Summary
- Name of the game: Dragon Age: The Veilguard
- Launch date: October 31, 2024
- Developer: BioWare
- Publisher:Electronic Arts
- Platforms:PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S
- Genre: Action RPG/ western RPG
- Context: Continuation after Dragon Age: Inquisition, with the premise of stopping Solas and stop the threat of ancient elven gods released, leaving the open world for more condensed areas accessible by fast travel.
History and narrative
The story takes place after the events of Dragon Age: Inquisition and focuses on stopping the plans of Solas, an ancient elven god also known as Fen'Harel or the Terrible Wolf. Solas plans to destroy the Veil that separates the physical world from the spirit world, hoping to restore the ancient elven world, even if that means destroying the current world.
You create a character from scratch that the game calls Rook (in Spanish some translations call him “Torre”, curious detail). He is fully customizable; in my case, I chose a Qunari with blue skin to make him a little different. Rook leads a group of heroes called The Veilguard. At the very beginning of the game, the plan to stop Solas goes quite wrong and some ancient elven gods known as the Evanuris are unleashed, including Elgarhan and Ghilan'nain, who end up being worse than expected. Although I did wonder: if Solas wanted to restore the ancient elven world, well part of that world was these gods, so they were probably going to show up whether the plan went right or wrong.
Now, our mission is not only to find and confront Solas, but also to gather allies, protect the world from these powerful entities and discover other secrets that are revealed as we progress.
Let's see, I must say that this was my first Dragon Age game. I know Inquisition was a hit, even GOTY 2014, but this game didn't grab me at all. The story is not amazing: a group of heroes who must stop the bad guys. Solas is very obvious as a liar and the game clearly takes you that way, cheating included. Also, the story is confusing, especially for someone new to the saga, and also because the dialogues are lousy. I almost never pay that much attention to this aspect, but in this game the mistakes do jump out too much.
To be a fun RPG, dialogue and decisions should carry weight. Here they fail miserably. Perhaps on a narrative level it's fine, but the dialogue is so poorly written that you simply lose interest. The game has six companions plus your protagonist, and honestly I didn't connect with any of them, not even with my own Rook, who I created myself. When you can't even empathize with your character, there's something wrong.
The dialogue options boil down to three: a correct answer, a sarcastic one, and a defensive one. Sometimes they expand to something more direct or rude, but nothing really interesting. The other characters bore, none of them have a story that makes you want to know more, and this hurts you at the end of the game. I got the bad ending, everyone died on me, and the reasons? Things like “he didn't feel confident”, “he doubted himself” ... poor arguments that you don't understand. They tell you, “if you had spent more time with them, maybe it would have been different”. Excuse me? Because I shared time with a friend is going to save him from dying in war? Absurd.
The scenes with these characters often give cringe, there are things that I don't understand how they passed the scriptwriters“ filter. And here comes a controversial issue: the game is considered ”woke". Let's see, the problem is not that it is woke, the problem is that social dilemmas of real life don't fit in a fantasy world. Are you telling me that you created a fictional world within an already existing saga and now you add modern themes that have nothing to do with it? There are ridiculous scenes like talking about how to stop the gods, and in the next scene two characters argue about the way they dress, and Rook has to decide, I mean, who cares about that at that point? These types of scenes are repeated several times and don't fit together at all.
About Ghilan'nain, I don't know how many times we face it. It's tiring to have to fight the same boss several times, all to unnecessarily lengthen the story. The story itself is average, neither good nor bad, but its characters, dialogues and decision making ruin the experience completely. You can choose all the right options, but if you didn't spend “time with your friends”, they still die. The story can be followed, but everything else sabotages it.
Gameplay
The main mechanics are real time combat. In my case I chose warrior. You have parry, dodge, combo attacks, skills, etc. The combat is not the best, it gets repetitive fast. As you get new skills it improves a bit, but the problem is the AI of the enemies, who always repeat the same attacks, with combos that you learn by heart.
To increase the difficulty, the game simply throws a lot of enemies at you, and it becomes survival mode type. By the last mission I was already so tired that I was skipping fights whenever I could. And to top it off, the enemies are hit sponges, taking quite a while to kill them.
The turn-based RPG elements are well done, the techniques can be interesting, but the skill tree is confusing. Many descriptions don't explain anything well and there are skills that seem useless, so you feel like you're wasting points.
