So first up is Dragon Age: Origins. I've only completed two actual complete playthroughs and never found the motivation to do more than that (plus, the save system prevents me from crafting more characters). In story, I think Dragon Age: Origins was pretty good. Granted, it was riddled with fantasy clichés and not-so-subtle tropes, but on the whole, I thought the main plot was pretty solid. My first, and to this day favorite, playthrough was that of a male city elf rogue. I found the story more engaging and meaningful in that playthrough. Climbing from the lowest rank in society to become a respected and admired hero with a heart of gold struck me very personally for a number of reasons. As for the characters, I liked most of them and they had some rather entertaining backstories, personalities, and, most importantly, character developments. My favorites were Alistair and Morrigan, although Shale and Sten were also really good. I never invested the time to romance Leliana or Zevran in any session, but I did pursue romances with both Morrigan and Alistair, which could account for my affinity towards them.

The combat in Dragon Age: Origins was pretty basic in my opinion, but functional and provided a number of ways to plan and strategize, which is a major plus in my book. But once I came back from Dragon Age 2, I was... underwhelmed, to say the least. In retrospect, Origins's combat was just what I said above, simple and functional, but hardly engaging. On easier difficulties, I rarely had a real reason to strategize or plan encounters; I could just hit the attack button and watch the combat play itself out, with the only input from me being selecting new targets or sporadically activating talents. Also, for all its varied locations, the environments never really shook me with awe.

In short, I think the plot and characters were Origins's greatest strengths, but also rather mediocre in retrospect. Its combat and dungeons/overworld were varied, but bland. I still think it's a great game, but it hasn't aged well.

Next, there's Mass Effect. Having recently gone through and completed another campaign, my memories regarding this game are fresher. I recall losing interest very early in the game (during the lengthy prologue) and nearly quitting a few times. I'm glad I didn't though. The biggest draws to me, of course, was the overall plot and well-designed characters that Bioware is known for. I feel as if the main plot of Mass Effect was very short though with only four main objectives needed to bridge the distance between the prologue and final mission. The sidequests were fun, as expected, but I also got easily annoyed with 90% of the human NPCs I encountered in the game, especially the Alliance representative, Admiral Hackett. It felt like every time I reached a new area of the game, this Hackett was constantly blipping in to demand my help. I wouldn't mind so much if he didn't constantly remind me that Shepard is a human and therefor obligated to advance human interests even at the cost of other races. If anything wanted to make me go renegade, it was the neediness of the human Alliance.

As for combat and exploration, I grew accustomed to it and found I enjoyed it about as much as I initially enjoyed both in Dragon Age: Origins. The third-person perspective bothered me a bit and I'm normally not a shooter-type gamer, so it took more effort on my part to settle into a reliable rhythm. The exploration aspect was a bit... rougher, I'd say. Initially, I hated the Mako and still maintain a love-hate relationship with it. On one hand, it's gratifying to mow down ground troops with its gun and rockets, but on the other, getting to different points on the map can be frustrating. It doesn't go faster, it can get stuck in certain places, and, while it's good at long range combat, when enemies get close or are at an angle, you become a sitting duck. The planets themselves had a lot of flavor, but the terrain was often built in such a way that you almost had to take the long way around.

Finally, the companions for the game were just as good as I'd expect from a Bioware game. My favorites this time were Tali'Zorah and Garrus. The main things that disappointed me about them is the lack of conversational options with party members and the fact that romance in Mass Effect was very limited. Both are probably the result of being the first game of its kind with the added fact that the romance scenes were originally protested against for being "pornographic" in nature. My romance options were limited to either Ashley or Liara since I was playing a male Shepard, but didn't find either character appealing. I also begrudge the fact that the romance with Ashley was practically shoved in my face a few times when trying to talk to her. It never went anywhere (thank all the gods) and I chose to sacrifice her to save Kaidan (who I actually thought was the superior character). I guess, my opinion on the human characters overall was rather negative. Practically all of them, except Shepard and Dr. Chakwas, acted very xenophobic and kinda racist. That's always been my biggest issue with the game.

