Double Dragon

I hit another major story beat in Dragon Age Veilguard, so this seems like a good point for another checkin!

 

 

Overall I'm really enjoying it so far. This most recent section was pretty explicitly framed as Help Your Team Members Deal With Their Personal Issues, which I honestly enjoy, particularly in a BioWare game. Companions are always a high point in these games, and while I shouldn't draw any final conclusions before finishing the game, at this point I feel like this is one of the best overall ensembles from any of the Dragon Age games. In particular, I think this may be the first DA game where I have felt a strong attachment to every single member of the party. Typically there are a few characters I love, a few I find interesting and one or two I'm annoyed by. This time, from top to bottom I like them all. They're all very unique, in personality and background and combat style and stuff, but they all click individually and work as part of a big, varied but unified team.

 

 

I'd mentioned before that my motivation behind team composition has changed over time, and it continued to evolve in this act. DA:V (which, side note, now that I write it that way it seems confusing, since V is the fourth game and not a roman numeral fifth) is the first game in the series with a rigid separation between your PC and the companion NPCs. You personally gain XP and level up as you complete quests and kill monsters and stuff. Your companions don't have levels or the same skill tree or XP. Instead, you gain Ability Points as you increase your Bond with them. It seems like you make a lot of progress in the Bond when you finish their personal quests, but you also gain some Bond by having them in your (two-person) party when you complete a quest, and I think you also gain a little Bond by defeating enemies/bosses in their primary enemy faction (like Darkspawn for Davrin, Venatori for Neve, Antaam for Taash, etc.).

 

 

In some ways this reminds me of the 90s / early 2000s era of CRPGs where companions would only gain XP while being in your party, so you were incentivized to recruit your core party early, and then keep them around forever and never swap in less-favored members. That shifted later to have companions always gain XP at the same rate whether in the party or not, so you wouldn't be gimping yourself (or not significantly so) if you wanted to temporarily bring another member in because they seem more relevant for a particular quest or environment or something. In DA:V I feel like I'm actively encouraged to swap between party members, not just to hear different banters and things, but also to keep their ability points moving forward. So we've moved back to companions advancing based on having them in your party, but in a way that feels like it's rewarding you for adding them versus penalizing you for removing them.

 

The pacing of the game has felt good, it's a long game but not overwhelming. I think the zone design really helps here, usually there are multiple things you can do in an area, including major story quests, companion quests and side quests, along with a few puzzles to solve and high-value treasure chests to track down. There's a good sense of progression, and more opportunities open up as you move along, but since there's a finite amount of stuff to do at a given time in a given zone you never reach that breaking point of an Oblivion or a Skyrim where the sheer volume of quests makes each one feel meaningless.

 

 

Gear advancement has felt pretty good. I said this before, but I'll repeat that I love the lack of inventory management. No item limits or carry limit, and you can't sell any gear, only trash/"valuable" items. That does mean that you end up getting a ton of equipment that you'll never use, but that's okay, it doesn't harm you to have it in your inventory, and it is extra-exciting when you do get a drop that works for you. I've been sticking to pretty consistent loadouts for my PC and my companions, I think so far I've only customized for one specific fight, after losing against a very tough optional boss who's vulnerable to Necrotic and resistant to Electric attacks. The one very minor annoying thing is that each Enchantment can only be applied to a specific piece of gear at a time - you can swap to another item of gear at any time while in the field, but if you want to put an Enchantment on that, you need to trek all the way back to your home base first. It would be nice (at least gameplay-wise) if each enchantment was applied to the slot instead of to the item, or if you could swap enchantments in the field.

