Veilguard Review from 15 hours of Gameplay through EA Pro

[Raynn von Valancius]

Greetings Everyone,

I'm posting this to establish and create a review of this said title, so those individuals who are wondering if the game has any good points or worth their time, won't have to navigate all the trolls or shills no matter which side of the issue they fall on.

First off, I did not purchase the game on Steam. This was a personal choice that goes against my normal behavior brought on by being burnt so badly by the Starfield debacle and the fact that I was well aware Veilguard alone was not going to be worth a $80 price tag. Instead, I went with the EA Pro sub at $17 for a month (they also had Dungeons 3 and Mad Games Tycoon so even if Veilguard was trash, I should get my money's worth).

Background on my play through, I'm about 15 hours in at this time. I chose mage as my class and am now deep into the Spellblade advanced class, so when I talk about mechanics, just realize this is the class I am experiencing. Now, as with all After Action Reviews, we'll start with the bad things, move on to the 'meh' stuff, and finally end with the 'pros' because its nice to end on a positive note. This will also be a bit long, so I'll leave a TLDR as the bottom paragraph. I'll also leave my PC specs so people can see the hardware I'm pushing and why I may not have had many issues with bugs or crashes. I played on Ultra settings for the whole 15 hours plus. I have only crashed twice, which is pretty exceptional for an EA title in my experience.

Specs on my PC

Motherboard: MSI MEG Z490 ACE
Processor: Intel i9-109000KF (3.70 GHZ)
GPU: ROG Strix GeForce RTX 4080 16GB GDDR6X
RAM: 32 GB (Corsair Dominator Platinums)
HDs: Two 2 TB SSDs for game storage (Samsung 990s) and HDD for Windows software.



THE CONS

Art Style: Not a fan. It's too clean, too cartoon, too bright. While I don't think it's bad in practice, for a DA game it stands out like a sore thumb.

Dialogue: Complete and utter trash. Worst written RPG I've played in years from a dialogue perspective. The story isn't the issue here, and we'll discuss that later, but the writing is. It's bland, it's basic, it's juvenile. Closest thing I can compare it to is those Goosebumps novel we all read when we're like 6-10 years old. It's that basic and silly. It's also widely inconsistent. Some of the NPC interactions are actually solid in their dialogue, which makes you wonder who exactly wrote what part. But overall, the basic banter and dialogue from every character and the PC is so simple and stupid, it borders on insulting. It kills the immersion and makes it exceptionally hard to 'get lost' in the story and game.

Game/Mission/Exploration Design: Now, this is not me talking about combat or the mechanics of the gameplay loop. This is about the ridiculous simplicity of the map design, the exploration points, and the god awful puzzle designs. It's insulting to the player because it's so simple. Puzzles are easy enough that even the most ADHD riddled 3rd grader could figure them out. Maps blatantly point out where you need to go and hand hold you to every collectible or branching area. There is no intrigue, no dilemma, no finesse. It plays it so easy and holds the player's hand so much, I find it insulting in a mature rated title. It screams that the creators think you're an idiot and can't figure stuff out on your own, which will also come into play later, but you get the idea.

Lack of Player Choice: This is a big one. Bioware RPGs have always been about choice. It's what made the genre what it is. The PLAYER guides the story through their actions. If the player wants to be benevolent, they can. They want to be a ♥♥♥♥, they can. Here, your options are severely limited compared to other Bioware titles and especially compared to BG3. The original Mass Effect games were beloved because EVERY PLAYER was Shepard. They created the Shepard they envisioned and then played through their story. Choice mattered. Here, it's been whittled down to an almost carebear level of choice (aka there aren't even any really grey areas or morality issues). And I have never run an evil play through in a Bioware title. But even my Paragon ass realized at times that sometimes you just got to shoot a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

The Message: Ok, here's the big one that everyone likes to focus on. And oh yeah, it's here as well. In the idiotic, immersion breaking way you expect it and have probably dealt with if you've ever been in the same room as one of these activists. The good news is, it revolves around ONE character and a few entries in the codex for the most part. The Taash character is a walking stereotype of what you would expect from all those people who embrace the lifestyle and post constantly on Tik Tok. She hates her mother. She's standoffish and rude. People just don't understand her and she's got a huge chip on her shoulder. She's boring, predicitible, annoying, and had this been 2012 even my Paragon Shepard would have struggled not putting a bullet into her head or kicking her off the team. Imagine Wrex, and all that anger he had at his species being genocided, but now make it about someone simply calling a character by her actual gender. Yeah, it's that damn stupid. She is as much a self-insert as Rey was for KK in the new Star Wars, or Kyp Durron was for Kevin J. Anderson, or Wesley Crusher was for Roddenberry.


The MEH

Music: Don't notice it as much as I did in Inquisition and Origins. It's not good or bad, its middle of the road.

The Story: Not bad. It's basically the fantasy version of Mass Effect 3. Big evil is coming, we need to band all these different groups of people together to face it and save life. Even to the point where each faction has a 'strength' bar and the more you support them, the more powerful that faction becomes. Since each NPC is a part of each faction, they are varied in who and what they bring to the table. Not bad in any way, but since this was the classic ME3 formula (and the combat now feels just like ME3 as well, more on that later) it feels like they didn't do as much as they could have and played it overly safe.

