BioWare please stop the combat dogpiles.

All? ..

No.

mass effect 3 had great combat, by far better than the first two games. now mass effect andromeda, as Lebanese Dude said, was and improvement of that. the combat in andromeda was basically ME3 but with the ability to jump and no class restrictions. sure you couldn't pause, but that just more realistic, you had to plan on the go while under fire (you know since soldiers can't really pause combat in real life), and yes you can't control your companions, but with the ability to use combos yourself, controlling companions was kinda pointless. let's face it, with the way the combat works in andromeda, if you could pause and control your companions you'd be too OP. the only problem with the combat in andromeda is that on higher levels it wasn't challenging enough.

but hey, great counter point on your part.

i played the game when it was out, i have no idea what are you talking about. not even sure what peashooter even means. if you mean the damage output was low, than i can tell for a fact it wasn't. on high levels (even on early patches) it was too high. the combat was very interactive and quite fun. so was the story and dialogue actually. i have no idea why a lot of people didn't enjoy the game *shrugs*

I'm talking about the MP.

WTF? The MP combat IS the game's combat. Just with different balance.

Well, that was fun for a while at least.

well it is a shame, but it was not a representation of the main game, so while i agree that the combat in multiplayer should suck, it is important to distinquish between MEA combat and MEA multiplayer combat. so when people said that the combat in andromeda was good, his counter argument was that the multiplayer combat was bad, but even if it's true, it doesn't mean the andromeda combat was bad, since as i said several times, one have nothing to do with the other.

well i'm sorry that happened, truly, because it is a fun game. that being said, it doesn't actually means the single player combat was bad, just cause it gave you bad memories of multiplayer. do not mistake me, i am not diminishing the fact you got a bad experience, i understand and it's a shame single player combat was soiled for you, but indevidual experience, even though valid, is not a representation.

to give my own example, i played the first witcher game, really hated the combat and never finished the game, and as such never played the witcher 2 and 3, cause it soled the rest of the series for me, but i would not claim that the witcher 3 is a bad game because of that.

I mean, its really not all they need "just to do", if you think a bit further. Nothing else at this point.

Strategic combat is slow, purely because of the nature of strategy. Strategy is long planning and involves tedious and slow play like positioning. In fact in chess, strategy is mostly about positional jostling, tactics is all about the fast exchange of moves. Divinity Original Sin 2 really nails this, positioning is important, and the combat while slow is fabulous.

Action combat is fast, because that's what action is like, time speeds up and it should be fast to showcase this. Tactics are involved because, like I said earlier, tactics are a fast exchange of manoeuvres. I'm playing ESO and the combat is action, fast and fun. Same with Skyrim. Same with all the action games out there.

It's very hard to blend fast action design and slow strategic design cohesively into one build. It's hard to make positioning important while still incorporating a fast paced feel. They need to pick one and stick with it. I don't think shoving a tac cam onto the combat field really does much.

Very quickly because I need to leave, but I'll be willing to expand on points when I get back. So in no particular order:

People are more interesting than flora, so when designing an interesting setting it should be littered with examples of places that have obviously been touched, quite extensively, by ... people. The most interesting places in Skyrim or Bethesda games to explore, by most people, isn't the wildlife but the ruins, the forts, the dungeons. Places with demons, or history of people. Andromeda was influenced heavily by exploring unknown regions, or in other words, vast areas filled with very little at all. Which, for a lot of people, is dull. Mass Effect trilogy, on the other hand, was rife with life and civilisations, and therefore the world was a much deeper and interesting place. Andromeda was not filled with much of civilisation at all. Sure Andromeda was never intended that way, but it's still a criticism to say "I didn't like that. Go back to traditional Mass Effect."

Side quests, or in other words, spend 20 minutes figuring out how to get up a mountain so you can collect 1/9 tags littered over the vast and abandoned wastelands of planets.

Lack of character agency, or in other words there was no evil option for protagonists to play. In the trilogy you could be a mean psychopath, in Andromeda choices were limited and you weren't able to.

Dialogue felt like teenage banter and often didn't reflect the gravitas of the situation. Which brings me to the word 'relatable'. Being 'relatable' or being able to identify with someone relies on your personal experience as a person. The protagonist felt like a kid to me, and as someone in their mid 30s the whole thing made me cringe more than once. Shepard was always more of an adult character, Ryder felt like her goofy teenage kid sister.

No quarians!

Combat was good. Characters were okay, hit and miss, but that was like that with the trilogy as well.

But the villains were horrible, and not threatening. 

So that's off the top of my head. It is never accurate to think "I enjoyed the game, it must be enjoyable for everyone" because it wasn't an enjoyable experience for me. The emptiness of the world and the portrayal of the protagonist puts Andromeda firmly below ME1 for me as a game, even though the combat is better.