User blog comment:Nord Ronnoc/A Tale Of Two Game Series/@comment-4950455-20121113044051

While part of the reason I prefer ME to DA:O is aesthetic, it's not just sci-fi versus fantasy. More like sci-fi versus generic fantasy that is trying much too obviously to not be generic.

The fantasy genre has been dominated so totally for so long by the Tolkienesque pseudo-European setting that any fantasy using it is going to lose something in my book. Most of the things that set DA apart aren't so much true innovation as they are attempts at making it Darker And Edgier (TM) that tend to crib from authors in their own right. The setting of ME may be a conventional space opera universe, but sci-fi as a whole has never been nearly as totally dominated by that aesthetic as fantasy has by the European setting.

As a RPG, I'm inclined to think that DA:O was better than anything in the Mass Effect series. But the setting is just a huge turn-off in terms of story, and that's leaving out the "series" question.