greywolf00 Dragon Age: The Veilguard Review

This is one of those games where I wish we had a more nuanced recommendation choice than Yes/No. TL;DR – depends, weigh the Pro/Con list (very subjective are Cons for me). Ultimately, I asked if I would tell someone to buy the game. My answer is No, because there’s a lot on context/caution I’d feel compelled to provide. Even after sleeping on it to see if I felt compelled to play today it really just hasn’t hooked me. Just as a background, I’ve been a big BioWare fan, including Jade Empire, KotoR, and SWotR. I even have Anthem and ME:A. In the DA series DA:I is the first game I didn’t finish, because there was too much slog (poor pacing, poor level design, war table time slogs) to overcome for me to stick it out. I was cautious about DA:V but after reading through the divisive takes on the preview I knew I’d give it a shot. I was less optimistic after watching several pro and negative reviews coming up to release but decided to lean on the Steam refund policy (which I’ve never used before) as a safety net and give it a try. 1 ½ hours in I’m still mixed on it. It is better than the negative reviews lead me to fear, but several things I saw in those reviews have resonated even in this short playtime. Pros: Pacing is way better than DA:I. There’s a lot of action right off the bat which picks back up quickly after the first break. So far, I’ve enjoyed the story – might be because I never finished DA:I. Cons: Some of the voice line delivery is very flat for the scene, undermining the intensity. Level design is improved compared it DA:I (which I found too large and bloated with busy work icons), but at least early on it feels a lot like DA2 where it’s very linear and limited. I did encounter a crash to desktop ~70 minutes in for “physically removing the GPU” during play. I’m running an i9-13900KF 3.00 GHz, 64 GB RAM, and a GeForce RTX 4090 so hardware isn’t the issue. I did upgrade to the newest driver released last week, but haven’t played long enough to confirm if that fixes the issue. Very subjective: Combat Action combat is my least favorite system (turn based > RTwP > Action). Even among Action combat games this feels simpler, and I always hated the ME take on commanding teammates. It has not improved here. That being said, one of my biggest complaints with Action combat systems is they don’t always feel responsive, and I do not have that complaint with DA;V. I can get my character to do what I want, when I want which is a core requirement. I had complaints about how spongy enemies got over the ME series where the last ¼ of ME3 was just unbearable for me, so I’ve just been playing on the lower difficulties to avoid it. I can see spongy being a concern at higher difficulties. Art Obviously, a turn towards cartoony which I’m just not a fan of, especially in a series that has been darker in themes historically. I really despise the Qunari overhaul too. Conclusion: I would not recommend this outright. If someone asked how I felt, I’d say it’s ok. Nothing really stood out or is compelling me to continue. It starts off pretty good, but I thought ME:A and DA:I did too before the shine wore off and I couldn’t bring myself to force my way through it. Given some of the great releases we had in 2023 and early 2024 (BG3, Rogue Trader, Horizon Forbidden West) this doesn’t come anywhere close to the recent RPG quality. I would say take advantage of the refund window to kick the tires and decide for yourself.