Bioware-Critic
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Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, Baldur's Gate, Mass Effect Andromeda
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Post by Bioware-Critic on Apr 8, 2017 17:39:33 GMT
I would love to give this title a 7-8 for all the hard work they put into it. But since it has so many problems and the dialogues as well as the characters are so bad for my taste, I would, if I had to put a number on it RIGHT NOW, give it a 2-4 out of 10. Especially when I think that it will take them a year and the full dev range of ALL the additional DLC-developement time available to fix even HALF of what went ... "down the tubes"! Since I rather NOT do that ... I will reserve my personal judgement until 2018. Good God, I cannot believe I am doing this AGAIN! I swear, I will buy the next BioWare title one bloody year AFTER it's release. I am fed up 'til kindom come by now So, ... back to saving entire planets with ... SUDOKU
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kumazan
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Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda
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Post by kumazan on Apr 8, 2017 21:27:24 GMT
Alright, I finally finished the game (started right as it became available in Europe, I'm this slow ), and here comes my not too in-depth review. I'm voting good even though my final score would merit a great, and that's only because I feel I'm being too lenient in my judgment of bugs and other technical problems. I find mind-boggling that this game wasn't delayed, specially if we are to trust the rumour(?) that EA had given the OK to such delay. Anyway, let's go: GAMEPLAYCertainly the best this game offers, no question. Miles ahead of anything the Trilogy had to offer, even ME3. Combat is particularly brilliant, I think the jetpack may have ruined the Trilogy for me, I don't know how I'll be able to replay ME1/2/3 without the ability to use it. I was skeptical that it would bring so much change on its own, but damn were they right about this. I love how fast paced combat is, how it forces you to move much more than in the Trilogy and I even found team mates to be more useful than I expected, even without the wheel. The minus here comes from the limit of 3 skills. I thought the favourites system would be enough to stop this from being an issue, but I found myself relying almost exclusively on 3 powers, and having to make an actual effort to change them, and I don't think this is how it was intended to work, so this needs to be revised, imo, even if the idea of changing profiles is not without merit. Now the Nomad, what a massive advance this is from the Mako and the Hammerhead. It drives so smoothly, and can climb just about anything (oh, what wouldn't I give to have you in Nodacrux ), it made exploration much more enjoyable. STORY, CHARACTERS AND WRITINGInconsistent. Not bad by all means, in fact I found it good, even with great sparks, but then it had absolutely nonsensical dips out of the blue which were quite baffling. Peebee's loyalty was the prime example of this, I believe, the mission was good, with its corniness and all (which I didn't mind), but the resolution was very poor. The main story suffered less from this, at least, and I found it great, even though I really think the whole asari and turian arks subplots, and some other non-critical arcs, should have been integrated into the story. Playing it all made for a great experience, but a playthrough doing only the critical missions would feel very shallow. On side quests, well, there are SO MANY that you can find the whole spectrum in them: some are great, some are meh, and some are filler. But in general I really think they did better than the Trilogy in this regard, certainly better than ME2/3, and a massive step forward from DA:I. And characters. This was the hardest part to get right, because people would inevitably compare them to characters we've been playing with for almost a decade, and spanning, in some cases, 3 games. And I think they did rather well, because I ended up loving them all, even Peebee, which I started having lukewarm feelings about after Eos, and Drack, who at first gave me generic krogan vibes, but ultimately held up as its own character. I think they should have developed more the crewmate characters though, they were good (so good that the voice of one of them made me change my romance plans), but they felt less unique because of this. Perhaps DA:I skewed my expectations here. GRAPHICS AND VISUALSThe game is beautiful. The lighting is particularly awesome, and there are several vistas, both in the planets and in the galaxy map that I could be watching for hours. And that possibly makes the somewhat poorish character models stand out more than they should. They got MUCH better after they fixed the eyes in the last patch though, I don't understand how a minor yet important thing like that terrible eye shader they originally had slipped into the game. However, the main problem aren't those character models, which are kinda mediocre but not enough to be even slightly distracting, but the animations. I didn't have great expectations for the animations, even if I thought people were being too negative about them, but damn, those were Bethesda levels of bad. It got distracting at times, and that's a bad thing to say about animations, which are supposed to help you immerse and not the other way around. It's true that it wasn't all the animations being bad, others being quite good even, but the inconsistency, if anything, made it worse. And this seriously pisses me off, because, with better animations and once the more common bugs are fixed, I'd seriously rank Andromeda as my 2nd favourite ME game. MISC- The cinematography felt inferior to that of the Trilogy, and this is, together with the animations, the main negative for me. Cutscene design could be way better at times, and it sometimes fails to properly convey the feelings and the stakes of the situations. I blame this more than the writing for the flatness of a couple of moments which should have had more significance. - The music was great, but see above. It only felt well used in a few parts of the game, mostly the final mission. Ironically, the Ai brifing videos made a better use of the music than the game. - I hate SAM with a passion. It just never, ever shuts up. Sigh. I'm OK with it being a plot device to solve just any possible problem in existance (our new Cerberus, yay!), but please make it less talkative. Please. - I liked the world design, not just the beautiful vistas, but the way hubs were designed and how it affected gameplay, it felt organic to me. Kadara Port was a pain to navigate though. - The crafting was good, I liked the amount of customisation it allowed. It could have used a better tutorial though, it fel a bit overwhelming at first. - The Galaxy Map is awesome, specially now that you can skip the autopilot within a system. - The minigames in the remnant facilities are an OK gameplay device, but make literally zero sense from an in-world perspective. - The bugs. Too many of them. None game breaking. Only a couple quest breaking (and both in minor tasks). But too prominent, specially enemies not moving at all, characters glitching and my Ryder disappearing in a cutscene. They have a lot of work ahead to get rid of them. So, all things considered, I give it a 8.5/10. In the end, I think my expectations were met, I had a great time, I think the foundations for a great saga have been set if BioWare decides to go for it, and I'm already planning a second, less completionist playthrough. Edit: Added a very necessary comment on bugs.
