4/5 ★ – ZombiePanda's review of Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

This game got so much hate when it came out, just a few months ago, I was hesitant about buying it or even playing it all. That bad press turned into bad sales, turned into a brand new free game on PS+. After 60 hours and getting the platinum trophy, I can tell you right now that all of that hate was unwarranted. I preordered Dragon Age: Origins way back in the day purely because the devs that made KotOR and Mass Effect made a new dark fantasy RPG and I fell in love immediately. I’ve played every previous DA game for hundreds of hours, so I have plenty of comparisons between the franchise to nitpick if I wanted to. But guess what, I don’t, and here’s why: Dragon Age The Veilguard is a good game! Is the game perfect? No. Are there writing issues? Sometimes, yeah. But all of those rage bait YouTubers made a big deal about a handful of things and people ran with that. Truly, go watch a couple of those videos and read some of the reviews on Reddit and you’ll see the exact same arguments with the exact same clips over and over every time. Isn’t weird that a 60 hour game has the same 15 minutes of cringe in every video? People criticize the new stylized designs because it looks too “Disney”. Have you seen DA:O? It looks like a potato, at least Veilguard will still look good in 16 years. Also, Dragon Age II really changed the designs of all the creatures and characters and it didn’t get as many demerits upon release. Speaking of DA2, Veilguard feels more like a spiritual successor to DA2 than a direct sequel to Inquisition. Both games reuse areas and locations almost as if they’re a character themselves to have the player connect to the communities with the world of Thedas. DA2 was also a bigger jump in real time action combat, which has been upgraded in Veilguard to pure action combat. I won’t lie, there’s some goofy stuff in this game. Some companion quest lines feel unjustly cut short, and some characters feel like they were written in modern times rather than a medieval fantasy time. But that doesn’t make the game bad. It is still very fun, the character build system is the best it has ever been. The skill trees are massive and complex, and the web of nodes you connect to make the ultimate badass looks crazy by the end. Also the gear system being simplified to a 5 tier color system where picking up repeat items just upgrades the one you have is genius. Some complaints I’ve seen are how the game doesn’t do enough because sometimes you fight, sometimes you solve rudimentary environment puzzles, and they don’t like how samey it is. I guess they never played a FPS campaign where you shoot at guys and then the combat is broken up by shooting more guys and then sometimes you old X to flip a switch or pray to a coffin idk. Anyway, I’m rambling because I’m on a dopamine high from beating the game, getting the plat, having fun in one of my favorite fantasy franchises and I got to do it all for free. It’s a good game, it deserves some recognition. I think it will get some way into the future (which is sad). DA2 was apparently a bad game until a couple of years ago, and Inquisition turned people off because the areas were too big and there were too many useless side quests muddying up everything. Inquisition also took time for people to appreciate it. Anyway, it’s free on PlayStation 5 for PS+ subscribers. At least give it a try, it’s the shortest game out of the four.