selenicseas

After finishing my playthrough of Dragon Age: Inquisition at the end of September, I was left with a wait that was (thankfully) much less than what every other player of the Dragon Age series had experienced: one month, rather than ten years. At that point, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to play the game on release. I typically like to wait months, if not a year, for all the bugs and glitches to get ironed out. I can deal with all sorts of things, but serious performance issues aren’t one of them.

Fortunately, reviews showed that bugs weren’t a problem with this game. That sounded way too good to be true, but it was, in fact, true. I encountered zero bugs in this game. I was baffled. I’m still baffled. I don’t think that’s an experience I’ve ever had before in a video game. All the previous Bioware games I played had bugs, including the other games in the Dragon Age series.

There are spoilers discussed all through this review. Read at your own risk if you haven’t yet played the game.

1. Combat

I had little expectations on the combat going into the game (I didn’t watch too many previews) and ended up pleasantly surprised. I like the combat in Veilguard! After the painfully slow combat of Origins, endless spawning waves of enemies in 2, and the weird floaty attacks with no weight behind them in Inquisition, this was like a breath of fresh air. Enjoyable combat in a Dragon Age game? I didn’t think it could happen.

Combat itself was pretty easy once I got used to it. I had a few deaths in the early game and then none later on, unless I was deliberately doing something reckless. By the time my character’s level was in the mid-40s, I was barely getting hit and rarely had to use healing. I never had to lower the difficulty. I probably should have increased it.

I have heard that some people lowered the difficulty to get through combat because the fights got too repetitive. I never got that annoyed with the combat, but I do see why they would do that. Enemy variety isn’t that great – it’s either Venatori, Antaam, and Darkspawn the entire game. Sometimes, you fight demons instead. Or dragons!

After fighting three dragons in a single gaming session, I realized that all dragons follow the same AI pattern. It definitely made the rest of the dragon fights much easier once I could predict what they would do, but it was also honestly kind of boring. If each dragon had its own AI, fights could have been much more interesting!

I did have some reservations on the 3-skill limit. I didn’t like how Inquisition limited each character to 8 skills, and only 3 seemed like it wouldn’t be enough. It ended up being fine. Skills never felt necessary in order to win a fight, though they were definitely a benefit to set up combos and strip an enemy’s armor/barrier faster. I played a warrior and didn’t check out the other classes, so I can’t say how necessary skills would be for a rogue or mage. I can’t imagine it would be too different.

Similarly to Origins, each class gets two different weapon sets that you can freely switch between. Warriors have sword &shield and two-handed weapons, mages have dagger & orb and staff, and rogues get dual swords and a bow & arrow. I never used the two-handed weapons much as I didn’t like how slow they were – they trade speed for greater stagger. And unfortunately, none of those two-handed weapons were greatswords. If they were in the game, that may have tempted me to actually use them more often.

Also similarly to Origins, there are combat takedowns! Seeing one in a pre-release preview video definitely pushed me toward playing a warrior in this game. There are only two unique finishers – one for when an enemy is at low HP vs. high/mid HP – but I’m happy to see them regardless. That was definitely something I missed from Origins.

I have not tried out a rogue, but it doesn’t quite seem feasible to play an archer rogue due to the limited number of (regenerating) arrows. That is a little disappointing; I would have preferred more variety in building a character’s combat setup.

2. Locations and Exploration

The map situation is much improved from Inquisition. There are much fewer of them: one main map for each region, with a few smaller maps that you visit only during missions. The main maps can be explored at any time, but there are areas that are only unlocked later in the game. There’s no risk of suddenly wandering into a high-level area.

Platforming (there is a lot of it) is a lot easier than it was in Inquisition, where it was unnecessarily difficult. There’s no slipping off a rock structure you’ve spent the past few minutes trying to climb. There’s also no getting stuck on rocks in the ground.

Exploration felt rewarding. I didn’t have to go out of my way to find goodies. There was always something in a nook or cranny, whether it was a chest, altar, valuable, or codex entry.

As for the locations themselves...

