I Completed Every Quest, Downed Every Boss, Grinded Every Reputation in Dragon Age The Veilguard on the hardest difficulty of Nightmare, here’s what I think about it.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard Review after 100%
Game Code provided by EA.
#dragonage #veilguard #rurikhan
Chapters:
0:00 Dragon Age: The Veilguard Review
0:56 What is the Veilguard? Dragon Age Tonal Shift
4:42 Combat & Difficulty
12:49 Build Crafting & Dungeon Crawling
14:15 Character Creator
19:52 Visuals & Artstyle
23:00 Sound
24:05 Writing & Dialog
33:12 Companions
43:31 Romance
44:42 Live Service Remnants & Itemization
54:11 Spoiler Discussion & Final Thoughts
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There is absolutely nothing wrong with the "woke" stuff. The problem is how the woke stuff is presented in the form of incredibly cringe writing. Dragon Age Origins was pretty woke as well for its time. And Baldur's Gate 3 is ultra-woke, but that turned out to be a fantastic game. It's the cringe, tik-tok generation style writing that made Veilguard to be a sloppy mess.
And the romance scenes are some of the worst I've ever seen…
It seems like the devs didn’t want to give you the option to make your dwarf masculine
So the things that matters to Dragon Age is not there. I know that has been the comments since the game came out, but most of it I heard from those who are a bit more on the harsher side. Good to hear from someone who can be more open to both the good and bad. One thing I want to mention; yes the woke/DEI stuff may only be 5% of the 99 hours playtime, but it's the pattern that we are concerned with. Games that have even 1-2% of that tends to not do a great job with things that matter to the players of said game. Anyways, great video!
I felt you on that dwarf reasoning. I"m the same way with ninjas. Anything ninja automatically gets a play from me. I can respect it but yeah this game is dookie tainted dog water.
Lorewise, the tonal shift is this in northern Thedas which has a different culture than Origins which is in the south/Ferelden and you were in the Warden faction which is a band of miserable people like orphans and criminals with fantasy cancer being fed lies. Vs here you are basically the “chosen one” so you get to see all sides. Also, try booting up Origins now, youll be surprised how similar Origins writing is to this but just less snarky.
35:00 – Regarding not being able to bring companions of the same class, that's a trap that I fell into as well, though you absolutely can, even on Nightmare and it was exactly what I did around the last like 20h of game.
The trap is, the game puts a lot of emphasis on Detonations, but in reality they are borderline worthless without making a build around it(Rally Party + Detonation damage + Detonation CDR gear), using their non primer-detonation skills is far superior if you don't have a build centered around companion damage, as they not only deal high damage on their own, on top of having an AoE skill node, they also have significantly shorter CD, typically less than half of the CD of the skills that prime and detonate.
Took me 115 hours total to do 100 percent
Solid review, pretty much agree on all but still had alot of fun playing. The action combat and beautiful world did it for me.
The problem with the game was for me never about the woke things, it is poor quality of the writing, or rather a lot of that writing. Especially Taash is so poorly written that I wonder if the writer actually hates non-binary people and wanted to make fun of them.
My first playthru took me 134hours 😂 i do enjoy the game a lot tbh. Still better thn inquisition to me. (My fav is da2)
But i also agree with a lot of criticism on the game. But hey. I never even thought there would be a game at all lol. So im happy with it overall. Despite its flaws.
We have more wokeness in games then Dwarfs or fantasy races.. so sad
Gimly is a reasonable favorite character in LoTR. The fact you can't play as much as a Dwarf as you want is sad. For me I never played as my favorite fantasy creature cause Treebeard was my favorite character. I never got to play a Treant or Ent in any fantasy game so I feel your pain bro. That Said, I DID enjoyed playing Veilguard. I got 100 hours on my first playtrough as a Qunari Rogue with the affliction build (Necrosis, Bleeding etc). I liked the game, did not care too much about the vibe or tone and to be honest the only other Dragon Age game I played was Inquisition. In gameplays I always tend to agree with my teammates unless they said something atrocious so I did not bother because "you can't disagree with the people". My main goal was to fix the elven gods problem and help my bros. I cam understand that OG BioWare fans and OG Dragon Age fans can be pissed about thos game but it dis not make it a ABSOLUTE AND UNDENIABLE BAD GAME. Just a game you happened to not like. Great review as walyas and a shoutout from a Brazilian fan out here! ❤
99+ hours playing Fail-guard… for us? Talk about 'taking one for the team' Bro, we don't deserve you.
