#i really want to replay inquisition at some point once I've finished veilguard

[shiredwarf]

the way i used to be normal about solas during inquisition and trespasser..... completely unrelatable now, utterly obsessed with the🥚

[thedas-elf-lover]

A slightly deranged review from a long time Dragon Age fan.

What this game promised to be in terms of a Dragon Age game: - Most romantic - Offer a few key world state choices that would have great plot impact, which emphasis on wanting to give players choices that have a visual impact, not just codex. - The most complex, deep companions yet. - Choices that matter.

What I got: [SPOILERS] - The shortest, chastest romances I've ever seen, where the end goal is quite literally sex. The final romance scene is the sex scene, after you've been locked in for some time. No sex before marriage, lol. Even the shortest romance in DAI is longer than the longest romance in this game. It's probably the least sex positive game out of them all. - The only choice that has visual impact is the Solas option, and even that doesn't really give anything major. Solas has maybe one unique line? Otherwise, there is no major change. The other two choices (Did you disband the Inquisition? Did you vow to save or stop Solas?) have no difference, either. It's a matter of do you want your Inquisitor to say "comrade" or "friend." The Inquisition doesn't matter. The South gets nuked off-screen anyway. In codex. So two of the three world state choices we get are mostly represented in codexes anyway. - I have nothing against the companions in Veilguard, but to call them the most complex is somewhat... false. Solas is a complex character. Thom Ranier is complex. Vivienne de Fer is complex. Fenris, Anders, Merrill, Isabela, Morrigan, and Sten are complex characters. They are characters who contain complexities that are not easily swept away. ALL the Veilguard companions are your next door neighbors. They're normal. There's nothing wrong about that, but they don't challenge you. There's nothing to think about. Lucanis isn't going to make you seriously consider your morality, despite being the "prince" of the Crows - hired killers. Neve's standing and possible privilege as a human mage in a magocracy is never commented on. These are just two examples, but the same applies for the rest of the companions. None of them are HIDING anything. I will reiterate that there's not anything necessarily WRONG with that, but it does mean they lack the flare of drama that previous companions had that made them brain-scratchers. - Choices don't matter. No matter what Rook does or says, you're railroaded into a scrappy, heroic person who is always right. The worst thing you can do in this game is just NOT do the companion quests. - Despite being a RPG, there is no roleplaying. It's more action/adventure. But it gets a little slow in places for an action/adventure. And it doesn't have enough roleplay value to be a satisfying RPG. - Pretty much the only reason I can see replaying this game is to see the opposite city routes. You don't have to finish the game to get the full romance, either. - No lore continuity. Elves, qunari, dwarves, and humans just living in peace in Tevinter. Some fantasy where poor communities aren't racist doesn't explain this away. - Orientalism in Rivain? - Reducing what was originally a story about slave liberation and rebellion to "love and murder" over Solas' ex situationship. - The game can understand gender that exists outside a binary but somehow can't understand multiculturalism. - Why does Bellara, a Dalish elf, have white guilt?

Some disorganized additions:

