All 23 BioWare Games, Ranked

Every legendary BioWare tale begins in the same place: assembling your party. Over thirty years, the studio gave us companions we would have followed into any fire, decisions that haunted us long after the credits, and worlds we hated to leave, from Candlekeep to the Citadel to Thedas. On Oct. 21, EA revealed that it is shutting down BioWare. To mark the occasion, we’ve ranked all 23 of its games, remasters and mobile and browser spin-offs included (expansions excluded), from worst to best. Gather your party. We’ll begin with the footnotes and climb toward the legends.

23. Dragon Age Journeys (2009)

Not every Dragon Age adventure arrived on a disc or through a Steam download. Journeys was a free Flash tactical RPG from EA2D and BioWare. It put a party of warriors, rogues, and mages through turn-based battles on a hex grid. The story opened with a darkspawn ambush, then led through Orzammar and back into the Deep Roads in search of a Grey Warden. Chapters 2 and 3 never materialized, but preservation efforts have brought Chapter 1 back, and you can play it on PC through the Flashpoint archive. If you ask me, that’s a fitting fate for a game about the Deep Roads.

22. Mass Effect Galaxy (2009)

Jacob Taylor’s vacation did not go according to plan. In Mass Effect Galaxy, the former Alliance marine’s cruise is cut short by a batarian terrorist attack. The fallout sends him and Miranda Lawson after a conspiracy targeting the Citadel Council, shortly before he signed on with Cerberus. Finishing the iPhone game earned you a reward in Mass Effect 2. Sadly, it was an iOS exclusive that vanished from the App Store in 2012, so there is no official way to play it now. That may make Jacob’s getaway the rarest trip in the galaxy.

21. Dragon Age Legends (2011)

Dragon Age 2 shipped with a social network in tow. Legends, a strategy RPG for Facebook and Google+, ran alongside the sequel in the Free Marches. You played a trusted ally of Ravi, the Viscount of Kaiten, and investigated the mystery surrounding his son. Through the linked platforms, you could recruit your friends’ avatars to join you. EA ended support in 2012, but an offline single-player version lives on in the Internet Archive.

20. Mass Effect Infiltrator (2012)

On the day Mass Effect 3 launched, a second war broke out inside an iOS app. Infiltrator cast you as a Cerberus operative who discovers horrifying experiments in his employer’s laboratories and sets out for revenge. IronMonkey Studios built this cover shooter to unfold alongside Shepard’s story, and it stayed consistent with BioWare’s canon. EA removed it from the App Store in 2015, so it’s out of reach unless you held on to an old copy. There are no conversation wheels here. You just get to hone the take-cover-and-shoot rhythm that powered the trilogy’s firefights.

19. Anthem (2019)

Anthem unfolded on a world its creator gods left unfinished. Freelancers piloted Javelin exosuits to stop a shadowy faction from seizing ancient technology. It was BioWare’s first new IP in roughly a decade, and it was built around co-op play. Squads of up to four set out from Fort Tarsis on missions and strongholds. The launch was rocky, and EA ultimately turned off the servers in January 2026. Still, the first time you took off in a Javelin, it genuinely felt like flying.

18. Shattered Steel (1996)

BioWare’s debut game wasn’t an RPG at all. Published by Interplay three decades ago, Shattered Steel dropped you into a future devastated by the Core Wars. As a mercenary mech pilot, you’re hired to look into pirate raids on Lanios 3, only to learn the raiders are a hostile alien species. It sold respectably for its era, topping 170,000 copies, and you can still play it on PC through Steam. BioWare was still refining its formula, but the very first draft had a giant robot in it.

17. Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood (2008)

So what happens once Sonic has beaten Dr. Eggman? Sonic Chronicles is a turn-based Sonic RPG developed by BioWare (yes, you read that correctly), and it answers with a mysterious threat that kidnaps the last echidna. Across this Nintendo DS adventure, Sonic leads a party of ten friends against the Dark Brotherhood. You choose your squad, listen to everyone’s opinion, and rescue the echidna. Between the party building and the dialogue choices, the game stays surprisingly loyal to the BioWare formula, just with a hedgehog out front.

16. Mass Effect: Andromeda (2017)

This entry left the Milky Way behind altogether. In Andromeda, you play as Scott or Sara Ryder. You wake from cryo-sleep as the Andromeda Initiative’s new Pathfinder, charged with finding humanity a fresh home in the Heleus Cluster. It isn’t a simple move-in, though. The militaristic kett and the beleaguered angara are fighting over the best candidate worlds. The game stumbled at launch, but its alien landscapes were stunning enough to take your breath away. You can play it on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox.

15. Dragon Age 2 (2011)

Dragon Age 2 took the sprawling world of Dragon Age: Origins and compressed it into a single troubled city: Kirkwall. Across a decade, you watch the city transform and discover how far someone will go in pursuit of power. You play as Hawke, a refugee who escapes the Blight and the ruin of home, then rises to become Kirkwall’s Champion. The tale is told, with extreme unreliability, by the dwarf Varric, who recounts it to a Seeker in three acts. You can play it on PC and on Xbox consoles through backward compatibility.

14. MDK2 (2000)

Once upon a time, BioWare let an alien invasion touch down in its own hometown of Edmonton, Alberta. MDK2 is the 2000 sequel to Shiny’s cult shooter about alien minecrawlers. In it, the janitor Kurt Hectic, the mad scientist Dr. Fluke Hawkins, and Max, a six-legged dog, find a minecrawler right there in Edmonton. They soon stumble onto a fresh scheme to destroy Earth. The game debuted on Dreamcast, but you can play it on PC today. It’s gleefully goofy at times, and that’s a good thing. Even a studio famous for sweeping epics deserves a chance to be silly.

Source: Polygon