For the longest time, I've been on a fence about this game. Finally, a month after finishing it, I'm able to write a review - and sadly, I do not recommend Veilguard.

Let's just state I'm a big Dragon Age fan, I've played all previous titles multiple times. It has to be said, while the core of DA has always been the same, no game from the series was really like the others and it would be silly to expect it from it now. Still, Veilguard has somehow managed to come as the weakest of their siblings, providing the player with the most forgettable experience of all Dragon Ages.

My biggest issue with the game: it holds your hand. It holds it so tightly and persistently it gets sweaty and uncomfortable. The plot is linear, the exploration unrewarding, if you can even call it exploration - mostly you'll run into invisible or even visible walls that can only be unlocked when the game tells you it's the right time. The combat, after finetuning the aim snapping settings, was even fun (at least for melee combat rogue), but the companions are absolutely useless. You have aggro almost all the time and they can't deal with the easiest opponents by themselves, serving you well only as vessels for their special abilities. The world looks pretty - yes - the landscapes has always been a strong point of Frosty engine and that's the only thing that feels cool about exploration. The environmental "puzzle" treat the player like an idiot and the only thing missing is a giant neon arrow pointing at levers/crystals you're supposed to trigger next to unlock way to the next loot chest. Worry not, if you manage to get lost in a straightforward mechanics of it, the NPCs will eagerly point you at the right direction. Repeatedly. Until you're yelling "shut up!" at your screen when hearing another "we must find the crystal to open this gate" cue.

The game plays itself. It requires little to none player input. You're there to click at glowing buttons to "upgrade" your shops and weapons. To click dialogue options, but instead of usual NPC->player line of choice->NPC-> player line of choice scheme, there's a bizzare implementation of whole chunks of dialogue that play as a movie after you choose one dialogue option, leaving you but a passive witness to whatever the writers seemed fit to be said next. There's no way of molding your Rook into something too, they feel hollow.

Romance content is a joke. A few very short scenes with almost no chemistry.

I lost a ton of respect for Hans Zimmer for signing under a creation of such vile, unfitting and overall "generic fantasy adventure music 10h" soundtrack.

It annoyed the hell out of me, the game kept forgetting its own lore. It annoyed me that most of the time, it felt like playing a TTRPG and being the only player trying to remain serious while the rest of the players keep laughing at what the GM describes. To the tune of Zimmer's circus theme, cause why not. This vibe was only strengthened by the fairy-tale like alignments. Good guys are good, bad guys are bad, simple, easy, no shades of grey. The de-humanisation of adversaries has somehow made the game the most racist and xenophobic of all from the series, while the goal I suppose was the opposite. Overall, it feels like all the edges have been meticulously sanded off. Any team conflict is resolved faster than you can say "Dragon Age The Veilguard". Any faction that could have a darker side is void of it, we got kind-hearted assassins and pirates who don't steal.

To sum it up, I've wanted to like this game, but it failed to make me care. And that's the biggest flaw. There'd been a potential that's been lost somewhere in 10 years of production and the finished product feels like a diluted version of what could have been.
If anyone needs me, I'll be replaying flawed but juicy Inquisition.

This is a non-BUYnary

DA: The Lameguard