4k monitor without 3rd party software but other than that it's a great show of backwards compatibility" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48650013))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Baldur's Gate 3](https://hackerapproved.com/p/baldur-s-gate-3.md): 71 recommend
- [Clair Obscur: Expedition 33](https://hackerapproved.com/p/clair-obscur-expedition-33.md): 58 recommend
- [Ultima VII Revisited](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ultima-vii.md): 24 recommend
- [Disco Elysium](https://hackerapproved.com/p/disco-elysium.md): 23 recommend
- [Chrono Trigger](https://hackerapproved.com/p/chrono-trigger.md): 23 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Dragon Age: Origins", https://hackerapproved.com/p/dragon-age-origins/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).