I Think Dragon Age: The Veilguard Is Incredible

     Before I get started I want to give you some perspective on where I'm coming from because I think it matters. I have not completed any of the previous Dragon Age games in the series. I think that alone would help you understand why I loved The Veilguard so much in comparison to those of you that don't like that it's changed so much from the previous games. I understand how you feel if you may be disappointed. I've been through it myself when the Resident Evil and Final Fantasy games changed into something completely different and I cannot feel the same about them as I did when I played the first games in those series. I do enjoy the newer versions for what they are but I was originally very unhappy with the changes and I still have preferences. Dragon Age: The Veilguard is the reason I plan to play through the previous games in the series soon. I had played Origins and Inquisition before but did not get halfway through them. Just a mood thing. The same thing happened when I played through and loved Mass Effect: Andromeda. It made me go back and play through and complete the original trilogy. Now, let us begin.

 "It is the risk of the path we have chosen, an overabundance of sorrow and anger."

     When an ancient god decides to right his wrongs by destroying the world, you end up leading a team of a variety of people with different histories, knowledge, and specializations that come together to try and stop him. While figuring out how to stop this god, the team ends up facing off against not just one god but a few as well as several dragons, corrupt politicians, traitors, cults, inner demons, and societal despair.

     Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a semi-open world action RPG. The combat mostly plays out hack-and-slash even as the mage (ranged hackin) when your spells are on cooldown which is quite often if you're using them. Eventually you unlock armor perks and skill upgrades that make your cooldowns faster. I'm not a fan of how long the cooldowns are in general and that your Companion abilities share the same cooldown period. That is terrible. Your companions can equip three skills each. You can cast one spell for each companion at a time until the cooldown refreshes, using two spells total out of the six combined that you can equip them with. It's easily the worst thing about the combat system to me. I do like the detonation system where some skills apply a debuff and other skills set it off for bonus damage and perks. This seems to be an ongoing theme with Bioware games and I like it. Hopefully in future games (if there are any) they don't continue to tie ability cooldowns to each other. My companions should be able to use one spell and then another and another with each ability having their own cooldown. I have to assume this was done for balancing reasons but it certainly takes the fun level down a bit. Also, the companions feel a bit useless when you don't give them direct commands. It's kind of a good thing since I'd rather them not be overpowered and "kill steal" but I do find it interesting how often developers have a hard time balancing AI teammates that well. I do like that each companion has their own talent tree that you can specialize into and customize for different playstyles and effects.

 "There is only so much good their deaths will bring."

     The combat is a bit on the easy side on Normal difficulty in general. There are plenty of regular encounters and boss fights later in the game that are annoying and frustratingly brutal. Part of it can be due to your character level but some engagements have multiple enemy types and the ranged enemies made me have to spam dodge until I could finally take them down. It's far less fun than it is strategic. Even if I want to take down the ranged enemies first, the other ranged enemies are forcing me to spam dodge. Some boss fights have specific annoying spam dodge mechanics as well. I find this to be normal for a lot of games, unfortunately. I'm just pointing it out here cuz it's a thing. Other than that, if you prefer your game to be hard you should raise the difficulty when you start the game. Maybe not the hardest difficulty but a notch up from Normal. There's also a custom difficulty setting that allows you to customize many different things. I haven't looked too deep into those settings.

"I don't think I'll ever stop being angry but I'm no longer afraid of it."

     The overall story is what kept me playing more than anything, along with the stunningly gorgeous environments. I loved the characters and their stories in general. Of course not everyone is my favorite. I was not very interested in Emmrich's overall story arc and I found some of it to be very stupid but there were also many cool things that were a part of it. His story was focused around death and after-life. Bellara's story is about magic and the history of her people, the elves. Lucanis's story is focused around family, betrayal, and politics. Neve's is similar to Lucanis but even better. Davrin's story is about a soldier who has to deal with bad orders, bad leaders, and learning that not every goal requires the same path. Harding's story was my favorite because I could relate to it the most. She pushed her anger away and down so hard that it nearly killed her. I would love to say more but it would be major spoiler territory. She became a god in my eyes. Bellara was my love interest while Harding was my hero. I speak on Taash later in this review. Most of the dialogue and events for all  of the characters including ones that never join your playable team kept me interested and engaged. I really looked forward to what would happen next and where we would journey to in order to find out.

      Bellara was my favorite character just because she's so sweet and hopeful, what I always find to be the most unrealistic type of mentality but it's still nice. I also like that she's vicious when needed so she's not just some innocent character. I felt like it balanced out her perkiness. It made me laugh so hard when at some point she said, "I wish I were a crime boss." Last person I would ever expect that from.

     The overall visuals are absolutely gorgeous. Every single environment had my jaw dropping at some point. I found the spell effects to be deeply impressive as well. The music is beautiful and mood setting. The voice acting is excellent in general. I don't enjoy every voice but I thought the acting was good. I'm not sure how much "choice" actually matters in this game. It was obvious to me that some choices did have an effect on the resulting dialogue and outcome but I'd have to play through the game multiple times to see just how real those choices actually are. It certainly felt good and like it mattered. In my experience with games that offer choices the alternate options don't actually change that much. There is an obvious path difference for one of the major story arcs in the game, though. General dialogue choices in most games don't usually matter that much in the end is all I'm sayin.

"We expose corruption and stop slavers but nothing really changes."

     I thought the side quests were well written. None of them felt like "fetch quests" to me. They added more depth to the world and characters I met along the way, not only the ones that join my playable team, but characters that are part of the factions we fight alongside with as well. I think it's also worth noting that there is quite a lot of side content that isn't accessible when you first come across it. I remember a couple of companion quests being in my quest log for many hours before I could even access the areas to do them.

