I actually think that this game is a huge downgrade to Doom 2016 and Eternal.

These are two of my favorite games of all time. They had amazing encounters, awesome weapons and some really fun maps ane enemies. All of this was thrown out of the window in The Dark Ages.

. The weapons here are abysmally mediocre and boring. They all feel the same. You can also stick to two weapons during the entire game and never feel like you actually need to change.
. 2016 and Eternal had upgrades that literally changed how you would play a weapon (ballista, machine gun, etc). Upgrades in TDA have zero creativity and feel boring.
. The idea of parrying in a Doom game slows everything down to a crawl where you are playing Ikaruga looking out for green orbs to parry it. It's not fun.
. The dragon and mech part are terrible. The mech manages to be a huge, huge miss. It's basically wait-for-green-♥♥♥♥-to-dodge-simulator.
. Cutscenes. Who the ♥♥♥♥ asked for cutscenes all the time in a Doom game?

I honestly cant name a single thing that this game does better than 2016 or Eternal. Please, retire the shield forever.

18 hours in.

The Good

Combat is pretty fun: this is an ARPG first and foremost. Combat... works. Kinda. Sometimes. Camera can be janky in melee, but at least most hits are impactful when you play a warrior. Skill tree is mostly okay. Do keep in mind that this plays more like a Ys game than most crpgs you can think of. I do think that sometimes there are a lot of visual effects that make it hard to keep track of everything.

Symmetra: I like that party member, except the chocolate box hat.

The Bad

Map layout: seriously, what the ♥♥♥♥. Maps look more like something out of Banjo Kazooie than something that belongs in a fantasy rpg. This is a game set in a """"""""dark""""""" fantasy world where there are floating platforms everywhere, ziplines in basically every city and nothing makes a lick of sense.

Writing: it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bad, and probably the worst thing about the game. It also doesn't make a lot of sense, most of the time. So, here is how dialogue feels like between Char A and Char B:
Char A: "So, we killing dragons or what?"
Char B: "Yeah, we are killing dragons. Also, I love cookies"
Char A: "Cool. The sky is blue today. The sky is blue because of a process called Rayleigh scattering, which is when sunlight is scattered by tiny molecules in the Earth's atmosphere".
Char B: "Let me see your wares".
So far, not a single dialogue choice felt impactful. Worse than that, theres no connection between what characters talk about. It makes no sense and it is just terrible.

The tone of the game: I do think its legit when people say that this looks more like a game that could be set in Arendelle or the Magic Kingdom than the world of Dragon Age. Everyone treats you like an idiot. The humor is pretty bad. There are no stakes. Varric is stabbed near the heart in the first 5 minutes of the game but it was just a flesh wound. Everything is bright and colorful, and your dialogue choices cant change that at all.

Party member quests: horrible. So far, every companion quest is about following them, listening to some random dialogue and doing something dumb. No combat in any companion quest for now.

Its so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ streamlined: everything here is made for Little Jimmy's first ever RPG. Combat is streamlined, npcs are streamlined, magic is streamlined. One example is when you pick quests to find the first npcs. You literally fast travel to where they are and you are talking to them as soon as loading finishes. Like, what the ♥♥♥♥.

"Puzzles": there are some environment puzzles because of course there are environment puzzles to fill the dead world with some random ♥♥♥♥ to give you +100 health, +1 skill point or a volcanic rock. They are incredibly easy to solve and boring.

Bellantra: that veil jumper party member, I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hate her and I wanna throw her off a bridge. Shut the ♥♥♥♥ up, Bellana.

Baldurs Gate 3 released last year: seriously, Im so glad for BG3 and hope more devs go back and release more traditional CRPGs. Actually, its kind of a sin to write Baldurs Gate 3 in the same sentence as Dragon Age Veilguard. Dragons Age feels like it launched 15 years ago and feels so, so dated in so many aspects, from the useless loot you find everywhere, to romance, to companion quests, to quest structures... thank god for Larian.

This game is awesome. Is it a bit janky? Yeah. Do the visuals look weird at times? Yep. It it super original and make with a ton of love? ♥♥♥♥ yeah. Love it, and apparently this game was made by a single dev. Congrats, my friend, you made something very cool. It's basically a mix of Castlevania with Dark Souls and Silent Hills, and it works. So many items, builds, crazy secrets and fun ♥♥♥♥ put here. I can't wait for a sequel or what comes next.

This game has several, several design problems. It's like someone looked at Dark Souls and thought: "hmmm how can I ♥♥♥♥ up the Souls formula to make it completely annoying?"

Oh boy, they did a lot of terrible decisions here.

1- The level design is confusing as ♥♥♥♥. I had to grab a guide to know where to guy after lighting up the five main beacons in the story.
2- ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mimics are actually small glowing items. Annoying. Theyre everywhere and don't add anything. They don't give you items like the mimics in Dark Souls and you can't fight them. Why the ♥♥♥♥ are they there?
3- Weapons of the same time have the same movesets.
4- Umbral world is a fun idea in theory, but quickly becomes a chore where it's better to just traverse only in the umbral realm to get the better loot and access special areas.
5- Some enemies are a pain i nthe ass to fight, especially the damn sorceress that summons fireballs in front of you over and over and over and over and over again.
6- Enemies behind every. Single. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Barricade. Like, what the ♥♥♥♥, man.
7- Vestige seeds. The location of the temporary bonfires dont make a lot of sense. Some of them are right next to each other, while sometimes you walk a lot without ever finding one.
8- Weapons. I wanted to use a hbig unga bunga weapons that required strenght only, but only found a sword that required 36 STR and thats it. Lots of weapons requiring Radiance and Inferno or a lot of stats I didnt like or wanted to level up.
9- Stagger. I still don't know how stagger works. I would sometimes completely empty the enemy circular bar but he wouldnt be stagered for a critical hit.
10- Smart idea to grab the Epic money for the sequel since I imagine a lot of people would just skip it if so many of these ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ annoying things persist.