Arlathan Forest as a whole seems like it was at least partially inspired by Area X in Annihilation – in particular, the rainbow shimmer and the people merged with trees. It’s one of the most beautiful areas of the game, and it’s revisited a lot, both in main and side quests.

Dock Town is one of the two city maps, and the only part of Minrathous (and Tevinter) you get to explore. It was always raining, which caused no issue with my PC’s performance, but annoyed me greatly when I was taking screenshots. You can see other parts of Minrathous from Dock Town, but you never get to go there.

Which is a huge shame, because I’ve spent three games hearing about the excesses and depravity of the Tevinter elite, and never got to see any of it.

There should have been one map for Rivain, not two. The Rivain Beach is very, very empty. It’s the only map whose hub, the Hall of Valor, is on an entirely different map. In my opinion, the Hall of Valor isn’t large enough to justify being its own map; it could have been merged with the Beach with no issue.

Another problem with the Rivain map being empty is that there’s no real exploration of Rivaini culture like there is with the other areas. Rivain has one of the most unique cultures in all of Thedas, with the peaceful Qunari settlements and seers that allow themselves to be possessed by spirits. Very little of this was explored in the game.

The Grand Necropolis is definitely one of the most interesting areas visited. I’m reminded of the Oldest House in Control – there are a couple of Control references in the game, and the Necropolis shifting its rooms around from time to time does seem to be one of them.

The other part of Nevarra visited is Blackthorne Manor, which is Mourne Watch-adjacent in décor. I’d have liked to see other parts of Nevarra, mostly because I’m curious if the entire country is decorated with skulls and candles that produce green flames. What does Nevarra City look like? Are there skeletons all over the place like there are in the Necropolis?

There are some areas that are only visited once or twice; one of those areas is Kal-Sharok. I was very excited when I learned you could travel to Kal-Sharok. It was finally time for dwarf lore! To my disappointment, you don’t actually visit Kal-Sharok. You visit an outpost, which has a lot of NPCs and what looks like a market. The dwarf-related valuables you find throughout the game, as well as the dwarf-related decorations you can buy (in the Black Emporium, of all places) make me think that there was supposed to be a Kal-Sharok faction that got cut.

Adding to this is Harding, the only companion that doesn’t belong to an in-game faction, who visits Kal-Sharok as part of her personal questline. I have no idea how a Kal-Sharok faction would even work, given how they’ve only recently opened up to outsiders, but it would have been incredibly interesting. Stalgard had some comments on how the Kal-Sharok dwarves had to “become like Darkspawn” in order to survive in isolation – what did that entail, exactly? How is their culture different from that of Orzammar dwarves? What have they discovered in that time?

The emptiness typical of open-world games isn’t present in Veilguard. There’s only one map per region that’s always available, but you visit five separate countries in this game, with one map per country (plus Arlathan, which is part of the Tevinter Imperium, and the Crossroads). I hate to complain that there aren’t enough maps after complaining about too many maps in Inquisition, but I think I have to do it here. What we got in this game isn’t enough to really immerse yourself in any one culture, let alone several.

But that’s the issue with having the game span all of northern Thedas, instead of just one country. If the game had taken place entirely in, say, Tevinter, this problem wouldn’t exist, because you could put all of your resources into fleshing out one culture rather than having to spread yourself thin on several.

3. Factions and (Mourn Watch) Reactivity

There are six factions that Rook can belong to in Veilguard, with one party member from each faction. I picked Mourn Watch because the backstory was excessively metal, and was definitely not disappointed. Reactivity was fantastic and it was everywhere – not just with Emmrich and in the Necropolis, but with NPCs from other factions as well. There were Mourn Watch dialogue options I could pick in conversations with the Wardens and Shadow Dragons. Anything that had to do with death, funeral customs, and the undead had a Mourn Watch option to pick.

Despite not being that related to the main story – the Wardens and Veil Jumpers definitely have more plot relevance – I’d definitely have to recommend the Mourn Watch faction if you’re interested in reactivity and learning more about Nevarran culture and everything related to the Grand Necropolis. Mourn Watch Rook definitely feels like a professional; they’re good at their job and don’t need Emmrich to explain things to them.

