Dragon Age: The Veilguard has strong characters, but gameplay stuck in the past

videogameschronicle.com:

Dragon Age: The Veilguard fleetingly captures BioWare magic, but just as often as it does this, it also disappoints with repetitive gameplay plagued with annoyances. While BioWare nails what it does best, like the excellent cast of characters and their interpersonal relationships, from a gameplay perspective, it too often feels frustratingly stuck in the past.

Set after 2014’s Dragon Age: Inquisition, the game follows Rook as they deal with the fallout of stopping the plans of Solas, The Dreadwolf. After accidentally releasing two evil gods into the world, Rook must assemble a team to defeat them and rid the world of Blight, a toxic, cancerous sludge that is slowly taking over the world.

Unfortunately, Veilguard’s main missions make for an uneven experience, swinging from incredible set pieces to frustrating slogs. Much of the game is spent destroying red balls of Blight that block your path or moving shiny cubes five steps away to open a door. We found our shoulders slumping every time we entered an area to find another roadblock that was solved by literally just following a red line.

This is part of an overall lack of variety throughout the game. You’re only ever fighting around three or four enemy types, so fights eventually become overly familiar. Combat itself can be fun, but we found that most enemies had far too much health. The issue isn’t that they’re particularly difficult (they barely do much damage), it’s more that the amount of time it takes to kill them means that the real battle is keeping your attention from wandering.

Thankfully, there’s at least a high variety of attacks, and your companions can also use their abilities to tag-team against larger foes. For example, if our character was to use a necrosis effect on an enemy, some companions can then use a fire attack to detonate that enemy. Controlling the attacks of the other two members of your party is convenient, and we very rarely felt the need to pause the action.

Elsewhere, Veilguard moves on from