Dragon Age™: The Veilguard

I loved this franchise since I was a kid, like almost 20 years of dragon age. I loved how the first 2 games had grit and the player is just some person, it feels like the feats are big but after all your work, they are earned. You can be a good person, a bad person, there are real consequences and the companions didn't care if you were strong or a softie, lgbt or not, some will like you, some will hate you. The political mechanisms of this franchise are great, love how easy it is to integrate yourself in the world. This franchise helped lil nerd me come into my queerness. I'm not downvoting cause of the 'wokeness'. Im just really passionate about this franchise and it let me down. My issue with this game is quite a few. Dragon Age Keep is irrelevant. Over 15ish years of story you've built is not important/erased. It felt disrespectful to fans. The scaling of enemies are overblown. In the first game you have to rally armies across the land to take down 1 archdemon and the hordes of darkspawn. It was intense and all was nearly lost, but apparently a ragtag group of 4 can take on 2 archdemons and 2 gods? Nah, these feats are stupid. Rook is just some person and companions aren't exceptional. It doesn't make sense. A big issue is between each major fight, the companions meet up and do a "We can't fight well if we aren't emotionally ready, please take your time to resolve personal matters before we fight a dangerous city destroying enemy thats waiting patiently for us to stop being babies". That is garbage. When versing such horrifically strong enemies, and with so much at stake, why do we get the luxury of emotional stability. These enemies aren't patient when they have the upper hand. They will not wait. Pull on our heartstrings, make things feel dire forever, make us feel the life death struggle. I want companions to feel like they're working things out on the go and not that they've had a lot of time to dilly dally. I miss when Dragonage was political and each choice mattered and consequences felt realistic and intense. The backbone and grit are missing. What made Dragonage great is seeing injustice and standing against it (or with it if you're a meenie). You are so bare bones of a character, railroaded into being a supportive friendly person, when you strip choice, then its not really a roleplaying game. Why aren't there slaves in Tevinter, Where are alienages, Did prejudice just die out completely, What about the mages vs templars, surely theres resentment and fear still among commoners. Where are the Dalish? Surely theyre not all Veiljumpers. Wheres all the consequences of the previous games. What happened to the chantry, Whos the divine? Did we forget the maker? Did we forget the horrible stuff the chantry does? Wheres the Qunari vs Tevinter conflict? Wheres the Chantry vs Qun conflict? Elves vs Shem conflict? Wheres the humans vs everyone conflict? Where are the dwarves, essentially 3 games without much dwarf anything, dwarves become less and less apart of the world with every game. Why does Morrigan and Dorian look so messed up. You'd think with so many lgbt making this, they could slay more with these iconic divas. Theres so much lore to draw from and it feels like this game is a bit hollow. The technology scaling is overblown. We were playing in lowtech fantasy landscape, its what made the game feel harder and made your feats feel more impressive, but now we have veil jumpers and holographic cities. Magic is so commonplace now, but it hasn't been long after the 3rd game, so it feels a bit wild to go from low to hightech and for peoples mindsets to change. Oh the combat is stripped bare, no nuance, no build consideration, so bare bones and not fun. They went downhill in the last game getting rid of entropy and spirit in mage. Just kinda meh by it, just point and click for everything really. Also the constant conversations of transness and Taash's journey feel very performative and cringe. Transness can be fed to us in funnier and nuanced ways. Like its a big deal for Taash, but surely their character is more than that. The whole Isabella scene made my roll eyes and I'm nonbinary myself and Taash was insufferable. Also the romances felt very scripted and effortless. The characters didn't really feel genuine and believable, very vanilla personalities. I will say. Very beautiful character creation, it is a pretty game. I could knitpick further. I'd just recomment playing the first 2 games if you want story and feeling and the last 2 if you want a more visual experience.

The game feels disconnected from the rest of the series, the only connections being Solas and Varric but even they feel like they could have been replaced by any new characters and the story would have been about the same. Replayed the game twice to complete all the variables and achievements then uninstalled. Overall very disappointing.