That was the only faction I’ve played, so I can’t speak to reactivity in the others. I did, however, notice that some of the other factions weren’t utilized as well as they could have been – namely, the Lords of Fortune. There is no Lord of Fortune décor you can buy from the faction vendor. They’re not even the main focus of their associated region. You end up learning more about Warden history than Lord of Fortune history in Rivain, which is actually very weird. They’re an afterthought in their own home.

4. The Plot, the Acts, and the Quests

After finishing Inquisition, I assumed that the plot of this game would be stopping Solas from tearing down the Veil and causing mass death. That is actually what Rook & company are trying to do that the beginning of the game, but things go wrong and the remaining two Evanuris are released. They become the main antagonists of the game, while Solas takes a backseat in a Fade prison of his own construction.

I do think that stopping Solas from tearing down the Veil – and dealing with the elves that sided with him, who get zero mention in this game – would have been a stronger story, but... I didn’t care for Solas in Inquisition. I thought he was condescending. I doubt I’d be able to tolerate a game focused primarily on him. Veilguard, thankfully, was not focused on Solas. In addition, I actually liked Solas’s character here! That’s something I definitely was not expecting.

Act 1 is the slowest-paced of all the acts. I was actually going to write my First Impressions review after I’d recruited everyone, but it took me a little more than 10 hours just to recruit Lucanis. It took another ten hours to recruit Emmrich and Taash.

There are some optional fights (the blight Champions) that become available in Act 1 that are probably smarter to do in Act 2 once you’ve leveled up a bit and become used to the combat. I did those fights in Act 1. This definitely contributed to me thinking that the optional content was front-loaded into Act 1.

The Siege of Weisshaupt is definitely the high point of Act 1, and contains the best boss fight of the game. I genuinely don’t think anything else can compare to Razikale.

Act 2 meanders a little. It’s primarily comprised of companion quests, which I prioritized over main quests. As a result, there were several main quests at the end of the act that I had to do one after another, with nothing I between. The second part of act 2 felt strangely paced because of that.

After hearing about the Butcher of Treviso the entire game, he shows up toward the end of act 2 in one quest only. He’s an incredibly underutilized character! The one conversation you have with him is fascinating. He absolutely should have been a reoccurring NPC like the Arishok in Dragon Age 2.

The Act 2 Treviso quest chain felt more disjointed than the quests in Minrathous. I know that the quests in Minrathous and Treviso change depending on which city you choose to save. I saved Treviso, so I’m wondering if the Minrathous quest chain has a better flow to it.

I wish that companions would have made their own decisions at the end of their own questlines instead of the player picking what happens. I know why this was done (so players have more control over what happens in their own game), but I think it’s narratively weaker. I’d prefer if outcomes at the end of questlines were determined by actions during the game rather than a choice at the absolute last minute. That would make me feel more like my decisions actually matter, even if the outcome of those decisions isn’t ideal or something I like.

And this does actually happen a few times in the game, so it isn’t like Bioware hasn’t thought of doing it. Refusing to free the mayor of D’Meta’s Crossing leads him to getting blighted – he comes back as a Darkspawn to fight you in Arlathan Forest later. And punching out the First Warden means that when he shows up later in the Cauldron, he’s too out of it to give you any advice.

All of Act 3 feels appropriately paced. The leadup to the final boss, as well as the final boss himself (Elgar’nan) was done so much better than in Inquisition. I’d say that the final mission of Act 3 is more comparable to Mass Effect 2’s suicide mission. It’s much more extensive than the suicide mission, but the basics are the same. You assign different party members to different tasks, and if you pick wrong, they can die. It’s easier than it was in Mass Effect 2; it’s pretty obvious which party members are the correct options for each task.

5. Miscellaneous Things

There are awkward scene transitions through the entire game, like things got cut and never replaced. Some things that should have been shown on screen were straight up skipped (how did we get down into the Ossuary, for instance?).

I largely didn’t care for the music, but very little of the music in the series has really grabbed or stood out to me, so there’s no significant change there. I do think the background music in the Hossberg Wetlands did a good job of making the place feel unsettling. It provoked a similar feeling in me to the Korcari Wilds BGM in Origins.

