Dragon Age™: The Veilguard

This game was a total ride in a lot of disappointing ways. But we can start with the good stuff first! Combat was fun. It was cool to have a melee caster class. Game looked good! Some of the voice actors were phenomenal. Some of the levels were super cool and immersive, big fan of Treviso. Okay, I think that's about it for the pros! MAN this game BLOWS CHUNKS as a successor to DA:I. I just finished another play through of DA:I and decided to pick this up on a huge discount. One hour in and I had no clue who I am, where I came from, how I got in contact with one of the protagonists who set the entire game in motion. And, sorry to say, you NEVER find that out. Hardly any tie-ins to any of the previous games. One of the NPCs from DA:I ends up being one of your companions and in DA:V she's... so... not herself. They completely baby-fied her. Her mannerisms were completely different, it's like she didn't exist in the previous game?! Dragon Age is dark, and brutal, and sad, and mysterious - there is none of that in here. It's a game made for kids. Everyone is too affable and charming and everyone forgives each other for the choices you make - and the choices you make seem to have little baring on the story save the LAST MISSION. This game is too bright all the time, everyone is weirdly short, the banter is awkward, the relationships with your companions develop too fast while the game feels like a slog. I have what, 28 hours, I crammed this game to the end just so I could file it away and never play it again. It's sad. EA potentially ended this lore-rich, expansive world. Just totally bombed the franchise. Let this one collect digital dust.

Too pared down for me. Dragon Age used to have grit in the world, storytelling, and systems. That's absent in this entry.

Is Veilguard a good game; It is actually half decent. Is it a good Dragon Age game; Trash would call it trash. The game has a lot of decently done aspects, but this is in no way even a decent Dragon Age game. Far less grimdark and borderline jolly. Butchered characters, terrible choice options for your character when it comes to story and dialogue. A lot of new characters feel forced with clear political agendas with extremely poor execution. The cream of the crop is how they decided to end the story and how they introduce a new villain which makes everything you did in the previous games feel wrong and void, and not in a good way. On a potato scale, this is a proud 3/10 Poisonous potato barely fried enough to make it edible, not good tasting, just edible. Spices and salt not included.

they ruined the game... Relationships are horrible... any interaction only happen at certain specific points of the game, nothing else. There is no option for deciding when to push the relationship, you must follow the flow the developers decided Companions were ruined, i loved the possibility to have multiple "full" playable characters. It felt amazing to switch among them in battle to focus on one point of it, when needed or when it was more fun. To be able to build and grow each of them independently. Now, companions are caped characters... you can barely do any intersting change, only 6 trees, more or less the same for all of them... Equipement was also ruined... i like the part to put whatever i want in whatever character... if that is wrong, it is my fault ! now, i can only choose to put whatever a given character is meant to use...

This review is two years late, but I enjoyed it. Like all of the DA entries it has good moments and not so good moments and a few awful ones. This is a series I play for the lore and worldbuilding. I went in wanting lore questions answered after 10 years and for the most part I received the answers I hoped for. The environments are beautiful, the music is memorable, and it runs extremely well on both my gaming computer and my Steam deck. Also, I really appreciated the combat modernization and am thankful I don't have to play another RTWP slog where I'm dreading battles to get to cutscenes. I've beaten the original BG games oodles of times and Pillars of Eternity and all the past DA games. I've served my RTWP time lol. Sometimes I just want to push the sword button and do sword things. The level designs are thoughtful and I felt rewarded for exploring off the path. The game is very tight and polished. Really fun to play. The art style isn't that much of a departure to me with the exception of a few characters and locations. Most of the environments just look like more painterly versions of Inquisition's, and the overly shiny character graphics are fixed (everyone looked like a salamander in that game, I'm sorry!) A few characters were a bit overtuned and as a result, stood out in a "we invaded your IP" way. I get it - it's art, but that was my interpretation of it. You can tell it went through development hell on the writing. Every line of dialogue feels first draft or spliced from voiceover or scripts and as a result you get a lot of repetition, weird out of context moments (people repeating the same names over and over as though they're the first one to say them), and what comes across as not having faith that the player will grasp the setting. Rook is unfortunately my least favorite protagonist of Dragon Age and I mean this in the most constructive way I can. Huge thanks to the DA Community Council for pushing back on V1 of Rook, who I understand was much worse. To any aspiring game writers out there: you do not need to fill every millisecond of the game with talking. You do not need to start every sentence with "Right." People breathe in real life. It is okay to reflect that in a video game. It's okay for characters to ask each other if they are okay after a battle, and it's okay to have emotions like worry, fear, doubt, and concern. Self-deprecating humor and levity definitely have their place in this series, but it does not need to dominate the protagonist's script. For example, a companion would have an honest reaction to something and be very worried about a situation. I had no choice but to reply with something along the lines of "just another day of darkspawn raining down on ya huh?" Unfortunately, I was not given a dialogue wheel in the matter. My good-faith interpretation is that the writers recognized many of these problems but did not receive a proper editing phase under the game’s ridiculous development circumstances. The vast majority of the game is fine, though. There are some pretty confusing and sometimes cringeworthy moments but there are also scenes that I consider the best in the series. The staging and technical direction of nearly every cutscene is excellent. If Mass Effect 5 is anything close to the technical and design levels of Veilguard but is able to go through editing rounds on the writing I think it will be the hit a lot of fans have been waiting for.

this game give me weird gay vibe so I quit it. Not recommend for adult gamer

Денег хватило только на анимацию волос и пейзажи. Но все остальное, тот еще отборный калл, тут даже не в повестке дело. Ощущение как будто я сюжет из Твиттера вычитал

This is a prime example of why you shouldn't judge a title by its bad rep, and why you need to try it for yourself. Gameplay and story-wise, my 60+ hour playthrough was an absolute fun ride. It's packed with exploration, puzzles, a flashy action-oriented combat system, and a solid overall narrative capped off by some epic late-game cutscenes. I did not feel robbed at the end. Granted, it's not without its flaws. Visually, I found the graphics a bit too vibrant and "fabulous" for my taste. The companions also feel a bit bland since they're all strictly good-aligned, and their dialogue is surprisingly uninspiring, especially when compared to the actual lore and story segments. An evil run is practically out of the question. On top of that, the game litters you with junk loot that offers no meaningful progression. As for the heavily criticized "woke" content, it amounts to maybe 10 minutes of dialogue. Even if it feels completely out of place, it made up less than 0.25% of my total playtime, so it's hardly a dealbreaker (and you can always just skip it). Ultimately, the good far outweighs the bad, and I'm glad I didn't pass on this one. That said, long-time Dragon Age fans might feel differently, especially those expecting another Origins after two already distinct sequels. My advice: grab it on a deep discount, give it a shot, and see for yourself.