- Tonal whiplash. You go from losing a supposedly beloved companion to the final romance scene (the sex scene) in the space of 5 second. - You can't speak to your companions outside cutscenes. However, you can go around the Lighthouse snooping on your companions having nice conversations amongst themselves. - Not a SINGLE companion bothers to check in on the PC even once. You played as a Grey Warden who lost Weisshaupt? No one cares. Emmrich will check in on Davrin but not you. The only point in the game where they show even a smidgeon of care for you is after the Regret Prison, but they don't actually show it. You're pulled out and it immediately cuts to a war table scene. No emotional reunions. - This is Found Family - but only for the companions. Bellara has the opportunity to see Neve as a sister figure, but not you. This could roll into the lack of roleplay value in this game, but it really adds to the lonely element of this game. - "Okay guys, we lost the big game. Let's all take a step back and do some self-care exercises." But the game is Weisshaupt and the South is getting nuked. - Characters often feel like caricatures of themselves. Oftentimes this game feels like a fanfiction of the story and characters it's representing. Some of the things the characters say are not things that normal people would say. Because Rook never builds more than an entirely superficial relationship with their coworkers, it's entirely believable that the most moving thing Rook can think to say, whenever the obligatory Sad Moment happens to a companion, is "[Insert Name Here], I'm so sorry." - You could replace the Inquisitior with a cardboard cut out and it would have more life. - We already had a story about a disapproving parent who is hurtful to their queer child with Dorian. There was a missed opportunity with Shathann to explore the Qunari's view on gender, but only the Tevinter characters are allowed to talk to Taash about different gender identities. When Shathann talks about qunari gender identity, it's oppression. This game's handle on cultural identity is awful. And then they fridged Shathann. - Did you know Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain, the ancient elven gods (we won't say Evanuris even though that's shorter and more believable to Andrastians who might balk at the idea of ELVEN gods), have escaped from their prison and are blighting the world? The elven gods escaped and they're blighting the world, because they're blighted and escaped prison and are elven gods and are blighting the world, Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain, those gods, who are elven, and escaped and are blighting the world. - This game is Young Adult. This game is YA with all the darker, grittier elements from the previous game filed away, presented as "politically correct" with "ethical piracy" with no continuity in characterization because Isabela Dragon Age 2 would NOT say any of that. It's if Genshin Impact was a Dragon Age game, complete with the canned body language (cross arms). - The villains are one-dimensional. Aelia's "Minrathous dark truth" AKA Batman villain, Butcher dies after 1 moment of glory, the Dragon King is nothing sauce, if Elgar'nan was just a little bit more intelligent he'd have just smashed that moon into Thedas and called it a day, Illario's speech is ripped right from the Lion King. Gone are the days where antagonists had complex reasons for their actions. Gone are the days where characters were put into situations were there was NO good choice for them to make and we could judge them with the nuance they deserved. - Also did you know: Whatever it takes?

On the bright side, the CC is great.

[thestitchpanda]

My Review Of DA:Veilguard As A Longtime DA Fan

[No Spoilers] My full play-through was about 80hrs, since I spent some time trying other races and classes to see what fit. After finally beating Veilguard I have some opinions.

TL:DR

Story was great but hollow

Feels disconnected from previous titles

Romance was barely there

Gameplay feels nice but repetetive

Graphics are beautiful

Need Golden Nug (NG+)

Excited for the future, if they learn from their mistakes.

I've played DA 1&2 plus their DLC to the point of memorisation since I was a little kid on my PS3. Hundreds of hours of many play-throughs, poking at every nook and cranny of those games. DA3 I only played a couple times and felt satisfied but overwhelmed with the massive open world style, but overall loved to be back in the world, and experience the awesome story, lively NPCs and in-depth romances. I hold all 3 in highest regard as my favourite series and will defend them to my dying breath. Veilguard felt like it intended to take all that made the past few games great and do even better… but wasn't given any of the love and attention it needed, much less deserved. It feels like a pile of bones of what it could have been; the bones are beautiful and pristine, but the are still a pile of bones, not the finished piece.

The Story Only four of your choices from the previous titles mattered; who is your Inquisitor, their romance choice, if the Inquisition was disbanded or given to the chantry, and if you swore to stop Solas or save him. Because of this, anything that would have had one of your choices change its state, they avoided or were vague about, not matter how massive of an impact they should have. They did this by saying the south was completely overrun by blight because of the Evanuris, and only your Inquisitor is fighting to keep everything together. No matter if your heroes from the previous games are alive or not. All of this just shown in codex's and letters. Away from that, I liked what there was. The true story-line of the past games was revealed, giving power that the story of this game was meant to be conclusive, but because of the previous gripes, I didn't feel as invested, relived or satisfied just… starved. I did tear up at certain parts, but I know that if it had been done better I would be a blubbering mess like the past games had made me. This game, given more love, could have beaten DA1 on story, but it doesn't come close to the past three at all when, given the weight of the content, should blow all three out the water.

