Dragon Age

2024 was a great year for RPGs. I didn’t play all the ones I wanted, but the ones I did play were pretty incredible.

82 hours from start to end, all quests completed, all companions at max bond, all factions but one maxed out, 47/52 achievements. Was it worth it?

Can I win Dragon Age: Veilguard with a bow that has just one arrow and takes ten seconds to reload?

But maybe the Dragon Age series has always been like this…

Dragon Age: Inquisition I’ve been back and forth on this entry. Whether it should be this high on the list. Whether it should even be on this list. And yet I feel if this wasn’t on the list, I’d regret it. Because the fact is, I really enjoyed my time with the Dragon Age games. Dragon Age: Origins was my first exposure to the modern multi-character Mass Effect-style epic RPG for which Bioware was famous. I’d played Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights, but this was something special. Half a dozen different origins – entirely different opening chapters to the game depending upon the race and heritage you chose at the beginning. Elves were reviled. Mages were hated and feared. The classic RPG tropes were turned on their heads. ...

There’s this thing I will always remember about Dragon Age: Awakening. Without explicitly putting the pieces together, there were plenty of hints that the new classes in Dragon Age: Origins’ expansion could connect with the old classes in exciting ways. Turning on the mage ability that drains mana from the corpses of the dead, plus the arcane warrior ability that turns you nearly invulnerable, combined with the battle mage ability that surrounds you with a swirling wind that does every kind of AE elemental damage, and you have someone that can just walk into a room and watch things die, being in fact powered by dying monsters, while the monsters just wish they could hurt you. ...