1.5/5 ★ – simpforsable's review of Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

Shorter conclusion at the bottom :) Story (This is my first dragon age game): The story has too much to tell and seems to interconnected with previous lore to allow this as your first entry into the series lore-wise. This might be completely different for someone who played the previous titles, but I didn't get into the plot since I often didn't understand what was referenced, so I gave up reading everything after a while. General combat gameplay: The gameplay is fun on a surface level, but with my mage, spellblade character it did get really repetitive, seeing as the attacks I did felt same-ish, I used the exact same combo when ever possible since it had by far the best dps and mana is handled in a way that allows you to cast exactly one spell, that uses 100% of your mana and then you have to attack enemies and wait to maybe cast a second spell later, if the encounter is long enough. Some spells are on cooldowns instead of mana cost, but the way mana works makes it just feel like all spells are on a cooldown, but some spells the same cooldown (your binary mana pool) for some reason. Equipment: Equipment is super rudimentary, you have damage + stagger as stats on you weapon and armor + %damage increase on body armor and helmet, some weapons come with different elemental damage types. You also get a ring and an amulet slot that give %damage to specific types of damage and a belt that improves your healing potion. All of this gear is just numbers go up. When you find something new, it will most likely have better stats than what you wear. Comparison to most similar game: The combat feel is most similar to hogwards legacy out of all things lol. Though I preferred Hogwards legagy as it felt snappier, countering more intuitive and your build was better customizable through the different spells as opposed by the class focus in dragon age veil guards that makes you make the choice of what gameplay you will have the entire game in character creation. Your party: You party is composed of your character and two NPC companions chosen from your roster of allies before each mission. You can pick your character from a beefy warrior guy, a rogue type and a mage, but your companions are all mage, rogue and archer types, so you will be the frontline of your group no matter what you pick and which companions you add to the party. The party system in general seems like similar but by far lesser version of that same system in dragons dogma 2. Where your companions felt like actual people fighting the same fight as you, needing support but also intuitively supporting you in return. Here in drafon age veilguards it feels that you have most/all of the aggro and you companions are sewhere around dealing a bit of damage, until you actively command them to cast a spellafter which they immediately go back to dealing light damage from the limbo. The Environment: The environment is not a cohesive or open world, instead you find a hub with portals in the beginning and enter each level through a portal when tasked to do so by the story. There is variety in the environments, but the level structure is pretty mich the same always, its long corridor like sections with the lightest puzzles and parkour, intersected by slightly wider arenas where grous of enemies spawn and block the way. There are small nooks and crannies everywhere that hide a purse or chest, no real hidden paths, just tiny niches on the wayside. Every level is littered with those and uses pretty much the same 6-7 different models for coin purses, small, medium and big chests. Like who put all that shit everywhere?! Conclusion: Most everything in this game is mid and has been done better in other games i played. The environments look okay, but is saw nothing that felt unique or otherwise amazed me. The levels themselves are all liniar paths to their goal. The encounter gameplay feels good-ish, but is repetitive and not very deep. the companions system is a big step backwards from dragons dogma 2 where my NPC party members almost felt like players working the same goal. Equipment is the dumbest numbers go up system where every piece has only two stats (with a 3rd and 4th unlockable by ugrading rarety) but you find nothing that plays or feels different, you will always inly have different nimbers depending on what you wear. The story I cannot rate for any thing exept that It is most definitely not a good entry point into the series. cheers