#game play review

[yellowish-ish]

goodbye curly

[felassan]

Tom Henderson of Insider Gaming mentions that the review embargo for Dragon Age: The Veilguard will lift on October 28th 2024 [source]

[gumsbiter]

Making the right choice

[eeveekitti]

rambley my new best friend rambley

[gothwizardmagic]

oh yeah i finished sacred and terrible air and i regret to announce that the distressingly erotic autopsy scene in disco elysium was not an isolated incident

[no-lullaby]

Sorry for no art in a very long time. I've been playing outer wilds and struggling

Hyper Light Drifter warm up

[krypto100]

I'm obsessed with this Christian review of Halo 2 I found

[apostaterevolutionary]

Oh man, I actually haven’t been this mad at bioware in years lmao (see my last reblog if you’re seeing this without context somehow). It’s oddly refreshing. Almost comforting even. Like ah, yes, of course they did something stupid, that’s just the world working as it always has. Sky blue, water wet, bioware making an absolutely massive fumble that fills me with burning rage. Normalcy

[lafaiette]

Guys, I'll be honest, I'm not really feeling it

[hellspawnmotel]

terranigma, a cool game

[kirby-the-gorb]

[ayrennaranaaldmeri]

[once again here be dragons]

ngl one thing that IS making me roll my eyes into the sun is how bland and flavourless some of the interpersonal conflicts between companions are as I've seen them in reviews.

Rook is standing between two companions and "sorting out" their arguments like they are talking to fucking children and the problems these chars have with each other are kind of just tiny, petty things? and so much which amount to shit like taash no like skeleton, emmrich find dragon boring, harding think emmrich takes too long to pack or has too many books, emmirch judging harding for sleeping on the dirt?? like what is this, genuinely. rook is always talking to these grown ass adults like they are fucking toddlers and i'm like...really. i saw one scene between davrin and lucanis that appears to have at least a bit more bite (even though the line i saw from davrin was legit just jacob's beef with thane) but apparently even that gets resolved very quickly and doesn't come up?

also rip dorian, he has been completely teaganed.

[alongtidesoflight]

so here's my honest thoughts on dragon age: the veilguard, after ~40 hours of playing. i finished the main quest after having finished all companion quests and major faction quests. just to clear up what content i saw, i played as an elven transmasc rook who is a member of the lords of fortune. he romanced lucanis (although after finishing the game i'm now leaning towards taash). i don't know what's happening in playthroughs that have a different race, gender identity, romance or faction going on.

full spoilers ahead, i mean it. don't read further if you want to avoid them. i don't want complaining about it in my asks.

oh and also, if you're worried because of a few negative reviews online i can comfort you by saying don't give a fuck about a certain big name youtuber who is very much tied to bethesda franchises giving this a negative review. i'll explain why.

i'm starting off with the things i liked

the game looks really pretty. i was worried it wouldn't feel like thedas anymore (with them trying to "focus on northern thedas only" i thought they'd make a clear cut in environmental design. they do and they don't. it's complicated. i'll elaborate on it when talking about the negative stuff). anyway it does. minrathous feels like kirkwall. treviso enchanted me like the winter palace did. the hossberg wetlands reminded me of the hinterlands and a couple other inquisition maps. arlathan looked like... arlathan. the crossroads were different, but familiar. overall i like the way it looks and feels. it's thedas, with a twist. it's a good one, and gives everything a solid but unique feel.

combat is top tier. if you're a hardcore dragon age player you WILL miss the tactical aspect of it for a bit, but i promise you, once you're used to the way the combat works, you will be lapping that shit up. and once you get to ability combos you'll mourn the control you used to have over your companions in battle a bit less

the MAIN quest and its story. i expected worse, way worse. and for a while the game even had me tricked (harr harr you'll get it in a second) it is Really That Much Worse. but holy shit was it good. i walked away satisfied ngl.

your choices have SOLID weight. there's consequences, good AND bad. i got minrathous blighted, ruled over by venatori, and the leader of the shadow dragons ultimately died because of my decisions. i made those at the beginning and throughout the game. he died at the end. DAVRIN died because i didn't expect what i was saying to have that much weight. i thought i was in the clear. he had hero status. well turns out, your choices can still get your companions killed even if you do everything right. i fucking love him. he shouldn't have made that sacrifice just because i told him to do everything it takes once.

the inquisitor, morrigan and dorian being there, surprisingly. there's also negatives to this though, see below.

speaking of companions dying and the inquisitor playing a bigger role: the final quest feels like me2's suicide mission. i was blown away by it and the fact that i got to see the results of all my efforts playing out in front of me.

bioware are NOT trying to redeem solas. they love him as a character yes, but i wasn't forced to see any good in him. he betrays you. he fucked my rook over twice. he fucked him over right back, for good this time (the veil wasn't torn down, i anchored it by binding him to it, he's doomed to uphold it). but solas really lives up to his name as the trickster elven god. rip to all the people who grew really attached to him over the years.

varric died. if you like him that's probably as hard reading it as it was watching it. varric died and the game lies about it until the very end. when the realisation hits, it hurts. but in the very best way.