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havox
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Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquistion, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire
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Post by havox on Apr 9, 2017 0:15:02 GMT
Just finished it, very disappointed on multiple fronts. Lots of mediocrity, forgettable music, terrible CC, boring companion cast, plot with holes big enough for Tempest to drive through, disappointing but I can live with. Some huge grievances migrated over from Inquisition though. Dialogue system: MET: / Paragon Investigate - - Shepard doesn't have enough blue/red points and regrets life choices \ Renegade MEA Investigate - Snarky yes / \ Yes Both Paragon choices Interface. Quest log, shops, strike teams. I think we've found a genuine alien life form. And I don't mean in-game, Bioware didn't get the memo being alien doesn't always mean humanoid with bird legs, 3 fingers and weird stuff in place of hair. I mean whoever designed that, I don't think has interacted with a human-made interface. Windows 3.1 was more user friendly than that. The side content is actually WORSE than DAI, which was already at a point so low even devs acknowledged it. Go to theese 3/4/5/10 locations and scan things or kill things, typically for some petty stuff Pathfinder shouldn't be bothered with, then return to the <!> questgiver. Murder mystery! Find clues, interrogate witnesses, accuse suspect, with getting the right or wrong man having consequences. Asscreed Unity had it. MEA, go to this location and scan 3 things. Angaran special forces ask for knowledge exchange with Nexus. Cool, paintball wargames with Angaras! Maybe pick up some special Angara special force skills or gadgets as reward! Nope, go to these 3 locations and kill things, +500 exp. Learn Angara laws to avoid diplomatic incidents on their homeworld! Have a learning session, then join Nexus ambassador party with possibilities to improve or worsen diplomatic ties with Angara! Nope, go to these 2 places and pick up 2 things. It is never ever brought up again, you never learn what Angara laws are, you can't offend them if you try. Worse than Preston's another settlement needs your help radiant garbage. Loot system. I didn't expect Borderlands itemization but this is bad even for my already low expectations. You either get vendor trash for sale, or mods that you can buy in shop, or weapons/armors that are immediately dismantled because they're worse than your crafted stuff with augments. For example, you cleaned out a group of Kett and one of them drops exotic alien blaster. If you're level 70-79 it will always be a level scaled Alien Blaster IX, you never get this "cool, these are some cool high level stats, in 5 levels I'll be able to use this", and you can craft a better version with augments at any time you feel like it, and this seriously dampens picking up anything, makes it feel like another chore. Last Bioware game I buy. TL;DR, Basically what she said, no soul. This game has no soul. There was no passion put into this game. It's clear the developer only made it because they were told to, not because they wanted to. Mass Effect: Andromeda is a generic sci-fi game inside a thin Mass Effect shell.
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thedarkprince
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Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda
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Post by thedarkprince on Apr 9, 2017 2:17:01 GMT
Can't believe so many people thought this game was "great." Has way too many issues to even be joked about it being a great game. Andromeda was an okay game that could have been great with better animations, less glitches and better writing.
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Kabraxal
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Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquistion, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda
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Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquistion, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda
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Post by Kabraxal on Apr 9, 2017 3:29:06 GMT
Can't believe so many people thought this game was "great." Has way too many issues to even be joked about it being a great game. Andromeda was an okay game that could have been great with better animations, less glitches and better writing. Ran into few glitches. Animations were never a big deal to me and are now fixed. I have thoroughly enjoyed the writing. Add to that amazing combat, great characters, addictive exploration, and what This game is, is pure amazing greatness to me. I can't stop playing.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2017 4:23:44 GMT
I'd rate it between good and great. I found it overall fun but there are things I would fix or things I wish they did differently...
1. Ryder backstory. Ryder should have been a bit older, at least 25 with some more backstory, experience related. Didn't have be anything but some kind of Ashley level experience where them becoming the pathfinder is a bit more realistic than totally ridiculous and actually borders on plausible because they do have some noted experience and training that is clearer and more defined. Also the boost in age adds maturity. 22 is just not really mature enough to do the things they are doing. Lots of 22 year olds still screwing around in life and not taking anything seriously enough. Some do. Rare ones do. But given our Pathfinder comes off somewhat sarcastic and not always the most mature at times in dialogue, I'm gonna have to say they really don't seem to be one of the rare mature ones based on writing. More consistency is needed for that.
2. Story - The development with the kett: been there, done that. Saw it coming miles away. Wished we had something more original. The discovery later helps relieve some of this 'you did not just do that again' factor. Archon was kind of a joke. He was scarier looking on the tempest screen than on my screen. I thought he looked like a cartoon character and a bit silly. His trash talk at the finale was kind of laughable and pathetic. I wish they went a bit more Saren. Saren was at least more fascinating and compelling. This one was a joke. I was waiting for the MWAAHHHAHAHAHAHA.