Which leads me to Mass Effect 2. As if to rub salt in my wounds, the next game forced me to work for a seemingly human-supremacist private company known as Cerberus. While I didn't notice as much blatant xenophobia as I did in the first game, I still grew steadily frustrated with the goals and opinions of both Cerberus and the Alliance. I've started to get the impression that Bioware is making a statement with their Mass Effect series, which is "if nothing else, humans are wonderful racists." Given that I grew up on sci-fi staples like Star Trek and Star Wars with their pro-alien policies, my opinion was easily colored against humans in general. Anyways, my only other major gripe was the startling contrast in combat and level-up processes. Why on earth did Bioware decide to switch from infinite ammo with a thermal limit to actual clips? Reloading is a pain in the ass during combat and finding more ammunition conveniently dropped by enemies is tedious and stupid. Furthermore, the new HUD isn't as useful as the original one. They tried to refine the combat, but it felt broken to me. Leveling up wasn't even exciting to me anymore. I think Bioware would've been better off leaving the combat and squad subscreens alone.

However, the companions made noticeable and commendable upgrades. I could actually tolerate the human characters and I was overjoyed to final commence an actual relationship with Tali. That quarian is one of my favorite waifus in video games. I loved the return of familiar faces and the new ones weren't that bad themselves either. Overall, I liked Mass Effect 2, but I still disdain the more traditional shooter combat they switched to.

Finally, Dragon Age 2. This game gets a pretty bad rep, but for reasons I don't necessarily agree with. I'll admit that the environments were dull and repetitive, but I didn't particularly mind. It meant that I knew where to find hidden goodies and that it was easier to find my objective. The characters were all gorgeous too. Merrill, Anders, and Isabela were all familiar and welcome additions to the sequel and I hold a lot of love for Varric, Aveline, Fenris, Sebastian, and even Carver (the witty banter between Mage!Hawke and Carver in the Legacy DLC is priceless). Bethany was pretty much the only main companion that I didn't develop a strong connection with. I just felt that she was flat and uninteresting (it also doesn't help that she becomes even less relevant after Act I).

The combat and story felt more vivid and engaging to me. I don't get why the story is criticized either. It's a very personal story that spans several years of one person's life. I hear that the reason the story was disliked is because it was disjointed and seemed as if Hawke had little, if any, impact in it. That's not true, in my opinion. Hawke is what literature refers to as a tragic or failure hero. Despite his best efforts everything falls apart and he is powerless to stop history's inertia. Hawke's allies can all betray or leave him at any point in the game. Bethany/Carver is effectively gone after Act 1, Isabela may leave for good at the end of Act 2, and the final act can force other companions to actually fight against you. The only exception being Varric. On many levels, I felt as if Dragon Age 2's story was more powerful and less formulaic than Origins's (hell, Origins is pretty much the Lord of the Rings; I mean, you've got an exiled prince {Alistair=Aragorn}, a mage {Wynne=Gandalf}, an elf {Zevran=Legolas}, a dwarf {Oghren=Gimli}, and so on). As for combat, it was very actionized in a good way. Button mashing has never felt more rewarding.

In short, I believe that Dragon Age 2 is superior to Origins in every way except perhaps dungeons and skills.

1. Dragon Age 2
2. Mass Effect
3. Dragon Age: Origins
4. Mass Effect 2
5. Dragon Age: Inquisition
?. Mass Effect 3 (I haven't played enough of it to make a final decision on where I stand with it.)

Story was a standard, boilerplate "end of the world" type. It worked, pacing was good, the mystery surrounding the Prothean extinction as well as the impending doom for the galaxy and the winning of the final battle against Sovereign was very well done.

Combat was okay, though I prefer the combat in ME2. Driving the Mako was a love/hate thing for me, and the squad tactical thing never really made all that much sense to me so I usually will just do my own thing and let my squad mates do their own thing and if they get hit or I get hit, at least I have some idea of what's going on.

A lot of the maps were repetitive (I think you're going to find this true of a lot of BioWare games). There were just a few different kinds of buildings and that was pretty much it, and you had the same basic layout with maybe a door that didn't open in one that opened up in another, and so on.

The characters were well developed and so on, and though the dialogue is stilted at the very beginning of the game it starts to become more natural as time goes on.

I wasn't that big a fan of the soundtrack, to be honest, because it reminded me so much of the cheesy science fiction films that played in theaters in the 70's through the mid-80's. Aside from the obvious big hits like Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and the Star Trek films, most had a lot of disco-ish sounding soundtracks combined with really shitty effects and though the music in Mass Effect was good, I just felt it tried too hard to be futuristic.

