Which of these three RPGs should I play?

[Ceremony]

I'm in the process of finally tidying up my PS3 games I've still to play. Three PlayStation Plus efforts sit on my list like, well... like huge, sprawling games of a genre I know nothing about that will take 50+ hours to finish. So, HFBoards, which would you recommend?

Demon's Souls

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

Dragon Age: Origins
​

My previous RPG experience can best be described as negligible.

Click to read more...

 

[SniperHF]

So, HFBoards, which would you recommend?

I think of of the list you would like Demon's Souls the most.
Followed by DA:O.
Then KoA.

 

[Blueline Bomber]

Having played all 3:

Origins is the best.

 

[Commander Clueless]

IMO, Dragon Age is easily the best of them and has my full recommendation. However, it's a little clunky by modern standards.

Demon's Souls - don't take my opinion on this one. I strongly dislike the series, so I'm not a good person to ask.

Kingdoms of Amalur isn't nearly as good as Dragon Age, but it is fun and probably easier to get into. More of an action style of combat than the tactical version Origins offers.

 

[Osprey]

Having played only Origins:

Origins is the best.

 

[firewagonHOCKEY]

DAO but I think it has aged. Great game though. Play it and then be prepared to get disappointed by the rest of them.

 

[NyQuil]

I played all three Dragon Age games in a row again maybe two years ago.

DA:O is by far the best.

The tactical combat is challenging but fun, and lacks the arcade elements of the following two that were spillovers from what was going on with Mass Effect.

The characters, story and world-building is excellent and it's a great standalone story. The DLC add-on is actually kind of fun as well.

There are also some very good mod resources out there now (e.g. Nexus) that can improve elements of the game.

I used one that allowed you to respec your companions which was great because the skill-sets they've picked when they join aren't always ideal and gives you a little more latitude in how you want to develop them.

If you have the inclination and the patience, the NPC programming routines can be a lot of fun. There's a relatively simple editor built into the game where you can define their behaviour and make them surprisingly adaptive and intelligent. For some reason, they eliminated this from the subsequent two games.

After programming my companions, I'd launch a tough battle just to see how well they'd fight without any direction from me. It was very gratifying to see them executing combos with one another, eliminating status effects, healing each other and so on without any instruction.

The move from PC RPG (with ME and DA:O) to console-style RPG (with ME2 and 3 and DA:2 and DA:I) wasn't a transition that I necessarily liked, but I'm more of a tactical player.

I'm playing Divinity: Original Sin now and it's really in my wheelhouse. They really did think of everything.

 

[sabresfan129103]

Demon Souls is great, but Dragon Age: Origins is really something else. That along with Mass Effect 2 are the last great Bioware games. It's really a shame what happened to the Dragon Age series after Origins. PC is really the best way to play Origins. I've never played it on console, so I can't speak to how well it plays there. I'm basically a huge fan of old school CRPG's like Baldur's Gate, so DA: Origins was just about a perfect game to me. I'm a huge sucker for games that have real time with pause combat.

 

[Corto]

Depends on what you like.

DA:O was a brilliant game, the best Bioware game for my tastes, and the last great tactical RPG they ever made (ME1 was legit too).
After that they made ME series into a plastic shooter with RPG elements, ruining the best space opera setting I've ever seen, and they tried to transition DA into an action-RPG but were utterly crap at it.

Like NyQuil said, DA:O has great tactical combat, is fairly large, has a decent amount of choices that you can make and effect the world, the story is excellent with the overarching plot being just the grounds for the "real" story which is about human conflict and morally grey characters, companions weren't horribly simplified and stereotyped like in later DA sequels, etc.
It felt like an old-school isometric RPG (and you could play it like that) with some more modern elements.

Demons Souls is what started the Dark Souls series, and its brilliant, but rough round the edges.
If you were looking for a Souls-like experience, IMO just pick up Dark Souls.
It's hard and punishing - but fair - until you learn the mechanics, then it just becomes brilliant.

KOA:R plays like a single-player MMO.
Its fun, good classes, good combat, decent story (RA Salvatore was working on it lol, dude who wrote so many Drizzt novels, and I gulped that stuff up when I was younger, pulp or not pulp - and it WAS pulp ).
I played through it twice, and I had to delay ending it both times as I got burned out on same-y quests etc.

 

[KingBran]

Out of those three I liked KOA the best. Very sad that Kurt Shilling ran 38 studios into the ground. Game has great reviews and people love it. Was hoping and still am... that maybe someday we will get another. Just fantastic gameplay.