I would have liked quicksaving in this game. There are plenty of autosaves, and you can pause and save just about anywhere, but I still want the opportunity to quicksave to my heart’s content.

If Bioware plans on more QOL updates, then I’d like to see something like the Golden Nug or New Game Plus. There’s no reason in particular to keep cosmetic appearances permanently unlocked. I’m not looking forward to re-collecting all those appearances in new playthroughs.

I wish there were outfits that properly showed off body tattoos. I ended up wearing the Antivan Crow casual wear most of the time instead of the Mourn Watch outfit solely because it showed off some of my Rook’s tattoos.

I’m kinda disappointed that the other races just look like humans now, but with horns or pointy ears. I’m aware that this is how elves and Qunari looked in Origins, but...I really liked the art direction for those races in Dragon Age 2! It was so unique! I definitely know why Bioware did it. They’d have to massively limit the character creator for elves and Qunari if they wanted to keep a certain look, and I can’t imagine any player would like that...which is probably why the game where you’re restricted to playing a human has these unique designs.

6. The End

Overall, I enjoyed this game. There’s plenty about it I liked and plenty I didn’t, just like with the other Dragon Age games. I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite of the series (that spot will probably always be held by DA2), but it definitely ranks higher than Inquisition – and that was really all I wanted from this game: something I liked better than Inquisition.

Will I play this game again? Of course, but I’ll definitely need a break after marathoning the entire series during the second half of this year.

Purchased through: Steam

Hours played: 102.8 (main game, Jaws of Hakkon, The Descent, and Trespasser complete)

Of the three Dragon Age games, Inquisition was the one I’d heard the most about. It was released in 2014, which is coincidentally the year I started using Twitter. I wasn’t involved in any gaming circles at the time, yet I still managed to hear about this guy named Solas, who was some kind of traitor and also bald.

Over the years, I heard plenty of other things – like the choice you make in Here Lies the Abyss and that Morrigan was in the game – but with little to no context. I also learned that Inquisition used a different engine, so things would be different from what I’d gotten used to in Origins and 2. That did not prepare me for just how different this game was.

This review is basically all criticism. While there are plenty of good things about this game (like the environments, which are gorgeous), the previous two games set up standards that Inquisition simply did not meet, in my opinion.

I had my first issue with the game as soon as I got out of the character creator and started playing. The controls themselves were different; the mouse buttons did the exact opposite of what I’d gotten used to in the previous two games. Keyboard shortcuts were also different. “Space” was now a jump button instead of pause. “V”, which had previously been used to turn off the HUD, was now a pulse that scanned the area for interactable items. In previous games, holding down “tab” highlighted objects. “Tab” now switches between enemies. Speaking of the HUD, there was no keyboard shortcut to easily turn that off. I had to go into the settings and do it manually.

All of this made me realize pretty early on that this was a console game ported to PC – and it wasn’t done that well, either. Maybe I’d have had a different experience if I’d played the game with a controller rather than mouse and keyboard, but I’m unable to use a controller for more than an hour without it triggering a massive amount of wrist/hand pain.

Inquisition is an open-world game. The maps are huge and there’s a lot to explore. There are crafting materials and upgrades to collect, people to recruit, rifts to close, and plenty of sidequests. There’s a lot to do, and plenty of it is optional.

That’s not obvious at first. While you gain power (used to unlock main missions through the War Table) though finishing sidequests, recruiting people, etc., there are dozens more opportunities to gain power than there are opportunities to use that power. I gave up on trying to finish 100% of the content in the game, and I still ended up with 100 more power than I needed by the end. I do appreciate there were so many different ways to gain power – so if you didn’t want to do one thing, you could do another and not miss out – but this was a little too much, in my opinion.

Actually, I think the entire game was too much, by around 30%. There were multiple maps (the Fallow Mire and Hissing Wastes, for example) that weren’t visited during any main story quests. And, due to how the story-relevant maps have tons of things to do on them, there’s no actual reason to go to the optional maps, unless you really want to go for completionism.

