I am still forming opinions on this game. I would like to like it, as I enjoyed and liked the previous 3 DA games, but the combat is not good, IMO. Not at all.
I do enjoy 3rd person action games, I love the Dragon's Dogma series and enjoy the Dark Souls series for example, but I am not feeling the combat system they developed in Veilguard. Part of it is because I wasn't paying that much attention to the media before release, so I was still expecting some type of tactical party combat. And not meeting my expectations automatically creates some negativity.
But even beyond that adding active defense hurts the combat so much. Maybe the experience is different if you are playing a mage or bow user, but as a warrior you are constantly having to dodge or block and watch out for indicators that you need to dodge or block. And because it is a party based game, the constant stream of special ability graphical effects from both you, companions, and enemies can make it very hard to get a good look at the enemy you are targeting (and those you aren't targeting) to see if you need to defend or not.
This is an even worse problem in many cramped interior fights against multiple enemies, as the camera will very often make it hard to see where your character and the enemy you are targeting is, with most of the other enemies being off screen. Other 3rd person action games I have played have not had this problem in nearly as noticeable a fashion.
As a result, it is true that you are much busier with a single character, but this is supposed to be a party game. In Inquisition even though they tried to push a more action like gameplay, they still allowed for a mouse driven tactical view so you can play the whole party, not just a single character. But in this game you are so busy dodging and blocking that you don't have the attention to focus on other characters even if they had actually allowed you to that.
I would have preferred they kept defense passive (just based on your defensive stats and any buffs you have) for the most part so you could focus more on the positioning, targeting, and skill usage of the whole party. You know, like it was in previous DA games. Offense is also more active with combos and attack chains being more important, and unfortunately character progression/level ups is also focused around unlocking and upgrading special abilities and core class combos/abilities rather than improving statistics.
I will probably hold off on further criticisms or praise until I play more, as I am still somewhat early, about 7 hours in, and don't know if I am still in the extended tutorial/training wheels section and if it will open up in a significant way in the near future. But I would note that this game seems to so far have a lineage that comes from Mass Effect 2 and 3 rather than the Dragon Age series. You have the same 3 person party and method of managing party members (using the menu to fire off their special abilities) and everything seems to be structured more as missions rather than a world that you adventure through and complete quests in. I have so far found almost no side quests (most of them being optional puzzle solving gameplay), most of the gameplay has taken place is mission levels you can never return to (extremely linear mission levels, btw), and so far more than half of the missions are companion recruitment missions.
I assume that last bit is because I am still at that start of the game and assembling the party, so we will see if that changes. However, the mission premises are very much written as "go find/recruit this character" rather than being to do some other task where you then just happen to encounter a new companion while doing it. And when the group is deciding what needs to be done to resolve the problem that the plot is revolving around, the decision is "We need to go recruit some more people!" rather than actively trying to do something about the problem.
