Opinions on DAO’s DLCs and various questions?

What I say is gonna be all over the place, but it’s just because I have so much I wanna say, and I don’t have any friends who have played Dragon Age so I just wanna get it all out lol. If I were to break these down, it would be like ten different posts, so for now it’s a jumble of various discussion points and questions 😅

I just finished DAO and all its DLC content (as a human female noble) for the first time, and I have to say, while at first the combat system made me think I was gonna hate the game, I ended up really enjoying it for its characters (despite its MANY bugs which I’m surprised have never been patched).

It wasn’t until after Ostagar that I actually found myself getting invested, and once I was in Lothering, the game had me hooked. I instantly fell in love with Leliana and she ended up becoming my fav character (and in-game GF), which was only compounded by the Tarantino-vibe DLC she got lol. Like for real, the cutscenes felt so Kill Bill, especially at the very beginning, and it was kickass.

Golems of Amgarrak was whatever, but it was cool seeing more about the dwarves, and the Harvesters were freaky AF. Witch Hunt was cool, but I really would’ve liked to have actually gotten the chance to really speak to Ariane and Finn, and learn more about them as people. When I saw that they had approval bars, I got kinda excited and thought I’d get the chance to really talk to them, since Golems didn’t have approval bars for Jerrik and Brogan. But while it ended up being entertaining to listen to Ariane and Finn’s banter with the dog, I felt sad that I couldn’t join in and talk to either of them unless it was plot stuff 💀

Awakening was great. I was sad about Mhairi, and it was a bummer that I never got to do Sigrun’s personal mission and that I accidentally went into the Silverite Mine before confronting Velanna, but overall it was still pretty fun. Anders was great, I was intrigued by being forced to deal with Nathaniel after his father murdered my character’s family, Oghren’s return kept a sense of familiarity, and Justice was an interesting concept.

Btw, I got the ending for Velanna where she said she saw Seranni in the Deep Roads and walked away, disappearing. Was the game trying to imply that it was Velanna’s guilt over letting Seranni go in the Mother’s lair and it was a hallucination, or was it implying that Seranni actually did lead her away from the others that Velanna was travelling with? Because I kind of think it was the latter, as Seranni and the darkspawn had gone into the Deep Roads anyway.

But one more question I have. Are the other games worth playing? I heard that the Warden character doesn’t come back and you play as different characters going forward, which kinda bums me out because I grew attached to the Warden the way I got attached to Commander Shepard in ME. But I’ve also heard that Inquisition is incredible, I’ve heard Veilguard is a serious mixed bag, and I’ve heard conflicting things about DA2.