the amount of care they put into gender expression and trans identities this time around. (i'll add onto this with negative points as well too).

rook feels very much ingrained in the world of thedas. he doesn't ask questions that expose the player to lore through dialogue as if he's stepped foot into thedas for the first time. those conversations feel very solid and good. i hope other faction players got as much joy out of this as i did.

and the things i didn't like and boy there's a lot unfortunately

the music. let's just get that out of the way holy shit. it doesn't feel like it belongs in this universe. it gets so incredibly sci-fi-y at times you'd think it's taken straight from mass effect andromeda. there's not a single song unique to veilguard that i really enjoyed. it broke my immersion, real bad. hearing a busker play the tavern songs from inquisition on a lute right after i killed some venatori with wobbly bass songs playing in the background is just odd. weird tonal shift. don't like it. it's made for people who like flashy light-weight cinema.

tevinter nights is required reading. the podcasts are required listening exercises. the game is so fast paced, especially at the start, that there's no time to introduce you to characters and how much weight their names carry in-game. i would not have known who half these people are if i hadn't skimmed over tevinter nights. i'd care even less about them than i already did. there is no time to get properly attached to them. people will act as if you're talking to a legend personified and you'll be thinking man goddamn which chapter of tevinter night were they in again and what did they do???

there's a weird mismatch with the animations. you'll have beautifully fluid ones, like emmrich casting spells. and then you'll have rook's face animating in the most unnatural manner that's sorta reminiscent of mass effect andromeda's "my face is tired" addison, when their emotions SHOULD be landing with the player rn instead.

i'm not vibing with the art style. sometimes it works. most of the time it doesn't. at points i felt like i was watching tangled.

that also brings me to some of the dialogue. same issue. i am watching frozen. i am watching tangled. someone on the writer's team really likes the adorkable trope. bellara is its victim.

for all the talk about identity, bioware sure doesn't like theirs. the grey warden armor got a redesign again and it just makes them look like a generic army. i hate it lol

in general, i don't like the armor design. the wardrobe/appearances system is fine, but it's just not helping if all the armors are just... kinda bland or downight bad looking? and don't get me started on the lords of fortune armor. that is orientalism personified.

the world states should have been carried over, full stop. i know they said they didn't because they want to separate what happens in the north from what happens in the south, which... i could have lived with that. but the inquisitor sends you letters that keep you up to date on... the south of thedas. you learn that there's a blight again, that people are standing strong but it's difficult, denerim's fallen, the rulers are taking care of it, orlais is fighting and they're successful for a while, etc etc. what's good bioware. i thought we don't care about the south this time around. why are you feeding me so much boring generic information. if you're not gonna show any of it and just write letters, then carrying the world state over should not have been an issue. i have a game dev background. those few lines of code would not have broken your budget or pushed your engine's limits. fuck right off.

this gripe of mine carries over to all the cameos. as a lord of fortune you have to deal with isabela a lot. it's fun. i missed her. you get to go drinking with her and taash and bellara! also my hawke romanced her. she's not mentioned once. they had the opportunity to put a sentence or two about her in there with not a lot of effort, trust me.

when varric dies, all she has is a single line about it. for gold, for fortune, for varric. she only says it if you interact with her on your way to the final push. that's not mandatory.

morrigan is there. kieran isn't. the old god soul that mythal and then solas absorbed? who cares at this point, the gods are dead now and solas is locked away for eternity. i suppose? why is morrigan there. she feels unneeded. i wish they'd just left her down south, at least that way i wouldn't have had to witness her god awful redesign.

dorian at least feels as if he belongs in this story. the shadow dragons are a crucial part to protecting minrathous. he's also weirdly underutilised. isabela and morrigan had more lines than him in my playthrough.

on the topic of romance: bro that was underwhelming. no, genuinely. you know when romance picked up a bit? after the point of no return. i heard maybe two lines of companion banter about it before that. maybe i missed something which i honestly doubt, but romance did not play much of a role in lucanis's storyline. i saved his grandmother as he wished me to (and if you read tevinter nights you know she was rather abusive and their relationship not the healthiest) and told him to focus on his family. a reunified family my rook wasn't even introduced to as a partner at the end of all that.

really, do not buy this game if you're only in it for the romances. others might be better, lucanis's basically gave me nothing. except for an outing (the second coffee date i had with him, it was getting repetitive) all of it played out once i committed to the final quest. the sex scene was a fade to black. annoyingly right after davrin died. if you're looking for well paced and good spice, pick up something else. the sweet talk and the final goodbye were nice though.

for all the good the ever-presence of gender identity does, it is brought up in such a disruptive manner too. it doesn't even play out naturally if you CHOOSE the lines that are meant to be said. hearing the words trans and non-binary in this setting doesn't feel right, and i'm saying this as a trans guy. i think it could have been handled more gracefully. the amount of times my rook went "i'm a MAN" as if he's about to start drumming on his chest and roaring any second now got super nerve-grating. "i'm so glad you're into me... the me who is trans. remember?" just. tell me one trans person who'd talk like that to a person they've grown close with and are trying to romance. this game doesn't handle sexuality well, so all this hey my body might not look like the way you're expecting it to look talk amounts to nothing anyway. i feel about this the way i feel about krem: this is partial exposition to trans experiences... packaged up for cis consumption. the ONLY exception to that is interacting with taash. holy shit was all of that heartwarming and bro did it feel good and natural to talk to them about theirs and rook's gender.

