Dragon Age: The Veilguard Reviews Point to a Divisive Experience
The much-anticipated latest release from Bioware has reviews slowly seeping out from critics, YouTubers and Journalists over the past 24 hours. The consensus so far seems to be that this is a great video game but, depending on who you ask, it may not be a good Dragon Age game. On top of this, while most scores remain strong, there are quite a few outliers in either direction. With this release, it is highly recommended that you read reviews and individual critic’s takes instead of taking a score at face value since this could either be a complete disappointment or a Game of the Year contender depending on your take.
Image by Bioware
The average of reviews weighs this release at a Strong 83 on Opencritic. However, as mentioned, that’s more an average of outlier scores than an overall stamp of quality from every site. For example, IGN and Eurogamer had nothing but praise for the release in their 9/10 and 5/5 reviews respectively. Eurogamer said the following:
“A fantasy role-playing game of astonishing spectacle. This is the best Dragon Age, and perhaps BioWare, has ever been.”
Conversely, other sites were much, much less impressed. VGC and VG247 both gave it a 6/10- the latter said the following:
“Dragon Age: The Veilguard is full of heart and soul. It’s also got some great ideas. Conversely, many of those ideas feel like they struggle to get out of first gear - and those that do find it harder still to make it to third. Sometimes the cleverest ideas are undermined by other systems or decisions.”
Image by Bioware
Phenomenal environments but poor level design; a strong story but poor writing; fun combat but also repetitive and uninteresting fights. These contradictory statements seem to be at the heart of Dragon Age: Veilguard’s discourse online. Depending on your own preferences, each aspect of this game could be appealing or appalling- which is rare in the AAA space- with games being deemed either a failure or masterpiece as soon as they are released.
Image by Bioware
If you’ve been looking forward to this release, it does seem to be a toss up as to how you’ll feel about it. This mirrors another fantasy RPG game that launched earlier this year: Dragon’s Dogma 2. That too received strong reviews with a lot of outliers on either site of the fence. The best action to take regarding this release is to just follow reviewers you trust and try it for yourself. It’s available this Thursday 31st October and will likely come with all the online discourse you’d expect. You have been warned.