3. All the hold stages in the ally quests got really annoying. It feels like it bogs down that whole section and suddenly you become a shuttle bus going back and forth on tasks. In my second run I tried to sync them up but the triggers on them are so screwy time wise that if you are efficient in doing the viability stuff, you will end up having to go back and forth to planets to some degree and even when you try to group stuff up, you still end up shuttling back and forth to several planets with allies in tow. This was tedious. ME2 design was more efficient. These ally quests here quickly became fetch quests which decayed them to 'I don't really care anymore' status.
4. Some of the side quests are terrible - contagion, the pregnant woman, stuff like those where you don't just fetch but you play tag too. That is some horrible design. They really need to understand that most players don't like that sort of tedious stuff.
5. Give us remnant keys. Lots of them at a decent price. There are just way too many puzzles in here and they become tedious to stop and do unless you are a real puzzle nut. There are at least two to four on each planet by my count. That's too much.
Probably some other minor stuff but on whole, not much. Overall I really liked the game. These are just things I wish they did differently that can suck some fun out of it if I don't just ignore it entirely, head canon it, or grind through it to get it done. Hopefully they will improve on these things for the next game.
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Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2
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Post by Dazzle on Apr 9, 2017 5:08:33 GMT
Despite the CC, despite the bugs, despite weird cisual designs, I ended up truly loving this game.
I felt joy, I cried multiple times, I felt rage and despair, I felt triumph, and I felt fear. I even fell in love. No other game has ever put me so thoroughly in a protagonist's head. When Scott was taken, I felt fury and wrath, to the point that I had to remind myself "Kyra, you don't even have a brother!"
I'm gonna mod the hell out of this game, and it will then be one of my top favourites.
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Post by taliesyn on Apr 9, 2017 15:25:00 GMT
I had to rate it poor.
Single player. Finished game, not motivated to do a new game+ at all. That's after playing ME1 four times and ME2 more than a dozen times. Main and Loyalty quests are just boring. Combat ok but gets repetitive very quickly and there is no balance to powers; soldier and tech under perform to the point that it's really annoying. Don't like or dislike any of the squad mates. Don't care to ever see any of them again. No Garrus, Tali, or even Miranda.
MP Loved ME3MP and I normally hate MP. Only play Halo for the SP, for example. But MEAMP is just not good. Weapons are terrible. Combos are a waste of time as they basically do nothing. Powers aren't very interesting either. When it takes all my powers plus two clips of ammo to kill a basic mook on bronze something is very wrong. I get it they are trying to piss people off into paying real cash to open boxes to get good characters and weapons. Problem is there are no good characters or weapons to get and that info is available everywhere. So they ruined what should have been a good game turning it into a cash cow. Time will tell if that worked. Oh and it's not a case of "Get better Scrub" since I can solo ME3 gold with four different character kits.
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Post by krazyguy on Apr 9, 2017 18:10:03 GMT
Finished the game on Friday, would give it 6-7/10, if the technical issues get fixed, I would give it maybe an 8.
What I liked
- I liked Ryder more so than Shepard, personality is there and I guess I just like the whole casual chilled tone. - I enjoyed all the companions, Jaal being my favourite. Nexus character were also cool, liked Kesh, Tann and Addison(even tho she's a...) - The story was pretty cool, nothing mindblowing I guess, the final area was super sweet though, loved that mission. It was safe all round for me. - The angara are an awesome species, dig the whole deal about them, squid cat kryptonians, the remnant too, really dig the vaults and they mystery behind them. - The combat is AWESOME, had a good time with it and switching between profiles is great, am a biotic fighting outlaws and engineer fighting synthetics, always changing up the gameplay. - The customization of armor and weapons are also cool, the selection is huge. - Open world was great, loved the environments. - The Assignments and allies/relationships were good, including loyalty missions.
On the Fence
- Nomad control was a bit dodgy at times on the pc. - The scanner needs more work or used differently, was kinda annoying at times, stopping and scanning. - As usual, scanning planets... guess that's just Bioware's shtick. - The Kett.. I mean, they looked great and I understood the whole deal but was hoping some more definition of their species, but obviously they are invaders and we'll know more about them in sequel(I hope for one) -The Archon, least Bioware did some Saren/Loghian moments like the perspective of the villain. But yeh, more time with him would have been cool... Least he was better than Corypheas and witcher 3's Eredin.
Did not like
- Character customization, it was poor, just poor. - Companion appearance customization... yeh, bring that back - Tasks... less of those or don't populate the map with those. I don't want to see those or it feels so busy. - THE MUSIC WHAT THE HELL... 2 tracks... maybe 3 I liked... that's it??? bring back Sam and Jack. - The UI - Animation and the eyes(fixed) - Stutter, bugs bugs bugs
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killashroomz
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Post by killashroomz on Apr 10, 2017 6:11:41 GMT
I know it says for after completion, but just in case i put spoiler things in. So I am really impressed with the ability to choose whatever skills you want when you want and such. Makes respeccing fun. Opens up all kinds of options. I feel like the choices in a discussion are often polar opposites, and that is just not how i feel. Such as when
You dad dies The choices are either
I didnt really care for him, or I miss him so much I am going to cry. Those are just too extreme of a choice. I really liked having a middle option personally. As much as you say the new wheel is for a lighter tone and a serious tone, it reminds me of good or bad. I also feel like the few words were very misrepresentative of what she was going to say. I know it is just a generalization anyway, but that generalization was way, way off of what she said half the time.
