Ok so I have been playing this game for almost 5 hours now and I am starting to feel already, a bit winded and bored of several things that normally is meant to be exciting about RPG's and was exciting about Dragon Age: Inquisition. The real question here is this though: Did they do it badly in DAV or has the industry and me as a person, just moved on from a concept that I experienced 10 years ago in the last Dragon Age game
I am playing this on a PS5 by the say. It's just a regular one not a super enhanced one or whatever those are called. I was a late adopter and only got it because I was diappointed that I couldn't play a PS game with my brother. That's another story and one that I have already told.
In Veilguard you play the role of "Rook" as the main character and at any given time you will have 2 people with you, sometimes 3 if you pick another one up along the way.
You are tasked with entering various areas in order to prevent the spread of the blight that is taking over the world - whatever our world is called - and you can change who your partners are, and their abilities over time. I usually go with the mage character and the short fat dwarf because they can slow down time and heal really well, respectively.
Her name is Harding and as far as I can tell she doesn't do a whole hell of a lot as far as damage output is concerned and neither does the other person I bring along with me.... and this is part of the problem: I don't really know or care to know very much about these 2 or any of the others I bring along with me because while they do run their mouths CONSTANTLY when we are moving around and you cannot prevent this, almost none of what they say is of any consequence. The dialogue is just there to have something there... and I don't like this at all. If there was a way to disable it I would have done so a long time ago.
I also don't remember any of the names of places that we are traveling to, how to get to any of them, or honestly, any of what is going on as far as the story is concerned and I can honestly say that this is because I believe that the story and the writing contained within is simply bad.
I'm trying to steer clear of the controversy that this game garnered itself by trying to be super-inclusive and diverse - I mean I am trying to not focus on that at all and just be genuine with my reaction to the actual game as an individual and not allow the hype to get to me. I am quite simply bored when I am wandering around and not all that interested in new areas or castles when we encounter them because they all have a "same same" feel to them.
It is evident that they tried to tread new ground with the combat and avoid randomized encounters but unfortunately that is not the way that it feels. When I do have to fight I feel as though it is the same every single time and my strategy ends up consisting of dodge-rolling away from all incoming damage and then turning around and getting a jump attack followed by a few light attacks and maybe a heavy in there as well. Then I dodge out and do it again, over and over and over again. I'm playing the game on normal difficulty and after 5 hours of playing this has always worked, including on bosses. There isn't any reason to mix up your gameplay and when I tried, I ended up getting whacked for 1/3 to 1/2 of my lifebar when doing so.
As far as enemies are concerned, they are already all feeling the same as well with the only difference being that the larger ones take longer to take down solely because of their massive HP pools.
I can't help but feel as though they anticipated that everyone was going to eventually end up approaching combat this way because rather than have more options in battle to make the ol' dodge-roll something that you don't feel compelled to do, they just make the rooms you are in smaller so that you I guess, will end up dodge-rolling into a wall and get hit anyway.
You do get XP from combat, so in the past I would actually feel good about fighting a lot to this end and also end up running away from certain enemies when I encounter them and save them for later when I have more levels under me but this also doesn't seem to be a factor here because one, the gameplay is extremely linear up to this point and also as far as I can tell I don't have any extra explorable ares to visit just for the sake of getting more loot and XP. I am told to go to a certain place on the map and when I try to go elsewhere I am greeted by locked doors or empty hallways.
On the off chance that I do encounter a chest or two they contain trash whose only purpose is to be sold for currency to vendors so you can buy upgrades to your current loadout or new gear. But herein lies another problem. If you do buy a new bow or sword, for example, it will be outdone by something that you find in a chest a bit later on anyway, so there isn't much point to spend any time doing this.
This is likely my largest complaint with this game so far: When I find a chest in a game I want it to be an exciting thing! I want to feel like something inside of it is going to be a great addition to my play and make me more powerful but more often than not it is just some crap contained inside that I am just going to sell to a vendor. There is NO REASON for these things to be contained inside of a chest since they cannot be equipped and have no purpose other than to sell them - just have them lying on the ground after a fight and that way I don't get my hopes up. By having chests not be special, I no longer feel like exploring in the hopes of finding a new chest because I know there is a 95% chance that what is contained inside is going to be a bunch of trash.
At this point I am not going to give up on the game because I don't really have anything else in the wings at the moment but I have to say that every time I fire the game up I am not excited about anything that I am going to be doing. The dialogue, which there is soooooo much of, is just trash and the story is convoluted and somehow boring at the same time. I am skipping most of it because none of it is interesting. The gayness or inclusivity that everyone was complaining about online during the initial release is evident in the game, but it doesn't take over the narrative and is easily dismissed. None of that is a problem to me. What is a problem is that all of the story doesn't interest me at all and therefore, the new locations and characters also don't interest me.
Maybe I am just spoiled at this point because the story for Diablo 4, the latest game I played before this, had such an amazing story to it. I will trudge on, but mostly I kind of wonder why I am bothering. It is mostly just because of lack of an alternative at this point.