My starting point to this series was Dragon Age Inquisition, I did not play 1 and 2. Therefore, the first time I played this game with an EA store subscription, I lacked a lot of context for the history of the game. The first time I played the game, I played it donning figurative eyewear made of extreme criticism as I expected a lot from this game, fair to say I did not like it and had to stop halfway into it. Then I bought it on steam for a discounted price and watched some history into the world since the other entries were fairly outdated. The game offers 3 starting classes, a sword and board knight, a rogue and a mage. It is really important that you actually like the class you play, for me it got really boring playing a knight. Second time around, a rogue worked for me. There are 3 specializations within the classes too and they are quite varied, allowing you access to a decently sized skill tree. The graphics and the artwork are significantly different from the previous entries, it appears less mature and the it fails to capture the great evils that plague this world, it feels like they aimed in the middle of something safe and then also gruesome, which looked like a little weird mix. That said, the visuals are great, the game is really smooth and I did not come across any bugs in my playthrough. Though, it failed to deliver on the ambience I expected, it is decent enough. The character customization was excellent. Although, the basic character presets might look cartoonish without any customization, you can give your character a grim and mature look through adjusting the various sliders quite a bit. The story lacks a bit in the early stages of the game. Character interactions seems a bit forced and your decisions will feel like they lack certain impact. However, as the game carries forward, they correct this part by introducing impactful consequences to your actions. They are not many but it is significant enough to let you know that your decision does carry weight and they will weigh on you. It doesn't do a great job of tying past game content or the history of the world, it could have been better but I still liked the amount of history that it does introduce and the amount of stuff you can read on the codex. If you stick with it, it gets better in the last half of the game and it becomes a great ride with your companions. Most of the companions in this game is quite new to you and there is no prior history of them. Therefore, it gets a bit difficult to relate with them, feel compassion for them or even deal with them. The only familiar face is Harding and it was only because I played DAI. The best part of the game was the combat and how smooth it was. Throughout the game, it didn't feel repetitive or feel frustrating (if you play on the hardest difficulty enemies do feel like sponges especially if you are under leveled for fights). You can make builds around different items you come across and combat is kept fresh that way. TLDR: Not a GOTY contender but definitely recommended to get on sale!

Комментаторы... Ну желаю вам и вашему уязвленному чувству гетеросексуальности скорейшего рака жопы. Сколько времени я скипал это уигру из-за плохих отзывов, все искал в какую рпг поиграть, вот недавно скачал корейский *хит* Кримсон Дезерт. 9999999 положительных отзывов, а игра для калоедов и консольщиков, их там ребусы решать заставляют аутистичные с передвежением кубиков, а те и рады. Тут же и графика прекрасная, диалоги занятные. Сижу, наслаждаюсь. По кнопкам тыкать приятно, бои динамичные. Что косается лгбт приколов, то хз, мужик. Не хочешь - не делай из чара трансформера и не заигрывай с мужскими персами. Все просто как и в жизни, латентный ты гомик...

Overall the game is solid, liked the upgrade system, combat and gameplay in general. Never had any game-breaking bugs and I believe it's optimized well considering it's a 2024 game. A lot of comments made it sound like this game is just about LGBTQ+ and it's too disrupting, but that is really just one character built around it and that's it, you can always skip the dialogues if it bothers you too much. Some dialogs and characters could have been written better, some lines are sloppy, but if you like Dragon Age saga, I believe you will enjoy Veilguard as well

Another great series absolutely ruined by DEI hires.

As a fan of Dragon Age: Origins, I really enjoyed Dragon Age: The Veilguard. 1. The story was excellent and kept me engaged throughout the game. 2. The companions were interesting, but the interactions with them didn't fully work for me. The game doesn't really allow the player to be harsh or confrontational. If I want to tell someone off, the game should let me do that instead of constantly softening the dialogue. Dragon Age: Origins is a great example of this, where you could argue with companions and even dislike them, which made the world and characters feel more alive. I would also remove the dialogue hint icons and let players interpret their choices on their own. 3. I liked the level design, but I wasn't a fan of the overall visual style. The game looked too bright, friendly, and somewhat cartoonish. Dragon Age is a dark fantasy setting, and I think the visuals should reflect that more consistently. 4. I really enjoyed the combat, especially playing as a mage. However, I would redesign the progression system by focusing more on active abilities and fewer passive bonuses. I would also increase the number of abilities available during combat. Instead of being limited to only a few skills, I would prefer having access to more abilities through hotkeys, similar to older RPGs. 5. Solas was one of the highlights of the game for me. Learning about his past, his motivations, his struggles, and the consequences of his actions was genuinely fascinating. 6. The game's performance was excellent. I experienced no noticeable technical issues or slowdowns while playing on an NVIDIA RTX 3060. I honestly don't understand all the hate this game receives. In my opinion, it's a very good game and far more enjoyable than Dragon Age II and Inquisition. If the developers had embraced a darker visual style, it would have been even better. That said, when compared to Dragon Age: Origins, most of the companions in Veilguard fall short in terms of depth, complexity, and overall memorability. I would definitely recommend the game. I spent 52 hours with it and don't regret a single one. If Dragon Age 5 ever happens, I hope it embraces a darker tone in its visuals, dialogue, and player choices.

Hat Spaß gemacht und war die ganze Zeit motivierend. Leider keine open world. Ach ja, die Quests zur Personenfindung bei Taash war gut. Sie ist jetzt binär, aber das gendern war unerträglich. Macht die Sprache kaputt. Zerstört mit seinen hen's, Behütere und anderen Wortfindungen die Immersion.

Aren't our characters quirky? Did...Did she just say that? rawr xDDDD SOO wholesome, and so diverse! Thanks for the gold kind strangers! Also the camera is atrocious, what's the point of a billion accessibility settings, when many people get motion sickness of a forced setting.