     Character customization in Dragon Age: The Veilguard is pretty great with plenty of options. Something I thought was a little weird is that it's kinda hard to make a "sexy" character. I can find them attractive but there's a diference. The options when creating a character are pretty good, though. I never ended up unlocking all of the armor transmogs throughout my playthrough and I'm not really sure why. It bothers me when a game doesn't naturally unlock everything by the time I've completed it. What I found especially weird about that was I was still getting loot during the last bits of the game when there is no new game plus so it was kind of pointless. I guess they still want you to feel like there's some kind of progression but when it was obvious to me that the game was about to end I was more confused on why I would be looting any of it. It was disappointing not to have everything already unlocked by that point.

"Sometimes the wrong choice is not choosing at all."

     Unfortunately, I thought that most of the armor was ugly looking. I had come across some comments on the forums that felt the same way about this throughout the series. Some of it is cool looking but I had like three total favorites out of the twenty-plus pieces of gear I could choose between. And one of those I got way near the very end of the game. There's also not a lot of weapon transmogs to pick from, four maximum for each companion. So that sucked too. Most of the gear for my mage wasn't even robe-like so that was disappointing. What happened here is that they obviously are working with armor themed to the different faction types in the game world rather than random or different cool things to wear so that limited it a lot. I'm still glad the transmog feature exists at all in the game and I did play around with it often. It was just disappointing how few looks there were that I actually enjoyed or was impressed by. I might have liked some of the armors more if the color schemes weren't so ugly to me. 

      Another downside to the transmoging is that you have to return to your home base and visit the wardrobe to do it. You cannot change your look on the fly. A couple of things that are missing that I would add to the transmog system is a Loadout system and being able to label specific pieces as Favorites. That way it would be easier to switch between favorite outfit styles. It's also really too bad we didn't get to see Emmrich in his other form during combat. That would have been so cool.

     Some of the general gameplay features that I really liked were the fast travel system that requires no confirmation when fast travelling. I imagine some people might prefer the confirmation but I already know I want to fast travel which is why I'm clicking on it so I loved that there is no confirmation for it. I also love being able to change my talent specialization at any time. I was surprised at how often I was using zip-lines to traverse through some of the environments. What I really liked about the zip-lining was that it felt natural and not like a gimmick. I thought it was implemented very well. Most of the puzzles were really easy but I still thought they were fun. The only thing I remember not really liking is the slow animations for climbing. I enjoyed the platforming parts but the climbing always felt and looked a bit clunky. Oh yeah, and the mouse scroll wheel doesn't work very well when managing and browsing the inventory on PC. 

     Something I noticed while using Photo Mode is that the companions are almost always scowling. I found it very odd and annoying. It's so rare when they don't have this really ugly face during combat. It makes sense and all cuz I can think of them as being serious while fighting but my gosh it's so ugly. It made me miss being able to choose facial expressions in Photo Mode which is a feature in other games that I almost never use. It also pointed out to me how little the companions do when you're not giving them commands. They do attack for sure but it's different and in Photo Mode I see them do a lot of running and standing around. It's kind of funny.

     I had intended to get a bit deep into my thoughts on Taash as a character but that would require way too much and I don't want it to distract from my review as much as it did the story in the game. It does need to be addressed, though. I liked the character and thought her overall arc was neat but was completely ruined by the forced ideology that never naturally blended in with the story. It was really bad. She's a super cool badass, though. If interested in more of my thoughts on that ideology feel free to have a listen to my vlog that I recorded back in July of 2024. It is not intended to offend anybody but it will offend the brainwashed. I do not remember everything I said and I am aware that I often express myself poorly because I tend to oversimplify things and generalize. Nuance comes from real conversation which I don't experience often.

     While Dragon Age: The Veilguard starts off especially linear, it does eventually open up and get much bigger with some decent exploration options and feeling. It reminded me of Kingdoms of Amalur. It's still not a fully open world game, though, and I'm fine with that. I felt like this game was a truly incredible experience overall. I kinda wish I got this game sooner so I could have said these things early on. I would like to see another game in the series.

     I have already started a second playthrough but I don't have any expectations on completing it any time soon. I had over ninety hours played on the game for my first playthrough. I originally played as a Quintari Mage focused on a close-range build. I am now playing a Dwarf Rogue and realized I probably should have focused more on a Staff and nuke build for my mage cuz the rogue was instantly noticably better with base damage than my mage was. Another thing I'm also doing in my second playthrough is playing with Bloom and Vignette disabled. It changes the visuals drastically. I prefer bloom but I do like both styles and the dark grittiness without bloom on is pretty cool. I hate when games don't have a New Game Plus. A quick note: currently only 31% of the players on Steam that own the game have completed the campaign, 40% - 50% got halfway through. This is based on the achievement progress I see on steam.

     Below is a vlog I recorded about twenty-ish hours into the game with my early impressions if you wanna check that out. Some of those thoughts were shared here as well of course. Update: I also recorded a vlog with a little bit of extra commentary along with this review that is below that one.

     I have posted hundreds of screenshots of this game on my discord. Feel free to join. I am mostly the only one active there but I do post daily just in case anybody feels like seeing what I want to share. It used to be more active back when I streamed on twitch and before I lost my mind. I forgot, I have also posted screenshots on tumblr here, here, and here. Always remember to trust your instincts, authority is the enemy, expertise is an opinion, and professionalism is inhumane. Thanks for reading. Game on.