I romanced Lucanis, you also just kiss and then sit on the couch and the screen goes black. Very disappointing considering Rook and him didn't even kiss until 70hrs into the game 🤡 holy hell
I assure you, there will be not the slightest bit of wokeness in POE 2.
An other DA Veilguard video with Taash in the thumb
This is game basically that scene when Gordon Ramsey made pad thai and the other chef said this is not pad thai lol I do agree the gameplay was fun but it just didn't feel like dragon age inquisition stopped playing after you unlock the Dracula looking dude I forgot his name
At least we finally got long hair in a Dragon Age game. But yeah, I was disappointed with the female character creator. Especially the breasts/glute slider. 😅
I also like to think of Varric’s summaries as Rook getting bored around the companions at the lighthouse, so they start a monologue in their head with Varric’s voice.
99 hours playing that just think of all the great books he could’ve read instead. Life’s too short to play this sort of tripe
The character models all look like eunuchs to me I don’t go to the gym and I have more muscles
Ruri, thank you for your sacrifice on our behalf. I too wish there were more good dwarf games. Hoping to get into game development to change that.
First 4 Secounds and i thought… man hes being damaged with DOTS from Veilguard o: Take a break or something else ! 🙂 cheers Edit TLoR Return to Moria OpenworldCave Dworf game with Multiplayer Ruri! 😀
I have the same issues with two and inquisition. I’m still stuck in the hinterlands with 60 hours in the game. Haven’t played it in more than five years.
You made my day with this review. Very down to earth and honest.
They could've easily woven in taash's dragon slaying with their non binary identity. Have it be a reason to explore themselves, or finding more through the dragon slaying. I love that there is representation, I just wish it was executed better. LGBT has always been part of dragon age, it was just fumbled here
The companions were so disappointing. I genuinely don’t know what kind of writer sees “master assassin and expert mage killer, tortured for over a YEAR and now haunted by a demon of pure spite” and chooses to reduce him down to a coffee addict with a gremlin on his shoulder that annoys him sometimes. Oh, and he’s astronomically bad at the one job we specifically hired him for!
Oh look. Another video trashing on Veilguard with a thumbnail of Taash screaming.
I get the game isn’t great and it’s a far cry from what we wanted from a dragon age game but y’all gotta stop with the Taash thumbnails. Absolutely nobody is gonna take our criticisms seriously when every time someone talks about it they use Taash as the pull in.
It’s gonna be incredibly hard for us to get past the bigot arguments from the other side when 90% of the time you use Taash as the focal point to get people to watch.
I have a gnawing suspicion that the young people being hired to write for high fantasy video games are not acquainted with high fantasy literature. Everything either feels like it was written by Marvel or Harry Potter fans. Even when the writing is decent, there is invariably some sort of contemporary narrative slant that turns me away.
I wish people would stop using that Taash face as a thumbnail, their mom is literally dying in front of them and so many people use it like it’s a “woke” gotcha lmao
I had a lot of the same criticism. But what is baffling to me is those on social media that really raise up in the defense of the game and would berate you for criticizing it and 'ruining everyone's fun and enjoyment of the game' and it's so… bizarre. I also played about 100 hours of the game, and someone was claiming that I was lying or that the Rook I made wasn't even mine and was from some YouTuber. I have videos, I've streamed it for my friends. And apparently I was the 'toxic person plaguing the industry'? It's insane. I'm a woman, also under that LGBTQ+ umbrella, and I don't mind diversity. But this was so… preachy and it was just horribly approached.
I tried to play a baddie in Thedas. But I had to be the nicest Karen. I felt like my last remaining braincells died once I was done with the game. I borrowed it from a friend cause I saw way before release that it wouldn't be work nearly 90 dollars. I don't know if there is a lack of media literacy, or a lack of care from those who are so highly defensive of the game and see that there is 0 things wrong with it. But once I put down the game and got that secret ending, it made me weep. The disappointment I felt crushed me, especially the story and the lore.
But thank you for the honest criticism. It feels like to know that I'm not going insane with how divided the fandom had become.
I spent about 40 hours playing the game, and to give the game credit, I really did not have a single issue with my RTX 4070 TI Super. The only time I experienced a performance issue was when I was trying to watch videos on my second monitor in HD while playing the game on high settings. So my performance problems were more about putting too much stress on my system and now the optimization of the game. Overall, it's a very smooth running game. That's about the only praise I can give the game. Everything else was mid or atrocious.
Music: 1/10 – bland and forgettable.
Graphics: 8/10 on graphical fidelity. The environments look great and ran very smooth on my system.
