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?

  • novibe@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • Schlock@beehaw.org
    1·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • Stillhart@lemm.ee
    1·
    1 year ago

    Origins is definitely the best and the closest to that classic Bioware feel you like.

    DA2 was polarizing but I enjoyed it. Very different from the first mechanically. Worth playing tho, IMHO.

    DA:I was… not fun for me. I feel like they tried to modernize the formula and added all the worst parts of modern (at the time) games, namely HUGE time sinks for no reason because it’s not a fucking MMORPG that makes money by the hour. /deep breath Sorry, I am still a little bitter at how that game turned out. Anyways, probably worth checking out, maybe you will feel differently. But it wasn’t for me.

    • Sean@lemmy.ml
      1·
      1 year ago

      Dragon age 2 was insanely fun to me, i definitely played it more than origins. (Im aware I’m not in the majority with that) I thought the combat was so fun and i loved doing different play throughs with different builds in that game

    • FIash Mob #5678@beehaw.org
      0·
      1 year ago

      DA2 was polarizing but I enjoyed it.

      The writing was pretty good. Just gets boring playing literally the same ten maps over, and over, and over, and over again.

      • CoffeeMan@ttrpg.network
        0·
        1 year ago

        DA2 takes a different take for me when I realized that you’re playing through Varric’s retelling of the story. It kinda explains why people are falling out of the sky to join the battle and other inconsistencies.

        • beetelier@beehaw.org
          1·
          1 year ago

          This gets often overlooked, glad it got brought up. The entire game is an exercise in unreliable narration. Gives you a very different lens to experience the game through.