Don't do it! They're the worse games ever made! Your unborn children will travel back in time and smack you if you play them!

Only joking, Mass Effect are pretty much hybrid shooter/rpg, the first one moreso than the latter which is closer to gears of war style combat with rpg attributes but better overall gameplay (imho). DAO was marketed as the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate, and is a good game though I don't think it lived up to it as much as I had hoped, but held hope that like BG2 fixed the issues with BG1 the same would happen with DA2. That unfortunately didn't happen, but some people like it.

Just go and buy them instead of asking for opinions here :P

But if you want an opinion, i will oblige.

Both Mass Effect and Dragon Age (as well as their sequels, Mass Effect's anyway since i've yet to play Dragon Age 2) are exceptional games. Mass Effect might take a little to get into, the inventory system can prove a chore and might have you scratching your head for a little bit, but once you get past that, you'll enjoy the RPG elements that are mixed with Shooter elements (like real time, cover-based combat as oppossed to turn-based) unless you dislike shooters. The story is also pretty awesome, no, scrape that, more like...EPIC.
Now if you like it, go try the sequel, you'll then proceed to shoot yourself on the foot for not playing these awesome games sooner (i almost did after ignoring Mass Effect over over a year).

Dragon Age is a little hit and miss, if you like team-based RPG games (like Baldur's Gate) that have a rather intense and visceral combat system, you'll probably like this one too. It's also (imo anyways) a little harder then Mass Effect, but easier as far as learning the ropes and getting into the game painlessly. The story, honestly, is kinda "meh" but still interesting to make you plow onward and the characters are all pretty distinct and fun to interact with (especially the random banter).

Now just go play them, unless you terribly dislike RPGs :D

Mass Effect is a bad game if you don't like cover systems. Dragon Age 1 is a good game if you don't compare it to any of the Black Isle or Baldur's Gate games. Just get Dragon Age.

ME & Dragon Age are the best rpgs so far Get me 1 and 2 and get the dragon age origins UE and if u want DA2 aswell you wouldn't regret this.

I totally recommend both Dragon Age games and Mass Effect 2. Can't really comment on Mass 1 since I can't get the bugger to work. But I hear it's a very good game.

I'm sure you won't be disappointed if you get those games :)

whats wrong with ur me1?

It won't run? :)

I was able to get it run, for an hour, then it crashed. It stutters like a grandma in a blizzard, crashes and acts oddly. Don't really know what's wrong with it, it's patched and all. I have both digi and retail version, both have the same problem :)

Specs?

Athlon II X4 635 (2,9ghz)
GeForce 9800GT (1gig)
4 gig ram
Windows XP

So, it should run.

But no-one has yet discovered the problem, so I kinda gave up long ago :)

Anyway, this is off-topic, hopefully PaladinHeart won't kill me :)

Mass Effect has some pretty severe flaws, but I still enjoyed it tremendously. Mass Effect 2 addresses many of those flaws, but unfortunately, it frequently bores me. I have yet to finish it - it's hard to motivate myself to play it when the game won't stop it with the fucking "go recruit some random assholes" treadmill.

Dragon Age is a solid game, if a bit dry. I found that it took some concentration to get into. I didn't finish it because I got sidetracked, but I did put quite a few hours into it and will be going back to it eventually.

Played ME1, ME2, and DA:O.
The ME series are awesome, ME2 changed some stuff, some for the better, some for the worse. ME1 seems more buggy. Still ,both are great games.
DA:O is a great game, but NOT the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate. Be warned that mages are completely and utterly broken, in the overpowered way. Also, unlike what the game claims, I never really found it that dark.

You don't need to use the cover system in ME1 (with stock difficulty at least). You can get away with just standing or crouching behind stuff like everyone did in the old days.

Unfortunately ME2 went all Gears of War and made this is no longer viable. :(

One peculiar thing about Dragon Age: I had to turn off the "persistent gore" (blood splatters that remain on your skin and clothing after combat). I was constantly giggling when everyone was standing around trying to look serious with blood splattered across their noses.

I have DA:O, but haven't played it yet. (Got a lot of other games on my backlog)

I finished ME1 and ME2, and they are the best FPSRPGs I've ever played. Some of the most fun I've gotten out of a game, totally worth the 110 hours I've spent on both games combined. And I still want to do another playthrough.

I had that problem and some people recommended disabling the antivirus and other running processes. At the time I had running TeaTimer from Spybot Search & Destroy which I uninstalled because it was useless, Avast which I configured to whitelist the ME folder, and SQL Server process running in the background which I disabled from Windows services. I had little hope but it actually solved the micro stutters I was getting with ME and MoH:Airborne (both are early Unreal Engine 3 games).
I'm positive that uninstalling TeaTimer was the thing that solved it. I just did the rest to see if I could get more fps.
My processor was Core 2 Duo (2.6 GHz) and Geforce 8800 GTS (320 mb).

The game never crashed to desktop though. The only time it crashed was when I forced AA from nVidia Control Panel.