Dragon Age™: The Veilguard

Dragon Age: The Veilguard — A Masterpiece That Trips Over Itself ------------------------------------ Probably the best game in the series mechanically. Possibly the most frustrating to recommend. Combat ------------------------------------ The best Dragon Age has ever felt. Small and large-scale encounters both work, and the action is fluid without being brainless. Some classes need rebalancing, but for a single-player game that's a minor footnote, not a dealbreaker. RPG and Story ------------------------------------ Your decisions carry weight — genuinely Game of Thrones-level weight in places. You can't play a villain, but that's true of most BioWare titles and rarely a problem. The companion system is strong: each character has a real backstory, personality, and arc. Voice acting is excellent across the board. The story has some genuinely surprising moments, and while map reuse for story missions gets tedious, the world is large enough that it doesn't become suffocating. Where It Falls Apart: Immersion ------------------------------------ The biggest bug in this game isn't performance or writing. It's immersion — and it's self-inflicted. The Marvel-style banter is a matter of taste. Fine. What isn't fine is the relentless didacticism around LGBT representation. I don't object to LGBT characters — BG3 had plenty and handled it seamlessly because it was woven into the world rather than announced. Veilguard lectures. There's a difference between representation and curriculum, and this game consistently crosses that line. Then there's character design. BioWare built its reputation partly on companions you actually got attached to — and for a large part of its audience, that attachment had a visual component. Morrigan. Isabela. Characters with presence, personality, and yes, appeal. That tradition is gone. Veilguard's female cast is visually flattened — deliberately so. There's no Eve, no Tifa, no Aerith, no 2B, no Claire, no Jill. Not even echoes of what BioWare itself once did. The male companions trend uniformly androgynous. When the primary audience — largely male — feels nothing toward the romance targets, the entire companion investment system quietly dies. You complete their quests. You don't care. That's a catastrophic failure for this genre. The cultural design consistency breaks things further. Western fantasy settings have an established aesthetic language. Veilguard drops East Asian cultural aesthetics onto elves with zero narrative grounding — no lore reason, no geographic logic. I'm Chinese. I enjoy seeing East Asian culture in games when it makes sense. Give me a Wuxia world, an eastern civilization where Qi powers combat, and I'm invested. Slapping those aesthetics onto elves in a Western fantasy isn't representation, it's incoherence. You'd flag the same problem if Viking dwarves appeared in a Wuxia epic and were called inclusive. The result is a game that keeps ejecting you from its world — not through bugs or bad writing, but through design decisions that prioritise agenda over vision. Verdict ------------------------------------ Mechanically excellent. Narratively decent. Immersively broken by choices that didn't need to be made this way. BioWare built this franchise on a simple formula: great combat, meaningful choices, and companions you genuinely cared about. Veilguard delivers on the first two. It abandons the third. When you can't get attached to the characters you're supposed to romance, when the world's visual logic doesn't hold together, and when the game stops trusting you to accept representation without being taught it — the emotional core hollows out. What should feel like an epic RPG starts feeling like a very polished arcade game with cutscenes. The tragedy is that the bones are brilliant. The combat alone deserves a better game around it. But authentic representation and world-building coherence are not in conflict — developers just have to choose craft over checklist. Veilguard chose the checklist. Recommended with reservations. Play it for the combat and the story beats. Just don't expect to fall in love with anyone along the way — and in a BioWare game, that's the most damning thing you can say.

Long time fan of the series, and I think it delivers. Rook is kind of a doof, but I like the rest of the cast, and the environments are gorgeous. Runs beautifully.

An excellent game ABSOLUTELY tarnished by people's expectations. ---- So, bear with me here. I'm not gonna spend ages making this a masterpiece of a review. I honestly do not get the hate this game gets. Is it as good as the previous dragon ages? I don't know. But as someone whom has played the entire series: combat is satisfying and intuitive. You have a ton of combos and weapon types to play around with. And although it's different from previous games, taking on a much more hack-n-slash or souls-like intuitive, it's still incredibly fun. Story is engaging (albiet not as strong as the previous games), and the exploration and quests are still a heavy focus. -Is the writing as good as the previous Dragon Age games? NO. But it's no where as near bad as some of the comments make it out to be. Still dark and engaging. Like, one of the first things you come across is a horror-esque scene of an entire village, which has been pretty much, for lack of spoilers, been turned into something out of Resident Evil. There's also that classic Bioware charm where it feels like half of your decisions will be remembered by at least someone. As per another incredibly popular review, claiming that the "game is monotonous" and the combat boils down to "button mashing," I honestly wonder if they were playing on the lowest difficulty. Because let me tell you, this is honestly the hardest game in the series in terms of combat at normal difficulty. You will die unless you learn how to dodge or parry. -Is it different from the other games in the series? Yes. But I certainly would not call it bad. It still feels like it takes place right within the universe, just from the perspective of a totally different character from the first 3 games. I honestly think that the heavy politics of Inquisition ruined what people remembered from its roots: Dark at times, story-driven fantasy, with satisfying combat. And for that, it's not much different. ...Although I cannot hesitate enough that the combat has very much shifted to be more like something out of a Souls game. If that's not your thing, you're gonna miss out on a lot. But as a whole, I honestly cannot understand any of the hate this game has gotten. -Is it the weakest Dragon Age game? Probably. -Is it bad? Absolutely not. Fair warning that it does suffer from sub-par optimization. But with a stronger computer you'll survive.