So all in all, I loved Mass Effect 1, but there was definitely room for improvement.

I liked this one a lot better than the first game for various reasons. The story was one of those side-trip stories that takes you away from the main plot overall but still has the End of the World thing directly tied in with it. I liked how the Collectors were actually repurposed Protheans and how they referred to their mindless fanaticism as a form of "ascension." It really takes the whole ME1 concept of "indoctrination" up a few notches.

Combat was much better, far more refined. You could vault over things, you could reload your weapon, a lot of the combat movement was better and snappier. And the Mako was replaced with a faster, more-enjoyable-to-drive hovercraft which, while still difficult to maneuver in some cases, it had a lot more options when you were behind the wheel, and the existing options were much more effective.

I wasn't a huge fan of the puzzles in ME1, and I'm also not that big a fan of the puzzles in ME2, however the ones in ME2 are themselves more varied and enjoyable to work with (with the exception of the one where you have to connect the dots because my mouse doesn't seem to like to cooperate when I'm doing those).

Dialogue was far better in this game and much more natural all the way through. The soundtrack was also an improvement over the original one from ME1, in that even though it still had that cheesy 70's "trying too hard to sound futuristic" thing to it, it also incorporated a more classical sound that made it a lot more epic sounding, and that really made a huge difference in my opinion.

So while I liked ME1, I loved ME2. Much improved over the original all around.

I liked this game less than ME1, but I still liked it. There were a lot of things about ME3 that I absolutely hated, the 20+ minute unskippable cutscnes, the more generic shooter feel the game had as compared with previous installments, and the online requirement to get the best ending really sucked (though there was a cheat which made that into much less of a problem, thankfully). Also, the inability to holster your weapon really jarred me. It made me think less of ME3 as the role playing game that BioWare sold the first two games as and more of a Call of Duty shooter. It was Mass Effect, but at the same time it wasn't.

The story was well-written, though the ending felt rushed and really incomplete. I got the extended cut DLC and I was so much happier with it than with the original version. A lot of people hate on ME3 for its ending and how the choices you made don't seem to have any real effect on the ending, but I don't see that as a problem. All Shepard is as far as the Reapers are concerned is an annoyance, so why would all his other choices really matter when it comes to the final confrontation and the final choice he has to make?

Combat was very well done, and it was also... easy? Combat in ME3 seems much easier than combat in either of the previous two games, almost to the point of hand-holding. The puzzle mini-games are completely gone now and you just hold down a button to open secure locks and so on. I could get headshots on Cerberus operatives much more often in ME3 than I could in ME2, and while I suppose that does do something good for the enjoyment of the story, the combat does suffer as a result.

The soundtrack is... pretty decent. Not as epic and grand as ME2's was, but it's good. Also, that piano part was very memorable and really drove home the sense of what was at stake in this entire game and really in the entire franchise.

Of the Dragon Age games, this is my second favorite. Not because of the story or because of the combat, because most of that stuff is pretty plain-jane when all is said and done. No, for me, it's the emotions, the characterizations, the moral gray areas, the things the Warden can do and get away with. I like how Morrigan is a bitch and doesn't apologize for it, and how on the other side of the spectrum Leliana is a goody-two-shoes who also is unapologetic about herself.

I did like the origin stories for each race and class a lot. I was not happy, really, with there only being one mage origin, though I suppose I understand the reasoning behind it as there was a Dalish Mage origin included in the coding but it was essentially exactly the same as a Dalish anything else origin). I enjoyed the political intrigue, the exploration, etc., though like I said, mechanically the game was pretty generic. Also, a lot of the maps were recycled over and over again, especially the random encounter ones, with the only real difference being which doors went anywhere and where enemies were placed depending upon the particular encounter you were going through. People love to rage on DA:2 for doing this same thing, but tend to forget that Dragon Age: Origins did it too.

Combat is repetitive, very blah all things considered. Difficulty settings... BioWare, what the fuck were you thinking with the difficulty settings on this game? Seriously. When I set a game's difficulty to "easy," I expect that it will be easier to play than it was when I was playing it on "normal." If it is easier, then it's only ever so slightly easier to the point of being relatively irrelevant. This game is hard no matter how you slice it. Thankfully, though, the game's squad tactics are far superior to those in any of the Mass Effect games. They are one of the truly great shining points of light in the otherwise dreary combat system of Dragon Age: Origins.

