Dragon Age: The Veilguard Reviews
As a Dragon Age fan, you're better off avoiding Dragon Age: The Veilguard—the once-dark fantasy world has been transformed into a Disney-like fairytale with childish, shallow dialogue, limited and inconsequential choices that restrict you to being nice, and a linear storyline that disregards the deep lore, impactful choices, and character-driven narratives the series is known for. Enemy design is laughable, side missions are shallow, puzzles are overly simple, and while the flashy combat is fun, it feels out of place, lacking strategic depth, making it painful to accept that this beloved franchise may meet its end in 2024.
Review in Dutch | Read full review
We were really hoping Dragon Age: The Veilguard would be the big, satisfying comeback that would remind us why BioWare was once an RPG powerhouse. But it just doesn’t make the cut. Instead, it makes us wonder if BioWare can still create games like the Mass Effect trilogy and the early Dragon Age titles as they did. If this is what the future of Dragon Age looks like, maybe it’s time to give the series a break.
BioWare is a pioneer of RPGs with strong characterization, but here they showed just how far it's possible to falter. If you're looking for the classic they're famous for, you won't find that experience in Dragon Age Veilguard. While it's no longer the same team from the days of the original Mass Effect and Dragon Age, this game is a flop that tarnishes the brand's reputation. Veilguard is at best a missed opportunity, and at worst a sign of the fall of a giant.
Review in Unknown | Read full review
Pretty aesthetics aside, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a boring sludge of grey. It's not awful enough to poke fun at for its broken mechanics like Star Wars: Outlaws, but similarly, it's nowhere near good enough to compete with the best Bioware have put out. Veilguard is a complete nothingburger; an indifferent shrug of a fantasy epic that fails to live up to what's come before, and destined to be thrown into the veil, reduced to a passing whisper of what could have been.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a gorgeous feast for the eyes with solid combat, but a vapid story filled with terrible, unrelatable characters.
Review in Unknown | Read full review
Dragon Age: The Veilguard shares no true DNA ancestry with RPGs. It is at best an Assassin’s Creed look-alike, a Hogwarts Legacy wannabe, but its infantile and banal storytelling makes it more of a Roblox game in a grown-ups’ graphics engine. There’s an argument to be made that this game was made by the new generation for the new generation of gamers. The point of its existence is not to raise and discuss serious topics or explore dark emotions. It’s here to provide good fun. Its target audience seems to be your average high schooler. You don’t want to bother him with topics of racism, religion, oppression, inequality, dogmatism, relationships, social interactions and other big topics previous games in the series tackled. Give him positive reinforcement, fairy-tale cartoonish looking worlds and loot. I think Bioware thinks very little of the new generation if this is their vision of what a game for them should look like.
So, yeah, sure. Dragon Age: The Veilguard is an objectively well-made product that is perfectly playable and it’s both empowering and entertaining. But it’s also nothing more than a product, finely tuned for passive consumption, right off the content mill.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard offers beautifully crafted environments, but its shallow enemy design and lack of narrative depth may disappoint series veterans. For those seeking a more casual RPG experience, it could be enjoyable, but it’s not worth paying full price. Wait for a discount.
Dragon Age - The Veilguard is far from being a disaster that many internet haters are claiming it to be. It's a serviceable and high-budget comfort food-level action role-playing game. Though if I'm being fair, that's probably the worst thing a standout trendsetter company like Bioware can commit: something that straddles along the lines of "fine".
This isn’t the end of Dragon Age that I was expecting - in this respect, the game must be rated low. However, as an action RPG with flair and a beautiful fairy-tale world, it turns out to be decent, and sometimes even more than that.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a colorful but absolutely passable game that lacks any depth. It will not only disappoint the fans of the previous parts, but also will not give joy to the new ones.
Review in Russian | Read full review
There is lots to do in this huge and beautiful fantasy world, but inconsistent writing and muted combat dull its blade
Dragon Age: The Veilguard feels like BioWare playing it too safe. While it nails what it does best, like the excellent cast and interpersonal relationships, from a gameplay perspective it feels out of date.
When all is said and done, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a solid experience. It's flashy, pretty and entertaining, standing out through the combat and environments. It no longer feels like this sprawling world that we explore and save from the brink of destruction, but rather a small pocket that needs constant supervision. This is a more on-the-rails experience when compared to any of the past Dragon Age games. Considering the struggles that Bioware has undergone since Dragon Age: Inquisition, however, it's still awesome that we received a game of this quality. It doesn’t share much in terms of style and gameplay, but we do see characters we love again in a beautiful world and fun combat. It isn’t the most mind-blowing entry to the series and does play it safe, but it's still a good game. The combat and soundtrack are solid, the environments are gorgeous and the game is still filled with a ton of world-building.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is full of heart and soul. It’s also got some great ideas. Conversely, many of those ideas feel like they struggle to get out of first gear - and those that do find it harder still to make it to third. Sometimes the cleverest ideas are undermined by other systems or decisions. Simultaneously feeling polished to within an inch of its life in places and utterly half-baked in others, it’s as baffling as it is engaging; as frustrating as it is fascinating.
Let's not beat around the bush: we didn't like the new direction Electronic Arts and Bioware have given to the Dragon Age franchise. The original idea must have been to expand the public for this third entry, but the result is a game that won't probably appeal to anyone, expecially long-time fans. Just give us a Dragon Age Origins remaster at this point, please.
Review in Italian | Read full review
It’s a decent action game but falls short as a Dragon Age title. Choices have little impact, and the gameplay becomes repetitive. While it may disappoint fans, feel free to give it a try if you're curious.
Review in Turkish | Read full review
Undermined by its own storytelling and technical troubles, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a tale of community but never quite finds its home.
The Veilguard has some fun combat and exploration mechanics, but in no way do they redeem a sterilized, safe, inoffensive, fully "Netflix" and badly written version of a dark fantasy world that has little to do with the series' past.