What a disappointment!!! After waiting so long for this it turns out to be utterly stupid. It's pretty, but that's the only good thing I can say about it.

Honestamente não é um jogo ruim... mas também não é um jogo bom. Ao meu ver os pontos positivos acabam sendo cancelados pelos negativos. Por um lado a gameplay é muito divertida, joguei como um mago e como ladino e com ambos me senti invencível com as builds que fiz, além disso, alguns dos mapas são bem bonitos e existem alguns personagens (Solas, Emmerich, Davrin) e momentos da história que são interessantes. Por outro lado é meio difícil de engolir que esse jogo se passa no universo de dragon age, principalmente para mim que joguei todos os jogos anteriores. Muitas das coisas que acontecem na história não fazem sentido, as escolhas feitas não tem peso (e as escolhas dos jogos anteriores são desconsideradas ou não tem impacto nenhum na narrativa), muitos plots e lore do jogos anteriores são descartados ou não são mencionados, além disso, alguns dos companions são insuportáveis (sendo o Lucanis o pior, porque nada na caracterização ou história dele faz sentido). Na minha opinião, não vale a pena gastar o preço completo para jogar esse jogo, mas se ele tiver com alguma grande promoção ou se você tiver o EA play pode valer a pena para experimentar.

This game is simply unplayable on my gaming laptop with high end specs. Even with all the graphical settings set to the minimum. Somehow it manages to run smoothly on a XBox Ally X limited to 13 Watt....

Mit beiden Augen zu gibt es einen Daumen hoch. Eigentlich wäre es ein Daumen runter, aber ich glaube an BioWare. Dragon Age: The Veilguard macht vieles richtig — und scheitert trotzdem an den wichtigsten Dingen. Das Kampfsystem ist richtig gut. Schnell, taktisch und befriedigend, mit einem Team-System das stark an Mass Effect erinnert. Auch das Leveln der Charaktere und Gegenstände ist gelungen, und die Herausforderungen motivieren. Vom reinen Gameplay her macht das Spiel Spaß. Aber dann die Story. Am Anfang noch interessant, wird sie zunehmend übererzählt und verliert sich in immer abstrakteren Handlungssträngen — spätestens beim Elfen im Limbo fragt man sich, wohin das alles führen soll. Die Welt fühlt sich nicht wie eine zusammenhängende große Welt an, sondern wie Stückwerk — einzelne Gebiete, die irgendwie zusammengefügt wurden. Das ständige Springen zwischen den Welten verstärkt dieses Gefühl nur. Das größte Problem sind die Charaktere. Sie bleiben blass und langweilig, was dafür sorgt, dass die Geschichte nie wirklich treibend wird. Die Dialoge sind banal und ohne emotionale Tiefe — runtergerzählt statt erzählt. Das ganze Spiel fühlt sich dadurch leidenschaftslos an, als würde es nur eine Checkliste abarbeiten. Schade, denn der Grafikstil ist zeitlos schön, die Teams mit den Skill und dem Aufleveln stimmt, und das Kampfsystem macht wahnsinnig Spaß und fühlt sich wuchtig an. Aber ohne überzeugendes Worldbuilding, starke Charaktere und gute Dialoge bleibt es leider nur halb so gut wie es sein könnte. Wer reines Gameplay sucht, wird Spaß haben. Wer eine Geschichte mit Herz erwartet, wird enttäuscht.

Some say this is not a "true" dragon age, but I disagree. It does go with the canon of the world and the outcomes of the play differ based on what choise's you make along the way. You may make it harder for yourself if you ignore too much of the content, so keep at it. I played first round on normal difficulty and fighter class. Now I'm on Nightmare with rogue, It's a challenge for sure, but doable when you know what to expect. I'd give this game solid 8/10.