I have to wonder what Bioware was thinking with creating three (!) separate desert maps – the Western Approach, Hissing Wastes, and Forbidden Oasis. There’s no reason the important part of the Forbidden Oasis (Solasan) couldn’t have been integrated into the Western Approach. The Hissing Wastes could have been part of the Western Approach as well, since it’s got a large amount of nothing in it. Would it have been realistic to have a bunch of elven ruins, dwarven ruins, and Tevinter ruins in such close proximity to each other? No, but it would have been less frustrating to deal with.

I also think the Emerald Graves and Exalted Plains could have been merged into one area, but that’s mostly because the names are so similar that I keep getting them mixed up.

I played a mage in Dragon Age 2 and had so much fun that I thought I’d play a mage in Inquisition as well. Unfortunately, mage combat was a lot less fun here. I couldn’t hit people with my staff like Hawke did. Why, Bioware? Why?

Combat in general felt a little strange. Not just because of the reversed mouse buttons or the greatly reduced skills available, but because of how the game controlled in general, I think. Things felt very floaty, both in and out of combat – like the characters had no weight to them.

Related to this, NPC pathing was odd. Party members would follow you, but once you stopped walking, they wouldn’t stay still – they’d run around like they were trying to get to something and couldn’t. Sometimes this meant they’d jump on and off of the furniture in the environment.

I’ve heard that Inquisition, like Dragon Age 2, was originally designed to only have a human player character. It definitely shows. There were instances where my elf should have known something – like, you know, who Mythal is – and did not. Oddly, there’s also plenty of reactivity in other places (plenty of anti-elf racism, for example, and on a more positive note, Josephine greeting Lavellan in Elven), so I’m thinking this is a case of missing things due to rushed development.

What’s especially weird about this is how hard the game went on the elf lore. It is, as Sera would say, “too elfy”. I don’t think I would mind that so much if so much of the series so far hadn’t focused on elf lore. I’m feeling a little overexposed on it. I want to learn about the dwarves and qunari! The Descent helped scratch that itch a little, but it definitely wasn’t enough.

As an antagonist, Corypheus is kind of half-baked. He doesn’t actually do very much, and since you can take as long as you want between quests, he doesn’t feel like much of a threat. The game may have benefited from some time-critical missions like in Mass Effect 2 and 3, where there were pretty serious consequences if you didn’t complete certain missions in a certain timeframe. That would have made the stakes feel higher, especially if those consequences cut off access to certain areas or ended up with you losing some of the Inquisition’s forces.

The final mission and boss fight were underwhelming. It was much shorter than I expected it would be, and only the current party was involved. That wasn’t the case in Origins or 2; all of your party members were involved, even if they weren’t in your active party. But Inquisition’s final battle was so easy that more allies on your side would have ended the fight much quicker, so it might be for the best that everyone isn’t involved.

The DLC was much better than the base game. Jaws of Hakkon introduces an entirely new region, but there’s no actual filler in it. The sidequests are tied into the story and lore of the region. It’s also way harder than the base game. I was genuinely not prepared for the difficulty spike.

The Descent is much tighter and goes deep into dwarf lore, which I personally think is the most interesting part of the Dragon Age series. I’d say the only bad thing about it is the gear collection, but that’s entirely optional.

Trespasser is the last DLC. I’ve heard that there was some controversy when it was first released, as it’s the “real” ending to the game and shouldn’t have been unnecessarily cut out. I do agree with this; I’ve never liked cutting out companions and missions (Shale, Return to Ostagar, Sebastian, etc.) and selling them for more money. It’s really something that should be included in the base game, since it sets up The Veilguard. I think that someone who didn’t play Trespasser and then went right into Veilguard would be pretty confused as to why Solas is doing what he’s doing.

My main complaint with this game is that it’s an open-world game with all the faults of an open-world game. There was a time in my life when I would have loved an open-world game – when I was a teenager and would play one game for years at a time – but as I’ve aged, my tolerance for open-world games has gone down. A 100-hour game better have the content to fill 100 hours without resorting to filler or bloat, and that’s unfortunately what Inquisition does.

I do think there’s a good 40-50 hour game in here somewhere. I did like the game enough that I’d replay it again – with more quality-of-life mods – but only while skipping as much of the side content as possible.