*minor spoilers*

Dragon Age Dawn of the Seeker (DADS) is an hour and a half cg Japanese anime based in the Dragon Age universe, following the story of Seeker Cassandra Pentaghast (from DAII) as she fights against plotters who wish to overthrow the Chantry.

Before I get critical, let's start with the good stuff. The voice acting is well done considering that the movie is foreign and dubbed. Cassandra has a different voice actress, but she did an excellent job at imitating the accent and her voice is indistinguishable from the performance in DAII. However, by far the greatest redeeming feature of the film (at least for nerds like myself) is the fact it centers around the Chantry. For the very first time DA fans get to see the Divine and her headquarters in the Grand Cathedral in Val Royeaux, Orlais. The climax even takes place in the Chantry version of St. Peter's Basilica.

But lets get down to brass tacks:

DADS has bizzare fluctuations in animation quality throughout the entire movie. For the most part the animation was simplistic, with the majority of things lacking detail. Even then DADS managed to throw some pretty pathetic looking CG at us (its ogres DX). However, fast forward to the climax, and you'll see a pride demon that is so well done that it wouldn't be out of place in a theatrical movie with an actual budget. The fact that it is such a mixed bag makes you wonder what was going on in the studio.

The story is a convoluted and has a lot of stupid decisions. There isn't any dramatic tension, and nothing is at stake. Tension arises when we root for the hero against opposition. Since our hero is a dragonslayer who cannot die, trying to save a CG old lady we know nothing about, there is no tension. Not much more can be said about it.

The Characters: Enter Cassandra, a Seeker and dragon hunter who can only express herself with flashbacks. She is incredibly boring, inhumanly strong, and dumber than a rock, but that's ok because she looks like an animated sex doll. Her decisions WILL baffle you, and you will probably wish death on her before the end. The antagonists of the film are similarly dim. There's a blood mage shapeshifter who forgets he has an army of hundreds of ogres, golems, and mages, and instead decides to mind control a girl who can mind control dragons. The dragons can't mind control anything, unfortunately, but three steps of mind control would be too unstable anyway. Then there's the Templar leader who teams up with the blood mages in order to put a new Divine in power, because the new divine would crack down on the blood mages. The only characters who seem somewhat normal are the minor side characters and Galyan, the plucky and kind sidekick who Cassandra tries to murder repeatedly over the first half of the film.

To finish: DADS may have some amusement for dragon age fans, but everyone else should steer clear. And DO NOT spend money on this. Watch it for free on the internet.