Weapon upgrades are boring, lifeless. Merchants are generic, I had gold to spare, there was nothing to spend it on except until the end. If you upgrade everything in the lighthouse, everything you find in the campaign becomes useless.
The controls respond well, although I had errors when I gave an order to a partner and he didn't do it. The combat is decent, a bit repetitive, but it's playable. It's not the worst thing about the game, in fact, it's one of the few things that can be rescued. The learning curve is normal, with some confusing moments, but in general it is understandable. The combat interface is ugly, but it doesn't stop you from playing.
And now, the worst part of the gameplay: the bosses. I only rescue the final fight, but everything else is terrible. Repeated mini-bosses, dragons with horrible combat design, nothing memorable. The three-headed dragon with phases I found horrible: in normal difficulty, in phase 1 comes out a head, you beat it. Phase 2, 2 heads come out, you beat it. Phase 3, the 3 heads come out and now they summon normal enemies. It would fit perfectly in a top of the worst boss fight designs in my life.
Then, the ice dragon flees in combat, and then you kill it, but a cinematic appears where the goddess revives it and now it has help from another fire dragon. Two dragons launching attacks all over the map at the same time, and the game doesn't know how to handle multiple boss fights. Lousy.
The final combat with the goddess is just breaking eggs, freeing allies and that's it. She dies in the cinematic. There are four fights against her directly and indirectly. Too much, repetitive, tiring.
Graphics and visual design
The art design is vibrant, with well-modeled characters, good quality textures and fluid animations. More stylized than realistic. Graphically, it delivers, it's not the best of its year, but it's okay.
The characters feel robotic, and that also affects immersion. I didn't find the character design appealing. I only loved the one of the elven goddess, but her brother's was left behind, which is disappointing considering he's supposed to be more powerful.
The world is semi-open, but very linear. It doesn't make you want to explore because there is not much to do. It has visually beautiful parts, but they are few.
Sound and music
The soundtrack is non-existent, nothing memorable. A week after leaving the game, you don't remember a single track. Neither in combat nor in exploration. On the other hand, the sound effects are good, believable, immersive.
The voice acting is bad, without enthusiasm. I don't think they are bad actors, it's the script that doesn't help. The only one I felt with some energy was Solas, and a little Taash, but only in his personal dilemmas. The others all sound the same.
Difficulty and accessibility
The difficulty is adjustable. The combat can be challenging, but if you level up a lot, it becomes easy. Now, in terms of accessibility, it does stand out a lot. I'm not talking about social inclusion, but about real options for players with physical or mental disabilities. In this, the game does a great job and it is the most admirable thing.
Additional content
I took about 25 hours on normal difficulty, going straight through the story. The replayability is low. There are decisions that change some details, different classes, romances and several endings, but it doesn't make you want to replay it.
There are side quests that expand the world and characters, but you have to do them for them to survive to the end. Otherwise, they don't trust you and die.
Once you finish the game, if you hit “continue”, it returns you before the final mission, which can be up to 5 hours of backtracking. There are no DLCs announced and I don't think there are any.
Technical Aspects
Good performance on PS5 and Xbox X Series X/S, no serious FPS drops. Sometimes the console beeps at startup, but nothing major. It has minor bugs, such as floating or frozen enemies, but nothing that ruins the game. In general, it is well optimized.
Value for money
Its launch price was $70. Honestly, ridiculous. Too bad for those who bought it at full price because it's not worth it at all. I got it for PS Plus, and if it weren't for that, I wouldn't have even touched it.
If someone wants to try it, don't pay more than $15, because the probability that you won't like it is high, and it's not worth risking more.
Trophies / Achievements
- Platinum obtained: No
- Percentage of trophies obtained: 37%
- Estimated time: 60 hours
- Platinum difficulty: 4 out of 10. The difficult thing is not the platinum itself, it is to endure the game for so many hours.
Conclusion
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is BioWare's weak return to the action RPG, visually it delivers, poorly written and designed characters, a repetitive combat system, but it entertains. While the main narrative may not reach the emotional greatness of Inquisition, something entertaining to pass the time on, this game represents what bad decision making and prioritizing irrelevant issues over the player experience is all about. The game after being analyzed it seems that it was developed by several teams that never had communication with each other, it seems that each one did their job they put it all together and it was approved like that. The game was a failure, I gave it a chance and although it is not the worst I have played because I finished it, I must say that it is a mediocre game.
My final rating for Dragon Age: The Veilguard is:
2.6/5