Also, the leveling up is wonderful, really in-depth and allows you to do so much customization to your character that you just don't get in later franchise installments.

This is going to come across as pure blasphemy to some folks, but I liked Dragon Age 2 better than Dragon Age: Origins. In fact, I think it's the best in the franchise so far. The combat was much more engaging and far more satisfying than in either Origins or Inquisition. The moral gray areas were still a huge part of DA:2. You could be a good character or an evil character, it was really fun.

Story was pretty good really. A sort of "rags to riches" type of story which went really well right up until the ending, which like Mass Effect 3 felt very rushed and left a lot of things unexplained. For instance, why does Anders' destruction of the Chantry in Kirkwall require the entire Kirkwall Circle to be killed? He's not even a member of the circle, he's a rogue Warden, and a pretty whiny one at that. Also, why did the mage leader suddenly decide to become a harvester? No real explanation is ever given, it just kind of happens.

I was glad to see characters come back from DA:O. Merril, for instance, who came from the same Dalish clan as a Dalish warden. Anders, who was a Warden mage from Awakening. Flemeth, the Witch of the Wilds (and I so like how they remade her so she looked more like a powerful dragon goddess type instead of an old hag like they made her out to be in Origins). Lots of old characters that had cameos as well as some who had major parts to play.

One thing I didn't like about this game was the way it would send hordes of little nothings your way to fight you and you could just sweep them out with no problem, and then suddenly it would throw a hard ball right down your throat with one enemy that was really powerful and would just wipe your entire squad out just by looking at you. At the same time, though, the tactics were pretty robust in DA:2 so you had that to fall back on if you needed it.

The soundtrack was good, though it also is the source of the one main reason I hardly ever play Dragon Age 2 anymore: that damnable little repetitive tune that plays every single time you finish a quest. Mass Effect 2 had one as well and it also drove me crazy. If there was a way to remove that one little song, I'd do it, but the way the game is made, you cannot replace it with any tracks that are not from the game itself.

Finally, the repetetive maps. DA:O used repetitive maps and nobody seemed to care. Mass Effect 1 used repetitive maps and nobody seemed to care. So why is it such a terrible thing for Dragon Age 2 to use repetitive maps? Personally, I don't think it is, and the people who use the "all the maps are the same" argument are really just grasping at straws to find anything and everything wrong with this game that they possibly can.

Definitely the biggest game in the Dragon Age franchise, it's a far more open world experience than either of the previous two. When it came out people were comparing its open world feel to that of Skyrim. And it is a very big game. That being said, though, Inquisition really isn't all that much of an improvement over anything else in the franchise, and though it definitely looks pretty and has a lot of the same things that made earlier Dragon Age games great, it is by far my least favorite installment in the franchise.

For one thing, you are only the good guy. You don't get nearly the morally gray options that you got in either of the previous two games. Blood magic is a no-go, supposedly because of how it wouldn't work with the story (never mind that it didn't work in the stories of either Origins or DA:2 and yet it was very much okay to be a blood mage in either one). Everybody seems to be either super pious or super evil, or if they're on the fence on anything they're just confused and haven't picked a side yet, and I find that the Inquisitor's job seems to be more centered around convincing everyone else that the Chantry's god is supreme than around defeating Corypheus.

And that brings me to another point: Corypheus was a boss in a DA:2 DLC. And the final battle against Corypheus in the DLC was much harder than it is in DA:I. Why put a dead DLC enemy in as a resurrected god in the main game and make him weaker than he was in the previous game's DLC? That doesn't make any sense at all, at least not to me.

And also a lot of your choices in previous games don't seem to matter in DA:I. For instance if you killed Leliana in the Sacred Ashes quest in DA:O, she is resurrected by the Maker in Inquisition, and she'll even tell you as much if you ask her.

The combat... sucks. There's really no other way to put it. The combat is bad. It's got all the fancy dancing around that you had in DA:2 but nowhere near the effectiveness it had in either DA:2 or DA:O. There are no healing spells anymore, and you now have a limit as to how many potions you can carry. Also remember what I said about DA:O's really in-depth leveling system? Well, it's really super-simplistic in DA:I. When you choose a class you get absolutely no say whatsoever in what attribute points go where, and it was that ability in the previous games that made it possible to make characters that were truly satisfying to play.