 

 

Build-wise, I took the Veil Ranger specialization, which is the Archer subclass of a Rogue. My Abilities are mostly lightning-based, and for combos I can inflict Weakened or detonate Overwhelmed. I can make this work with a lot of companions, but it's a particularly natural combo with Taash who can detonate Weakened and inflict Overwhelmed (both on command and periodically passively). I mostly do ranged attacks from a distance, usually trying for headshots but often settling for center-of-mass targeting. During this Act I've mostly been rocking the Trueflight Bow, which does bonus damage to Armor; a big part of that is that it's generally been my highest rarity useful bow, I think it's currently at Epic tier. The special effects of this are generally useful, I think there are some other ones that might be a better match for my playstyle, so once I finish upgrading other bows I might swap it out.

 

 

One interesting thing about Veilguard is that there are two broad classes of gear. Most items have a dual upgrade track: as you find duplicates of the same item, you upgrade the Rarity tier, which in turn will unlock other special effects of the item; you can also use the Caretaker's Workshop to upgrade the Level of the item, which will directly improve the numeric stats of the item (like Damage or Stagger). Then there are a few hard-to-find Unique items. These don't have a rarity or a level and come fully unlocked. These tend to be gimmicky. Examples include a Bow that reduces your Arrow Count to 1 but massively increases the Damage; another Bow that adds seven arrows and fires triple shots that each do 50% damage; one piece of Armor that massively increases your Defense but reduces your Ability power; and so on. I think that for a future playthrough of the game, it could be very powerful to design a build around some of these specific Unique items and beeline to them as soon as you can. In a way these items remind me of the Meteorite Staff from Elden Ring, in that it's a very powerful item if you get it early, but will eventually be outclassed after you're able to upgrade other items.

 

 

As I've built out more of my Archery abilities I do less hand-to-hand combat, but it is very satisfying. My strategy is heavily built around Dodge: I'll close range with someone (or shoot at them until they close range with me), get in a few hits with my dual-wielded blades, then dash through them, get a few more strikes, dash again, and repeat. Depending on the enemy speed and how crowded the battlefield is I may be able to get a whole attack chain in before the dash, or might need to dash after each individual tap. I'm currently using two Unique weapons for my melee swords. One does very low damage but inflicts Bleed on each hit, along with increasing the max stacks of Bleed; obviously this gives decent DOT, so if I'm in trouble I can lay down a few stacks of Bleed, run away, and hopefully something bad happens to the bad guy. The other weapon does 0 base damage, but inflicts a good amount of every type of Elemental damage, for high overall damage; I added an Enchantment to this that adds back in some Physical damage. I think this ensures I can do Critical melee hits no matter what element an enemy is resistant to.

 

 

Overall, I try to pick items and abilities that increase my archery abilities. I'm not too concerned about arrows: thanks to my ability tree I have a good amount to carry and good regeneration, so even in boss fights I never run out. But I'll use items that boost ranged damage, help with weakpoint attack, or otherwise increase my most common attacks. (Unlike Elden Ring, I haven't dug into theorycrafting and still don't understand [haven't bothered to look up] some basic concepts; for example, I have taken several passive abilities that upgrade my Area Abilities and Duration Abilities. But, I don't know what Area Abilities and Duration Abilities are, and whether I use any of them, and thus whether those upgrades are useful or useless.)

MEGA SPOILERS

In the romance department, I'd been flirting with multiple ladies, narrowed it down to Bellara and Harding, and ultimately locked in to romancing Harding. I already had a soft spot for her from our time together in Inquisition, and she's just great in general. Some sweetness (I love her subtly flower-embroidered collar), a lot of strength, self-awareness, devotion to her cause and her team, a certain level of maturity while still remaining open to new experiences. We're currently dealing with a physical incompatibility in the form of her raw lyrium expression triggering intense drowsiness in Rook. I'm curious to see where her Stone Sense storyline continues.

 

 

Harding is a bit of an outlier in general. She seems to be the one companion without any associated faction. I suppose that Kal-Sharok is her most affiliated location, but unlike, say, Arlathan Forest for Bellara you can't ever return there. She's most linked to the Inquisition, and I did love meeting the Inquisitor and getting notes from them, but that's a very distant southern faction you never directly interact with. On a practical level, while all other companions have unique gear you can buy from their faction merchant, Harding seems to have a few pieces scattered between a few different stores.

