1998: Baldur’s Gate
The IP that put Bioware on the map is arguably still the best series they’ve ever produced. While in my opinion Dragon Age’s setting, storyline and characters surpassed those of Baldur’s Gate, there are still many things about Baldur’s Gate that remain superior: exploration, class and spell selection, and available PCs to name a few factors. There’s a reason that Baldur’s Gate remains a legendary name and a gold standard in RPGs.

2002: Neverwinter Nights
Without a doubt, the strongest feature of Neverwinter Nights was the Aurora engine’s make-your-own-adventure toolset. Many things about the Neverwinter Nights game engine bothered me, and despite completing the included single-player adventure, I never loved it.
I hated the fact that you couldn’t control an entire party of adventurers. Although I spent countless hours with the Aurora toolset, it never changed the fact that Neverwinter  couldn’t hold a candle to Candlekeep. I never played Neverwinter Nights 2.

2003: Knights of the Old Republic
Hailed by many as a better Star Wars story than George Lucas’s prequel trilogy, KotOR was met with much acclaim. But the lackluster combat was so very similar to the combat that had annoyed me so much in Neverwinter Nights. Although I appreciated the story, and very much enjoyed The Big Twist, the black and white good versus evil choices that determined your alignment on a very one-dimensional scale never struck much of a chord with me. I never played KotOR 2.

2005: Jade Empire
I enjoyed the gameplay of Jade Empire more than I had Neverwinter Nights or Knights of the Old Republic. It had a single-companion mechanic very much similar to Neverwinter Nights’s and a good guy/bad guy gauge similar to that in KotOR, but the combat was twitch-based. Sure, there were RPG aspects, but I got to manually jump, punch, kick, and dodge. I’ll grant you that by this point, the conversation system in Bioware games was getting very much same-old-same-old, but with much of the remainder of the game working so well, it was easy to overlook the staleness of the conversation mechanics. And Jade Empire had a storyline better than any of the previous Bioware games. Jade Empire 2 would be very nice.

2007: Mass Effect
TO hear some speak of it, Mass Effect was the second coming. The premise of a race of super-machines threatening humanity sounded absolutely fantastic. What we got in reality was a shooter that didn’t feel much like a shooter. It had a somewhat innovative conversation system, but the same black and white good vs evil mechanic that had bored me in KotOR was replaced by a black and white paragon vs renegade system. And the closest to unstoppable robots we ever got was the geth, a robotic race of utterly unremarkable peons for the PC to shoot at. Oh, and for some reason they could put people on giant spikes in order to change them into zombies. For some reason. I’m not in a hurry to play Mass Effect 2.

2009: Dragon Age Origins
Where to begin? Bioware took the one game they’d made which had been absolutely fantastic (Baldur’s Gate) and they did what they could to make it even better. And I’m not just talking about better graphics.

Firstly, the system of game mechanics. In the past, they’d used Dungeons and Dragons rules. Baldur’s Gate used 2nd Edition rules. Neverwinter Nights used 3.0. The current D&D ruleset is 4th Edition, and it’s dog crap. Bioware made the decision to create their own rule system, and I couldn’t be happier with it. It’s very different, but it’s probably my favorite RPG rule system other than Fallout’s SPECIAL system.

Secondly, they took that tired old black vs white good vs evil character alignment system and trashed it. In its place, they set up a system whereby each of your NPCs will have a different opinion of you based on their own values and their opinions of the various decisions you make throughout the game. It may sound like a small change, but in practice, it’s hugely different, and aside from making the game deeper, it leads you to care about the characters with whom you travel.

2011: Star Wars: The Old Republic
Oh, good. Another MMO. Based on a game that everyone other than myself loved. I’m not particularly interested.