I have never played any of the Dragon Age games, but I just gained access to the GamePass tier that has EA games, so I can play any of them.
I absolutely love all of Bioware’s “classic” works (KOTOR, Mass Effect) where conversation choices affect the plot of the game. Would you guys recommend just playing the Dragon Age games in order of release, or what is the general consensus?
I love Dragon Age: Origins. One of the best “modern” RPGs for sure. Great replayability. Great characters. Great “rpgness”.
I also love Dragon Age 2. It’s not a great game… but I actually like the story more. I like how more “focused” it feels narrative-wise. The characters are also great. The “rpgness” is less good… and development issues makes for a lot of reused assets.
I kinda like Dragon Age: Inquisition. I’ve been replaying it recently. The story is decent. The characters are also good. Maybe even better tbh. I like the main plot points and the ideas etc. But the game mechanics kinda suck… I hate the pointless missions that take time like mobile games. The way the story progresses, with meta-points blocking things also sucks. But it’s ok…
All in all, I would recommend playing them all. But kinda like watching all the Godfather movies. One is great, another is pretty good, and one kinda sucks but it’s ok. But if you just watch the one that’s great, you kinda miss the whole thing.
If you are here for branching stories with a lot of player choice you basically have to start with Origins. The save transfers up to the third game and it has a lot of callbacks that could have played out differently if you picked different things in the first two games. It’s basically the only redeeming quality of DA:Inquisition for me.
The first and it’s addons. Full stop.
Honestly, it depends on how aware you are of fantasy tropes. I found the DA games to be utterly boring and predictible point for point, and I’d be sitting there going “Oh, this is where X is going to happen…” and sure enough…
If you haven’t played a lot of fantasy games or read a lot of fantasy fiction, they’re probably fine… I found them annoying.
Spoilers, probably:
Origins and Inquisition. One was a masterpiece and the other was also great.
But I would suggest that you start wir Dragon Age inquisition since Origins simply feels like the old game that it is.
I agree on point one.
Disagree on point two.
DAO does have some age, but the writing is much, much better than in DAI. (Also, and I can’t emphasize this enough, play DA:O’s expansion pack. IT IS SUPERB.) Further, most of the side-quests in DAI feel like empty, MMO junk, whereas every side quest has some meaning in DAO.
I would agree with most about DA:O and Awakening. I consider that DA2 is also a good game, BUT it is really different from DA:O, and I feel like I liked it more after having replayed it later on.
I don’t really like DA:I, and it is only worth it if you also play the endgame DLC, because the base game ending is really underwhelming. And, the game managed to implement everything that I hate about “Open World” games.
i love love love origins and da2, i have da2 tattoos, but i don’t know if I’d really recommend them. dai is overambitious and less well written than the other 2. I would give them all a shot but not feel bad about bouncing off the combat and graphics of any of them.
Dragon Age Origins, this is the way.