Armor/Cosmetics: this came into the 'meh' category, despite me really liking all the NPC character designs. The reason it's here and not a pro is because the PC gets shafted hard. Not going to beat around the bush. The armor sets for the PC are ridiculous, borderline moronic I would say. Now, fashion is always going to be subjective, but to me this is some of the worst cosmetics I've ever seen in a DA game. Most of them look like they were ripped direct from World of Warcraft. Big shoulder pads, ridiculous coats and hats, masks which would make you wonder how someone could fit through a door properly, much less engage in combat.

The Lighthouse: This is your base of operations during the adventure. It's not as great as what we had in Inquisition, but not as lackluster as we had in Origins and DA2. In the end, I think it comes out to a nothing burger. The design and level art is really well done, though.

Skill Tree: Strong for the player and basically what we saw in previous titles, but with more freedom for player choice. Unfortunately, NPC skill trees are very small, restrictive, and outside of what debuffs they can combo off of, work almost identical (both tanks have a taunt and invul, all dps have a heal, ect). While I like the fact it makes it easy to swap companions, it also makes each of them a little less unique in what they bring to the table.

Codex: For the most part, it's exactly what every other DA game was....until you get to 'THE MESSAGE' portion. Not sure who tried to write this and include it as part of the lore (aka they tried to turn it into a story about teaching dragons sexual orientation) but either way its tacky, full of modern psycho babble, and feels as out of place as it sounds when it comes to the game. You can probably find the exact thing on youtube at this point, I'll leave it up to you to check it out.

The Pros

Character Design: While I may hate the style (because its not DA) I can't fault the art/design team. From Bel to Emmerich, every NPC is dripping with unique style in their character design. They look fantastic, make sense based on their origins, and every time I was introduced to a new companion I couldn't help but notice how damn good the design was.

Voice Acting: Look, the dialogue is complete ♥♥♥♥, but damn if the VA's didn't come in here and try to make lemonade with what they were given. Every one of them is doing the best they can to try and sell this crap dialogue, but a special mention goes to the male Rook character by Alex Jordan(my choice). Even with how stupid the dialogue is, he sells that ♥♥♥♥ like its Oscar worthy writing (Alex Jordan also did Mr. Hands in Cyberpunk). But overall, I salute all these VAs. There's not one of them who don't take this seriously and try their best.

Combat: I talked about it before. The combat is straight ME3 just in a fantasy setting. Abilities can combo off each other (if a little less complex than ME3s version), they look amazing, ultimate's feel like the floor clearing abilities they should be, normal combos flow nicely. It all feels solid. While there are games that do this better (the Arkaham/Shadows of War series) this is very solid and is a major boon to this title. The power fantasy is there.

Level Art Design: Look, I may hate the art style and the simplicity of the map design, but damn if the level art isn't breathtakingly good. Everything looks amazing. The Lighthouse and Crossroads alone are the type of graphics people stop to look at when they walk by and catch your screen. Major props to the devs and art team because you slayed the crap out of your job this time.


TLDR and Final Conslusion

It's not as bad as I thought it would be. But it's also not worth the $80 price tag. I don't even think its worth the $60 one. While it does many things incredibly well, you can feel how disjointed this title is. Which we can blame that on the rewrites, redirections, reboots, the message, whatever. Regardless of WHAT is to blame, as a player you can feel it. It makes it hard to WANT to play the title. You don't feel invested because the dialogue is so weak it prevents you from viewing this as a story or adventure. It doesn't embrace you or excite you. It's simply you taking these people from one place after another until you complete whatever little objectives are in the top right of the screen. This is not the ME crew, which to be fair is hard to match anyway. The quiet scenes on the level of interacting with Garrus or Liara just don't exist here. The lack of player choice, and the fact that sometimes your dialogue choices on screen will be vastly different than WHAT THE CHARACTER ACTUALLY SAYS, degrades this title even further.

While there are great things in the art, character design, and combat most of this is degraded by treating the player like a simpleton, vehicular dialogue, and the 'modern message'. Either way, this isn't really what DA was before and why most of us enjoyed the IP in the first place. Still, it's also not the whole 'worst game of all time'. Yeah, there are some moments that match the cringe level of all those women shaving their heads over Trump's victory, and the game doesn't even bat an eye when it hits that level, but it is not a 3 or below star title.

I can't recommend buying this game for the $60 or $80 tag. It's not that good. But I also can't say paying for that EA Pro for a few months to finish it AND get access to other titles you may not have wanted to pay full price for isn't worth it. When looking at paying $17 a month for this and several other games, you can't argue you'll more than likely get your money's worth.

But for me, this is 5/10 star game, solely because its a non-immersive RPG with its dialogue and weird self insert message. Its the game equivalent of getting a McDonald's burger on the way home from a 12 hour shift because you're too tired to cook and its on the way.