The Romance A big part of play-throughs were the romances, in past games they weren't just some extra flavour, but often affected the story as a whole and had their one dedicated story arch so you felt connected to your partner and cherished your time together or were scared when the dangers of the story put them in harms way. But in Veilguard it's just a few lines of dialogue and a fade-to-black before the finale. Nothing much extra than just the basic companion quests, and even those feel like not enough. My romance choice just had us kiss once… just once after hours and only a few chances to even flirt (You can't even speak to a companion without them having dialogue waiting for you). I felt myself just wanting something, anything more, but was met with disappointment. A big part of replay-ability is romancing every choice, but It doesn't feel worth it in this game, there wouldn't be enough that set them apart.

The Gameplay As someone that favoured the DA2 gameplay more than DA1 it was really fun to play this game, and the smaller maps felt much more alive and had the right amount of exploration to an almost metroidvania type degree, requiring companion abilities to unlock certain doors/puzzles, or just having to wait until later chapters to unlock the rest of the map. Climbing on rooftops, searching back alleys, petting animals, I loved it. The combat feels like a combo of DA2 and DA3 in the best ways, you run around in cramped arenas or massive combat pits, hurling abilities and switching between ranged and melee combat as you see fit. But the companions don't really seem to scale the same as you. I played on underdog difficulty, and was dominating in combat alone, whilst my companions weren't even effective meat-shields, having only two instead of the usual three certainly didn't help. My biggest issue was that the game heavily focuses on ability combos, combining two abilities that matched would cause a detonation, making the enemy slow for a couple seconds and explode to deal damage. Late game I was spamming these combos just to have them do a fraction of my own damage from regular attacks, and the game has all skill trees built around getting these detonations and dealing effects to enemies with them. You can't even have your companions do them independently, you have to manually tell each companion and/or yourself to use their skills to cause the combo.

The Graphics I spent way too much time in this game just going around in photo-mode, as you may see on my steam profile (some spoilers). It's amazing to see the world I fell in love with on PS3 become this beautiful fantasy world that captured my heart, it feels magical, it feels real, and that's playing on medium graphics. This game has performance issues, won't deny, my 4070 was overheating to the point of crashing, peaking at ~100 degrees on higher graphics. but it was worth it. and I can only hope they optimise it with future updates. The sound on the other hand, has balancing issues, crackling and sometimes it just cuts out, forcing me to reboot just to have combat music. The song choice for the final credits definitely didn't feel as heart-tugging as DA1 and DA2. The costume design for the armour is also great but the headgear were kinda ugly if you wanted a lighter look, and wearing a helmet would muffle your voice during dialogue. That being said, having to run around, spend thousands of gold, farm for loot and run around maps finding multiple obscure vendors just to unlock maybe half of the cosmetics for this game feels disheartening when your realise that they didn't give you a way to carry these into your next play-through. The Golden Nug wasn't there on the release of DA3, but when they finally did it felt great and gave me motivation to hunt for them and play the game over and over with new outfit choices. You think they would have learnt from that, but I guess that could be said for the rest of the game.

The Future I've heard rumour that this is the final DA game, which I certainly hope is not true, the ending alone teased more to come. Ans with this plot line kinda wrapped up it would give them the freedom to explore much more potential in Thedas and beyond (also teased in game). I love Dragon Age with every part of my soul, and I do believe that, given they learn from their mistakes, listen to the community, give the games time and let the super talented people that work on these games put their passionate souls into their creation, the future could be very bright. Let our choices in the past games matter, let us touch the worlds and make them our own, get invested in the lives of the characters, fall in love with your world. Reward those that played the past games, give a world full of wonder for new players, encourage building up the community. The Dragon Age Setting deserves so much, please please please don't let it die!