My Experience With The Dragon Age Series

It was recently announced that the upcoming Dragon Age game would be titled Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, a title that will be particularly interesting to fans familiar with Dragon Age lore. This news reminded me that, while I’ve touched on Dragon Age here and there, I haven’t shared my thoughts on the franchise and what I think about each individual entry. Therefore, I thought it would be interesting to share my experience with the Dragon Age series as well as what I think about each of the main three games.

When Dragon Age: Origins was originally announced, I was incredibly excited. I had absolutely loved Mass Effect and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and I was eager to see how Bioware tackled a fantasy setting. It’s worth noting that I had little to no experience with Baldur’s Gate, the game series that Dragon Age: Origins acted as a spiritual successor to, but as soon as I got the chance to play it in November, 2009, I was instantly drawn into the world of Thedas, the world of the Dragon Age games.

Admittedly, I did choose to play the game on easy difficulty, as I tended to do at the time, but I still loved the fantasy setting, the intriguing characters, the RPG mechanics and the grey morality behind many of the decisions you have to make. I replayed the game several times, making new decisions and seeing how they impacted the story, and I eventually learned to play and appreciate Dragon Age: Origins as a tactical RPG, zooming out the camera and selecting what each character should do in combat. Dragon Age: Origins is by no means a perfect game, it has plenty of stiff and awkward animation, the main villain of the game feels almost tertiary to the experience and there are plenty of pointless side-quests that feel like busywork but I still hold Dragon Age: Origins and its expansion, Awakening, with high regard.

It was a surprisingly long time before I got the chance to play the rest of the Dragon Age games. Dragon Age II was released on 8th of March, 2011 but was removed from the Steam storefront within a few months. After that, EA seemed to release their PC games exclusively on Origin, their own digital distribution platform, and, not having a good experience with Origin via Spore, I shrugged my shoulders and played other games instead. It wasn’t until EA returned to Steam in 2020 that I considered returning to Dragon Age. I bought Dragon Age II and Dragon Age Inquisition while they were discounted, replayed Dragon Age: Origins and its expansion to remind myself of the characters and world and, finally, started playing Dragon Age II.

Now I’d be lying if I said I went into Dragon Age II with no expectations. I’d heard mixed things with some people considering it to be an underrated gem and others deploring it as changing too much from Dragon Age: Origins. I, for the most part, found Dragon Age II to be a good, if not particularly inspiring, game. I would agree with many of the criticisms labelled against it such as the simplification of the combat, the lost tactical overview was particularly disappointing, the fewer options available within the dialogue and the game’s graphics having a more strangely stylised look. However, I did think that the story overall was pretty well-told, the animations for both conversation and combat were dramatically improved and the cast, even if many of them paled compared to Dragon Age: Origins, did end up becoming interesting and likable. My biggest surprise actually came from the playtime of 30 hours which, compared to many other Bioware games that could easily double that, seemed quite short. Nonetheless, the game did exceed my expectations and I certainly don’t hate it as much as some people do, even if I still prefer the first game.

Now we get to the interesting one, Dragon Age: Inquisition. Keep in mind that the only things I knew about Dragon Age: Inquisition before playing it was that it incorporated open-world gameplay and had won Game of the Year at the Game Awards. Therefore, I was quite excited to begin playing. However, I immediately ran into various issues that would hamper my enjoyment. I did appreciate that the open world was split into various zones but many of these zones felt entirely superfluous with my example being the Hissing Wastes which felt entirely pointless. The RPG elements felt even more simplified than Dragon Age II, which I was certainly not expecting, with stat allocation being automatic and the skill trees feeling restrictive compared to the other games. That’s not to say that Dragon Age: Inquisition is a bad game, I did enjoy certain zones of the game, some of the characters were quite enjoyable and interesting and I did admire the ambition of certain mechanics like the ability to customise your keep. However, the game itself, beyond making many game design decisions that I was unhappy with, feels overly bloated with pointless exploration and side-quests and I came out of the experience feeling quite disappointed.

I’m certainly curious to see what Dragon Age: Dreadwolf is going to be like but, considering the financial and critical success of Dragon Age: Inquisition, I’m worried that the style and feel of the original Dragon Age is going to be lost. Of course, that is only my opinion. Let me know your thoughts on my experience with the Dragon Age series, what you think of each Dragon Age game, whether you agree or disagree with me on the direction of the Dragon Age franchise and any additional information you might have on the topic.

Thanks for reading and if you wish to seek any of the titles I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs! Also feel free to follow my curator page on Steam “JRPG Reviews” for thoughts and opinions on any JRPGs that I play and my YouTube channel “Victory Achieved Gaming” where I guide my friend through challenging games.