 

 

My favorite overall companion is probably still Davrin; as I noted in my previous post, I've been surprised by just how strongly he's grown on me. I initially assumed he would be a boring one-note fighter type, but he has such a great personality, an interestingly specific struggle he's dealing with, and... I dunno, I just really like him a lot.

 

 

Emmrich is probably the most out-there companion; I can't think of anyone similar from any other RPGs I've played. His vocal delivery reminds me of Dorian from Inquisition, which is great, but his personality and background are very different, despite both being mages. Like Bellara he has a nerdy obsessive quality to him, but he's her opposite in age, experience and maturity, reminding me of a beloved professor emeritus. Full of interesting ideas, confident while never seeming arrogant. He's often my go-to when I have a tough boss battle ahead but Harding isn't in my party, as I've built out his Heal ability and he synergizes well with a different set of companion abilities.

 

 

For the main story: I don't think there were any especially huge choices in this act like the Minrathous-vs-Treviso choice of Act 1. I've been generally supportive and encouraging of all companions as is my wont, although the form this takes can vary; some seem to respond better to toughness while others warm up more to a sympathetic ear. I don't think your tone ever locks you out of content, but you get stronger reactions one way or the other.

 

 

The last big story beat I hit was helping the remnants of the Grey Wardens defend against one of Ghilan'nain's blighted high dragons. This was a pretty epic fight: once you get the dragon down a good chunk, the second blighted  high dragon swoops in. But there's also a fun mechanic for the latter part of this fight where you can periodically summon off-screen allies (in my case Minrathous shadow dragons) to fire a powerful magic ballista at a designated target. By this point in the game I'd fought enough dragons to get the mechanics down. Periodically, one or more of their limbs will start glowing and appear in the modal overlay as a "Weak Point". After doing enough damage to the shifting "Weak Point"s, the dragon will collapse to the ground, exposing its heart as a new Weak Point. It takes massive damage when you hit that - I think each hit might be a crit or bypass defense or do multiplicative damage or something. Anyways, you want to whale on that exposed heart while you can, but that's also a great time to fire off your Ultimate Ability or invoke a lyrium-infused ballista bolt or otherwise do huge damage. So, even with two dragons on the field at the same time, I was able to get through this battle without dying and reloading, yay!

 

 

Immediately after this sequence and the next set of story beats, I picked up Taash's personal quests, which led me to yet another two cool dragon battles, one fire dragon and one ice dragon. So that was a good four dragons taken down in one long session - pretty fun!

 

 

I'm just dipping my toes into Act 3, which so far seems to be continuing the Act 2 theme of "The most important thing you can do now is to teach the Power Of Friendship to your team." I feel like the game is heading towards an ultimate boss battle against Elgar'nan, possibly with Ghilan'nain but maybe separately. But who knows. I haven't seen Solas for a while and I definitely still don't trust him. I am curious about Mythal; I did talk with Morrigan and Flemeth's alternate spirit, so I imagine Mythal will be an ally if anything. The stuff about the Titans has been interesting too, especially as that's been teased since the Descent DLC for Inquisition. I imagine that the Titans will be more prominent in a future DA game, but again, I've been surprised in the past!

 

 

Oh, I should also note here that I defeated the Formless One late in Act 2. I've loved how this tradition of semi-hidden, optional, super-duper-powerful bosses has continued throughout all four games, and of course that continues the great tradition of Kangaxx and similar "secret bosses" in Baldur's Gate and earlier games.

END SPOILERS

I'm already making good progress in Act 3 and enjoying the game. I think it took longer for this game to click with me than the earlier ones, in large part due to the more Action RPG style of it, but now that I'm invested in the companions, world and story I feel motivated to keep going, and I have enough experience with the controls that I'm no longer annoyed with them. (I do still wish this was more of a traditional tactical RPG than an action RPG, but that isn't my choice to make.) I probably have one more post to make after I wrap up the game, will see you in a bit with that!