roelani Dragon Age: The Veilguard Review

The game is in a great technical state and the combat is deeply enjoyable, but its problems lie at its core. The entire backbone of this story is completely rotten. The pacing is abysmal. The tone is off. This is not a Dragon Age game. It's a game that was developed by people who vaguely know what DA should be and attempted to replicate the formula without understanding what makes it work, focused almost entirely on cramming in their group DND session OCs, regardless of whether there's a place for them in the world of Thedas or not. It's not a game, fundamentally, about an individual being tasked with the impossibility of saving the world from danger and, along the way, becoming close with their found family of misfits. It's a game about a random person being chosen to lead a found family of misfits while, on the side, having to save the world. They were right when they renamed this game. It's not about the journey, or the fight, or Solas. It's not about the stakes. It's about the mind-numbingly boring inanity of fixing a bunch of immature teenagers' problems for them. Saving the world is secondary. You are not the Hero, of whom legends are told. You are the Babysitter, forever mired in pointless, unending, navel-gazing busywork. Shame, because some of the moments, some of the lore, are great. The last two hours of gameplay are an absolutely phenomenal ride of lore reveals and thrilling action set pieces that put the previous 10 to 12 hours of mindless, tedious garbage content to absolute shame and makes you dearly wish this game had been made differently, with a different focus. The rotten core of this game needs to be pointed out. This needs to fail to send the message to the developers that you can't just slap a coat of "Bioware Magic Juice" on top of a shambling corpse and call it good enough. This series has always lived on its writing, on the effortless charm of its characters, on the playerbase's attachment to its deep, connected lore and vibrant world. Not so anymore. This project should've been canned when EA forced them to multiplayer it, and they should have restarted from scratch. Not from their existing assets. From the script. In a single-player, story-driven game, you'd think this was obvious. Apparently not. Pros: Great performance on PC Almost no bugs encountered Visually stunning environments Great exploration and level-design Action gameplay is thrilling and offers lots of advanced options for tweaking your experience Buildcraft is engaging Cons: Story is abysmal Cast of characters is bland and insipid Focus is on the wrong parts of the story Doesn't feel like Dragon Age Tonally dissonant across the board Has no identity of its own. Derivative beyond words Action gameplay a hard departure for the series, will turn off some gamers