I do not believe I can't tell my partners what powers to use. Makes who I choose to bring with me more about who I would like to hear talking, and not at all about their combat capability. No, I do not trust your AI to use their powers for me. And I kinda feel like losing the ability to control their abilities just says the game is so easy I don't need to, or you have way too much faith in your system yourself. One thing I noticed about bioware games is you take very important things out, while adding other things. Very weird.
Just because I expect there to be another game, does not mean I want to have to wait for it to get answers to things. Not knowing what
The remnant are Is a silly thing. We are just going to be able to use all the technology without knowing anything about it expect that they also speak english. I fully look forward to more games, but each game needs to be self contained. Thats it. When you use cover, if you just turn around, and do not move, my person should not stand up and get shot at from both sides. That is silly to me. I also think it is crazy you dedicate two buttons to movement, although I enjoy being able to hover and stuff, I feel like that could be mushed into one button and work better.
Where the f*** is the heavy melee? I would much, much rather not have the jump melee than not be able to heavy melee. That is a personal thing. I enjoyed the differences between heavy melees and the different classes.
The "auto-pilot" I feel woulda been much cooler if it had been like you guys previewed it in the trailers. From the cockpit with your character in view. I really felt like this game was a bit more boring because I had to wait 10 seconds to see a 1st person view of my ship fly through rocks to get to my next planet. I'm not a real ooh graphics heavy person I suppose.
I also did not really care that much about colonizing the planets, though that is exactly how you advertised it. I just want to be more of a pathfinder and less of homebuilder.
This is also the only game where I did not like half of my crewmates. I think the only crewmate I ever did not care about was Navigator Pressly, and when he died I just wish i had been able to talk to him more.
Peebee and Liam were both characters I did not want to talk to. But I did just in case they turned out differently. Suvi is a good example. I enjoyed having her debate about god and science and I found that to actually be thought out. Apologizing near the end of the conversation. When I say to myself, "man thats what I would of said", you guys do a great job of writing. Why did I have to wait for kallo to lose his cool when I knew he and Gil's arguing was more than nothing? Also funny, Kallo was the only one I ever heard argue with Gil. Going and talking to Gil he was always just having a great time. You never heard Kallo and Gil argue when you talk to Gil, only when you talk to Kallo. The argument is so one sided it makes Kallo out to be a whiner. There was no way I could settle it before it exploded? That is not the kind of thing you just let boil over.
I did not have a problem with the facial animations. I actually thought that their mouths looked like they were saying what they were actually saying. The mouth movements. The only problem I had was their eyes would shift back and forth and left and right real crazy. The only problem I had was with their eyes moving too much.
Long post But I really like Mass effect, I am glad this did not turn out as bad as Inquisition did. Ugh
Mass effect 1 had the best story, mass effect 2 was awful because of the planet scanning, and mass effect 3 had the best combat and a pretty solid story. If that gives you a background of my opinions.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 10, 2017 15:21:46 GMT
I'm about half way through my second playthrough and for the most part I think the game is decent. The Nomad is a lot of fun to drive. The planets are interesting, varied, and also beautiful and fun to explore. And I love the galaxy map and scanning and traveling around in it. Squaddies are memorable, some more than others, but that's normal. I think where it gets a little uninteresting is how all the squaddies are nice people who just want to help. There are no jerks, and the conflicts are relatively trivial., so it makes for a kind of boring group dynamic.
Another place where the game fell a little flat for me was the enemy. You spend most of your time fighting the main enemy, the kett, and unfortunately I found them to be really dull, both story wise and combat wise. In regards to the story, the kett never felt scary or threatening to me, what they were doing was bad and was important to stop, but it was lacking a level of engagement that genuine fear would have enhanced. (For example the reapers were scary because of what they did to people and how it seemed they couldn't be defeated).
Fighting the kett became dull very quickly because of how repetitive each battle started to feel in a very short time. The kett tech and stations are really cool looking, but after a while they all look and feel the same, and combine that with the limited variety in kett enemies, fighting them just got boring really fast. Even in Multiplayer they are dull, and making an enemy more difficult to kill does not make them more interesting. I believe most people in Multiplayer choose to fight Outlaw not only because it's easier, but because they're a more interesting enemy with a lot more variety that people haven't fought before.
Thank heavens for Kadara, what a great area. Yeah, it's a den of scum and villany but that is a large part of its charm. It was definitely a bright spot in the game for me. Except more time needs to pass before enemies respawn, like in Skyrim where a certain amount of time would pass before bandits would return to a place, but that needs improvement across the whole game.
One thing I would like to add is though the most recent patch took care of a lot of initial problems, this game was released in an unfinished state, as far as I'm concerned, and should they make another ME game I won't be pre-ordering it. I will wait to see some let's play vids and twitch streams from people I trust before I buy it. I have been loyal to BioWare for some time so this is kind of big deal for me. I'm glad they're listening to the fans and all but I no longer trust the people in charge of ME.
