This was offered for free to PS-Plus members quite some time ago after the game failed to make their sales figures. A lot of this was due to the bad press about the game being "woke," which I can confirm is the case in a not-so-subtle way although I haven't yet made it to the famous "accepting non-binary centaurs for who they are," portion yet.
As someone that was a huge fan of Inquisition, which I think is one of the greatest RPG's ever made, I had really high hopes for this game being a good one that was tarnished by the bad-press bandwagon and here are my honest takes on the game thus far.
This game follows in the footsteps of where Inquisition left off, with your soft-spoken mage friend "Solas" who at the end of the game that is more than 10 years old, kind of betrayed the group and was responsible not just for the bad happenings in that game, but is at the forefront of the bad that is happening in Veilguard. It remains unclear if he is actually a baddy, or if he actually has the right materplan and all of us are just to stupid and short-sighted to know the difference.
First off, go ahead and get settled in and prepare yourself for a lot of screens like this because this game is extremely story-heavy. For the most part this really annoys me because I have about 2 hours logged in the game so far, and at least 90 minutes of that has been spent on dialogue and making choices that don't really seem to matter all that much. There are certain parts where your choices will affect your relationship with potential party members and these choices will affect how powerful they become and how useful they are in your party, but it seems as though most of the choices you make don't really have an impact on how things move and it certainly doesn't change the overall trajectory of the plot.
As of yet, I wouldn't say that my companions, save one, actually make all that much of a difference in the tiny bit of combat that I have seen up to this point.
Speaking of which, the combat is pretty good, not perfect but pretty good in its fluidity and ease of understanding. One thing I don't like, which could very well be a flaw in my own play-style is that this seems to be another one of those games where if you want survivability you end up taking this maneuver all the damn time.
In combat, I feel like I am constantly dodge-rolling and I wouldn't continue to do this if it wasn't so effective. Not only does it get you out of the clearly marked damage area that you can see coming because it is "painted" on the ground, but it also invokes a moment or so of invincibility even if you are in the affected area. They introduce a parrying technique that I suppose is meant to help you but this only works on certain kind of attacks and not others, so for me I am just spamming dodge basically all the time.
You've got your own commands such as heal/strike heavy or standard / ranged attack, dodge / move etc but your companions auto-attack with standard strikes unless you tell them to use their special abilities. This is really the only way they are going to meaningfully helpful and while the above looks like chaos to most people, it pauses the action so you have plenty of time to make the right choices. For me I basically just use everything in all battles with enemies of any substance.
Now here is the bad part that I have faced so far. Your enemies, even in early game range from one-hit trash mobs to enemies that take 45 hits to down and are constantly moving. Since I play as a ranger of sorts (I think it is actually called "rogue") I am always trying to pop off shots from a distance. This is easier said than done because if you do this, the enemies lock onto you and charge straight for you.... then i go back to dodge roll.
The movement around whatever battlefield is easy enough I suppose and the PS5 handles the rather intense level of graphical demand. If I was to have one complaint it would be that you turn around during battle as if you were standing in a tub of maple syrup and I don't know if there is a way to change that, I hope so. I've been blindsided so many times because my character turns around like they recently had neck surgery.
Combat stays interesting enough I suppose, but I am yet to formulate any sort of real strategy other than trying to stay at distance as much as possible and if a tougher enemy ever blocks one of my attacks, I immediately dodge roll out of there, run a bit, then SLOWLY turn around to face them again. Since you often cannot see the attackers I am happy that this little colored bubble appears around your head to indicate that an incoming attack is headed your way and they you do what? Well you dodge roll of course!
The story is OK so far I guess, but the problem I have with it is that there is just so much of it. There were stretches of 20-30 minutes where the only thing I did sit through some sort of long dialogue something or other, skipping most of it (which is thankfully an option) and then getting out of that, seeing a marker in the distance, walking there, fighting nothing, then being subjected to even more talky talky. Why not just warp me there bro? What's with the senseless moving around in a city that doesn't appear to have much of a purpose since I leave it immediately following the 3 part talking act?
One of the things that I really enjoyed about Inquisition was that it seemed very open and you could decide to take on an area in a very deep sense and do side missions and gain xp and just hang out there for a while in order to have some fun just fighting and not bothering with cutscenes and story progression but so far in Veilguard the story seems quite locked and linear. I'm really hoping that this changes soon or there isn't going to be much chance that I will carry on all the way through.
I'm still enjoying it for the most part though and the jury is going to have to remain out about whether or not it is a good game. There is clearly a "girl power" and "alternative lifestyle" agenda in the narrative, but it hasn't become unbearable just yet. I'm still kind of alarmed that Bioware went that route to their own detriment really.
So far I am not as captivated by this one as I was Inquisition but I am not going to run away from it just yet. As of now the only real problem I have with it is the constant interrupting of gameplay so you can get more and more and more and more dialogue in there and for a player like me, I get so frustrated with this that I end up skipping most of it and as it stands now all I know is that I must head towards the white star on the map and kill whatever it is that is there. For what reason? I know not.
