The 9 Best RPGs Like Dragon Age
Messy, morally gray RPGs wherever you look
BioWare’s Dragon Age is a fantasy RPG series about warring factions, world-ending threats, and, yes, the occasional dragon – but that’s the first-glance take. Get into one Dragon Age game (start with Origins!) and you’ll see that the true heart of this series is the people you drag into hell with you.
The choices you can make in Dragon Age are messy. Your companions get legitimately attached to you — or not; your dating life can complicate your mission; and innocuous decisions you make in hour one can affect the sweeping political options available to you in the series’ biggest moments. Whether you seek more of that exact mix of party banter, branching loyalty quests, and a world that remembers you, or you’re intrigued by the same bones in a different skin — sci-fi crew instead of fantasy party, perhaps — here are 9 games to add to your queue.
9 Divinity: Original Sin 1&2
Why you’ll like this if you like Dragon Age: The cast of well-written characters and intricate combat system (along with Larian Studios’ whimsical charm)
Where to play: PS4, PS5, Windows PC, Xbox Series X
Although Divinity: Original Sin and its sequel are set 1,000 years apart, in both, you’re protecting your fantasy world, Rivellon, from a magical energy (Source) and monsters emanating from the series’ overarching Void. But, luckily, you’re not tackling that alone. Each game gives you the opportunity to gather a party of intrepid explorers to save the world, but, more importantly, bicker constantly as you do.
This dynamic within Divinity: Original Sin and especially Divinity: Original Sin 2 makes the characters the true reason for replay after replay. Sure, you’re solving a murder mystery in Divinity: Original Sin and escaping imprisonment, then surviving the wilds in Divinity: Original Sin 2 — but those are details. Wait until you meet Sebille. You’ll either be best friends or unable to stand each other immediately.
8 Neverwinter Nights (Enhanced Edition)
Why you’ll like this if you like Dragon Age: It’s a 2002 game that helped form today’s RPG genre of real-feeling companions and branching questlines
Where to play: Windows PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Windows PC, Xbox Series X
Before Dragon Age, there was Neverwinter Nights — a fellow BioWare title that paved the way straight to Dragon Age. At the start of the game, a fatal plague called the Wailing Death (chill; normal) is striking the city of Neverwinter. You’re in quarantine, but you still need to graduate from the Neverwinter Academy and figure out how to help Lady Aribeth create a cure for the plague. People are panicking. There are riots to navigate. Everything’s absolute chaos behind the city’s closed walls.
Since Neverwinter Nights is nearly a 25-year-old-game, some parts of it are harder to love than others, but it’s worth a play for Dragon Age players seeking a nostalgic title.
7 Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader
Why you’ll like this if you like Dragon Age: It’s got similar-feeling companion depth and combat primed for a party tactician
Where to play: Windows PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, Switch
In Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader by Owlcat Games, you’re exploring uncharted space…specifically, the Koronus Expanse. But while the setting differs from mostly land-based Dragon Age, the problems your characters face are similar. Here, you’re navigating a succession crisis and working to claim your place within the Von Valancius family. Much like Dragon Age’s Blight and Darkspawn, Rogue Trader has its share of existential corruption for you to weather (here, it’s Chaos and Warp mutations) while you also have to deal with the possibility of much more immediate betrayal.
Dragon Age players will recognize Rogue Trader’s starting class and character background system – will you be a Warrior who was a military officer, or a priest-turned-Operative? – but the turn-based combat will be a change of pace.
6 Baldur’s Gate 2: Shadows of Amn
Why you’ll like this if you like Dragon Age: Everywhere you turn, there are fiendishly difficult narrative choices. Buckle up
Where to play: PS4, PS5, Switch, Windows PC, Xbox Series X
Welcome to Baldur’s Gate 2 — surprise, you’re trapped in an underground laboratory. You’re Gorion’s Ward, a Bhaalspawn (e.g., kid of the murder god Bhaal). There’s a devilish wizard, Jon Irenicus, who’s torturing you – ahem, conducting tests to study your essence. You need to escape, rescue your also-trapped childhood friend Imoen, and then rest and recover…as long as nothing happens to interfere with that plan, of course.
In Baldur’s Gate 2, as in the Dragon Age series, you’re learning about the world around you and figuring out who you can trust or recruit to help you accomplish a goal that’s both very personal and potentially world-ending. But here, there are vampires.
Baldur’s Gate 2 is another BioWare title from before the company moved away from D&D, so the two games also share developer DNA. (As a bonus, if you’re a Dragon Age person and you’ve not played Baldur’s Gate 3…please do.)
