Recent reviews by tiikay

TL;DR: Good game, but not a great Dragon Age game.

• PERFORMANCE: Ran quite smooth on an older GPU, and I did not encounter graphical errors or glitches at all. Ran on a combo of Medium/High settings with DLSS OFF, RTX OFF, Hair Physics ON.(NVIDIA RTX 2080 SUPER, AMD Ryzen 5800X, 32GB RAM, installed on SSD). Steam Deck performance wasn't amazing, and looked like trash, even with optimized settings, but overall was acceptable when I was away from my PC for a week.
  
  
• COMBAT: BioWare finally decided to commit to a full action combat experience after devolving their original CRPG system from Dragon Age: Origins into some weird tactical/action hybrid system in Dragon Age 2 and Dragon Age: Inquisition. I would've also been pleased if it leaned all the way back into an upgraded DA:O style of combat as well, I'm just glad it's no longer this half-this/half-that system. Sure, the new combat looks flashy, but it kept me entertained for what it was.
  
  
• ENVIRONMENTS & CUTSCENES: The game is beautiful. Locations were gorgeous. Level design was a little more closed off in comparison to DA:I, but navigating maps reminded me of DA:O and DA2. The narrative attachment to the locations was still a little shallow at times, however at least the locations were all used in some capacity to complete the game (vs. DA:I having some locations you didn't even need to unlock in order to finish the game). Plenty of dark and gloomy places as well.
  
  
• CHARACTER CREATOR: There was quite a bit of variety and freedom when it came to creating Rook, and my finished Rooks seemed to match the style of the rest of the characters in the game for once! My custom characters in previous BW games would always seem to look unrealistic vs. team members; you could always pick out a custom BW character from a group shot, no matter how 'realistic' you tried to make them look, without mods. Rook looked, and for the most part, some writing aside, sounded great in Veilguard.
  
  
• COMPANIONS: Overall, it was a horrible, slow start for the companions, but other than some nitpicks I'll get into later, they were alright! Emmerich and Bellara were the highlights for me. Bellara's personal quest dilemma coming from thinking she failed because of her neurodivergence was a comforting story to work through with her. I still think DA:O and DA:I companions are my personal favourite companions of all time, but the Veilguard crew grows on you. -I- connected with the characters. Whether or not Rook did properly though...
  
  
• ACT 3: The cutscenes and narrative do hit hard in the final parts of the game, I wish more parts of the game were written to be the same quality. Some of the companion parts I feel would've hit harder if the dialogue between Rook and the companions was better, but overall I had fun finishing up the game, and Act 3 was the best part.

• NARRATIVE: The narrative setting was too unfocused. After the events of DA:I Trespasser, I'm sure we were all excited to fully dive into Tevinter to continue the chase after Fen'Harel. However, we did not get a deep dive at all. We never really got to see the inner workings of a city run by Magisters, or really experience how different Tevinter is from Ferelden and Orlais. Dock Town just felt like Kirkwall's Lowtown 2.0. Where was all the politicking, the slavery (and resistance!), the palaces, the corruption, the Imperial Chantry, Dalish resistance, Fen'Harel followers...? Minrathous should've been the elaborate centerpiece of this game just as the Hinterlands/Skyhold was for DA:I, or Denerim in DA:O. Looking at the scope of the game though, how could they fit all of that in when they needed to introduce us to SO MANY other new elements (such as factions, their people and locations)? They spread themselves too wide and thin with this one and the depth and immersion suffered for it.
  
  
• COMPANION DIALOGUES & CONNECTIONS: The lack of exhaustible dialogue with party members was super disappointing. I miss being able to go around and have the main character ask other characters about themselves and have different things to say in response. There seemed to be less back and forth dialogue with companions, and more listening to them ramble on with mild reactions from Rook every once in a while. It was fun to see how the party moved around The Lighthouse to talk to one another, but eavesdropping to get more background info on a character was not great. The pacing of relationships and romances was also not on point and lacked the depth that previous games (and recent competitors like Baldur's Gate 3) had. When characters weren't victims of horrible writing/scripting, they were realistic, and their stories were interesting to follow. -I- connected with the party, but the lack of give and take dialogue or conflicting opinions didn't make me feel that Rook did.
  
  
• SOUNDTRACK: Mostly underwhelming. It picked up where it needed to in Act 3, but overall mostly forgettable. The parts that were really solid were revamps of tracks from Inquisition.
  
  
• ANIMATION: Outside of a few moments, dialogue and some cutscene animations were not all that great. Facial expressions and mouth movements in most scenes were off, and in some scenes, characters facial expressions did not match the level of voice acting that we were hearing. Also, if I had a drink for every scene that had someone with their hands on their hips during dialogue, I'd probably be dead.

• WORLD STATES: I understand not wanting to wade through three games worth of intertwining world states and decisions while developing this game, but I feel that by not including even the most BASIC of decisions from the previous games, BioWare has created a disconnect between Veilguard and the Dragon Age universe as a whole. What makes a Dragon Age game feel like a Dragon Age game is seeing even just the littlest thing that would change based on something you did in a previous game. I wasn't expecting to ever see the ripples of us choosing what to do with Ruck, for example, but we should've been able to at least see the effects of choosing the leader of Ferelden, Orlais, The Divine, or the outcome of Here Lies the Abyss in Inquisition (The Wardens! Also the Fade Survivor during that quest said they'd head out to Weisshaupt! That would've been amazing to see in DA:V!).
  
  
• CLEAN SLATE?: The game tosses aside everything longtime players have built over the last 15 years. By the end of the game, the cities, character and WORLD that we've been experiencing... it's gone. Over 'text' too, which hurt the most. Post credits scene also undid a lot of complexity that previous DA Villains had, so there's that..

Overall, Dragon Age: The Veilguard left me with mixed feelings after finishing a 90 hour save. I played through every single quest to try and find something to make it feel like a worthy DA game, but didn't find it. I know it was stuck in development hell, even planned as a live service game at one point, so it explains some of the shallowness to it. The devs had passion but time and/or leadership was not on their side. It shows. The technical quality and the amount of surface level storytelling compares to any other good AAA title out there, considering development hell, but I find it misses the mark as a Dragon Age game.

I had fun with some parts of Veilguard, but also felt homesick while playing through it. I was missing the connection to the world I've come to love and enjoy over the last 15 years. It's Dragon Age, but with a good chunk of the magic and feels removed from it, and that was with me playing as a Grey Warden Rook. If they patch in QoL updates, maybe I'll change my opinion.

Reviews are entirely subjective, I know some people love this game, and that's cool. I just wish it fully clicked for me too.

I hate everything about you...

... why do I love you?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If you played Dragon Age: Origins multiple times back in 2009 just to explore all the narrative options... this one is for you. It takes what we all loved so much about that game and expands on it 100x. Genuinely kept me smiling (with a side of ugly crying at times) while playing, and even on my 3rd time through it, I'm discovering things I somehow missed the first two times.

2023 GOTY right here.

Edit: Not only did it win tiikay’s GOTY 2023, but it took home multiple awards and GOTY at the 2023 Video Game Awards!

Congratulations, Larian Studios ❤️ This is definitely a project you could tell the entire dev team, voice and motion capture artists poured their heart and soul into. Can’t wait to see where the studio takes us next!

It's pretty good.
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...building has taken over my life, send help...