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Hammerhead
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Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquistion, Mass Effect Andromeda
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Post by Hammerhead on Apr 11, 2017 18:04:36 GMT
Played as MRyder, I really tried to make use of the profile system, but opted for an Explorer build (Nova, Remnant VI and Energy Drain with Piranha and Asari Sword) as the system poses a problem in combat. Completed to 99% completion, with a few glitched minor quests that I couldn't finish. Romanced Reyes and Gil. Now on second playthrough as FRyder. Combat - 8.5/10 Overall, a vast improvement on previous games. Though the loss of combat wheel and unwieldy profile changing mean you stick to one class more than you'd expect.- Loved the dynamic cover system, particularly in contrast with previous games. - Loved the AI flanking and rushing. As annoying as it could be, it added a lot more depth to battles. - Jetpacks! These added a new vertical level to combat and improved mobility in and out of combat. - Changing profiles in battle is cumbersome and sometimes fatal if swarmed. This runs against the goal of its implementation. - Some useful new skills (Backlash is literally a life saver), power balancing is an issue (looking at you Charge/Nova), some previous powers omitted entirely (AI Hacking would have been sensible given the theme). Exploration - 9/10 One of the finer aspects of the game. Worlds are beautiful and vast but not empty. The Nomad is well executed. Environmental challenges are a nice twist, and overcoming them opens up new areas.- Nomad is well-balanced, and vital unlike mounts in Inquisition. - Worlds are stunning, hubs are lively. - Forward stations are make returning to an area less tedious. - Plenty to do, though this can seem overwhelming when you have a mission marker every 20 feet or so. - I played pre-patch and so travel between planets got tiresome quickly, but this has now been fixed. Questlines - 6.5/10 Storyline has a reasonable premise, but is largely skeletal, needed much more body. Bioware struggles with clichés, irrelevant choices and underdevelopment of plotlines.- Plot holes and cliffhangers abound. Notably surrounding the Hyperion's abduction from a seemingly intact Nexus? The Quarian ark? The Benefactor? Who/what/how/where created the Scourge and what frightened the Jardaan into leaving Heleus? Just general Jardaan motivations? Are Kett really THAT cliché? (Please say there's something more to them than ARGH ME BAD!) - "Major" Choices lack any meaningful consequence. - Fetch (or rather scan) quests are far too common and are largely inconsequential. - Some side quests really are quite memorable and thought provoking... The ex-Cerberus scientists or the poisoned Angaran settlement for example. - Another painfully Human-centric Bioware game. 4 Ark origins, 4 PCs? No? Okay. Humanity is once again over-represented everywhere, and painted as the infallible saviour of the "lesser species" in Heleus. So much so, it's granted sovereignty over the power to control the cluster's very habitability as a reward for crashing their ship there after allowing it to be abducted from a giant (and apparently undamaged) space station by cliché aliens. - Loyalty missions are truly remarkable, you can really tell how much thought has been put into each of them. Sadly, they bear little consequence if you decide not to bother with them. Romance and Dialogue - 6.5/10 Romance feels rushed, forced and sometimes quite awkward, I felt indifferent about most major characters (except Jaal, Reyes and maybe Moshae and Vetra). I like the 4 choice system much better than the Paragon/Renegade system. I really clicked with Ryder and most VAs are spot on, but writing sometimes lets characters down.- Most romances feel rushed, are underdeveloped and/or unfulfilled. Some romances are just a few dozen lines of dialogue long. For example, Gil wants to make a father out of you after a total of 2 dates. Avela's romance starts and ends with her side quest, amounting to a kiss and a "maybe later". - 4 choices is better than two and I felt I could focus on what I might say in the circumstances, instead of being shackled to how many Paragon/Renegade points I need to build up before Rannoch ( RIP Legion :sob: ). - Patch 1.05 helped with facial animations, but for me they weren't such a bug bear anyway. So Addison looked like a porcelain doll with RBF, I quickly got over it and her, I also feel it got better as the game progressed. - Writing issues tend to tie in with questline issues. I feel that had quests had more body/consequence/background, then related dialogues would have been more enriched, informative and meaningful. UI - 6/10 In a few words, cumbersome and convoluted. It's not a deal breaker but it's a bit tedious.- Favorites, Journal, Inventory and Research/Development screens are difficult to navigate and poorly explained. - Profiles changes in combat are unwieldy and hindering as you are being swarmed by enemies, this defeats their purpose, and I found myself limiting to 3 skills just to avoid bothering with it. - Skill upgrade screens are similar to ME3 which is good. But they don't properly explain specific upgrades or skills very well. Does anyone actually know what Power Restoration/Defence does? How long does Flamethrower actually last - who knows but I can increase its unknown duration by 50%! Yey? Extras- Character Customization is truly awful. Hopefully Bioware will address this in the months to come. Luckily defaults don't like they've been hit in the face by a shovel. - Music is well composed, but rare to hear. Overall, the game shows good but is inconsistent and underdeveloped. Exploration and surprisingly combat shines through in this adventure, while traditional ME strengths of plot and character development wane. It feels as though it's been rushed out half-finished. Plotlines finish abruptly without resolution or consequence, and background/body is often omitted, which makes it difficult to establish a connection with the wider story/context. Characters and romances seem rushed and lacklustre, with some romances getting just a few dozen lines of dialogue. Poor UI means I sometimes feel more restricted in my skillset than I ever did in the OT, however free flowing diverse combat makes up for much of that. The rich and diverse planets you encounter are marred only by how superficial their plots and background sometimes are. 7.5/10
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rapscallioness
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Post by rapscallioness on Apr 11, 2017 20:25:46 GMT
Hmm, okay:
Like:
*Hair physics is good. Had good bounce and movement without being ridiculous. Hair is much better. Thank you, Hair Person/People
*Ryder voice actors for Bro and Sis are great. Love them.