5 Mass Effect (Legendary Edition)
Why you’ll like this if you like Dragon Age: It’s got the same BioWare choice-and-companion architecture. Just swap your sword for an assault rifle
Where to play: PS4, PS5, Windows PC, Xbox Series X
Mass Effect and Dragon Age are both BioWare RPG franchises with relationship building, storytelling, and party- or squad-based tactics. In each, your choices shape the narrative. In each, you can use save data from one game to influence the next. In each, you have a base — a camp or a spaceship — where you can regroup with your companions.
But that’s where the similarities end. In Mass Effect, you start as newcomer Commander Shepard aboard an advanced starship. You’re working to investigate a beacon on a human colony world…until things may or may not very suddenly take a turn for the worse (brace for attack!). But at least you’re fighting alongside friends. Getting to hang with the sullen, sarcastic Garrus Vakarian might be one of the greatest joys in the series.
4 Pathfinder: Kingmaker
Why you’ll like this if you like Dragon Age: It’s got party-based tactics and large-scale kingdom management.
Where to play: PS4, PS5, Windows PC, Xbox Series X
If the political games you could play within Dragon Age: Origins were the draw for you, Pathfinder: Kingmaker has that in spades. With even more management systems layered on top. Here, you start the game as a group of adventurers gathered by one Lady Jamandi Alordi. You’re going to the Stolen Lands to bring back the head of the Stag Lord. If you do, you get to found your own barony. If not…well, let’s not contemplate that alternative, shall we?
While this game isn’t just routine kingdom management – there are mysterious fey threats and an ancient curse getting in the way of your day-to-day – steering Pathfinder: Kingmaker’s plot via being a decent lord to your barony is a big focus in this game. But, if you’re looking for explicitly similar structure to feel anchored here, Dragon Age: Origins players rejoice: the combat is real-time-with-pause, which should feel just like home.
3 GreedFall
Why you’ll like this if you like Dragon Age: It’s got grudge-holding factions, possibly-loyal companions, within a Colonial-era setting replete with political intrigue.
Where to play: Windows PC, PS4, PS5, Windows PC, Xbox Series X
Less polish, smaller budget, rougher edges, but a lot of the same charm – GreedFall feels like Dragon Age in that, here, you’ve got real-time combat, a world where your choices matter, and the ability to deeply bond (or not) with your companions. In GreedFall, though, instead of battling the Blight, you’re working to save the old continent from a plague, the Malichor. Your character is a Legate tasked with traveling to an island untouched by the plague to discover the cure, but you’re not the only one with that idea. As multiple colonial factions – including the religious nation Thélème and the fond-of-science Bridge Alliance – fight over the island, your job is simple: Protect the island, search for the plague’s cure, and fend off political disaster. That does sound simple, right?
2 Solasta: Crown of the Magister
Why you’ll like this if you like Dragon Age: It’s a crunchier, more tactical game: Think Dragon Age run through a true Dungeons & Dragons ruleset.
Where to play: PS5, Windows PC, Xbox Series X
As Solasta: Crown of the Magister begins, your party of four is called upon to investigate the Badlands – a land infested with monsters, but you’re prepared for that, right? You do find the titular Crown of the Magister along the way, an artifact that might just be able to help you save your world.
Dragon Age players who loved the series’ focus on deep character writing may find Solasta a bit lacking. Solasta’s focus is not on story. Instead, you’re managing turn-based combat, organizing inventories, and figuring out how to use your class abilities to their greatest effect.
To the “less of a story” point, though, Solasta’s sequel is in development. It’s theorized that the team’s leading harder into story this time around, so stay tuned.
1 Dragon’s Dogma 1&2
Why you’ll like this if you like Dragon Age: While this game doesn’t have traditional team management – you’ve got pawns, not true parties – it does have the same dark fantasy tone and ingrained class build system.
Where to play: PS4, PS5, Windows PC, Xbox Series X
A gigantic dragon has just attacked the fishing village of Cassardis. When you step up to defend, the dragon rips out your heart, eats it, and leaves you for dead. Oh no! Game over. Except it’s not: You wake up as an Arisen. You’re now bound to the dragon’s fate. You need to find it and get your heart back. Have fun!
Dragon’s Dogma is very different mechanically from Dragon Age, but it sets a similar scene and feels in-genre anyway. You won’t find deep companion writing here, but what you will find are dragons. Did you play Dragon Age for dragons? Extremely understandable. You’ll love Dragon’s Dogma. We cannot overstate how many dragons there are.
With Dragon Age, BioWare helped build a genre of games where stories and companions come to life on a grand scale – but there’s still the quintessential battle RPG focus on skill progression and party tactics. Interested in saving a fantasy continent from the plague? More interested in building your own barony? Regardless, there’s something here to play. And replay, with different choices. And replay, as an evil overlord. And then replay again, just for fun.