Characters: 2/10 – Horrible character design, cartoony art direction, and all the characters are very 1 dimensional.
Combat: 5/10 – Passable combat, but very minimalistic and allows for limited creativity.
Story: 4/10 – Standard RPG story of a group of expert misfits taking down the big bad bosses. However, for a Dragon Age game, the story is 1/10, the worst story in the series by a long shot.
I recommend people pick the game up on sale. Wait until the game costs around $20, and then it's worth it. But this game is definitely not worth $60.
I still don't understand why EA bought a rpg studio and completely wrecked it chasing Fifa levels of player engagement and profits.
Having a barrier to respec your build in games is so shitty but so many games do it. I'm surprised Veilgurd doesn't, unexpected win right there, that should be more standard.
if you thought the combat was good, youre a disney fan. the combat looks disney, plays like disney. Rated M but plays E for everyone. Your companions are invincible. Green pots that contain health. you can side step enemy animations and the enemy patterns are so simplisitc. There are no diverse enemies and the models are all the same, or look "off" I.E. blood spawn or the Ogre. Its just a bad game in general. Visually pleasing, thats about it. Dialogue is terrible and they repeat the same thing over and over. And all the characters including yourself, are not likeable. Your choices dont make a difference either.
No DLC because they wanted to have a self-contained story, but gonna do the bullshit clifhanger "True Villians" ending
Cant believe anyone was defending this slop. Bioware is dead and Activision/Microsoft are puppetering it's corpse
My friend, what do you mean by “pandering”? For example, would it be “pandering” if a game includes a very macho dwarf who does not emote and likes to kill things? What the hell is “pandering” other than “I don’t like this because it’s not what I expected”?
Have you surveyed the entire trans community to find out what MOST of them think about Taash? Or are you just going to cherry pick the few trans community members that agree with you, and pretend that this represents the whole?
Wow, conversations after a big battle that reflect on the battle and look to the future. That’s never been done before. You must be right. ????????
To upgrade an item, check top of item screen to see in which region it is sold. Up your rep in that region, and .. ta da…. You will find the upgraded item. Not that complicated.
I can barely acknowledge this game as a “fun action game” because it is so poorly designed the combat becomes dull after 10 hours. When the common critique is you have to lower the difficulty because enemies are just health sponges and combat is so in your favor there is no real variety, I cannot see that as fun. Others have mentioned the primer detonator combo becomes the only real objective in combat again making combat severely boring.
They never should have tried this for a Dragon Age game. Since 2 the common issue many of us had was they went too hard into the action combat angle and not more into strategy.
Um, I chose NOT to save Treviso, and Lucanis was essentially GONE for the much of the middle third of the game, and my choice was discussed constantly.
I want to specifically talk about Taash here.
I stayed away from anything about the game after the first trailer, I didn't want to hear anyone's opinions and I wanted to walk in blind.
Taash was my first interest from the game opening flash of all the characters. Design, style, attitude was cool when I met them.
But the writing was jarring. Different, semi-modern tone with harsh responses and rough sandpaper to other party members.
I still chose to romance them. I came to care about Shathann and craved an opportunity to talk to their mother, to ask questions, and to understand more about why Taash acts the way they do.
spoiler ahead.
And then Shathann is gone, I genuinely felt my heart hurting when Taash yells for Tama from the cage.
And then there's nothing else with Taash, no big romance scenes, character expansions or anything actually worth watching after that point.
I've paused my playthrough because I feel so weird compared to other DA games where I could go talk to my romance interest, even to just say I had nothing to talk about…
I'm the player that spends 30 minutes just talking to NPC's about lore, I romanced Solas in Inquisition and spent way too much time pestering him about the fade and spirits.
The only time I felt I could actually spend more than a moment with an NPC was the Seer Qunari in Rivain. I spent 10 minutes poking compassion, switching party members to see if compassion would say anything different.
ONE NPC HAD REACTIVITY. ONE NPC ACTUALLY HAD ENOUGH TO SAY THAT I WANTED TO ACTUALLY STICK AROUND AND LISTEN.
I uninstalled Veilguard after 80 hours, I haven't finished the game but I can't get through it right now. I just bought Mass Effect Legendary edition and though I've never played them, I'm actually interested now. I can poke an NPC and find out about their species, their culture. I can spend time LISTENING to what they wrote.
I dropped veilguard because the combat was mind numbing repetitive and boring and I was dreading every instance of dialogue. Complete 180 from my BG3 playthrough. Picked up Metaphor and it’s crazy how I forgot about how addicting well written characters and good dialogue is
paid