*Vistas can be astonishingly gorgeous. Auto pilot driving through the cosmos is friggin amazing..when it's not overdone. (that's been fixed with a "skip" option which is Perfect. BW, please do not take criticism of this mechanic has a cue to get rid of it altogether in any possible future installments. it just needed to be fixed, not ditched...because i know how you like to get rid of things that receive criticism instead of just improving them. don't do that. stahp. please.)
*The city layouts are nice and meandering.
*Love the Tempest design and piloting up front with Suvi and Kallo...and all their comments. Love that.
* The crew really grew on me, and I came to really like them.
*Combat is alot of fun
*Majority of sidequests felt like they were needed and important to the overall goal.
*Loyalty quests were well done and had some meat to them.
*Great banter, when I finally heard it. Makes a huge difference.
*Story had some interesting parts, some good lore, and mysteries.
*Loved how the main character moved. The movement and control of that movement was much, much more agile and responsive.
*The ending was a ton of fun. Action packed, got to see everybody getting together and doing their thing. Then after all that adrenaline, there was a nice cool down epilogue.
Eh, not so much:
* Profiles..eh.
*Inventory: I have to carry around this stuff I want to keep, yet I can't equip it in the field? I've got a sniper rifle in my inventory, but I can't pull it out and use it when the time calls for it?
*Crafting..uh, Idk. I've done alot of crafting in my gaming life, but I found this set up confusing with too many unnecessary steps. I liked the augments, but everything else..eh.
* Npc posture and movement, or maybe just the human npc's? They walk and stand like they're constipated. They have this constant bent knee, butt poked slightly out stance that makes me think they need to take a dump. The main character moves and walks great. From what I remember, the aliens move and walk great. What happened there?
* Too many desert, desert like worlds. Havarl, Voeld, Habitat 7 were amazing worlds. Eos, Elaadeen, Kadara- where we spent most of our time were far too similar. Far too mundane. Boring sand is boring. If you have to do sand in an attempt to show desolation maybe make it a sparkling black sand..with crystalline particulates that kick up as the Nomad rides over it, billowing out into strange images. Occasional lightening bolts, or meteorites striking; maybe sinkholes that randomly open up in front of you as you're driving. Just something different than yet another desert world.
* Too much back and forth. Too much backtracking. Too much chasing people/things around. You gotta go over here, then over there; get back on the ship; go through all the loading screens; go to another planet; then get back on the ship; go back to the quest giver and we all say , "Hoorah!" Or, chasing signals and that type of thing. Drive all the way over there..oops not here, maybe over there; drive all the way there, not here, either..hmm. And so on. I cannot express to you, BW, how much I despise that type of thing. I just want to go to the spot and start the mission. Don't waste my time jerking me around.
* CC: ...hmm, okay see the thing is I'm not interested in EA's "Amazing, but wait there's more..!" facial scanning tech. Keep that shite over at NBA2K. Comprehensive character customization is a staple. Why would you foist that crap on us, BW? And it's not because of the Family thing. You can customize your twin, and your father comes out looking any kind of way he wants to, sooo...
*Dialogue options: I want more options to express frustration or anger.
* If you're going to make a sexy cut scene option for one character, you make them for all. I know you feel like, well, more players are going to see this material so we're going to put all our resources and effort into those scenes and whatever for everybody else; but last I checked we all pay the same amount money for these games, and deserve the same quality content.
Like I said before, overall, I had a good time with the game, but when it was frustrating, it was very frustrating. You did some amazing things, but I want to see a more consistent level of quality across your games. Everything from planet design to character design/animation to romances.
And more worthy adversaries, please, instead of muahaha villains.
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timebean
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It's just a game, folks...
Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquistion, KOTOR
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timebean
Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquistion, KOTOR
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Post by timebean on Apr 11, 2017 22:00:24 GMT
Finished the game a couple of days ago, and needed to let it settle in my mind a bit. Here goes.
Good. - Gameplay was exciting. Jump jet rocked. - Worlds were pretty...when the fracking game didn't constantly drop frame-rates, that is. - Nomad was fun. Especially with upgrades. And it was super fun on H0347 (or whatever the name of that rock is). - Voice acting was really good (although vocal frying should be discouraged in main character-actors...seriously). - Squad banter in the nomad was the highlight of the game. If it worked more often, I may have liked the crew more than I did. - Story was OK. The enemy was a joke, but there were some interesting plot elements (ie, basic Bioware). - Characters were subpar. So much so that at the end game, I forgot who most of the folks were that showed up to help me. There were a few hidden gems here and there that stuck out, but...overall meh.
Bad. - Squad were lame and boring as hell (except for a couple of good loyalty missions...and Drack) - Andromeda aliens were basically re-skinned humans. Nuff said. - Milky Way aliens were watered down compared to previous games (especially the turians and asari). Seriously...new players will have NO IDEA who the Asari are from this game. They prolly think they are clones and Peebee is special because she had an elcor father. And they would have no idea what a friggen elcor was, anyway. I mean, even the cultural center just ignored all the other Milky way races. Ugg! - Dialogue - some of it was absolutely cringe-worthy. I mean, we are talking Twilight level here at times.