The story is good, I'll give it that. I like the ending they gave to the main story, especially the part between Flemeth and Solas at the end, and I like the endings the DLC give, especially the Trespasser one, which really fleshes out the whole situation with Solas a lot better. But it's still really a very preachy game and I don't really consider DA:I to be a role playing game so much as a morality play.

1. Mass Effect 2
2. Dragon Age 2
3. Dragon Age: Origins
4. Mass Effect 1
5. Mass Effect 3
6. Dragon Age: Inquisition

Best story of them all. Has a refreshing cinematic flair and broader freedom in the choices given that we just don't see these days. My memory tells me that the consequences of the dialogue options were too unclear, but those impressions are too hazy for me to be confident in them. I tried replaying it a few years ago, and it reminded me of a cheesy, overly-dramatic space-themed TV show, but in a good way. However, my replay was derailed around the first real, involved combat situation (I remember trying to use a sniper rifle). The outdated combat mechanics and leveling system are so painful.

Didn't really like it, honestly. It was okay but utterly failed to capture what ME1 had. A pale imitation and typical by the numbers sequel effort. Combat was improved, dialogue was dumbed down too much, quests followed a boring structure. Bioware probably put more effort into planning the final mission outcomes than any other part of the game, and even that failed to communicate why some decisions were best where others led to a less-than-perfect outcome.

I didn't expect much from the story given ME2, and my expectation was met. Story had plastic-level emotional depth, although Mordin's sacrifice was great. The indoctrination theory would have made for a better game. The tech behind the game created a few nice audio and visual experiences. Dialogue was mediocre. Combat was excellent, but it only felt excellent in multiplayer. Leveling system was streamlined even more, and it made for a better experience in multiplayer than it did single player.

This is the only multiplayer game I play currently. Right now, my sensibilities say fuck UT3 and the handful of annoying regulars I've tolerated for years. People need to pull their heads out of their asses, but they only get sucked in deeper with time. Almost every night I'd finish playing pissed off at some things that happened in-game and would take over an hour to wind down. Too bad it's also the best game I've ever played. Anyway, my N7HQ says I have over 1300 hours... but some of that is having the game launched and idle for hours. My manifest is maxed (e.g., every weapon, item, and character fully unlocked), and I'm usually clearly the best player in the lobby when the match is over. My gameplay competence is in the top 1% or 0.1%, but I'm not a true master and don't want to be one.

This was a good RPG. The story was long and it evolved, and Bioware did not shy away from including some rather dark, draining, and gruesome content. There were lots of battles and they had depth. My one, screaming complaint is that the leveling system did an atrocious job at communicating skill effectiveness, so I ended up struggling through the game with mediocre builds. I watched my friend breeze through combat, and I told him that he had a much easier time because "you picked skills that sounded cool", which was apparently the right thing to do.

I beat this game before its mechanics-altering expansion/patch came out.

I liked it, but the gameplay became stale after fully clearing the first big map, holding few gratifying experiences to justify the doldrums. I stopped playing after 100+ hours. The dialogue and voice acting was good-ish, the overall writing was okay, the leveling system was poor, and the combat should have been so much better than it was. I killed a few dragons while underleveled and thought those fights were "stupid". The quality of crafted equipment was moderately disappointing for the crafting system's complexity and the material grind.

My initial multiplayer experience was totally fucking broken. Later on, I tried multiplayer again when everything worked, and it was fun about 20% of the time, annoying 40% of the time, and simply not fun for the final 40% of my time. Much later on, I read from other ME3 players that DA:I's multiplayer promotion system is deeply flawed and terminally unbalanced.

Playing DA:I was a cautionary tale for me because my GTX 480 could not run the game well, which did negatively impact my experience. Because of that, I waited to buy The Witcher 3 on sale and waited more months still to play it until I upgraded my GPU (to a good R9 290X). I absolutely wasn't going to compromise my TW3 experience because I've been a (somewhat undeserved) fan of the series since before there was any hype.

Anyways, that's my opinions on both series so far in relatively exhaustive detail. Thanks for responding, by the way.