I believe context is important when writing reviews, so I think it’s relevant, you know, I don’t really like Dragon Age.

While BioWare’s Mass Effect remains one of my favorite single-player series of all time, I’ve jumped ship from Dragon Age several times. I didn’t like the first game and didn’t get very far. I think I beat the second one, but I don’t remember anything about it since it was 13 years ago. And after 15 hours in the hinterland of Dragon Age Inquisition, it was over.

So am I a bad choice to review Dragon Age: The Veilguard? If you want to know what it’s like for a die-hard series fan, sure. But “Inquisition” was ten years ago, and the idea is undoubtedly to attract at least some of a new audience. And as someone who hasn’t loved it in the past, I have to say that I really enjoyed Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Even though everything I say here might go against the motto “But they changed that compared to the other games!” Comment, I can only rate it for what it is. And I enjoyed it.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard deals with the aftermath of the treacherous elven god Solas as he attempts to tear down the Veil that will destroy the world. Not great, but Solas says he will minimize the damage and it will be better in the long run, trust him. That’s what we do not trust him and complete his ritual, but in the process accidentally free two even worse trapped elf gods who now want to infect and dominate our world. Oops.

The central “Veilguard” refers to us, you guessed it, assembling a team to take them on and save the world, with our character “Rook” being a sort of nobody, but through a working relationship with Varric in all that is thrown in. All of this takes place ten years after the last game.

Unfortunately, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is one of those games that takes a while to warm up. I’m talking about 8-10 hours, but in the context of my 65 hours of playing about 80% of the way through the game, that’s technically just the beginning.

The combat was hard to get used to at first (parrying in this game is bizarre) and I didn’t really get along with the first few team members. But as the game progressed, I got to know everyone and began working on a real character “build” for my sleek poisonous villain using skill points and gear. Everything felt better, both narratively and gameplay-wise.

Combat is the exact opposite of the famous Baldur’s Gate 3, which will be an unfortunate point of comparison for Veilguard because no, the game as a whole is of course nowhere near as good. While Baldur’s Gate has extremely technical turn-based combat, things here have become very, very arcade-like, with splashy combos and rechargeable moves/spells for you and your teammates. You always control Rook, but you can give him spell commands for “ignite/detonate” combos. You can queue moves while pausing combat, but I barely saw the point of it since it was mostly to spam detonation spells, damage, or healing when I needed them. At least I know this is a significant departure from previous games.

I would say that the combat felt good in the middle 30 hours of the game. It was more complicated than the rocky beginning, but over the last 20 hours or so it became really, really monotonous, with little enemy variety and a reliance on a small handful of combos that were miles better than anything else. In the end, there were no boss fights that gave me any problems at all, and I couldn’t get below 80% health most of the time. I probably could have increased the difficulty even further, but I didn’t feel the need to spend a lot of extra time on these encounters with so much history to experience.

The level design was something else that opened up over time as at first it felt extremely linear to the point of getting boring, but the more you play these zones get bigger and bigger and there are around 140 gear chests to find, as well as health upgrades and skill points. Some were easy to access, others were completely insane puzzles that I never solved. But it was a varied landscape that grew on me over time, avoiding the often-wasted space of a completely open world.

BioWare seems to understand the central appeal of their games, the team experience and getting to know each individual member, whether friend, rival or romantic partner. So much so that I would say 70% of the entire game is some sort of companion quest. This isn’t like Mass Effect takes a big mission and just does a hangout. Five missions, five meeting points? Yes, that’s closer. Sometimes it feels a bit too much, just like me Really Do you need to quickly travel to a forest to walk ten feet and have a three-minute conversation with someone? Repeat about 20 times.

The character I probably liked the most was…me. Rook, who I thought personality-wise was a well-crafted tailor-made protagonist who wasn’t relegated to complete silence like we sometimes see in this genre. And the character customizer was great. Anyone who makes “ugly” characters in it, as previously criticized, is simply bad at it. And overall I liked the art style, which may not have come across as well in trailers. I don’t think hyperrealism is always necessary, and no, I wouldn’t call it “Fortnite” because that seems too reductive.

Over dozens of hours, I really liked my team, even if I regretted my romantic decision. I won’t say who, but when I realized I wanted to move, two teammates pointed it out She I was interested in my other two romantic prospects and well, I didn’t want to be an idiot. If you’re wondering if this is a “choices matter” game, I can only speak to one playthrough, so it’s a little difficult to say, but there is a clear, very, very big one Decision made early on impacts most of the rest of the game and is probably worth a second playthrough in its own right. And it’s not just a matter of, “Should I do good or bad?” You really can’t be evil in this game. Not even really an idiot. Just kind of…dull.

Overall, despite my limited knowledge of Dragon Age lore, there are some big, big reveals about the nature of this universe at the end of the game that were really interesting to me. I found this more interesting than the central “kill these evil gods” plot, which led to what I found to be a more by-the-numbers final mission, the format of which, if you’ve played a Mass Effect game, will seem familiar and a little forced.

Is this the game Dragon Age fans have been waiting a decade for? I have no idea. Maybe not. But I, someone who couldn’t get through any of the other games, often couldn’t wait to play more of The Veilguard. It could have used some editing, more gameplay complexity, and perhaps some sharper text at times, but it did a lot of things well and I really enjoyed my time with it.

Score 8.5/10

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