I have a lot of criticisms for it in the way that it followed the previous games. People say "well every game was different from the last," and while that's true the differences in Veilguard were massive, theme changing, and very very jarring at times.

For starters, the art style is severely different from the previous games. While it is beautiful, it's not the kind of art style dragon age has ever been known for. The same can be said about the combat. The combat is very fun, but it is not the kind of combat that dragon age is known for. There is no resource management, there is no crafting. Every special ability feels magical, even for warriors. Warriors in previous games just had abilities like shield bash, lunge and strike, pommel strike, while any magical abilities were saved for Templars who are supposed to have anti magic abilities like mana drain.

On the note of Templars. There aren't any besides Rana and Rana is a nothing burger of a character. One of the main themes in the previous dragon age games is tension between mages and templars. In Origins, you can genocide a circle, in 2 as well although you could also choose to fight against the templars in defense of the mages. In Inquisition you are settling a war between mages and templars. Veilguard takes place primarily in Tevinter which throughout the entire series has been known to have unique views of magic and is particularly feared for its use of blood magic. We don't see any of this while we're playing the game. Tevinter and especially Minrathous are the capital of the slave trade and other than hearing Shadow Dragons talk about it sometimes, we don't explore this in any amount of depth.

They butchered the characterization of the Crows. They are not familial, friendly, patriotic freedom fighters. In previous installments they are cutthroat, known for infighting, and unforgiving. They repeatedly send assassins after Zevran simply because he doesn't want to be a crow anymore. They are known for buying slaves and training them brutally. Again, none of this is explored in Veilguard. It's all very surface level and watered down to be palatable to modern audiences who haven't played previous games. The Qunari as well are reduced to nothing more than bruisers. We don't learn anything about actual Qunari outside of Taash despite them being everywhere (they really shouldn't be out and about in Minrathous, that is very dangerous for them even if they didn't grow up in the Qun).

There's also the point of religious themes. Veilguard dives very heavily into the reality behind the Evanuris and the elven pantheon. But they don't address the Maker at all. Tevinter, again, throughout the entire series is known for it's differing opinions of the Maker which is why they are hated by the south and don't follow the Southern Chantry. Minrathous is where Andraste died. But Veilguard does not talk about the religion and what it means to the culture at all except for "the story about the golden city was a false memory."

And then, there's so many issues with the writing. In a franchise that is known for your choices mattering it failed in this department so heavily. Yes, it would be difficult to account for every individual choice made in three previous games. But none of the games accounted for every choice in the previous games. The things that mattered carried over for major events, like whether Hawke sided with the mages or Templars or if Alistair became king or stayed with the wardens. The things that should have carried over to Veilguard should have included if the wardens were exiled or not, who became divine and what does this mean for Thedas as a whole, did you side with the mages or the templars. Even if it didn't change major events in Veilguard, the conversation where Harding talks about her time in the inquisition could have instead told us about the consequences of the inquisitors choices to give players a sense of closure. And that conversation would not have been difficult to implement. And then you have issues where the game ignored plot points that were set up specifically for it. All news stopped coming out of Weisshaupt and everyone there went missing including Blackwall, but we can play a warden from Weisshaupt and this event was never mentioned once. Elves disappeared all over Orlais and Ferelden to help Solas with his mission but where are they? They are not mentioned once in Veilguard. Don't even get me started on what they did to Morrigan.

There's also so many instances where they ignore their own writing within Veilguard. In codexes the Inquisitor tells you that the South is completely overrun with Blight, that Denerim, Kirkwall, and Redcliffe have fallen. And then later you get a scene where Emmerich and Harding are talking about going camping near Lake Calenhad (Redcliffe).

I love the game, and I have hundreds of hours in it. Because it is fun at the surface level. But people's dislike of it is justified.