theStitchpanda
South Australia, Australia
Právě je offline
Oblíbená hra
Přehlídka snímků
Dragon Age™: The Veilguard
Přehlídka recenzí
[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. I Love this game, but I did give it a "no" for a reason.

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 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!
Přehlídka sběratele
Přehlídka workshopu
Completely SFW and focused on improving visibility. But full of Anime and Gaming references.
2 hodnocení
Vytvořil – theStitchpanda
Přehlídka ocenění
x12
x1
x3
x1
x1
19
Obdržená ocenění
59
Udělená ocenění
Nedávná aktivita
157 hodin celkem
Naposledy hráno 13. čvn.
50 hodin celkem
Naposledy hráno 11. čvn.
9,2 hodin celkem
Naposledy hráno 7. čvn.
Komentáře
Azzy 1. kvě. 2023 v 9.49 
-rep stinky
Azzy 4. čvc. 2022 v 10.25 
-rep not you playing clicker games just like my bestie why :steamfacepalm: