Ferelden, its companions, and choices that weigh on you.

On gut feel, Dragon Age: Origins crushes almost everything: ahead of 95% of games when people pick on instinct. And the emotional criteria back it up. Connection sits ahead of more than eight games in ten, rediscovery ahead of nine in ten, the desert island close behind. This is a game you keep. But two lines pull downward and create the tension. Feel with a controller in hand beats only a third of titles, and art style falls right to the bottom, though that rests on very few votes, so read it carefully. There's the paradox: you love it, you bond deeply with it, yet neither its handling nor its look are part of what you remember.

Among Western RPGs, that makes sense. Tactical pausable combat divides players, and a 2009 game struggles on pure visuals against productions built for today. Its greatness lives in the writing, the characters, the decisions.

So, who's it for? For you if you love a world and its companions haunting you long after the ending. Much less if you judge first by comfort of play and raw beauty of the image.