Combat changes put me off initially but honestly, enjoyed it far more than inquisition, combat is far closer to me:a and that's a good thing, me:a is easily the best mass effect game mechanically (and that's coming from someone who still loves me1), skill tree is massive and you can respec whenever to try different things, as an RPG I personally felt it's quite strong. Also, felt da:v was more focused wrt maps, da:i has really large, empty maps that I originally tried to do everything in, by the hissing wastes unless it was shards or an interesting side quest I ignored it.

Felt them making companions invulnerable was a good idea too, da:i on nightmare they usually died almost immediately against things like dragons or dlc bosses unless you micromanaged the hell out of them.

Story wise, it's me:2; you collect a bunch of experts for an impossible task. Personally, I like bioware RPGs, they've always been cheesy. Shepard has lots of one liners that are sarcastic quips, "it's a big stupid jellyfish" comes to mind immediately, half the dialogue between Shepard and Garus in the later games (especially me:3). One criticism is probably shared with me:a, we had time to experience the me characters over the course of the games, they weren't immediately like that, but honestly it never really bothered me, jade empire has really cheesy dialogue and is up there for me flaws and all.

IMO one thing bioware has always done well is world building and veilguard isn't an exception to that for me, I like that the set the game in a region only really mentioned in previous games.

is it the best game I've ever played? No but definitely an enjoyable one, I personally feel we'll see retrospectives in a handful of years like I've seen with me:a recently (another game that was actually solid and had some interesting ideas and concepts)