Dragon Age The Veilguard Criticism Thread (formerly Skepticism Thread) [Spoilers]

Anyway, point is, it's woke as fuck. Now, that's all well and good but it gets a lot worse because regardless of political and ideological agendas, if we're looking at this game from a purely mechanical perspective it still reeks. I can't give you an example of a single mechanic I enjoyed. The "crafting" is laughable, itemization is horrible, character builds and progression are meaningless and the combat is the worst offender. It's beyond simplistic with every class and sub-class feeling largely the same. The enemies all feel the same too and the only difficulty the game provides stems from enemies having an absurd amount of health making a lot of fights a real slog. New enemies appear out of nowhere, attacking you in waves. You may think you're going up against three darkspawn, but nah, have fun grinding down these six waves of teleporting cunts that'll never kill you but take ten minutes to finish off.

The absolute worst part of combat is the way the "party" works. You don't have a party, not really. Mechanically, it works like a retarded card deck builder. You see, your two companions are immortal (they have no health bars) and aren't targeted nearly as much by enemies in battles like yourself - they're mostly ignored and do little damage besides. Instead, they only serve one real purpose in battles: for you to use their abilities. They can have three equipped at a time (as can you), and these ability cards are the only stuff that does any significant damage. You're supposed to figure out combos, but there's nothing to figure out. Use ability X to give an enemy the effect Y, then use ability Z that does extra damage against enemies affected by Y. It's banal at best. Moreover, all these abilities come with a cooldown - a cooldown they fucking share, meaning once you use one all three go on cooldown (there's a few exceptions to this) - which means you'll spend most of your time simply auto-attacking and dodging enemies whilst waiting for the cooldown to end.

I could go on and on and on, but I won't (I've an actual review to make before the embargo lifts). This game is an utter mess and anyone giving it a positive review can never be taken seriously again.