Really bad. - CC was abysmal. I can't believe that was serious. - Fetch quests sucked. THEY ALWAYS SUCK. If you populate a huge landscape with interesting things to see and explore, we will do it. You don't have to send us on a bunch of lame-ass collect-o-quests to get us to do it. The better "tasks" were things we stumbled upon, like the kett surveillance stuff, and the logs about the archon, etc. It would make sense for us to try to find things like this to weaken the enemy. They are still relatively boring, but at least they make SOME narrative sense and encourage us to keep looking for other interesting things. - Menu system. I mean, don't these people go to school for this? I have run R-code more intuitive than these menus - Replay value = zero. All the quests have binary choices that don't change much expect who shows up at the end. Without renegade options to make it fun, there is little point. I have no desire to sit through another 80 hours to be a somewhat snarkier paragon. If I could make a decent looking male Ryder, I might do it just for that. But again, the CC is total shit.
Overall, 7/10. I almost went 6.5, but the fact that there was at least a little bit of ME-goodness in there (mostly in Drack and Kallo) merited an extra 0.5 points.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 12, 2017 7:30:12 GMT
Finished yesterday night! Yes - the solar systems, they looked great, I know many people wanted to skip the travel from one planet to another but I didn't mind, really. I have a crazy collection of screenshots ! - the krogans made me feel at home - the angaras - Jaal (and his wonderful romance), Drack, Vetra, Liam, Lexi, Avitus, Kandros, Evfra - the familly Ryder quest. I thought it would be terrible at first because I really never liked the father but then, the quest change in the middle, with Jien Garson's murder and, OMFG, the last memories, I had an heart attack ! I felt like I was in ME again. - the happy ending and at least the last mission was Epic - the nomad - Voeld when it has northern lights everywhere - and strangely enough, my Ryder's brother, Scott... He grew on me all of a sudden on the last mission ! - new dialog system for Ryder - the architects fights Nope - well "dislike" is a very nice word for what I will wrote, so I will say "hate" the glitches. I was certainly cursed with my copy, I had so many of them. I get used to play with 80% of them but the last 20% were killing the immersion, especially when you have to reaload your game... I feel so disppointed by BW for releasing an unfinished game (do we know why ? is that because of EA or because of BW itself?). Just curious : for those who played the trilogy or/and the DA games, when they came out, were they that bugged? Because this is the first time in my life I play a disaster like that. And I feel so unlucky when I see some of my friends who had only minor glitches. - I had the same problem here than on DAI : Few prioritary missions and pleeeeeeeeenty of stuff to do. So, you do your mission, it takes you 1h and then you do other stuff during 20h. Each time I came back to the main story, I was like "eur... what happened already?". The romance suffer too from this narration. I would love for the next MEA to have many secondary missions really included on the priority quests and main story (I still don't get why the turian and Asari arcs were not prioritary missions + they could have been far more developed than what we had, especially the turian arc... ). And with real consequences. - Musics... I can remember 2 musics from the entire game : the galaxy map and the Architects fights. The musics are something really important to me, I can't believe how inexistant they are in the game... - CC lack of options - animations... also when I see the improvements of the faces with patch 1.05, which came out just 10 days after the game was released, I would have loved to wait + 6 months and to have a better quality product and less glitches... - Main story is a bit warmed over. All the time I was like "hey it's like the collectors, hey it's like the protheans, etc..." .....Isn't it a bit too simple to find another great civilization who have done the terraforming job for us ? - a regret : the lack of imagination for the planets... Ice, sand, Yellowstone.... well, yes, but... I don't know, I was waiting to see very different worlds, not something so closed from what we already all know on Earth. - SAM ... please shut up ! I have few quests to finish and that will be all for me. No NG+ for now, not until all the patches and dlc come out. Talking about DLC, Jien Garson's murder and Quarians ark DLC would be interesting. For the next game, because I think there will be a next game, I hope we will have more originality on the main story and on the planets we will explore, more memorable new characters (I also don't mind to see characters we already know having a far more interesting role, like Kandros who spend 90% of his time near a console... poor guy), more new aliens, and..... less glitches. I beg you, for my mental health, less glitches. So I give the game a 14/20 and voted "OK". Without the glitches, it would have been 15/20 / "Good".
