Malf on 31/10/2024 at 23:13

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I've started playing this, and I've liked what I've played so far. I've somehow subconsciously made Elven Jessica Chastain as my Rook; no bad thing!

I started on Mouse & Keyboard, but to be honest, it really plays better with controller. It's a third-person action game first and foremost.
Coming from Guild Wars 2 with its limited number of dodges before your stamina has to recharge, I feel spoiled being able to dodge whenever I want, as many times as I want.
I also went for a mage. Sulph and I were chatting about this, but in the past couple of years, I've really tried to get out of my comfort zone and play something other than thief.
There's a nice combination of combo moves and special conditions to get your head around, and where I thought I'd be going for more the ranged staff wielder style of play, I've ended up feeling more drawn to the mage's dagger and orb "Spellblade" style of play.

Graphically, I'm really impressed.
I'm so glad that Bioware have realised that stylised graphics tend to stand the test of time better than the pursuit of realism.
There's an obvious comparison to be made between this, Dishonored and the Netflix Arcane series, and I for one am lapping it up. It gives the game more character than any of the previous Dragon Age games, that's for sure.
People who complain about this game's graphics have no taste.

The intro/Character creation is okay, but not a patch on BG3's epic intro movie and seamless cut to character creation, accompanied by one of the most memorable songs in recent game history.

Here, you get a stylised slide show that is essentially "Previously on Dragon Age...", that drops into a very detailed character creator that doesn't have the benefit of "Down by the River" to make it really pop. Instead, there's just some generic, inoffensive orchestral stuff going on in the background.
However, after character creation, it drops back into a stylised slide-show, then does a really impressive and seamless transition from 2D to the actual game. That really did impress me.

We'll see how it pans out, but first impressions are good.

Malf on 2/11/2024 at 12:01

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Okay, I'm really digging this game now.

The first few levels are indeed quite linear, but after a certain point, it opens up, and you have free reign in how to approach things.
Level design wise, it's definitely not open world, and more a bunch of carefully crafted levels with tons of secrets to find and ways to navigate them. But this is a welcome change after the glut of open world games we've had for the past decade.

I've recently realised how important to RPGs the idea of lots of maps and an overworld really is and the advantages such an idea has over huge, open worlds.
In that it allows designers to really go to town on themed areas, and The Veilguard plays into that strength. You don't have an overworld per se, but rather a hub world in the Veil connecting you to places in the real world. If you don't want to go through the hub map every time however, you can also just bring up the world map and travel to any Fast Travel point you've unlocked.
I'm currently exploring the city of Treviso, and am having great time poking my head down random alleys and finding interesting things.

There's a lot of Metroidvania stuff going on, with many areas locked off because you may not have certain abilities yet, giving the player an incentive to revisit maps.

As is always the case with Bioware games, romance options abound, although I've not chosen to engage in any of them yet, and I'm not sure I will.
As noted in other threads, I much prefer it when these kind of games allow me to play matchmaker, so we'll see if this one does. I suspect not, but I hope to be pleasantly surprised.

Regarding the stuff that dipshits like Unit get their panties in a bunch over, here's the key point: it's about representation, and if you want to play a straight white guy or gal and bone everything in a completely hetero-stylee, you can.
The imporatant thing to understand is that people who are traditionally under-represented in games can play a character in The Veilguard that they can identify with too, giving them a better experience while not impacting anyone else's.
And that's what these hatemongers fail to realise or simply choose to ignore in their efforts to stir up drama:
It's all optional.
And to someone like me, a mostly straight white guy who strives to be a friend and advocate to people on the fringes, it also allows me to explore these ideas and understand the experiences these people go through.

Anyway, enough with that stuff.

I have one solid criticism at the moment, and it's one I noticed Mortismal highlight in his review: Enemies are pretty much focussed entirely on the player, which when playing as a mage can lead to a really rough time in some of the harder encounters early on, as you don't have the durability of other classes. I am sure the power dynamic will change as I get further into the game, and I'll probably end up massively overpowered, as is the case in most modern RPGs.
But I don't think I'll ever not notice how freakishly intent the enemy is on me rather than my companions.

Overall, this is the most confident and competent Dragon Age game I've played to date (I personally think Inquisition was the best prior to this one, despite all of the MMO-lite nonsense.)
Purists may bemoan that it's moved too far from its roots of being a Baldur's Gate successor, but to those I would say that the original game didn't even feel like that, and I've replayed it recently.
The true successors to those original Baldur's Gate games are the Pillars of Eternity games, so go play them if you want more of that.

Technically, it's graphically fantastic, and has superb performance on release with no major bugs or graphical glitches that I've experienced so far. In fact, I would even go as far as to say that this is quite probably the most stable AAA release I've played in an incredibly long time.

However dear reader, be aware that I am currently playing the game and am therefore still somewhat in its post-launch hype bubble, and that with some time and distance after finishing it, I may look back on it differently.

But for the time being, I'm having a great time with the game :D

Edit:
Oh, one really cool thing!
While recruiting one of the companions who is held prisoner, the music has occasional touches of Mass Effect style seamlessly interwoven with the regular ambient score; I'm hoping to hear more of that!
Without checking, I would guess it's the same composer.

Malf on 2/11/2024 at 15:18

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That user score's ridiculous, and reeks of manipulation by butthurt bad actors.

Starker on 2/11/2024 at 18:31

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You need to own the game on Steam in order to review it, so maybe not really all that surprising.

WingedKagouti on 3/11/2024 at 11:12

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Review bombing on Steam generally requires a publisher/developer doing something stupid (like adding in predatory microtransactions after a game has released) or just releasing a broken game/update. For overpriced DLC the bad reviews tends to go on the DLC itself, unless every piece of DLC is overpriced.