Dragon Age: The Veilguard opened to what seemed to be overly optimistic reviews with many outlets giving the game a perfect 10/10. This seemed strange to me having played the game for about 10 hours now I would say that it's on-par if not slightly worse than some of the more mediocre RPGs out there such as Starfield.
So my question was, why are all of these outlets giving the game a perfect 10/10 as if it was the greatest RPG ever made? There was even one outlet outright lying, stating that Veilguard was "shattering Steam player records". To debunk that right away, Veilguard had a peak Steam player count of about 85,000 players. Baldur's Gate 3 peaked at around 875,000 at release. There was no "Steam Player record" broken by Veilguard.
Sourced via Steamcharts.com:
That's not to say it's a bad game. So let's go through some of my thoughts on the separate elements of the game:
Combat: The combat is pretty good compared to other Dragon Age games, it reflects the
Mass-Effect style combat that other Bioware titles have had.
Story: The story is decent and will be enjoyable for most RPG enthusiasts.
Graphics: There's actually been quite a bit of controversy over the graphical style, which trends towards the more "cartoony" style. My guess is this has more to do with optimizing for current gen consoles that are aging which tends to give games the "smudged" looking effect. The graphics don't bother me that much, I actually thought they were quite good.
So the question remains, why the glowing reviews? In my opinion this was due to the games more "controversial" or "woke" content. Gaming outlets are biased to support these things, the game includes a transgender character which has caused these outlets to praise the game as if it was the greatest RPG ever created. Seemingly ignoring all flaws. Now this content is definitely ignorable and didn't bother me that much. But I believe that is why the reviews for the game seem way higher than they should be. I actually created this post because I wanted at least one place where someone expressed a realistic view on the game vs just saying it's the greatest thing ever because of your political views.
I personally would give the game a solid 7/10. I would however not spend money on this game if you have not completed Witcher 3, Baldur's Gate 3, or Cyberpunk 2077. I would recommend it if you are craving some RPG gameplay and have no others to play.
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