rivain and nevarra are new locations added by veilguard. they're also incredibly underwhelming, small and constricted maps. rivain is a coastline with a few ruins. the hall of valor is a partial ruin nestled into a cave on a beach, with a fighting pit. isabela is there in her skimpy outfit commentating your pit fights. that's it. i'm sorry if you were looking for a bustling pirate cove or whatever. you're not gonna get it. the nevarran crypts btw are a long ass dungeon crawl. that's it.

speaking of maps. i thought people were being dramatic when they said you're gonna be fighting the same enemies on them again and again. i thought they were figure of speeching it. they're not. you WILL fight the same amount of enemies. in the same spot. every time you reload the map. best to stay on a map and clear out the enemies and do as much questing on that map as you can before leaving, because you WILL have to do it all over again once you return.

the three choices i made for my inquisitor didn't matter lol she didn't have to face solas and therefore couldn't stop him at any cost as she had sworn (maybe because my rook tricked solas into binding himself to the veil, there was also an option to fight him. would she have stepped in? who knows). blackwall wasn't mentioned. and either her using a small amount of her forces in the final fight was the reason the civilians of minrathous fared so well..... or it just didn't matter. ultimately i think she had very little impact on anything

[dreamsy990]

SPONTANEOUS MINI REVIEW BECAUSE I REALIZED THAT I HAVENT FUCKING TALKED ABOUT FRAGMENTARY PASSAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ok so. i actually really liked this one!

so uh. if you witnessed that incredibly long thread i made yelling about kh3 you will know that i. am not a fan of the look of modern kh. i think its kind of uninteresting compared to the delightfully cartoony style and just generally i dont like more realistic looks to games that already had a unique visual identity.

so im here to say that i think it works for 0.2! im a good way through kh3 and i dont think it works well there and ill get to that when i eventually review that game but. in 0.2 i think the new style fits the more dark tone very nicely, and the enviornments are absolutely gorgeous. like i came out of ddd thinking absolutely nothing could top symphony of sorcery in terms of world design and was proven wrong. the realm of darkness is my new favorite kh "world". for my mutuals who havent played kh, look at this!!! its absolutely gorgeous

and the environments are actually my favorite thing about this game. besides being beautiful, theyre also delightfully trippy and unsettling. theres a section where you have to climb up a seemingly never ending staircase, and every time you reach what you think is the top you hear aquas worst thoughts. a lot of the areas are twisted, destroyed versions of worlds seen in bbs. its very dark (fitting, for the realm of darkness) and honestly its a treat to just walk around admiring the view. the visual storytelling is as good as kh ever gets.

i briefly mentioned aquas thoughts a minute ago so ill bring them up again, her commentary adds a lot to the desolate atmosphere, and this game really feels like a character study. it shows her desperation, her worst thoughts, her hope despite everything, and its just genuinely good. i havent been able to say that about khs character writing since like. days. its GOOD.

i am. not a fan of bbs' writing. i think its got a good underlying concept with absolutely terrible execution, and it makes me wonder at times if the things i like about it were intentional or not. but this game takes the best written character of bbs and gives her more depth than they ever could before. i can say with confidence that aqua is one of the best characters in the series, and a lot of it is because of this game.

the tone here is very gloomy, but thats not really a complaint because the game is so short. the depressing atmosphere isnt too much to bear because youre barely in it for more than 2 hours. and i think that run time is EXACTLY long enough. it goes for exactly as long as it needs to tell the story and still give a moment to breathe.

as for gameplay. im not the biggest fan of the updated system. i like to think im open to change with kh's combat. i think the command deck has potential and the card system in com was fun and i actually liked days' panel system. but something about the way this new version of the system feels to play is just. unsatisfying. hits dont feel like they have any weight to me, and spells feel inconsequential despite being more grandiose than ever. its just not as good as it was before, and like its a sort of half assed replacement of reaction commands. the way they incorporated style changes into it was okay, but again its not as satisfying as it was in bbs. but maybe it was just satisfying in bbs because the rest of the combat there sucked

tldr, the things i care about in a game (writing and visuals) were fucking spectacular, but the gameplay definitely had room to improve. also if i ever have to fight a darkside again ill throw up and cry! 8/10, though im tempted to raise it to a 9 for the environments alone

[lunathejediknight]

i sat my ass down and watched sonic 1 and 2 finally

let me just say I do not need another hyperfixation...

my Pinterest board: "you sure?"

me: "shit"

all jokes aside THESE MOVIES ARE SO GOOD!!! I think knuckles is my personal favorite so far, also the way I screamed when sonic called him the winter soldier, I was so happy man (Bucky's my favorite in the MCU, apart from wanda) so final rating for both movies: 1st one 9/10 second one 10/10 would highly recomend, now time to see the 3rd one :D i'm am very excited

[kerocola]

Christmas Klonoa (2022)