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Post by Deleted on Apr 12, 2017 13:39:37 GMT
Domi’s Review: Sara and Scott’s Excellent Adventure (Rated as Great, 9/10 on the poll) With gratuitous, self-indulgent, blindingly bright hair screenshots : I’ve just finished the most excellent journey. It was, in essence, a Quest for the Promised Land, a something that came up as a sidequest before, but never been used as a main theme. The Helius Cluster in Andromeda galaxy was my new Kingdom of Prester John. So, that gotta be a tragic and perilous journey of spiritual… I can’t recommend playing this game if you intend to take anything with grave seriousness. But if you are in a mood for pulp fiction and guilty pleasures, suspend your disbelief, stuff away your inner grumpy grandpa’s high-brow attitude, and Andromeda is one hell of an excellent journey. Nobody gonna die. Not even goldfish. Ryder doesn’t have a fishtank. Andromeda took me to a living Galaxy. I was visiting with the local dwellers, Angara. They fought with and against me, made uneasy alliances with my team, or berated it. The Galaxy had an ominous cloud hanging over it, slowly eating away at it, but I had plenty of time to worry about that sort of stuff. The End of the World alarm was not blaring for all 100 hours of the game in the distance becoming a laughable irritant. Non-triumphant, but bodacious side-quests. Totally. Unhurriedly, I navigated a spaceship around that corner of the Galaxy. I tried to shore up, clean up and augment. I cared for this Galaxy. The Vaults, OMG, the Vaults! The blend of puzzles, the pattern matching, jumping and timer restricted actions was entertaining. The quests were you just talked were blended with the quests where you shoot them in the face till they were dead. I want to specially note that game permitted me to skip over the things I did not want to do with a remarkable ease. The New Tuchanka story did not appeal to me, so I barely left my footprints in its sands, and it was just fine. And, a confession: I loved Nomad once I’ve upgraded it. A crazy machine. I am sorry for hating on you back on Eos, Nomad. Hugs? I was playing one young alien orphan trying to follow what seems like the best course of actions among the competing interests and against strong-willed and much worldlier characters. I had a trump card in my sleeve, something my family left me, like that magic sword in ‘em good olde tales. I was taken in once in a while, and I pulled a fast one too. I have a cunning plan, evil alien dudes! I also had a brother. That’s my second videogame brother, and for someone who spent most of the game comatose, he managed to become more than that one male squaddie whose appearance I have some control over. One brother coming right up. Sometimes I trusted explicitly and sometimes not at all. I did stupid things for my friends, and was ruthless on occasion. I’ve made a mistake of kissing a scoundrel. I’ve awkwardly build an understanding with an alien being, and eventually got to facepalm through a Space Regency romantic experience. That’s an eyeroll, Ryder, not a sigh. I am sad that the sojourn in the Andromeda Galaxy is over. The sense of adventure and that unapologetic having tons of fun is hard to capture. Not everyone gets to experience it in a particular video-game. I was very fortunate because I did. From the moment I started the game till the moment I read a bunch of thank you e-mails. And, well, here is my Reply All: Thank you so much, BioWARE. Party on and stay excellent to each other. After all we are all Pathfinders. And, text-based: I’ve just finished the most excellent journey. It was, in essence, a Quest for the Promised Land, a something that came up as a sidequest before, but never been used as a main theme. The Helius Cluster in Andromeda galaxy was my new Kingdom of Prester John. So, that gotta be a tragic and perilous journey of spiritual… doom… gloom… something. But what do we have here? I can’t recommend playing this game if you intend to take anything with grave seriousness. But if you are in a mood for pulp fiction and guilty pleasures, suspend your disbelief, stuff away your inner grumpy grandpa’s high-brow attitude, and Andromeda is one hell of an excellent journey. And nobody gonna die. Not even goldfish. Ryder doesn’t have a fishtank. Andromeda took me to a living Galaxy. I was visiting with the local dwellers, Angara. They fought with and against me, made uneasy alliances with my team, or berated it. The Galaxy had an ominous cloud hanging over it, slowly eating away at it, but I had plenty of time to worry about that sort of stuff. The End of the World alarm was not blaring for all 100 hours of the game in the distance becoming a laughable irritant. Unhurriedly, I navigated a spaceship around that corner of the Galaxy. I tried to shore up, clean up and augment. I cared for this Galaxy. The Vaults, OMG, the Vaults! The blend of puzzles, the pattern matching, jumping and timer restricted actions was entertaining. The quests were you just talked were blended with the quests where you shoot them in the face till they were dead. I want to specially note that game permitted me to skip over the things I did not want to do with a remarkable ease. The New Tuchanka story did not appeal to me, so I barely left my footprints in its sands, and it was just fine. And, a confession: I loved Nomad once I’ve upgraded it. A crazy machine. I am sorry for hating on you back on Eos, Nomad. Hugs? I was playing one young alien orphan trying to follow what seems like the best course of actions among the competing interests and against strong-willed and much worldlier characters. I had a trump card in my sleeve, something my family left me, like that magic sword in ‘em good olde tales. I was taken in once in a while, and I pulled a fast one too. I have a cunning plan, evil alien dudes! I also had a brother. That’s my second videogame brother, and for someone who spent most of the game comatose, he managed to become more than that one male squaddie whose appearance I have some control over. The dude came through for me, and I got attached. Way to go, bro! Sometimes I trusted explicitly and sometimes not at all. I did stupid things for my friends, and was ruthless on occasion. I’ve made a mistake of kissing a scoundrel. I’ve awkwardly build an understanding with an alien being, and eventually got to facepalm through a Space Regency romantic experience with the said alien being. I am sad that the sojourn in the Andromeda Galaxy is over. The sense of adventure and that unapologetic having tons of fun is hard to capture. Not everyone gets to experience it in a particular video-game. I was very fortunate because I did. From the moment I started the game till the moment I read a bunch of thank you e-mails. And, well, here is my Reply All: Thank you so much, BioWARE. Party on and stay excellent to each other. After all… We’re all Pathfinders!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 12, 2017 14:30:35 GMT
Tag "spoiler" is a wonderful thing, especially when you can hide a dozen of screen sized pictures with it. All the sour-grapes guys all over Internet posted their reviews with pictures or videos unhidden. I followed the suit. I've cropped and resized the snapshots to 65% of the game's capture. The words from the game on screenshots masterfully interact with the text of my awesome and colorful best-ever definitive review of Andromeda! You cannot cut out the words from a song, you can't hide the pictures in my review!!!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 12, 2017 14:42:28 GMT
All the sour-grapes guys all over Internet posted their reviews with pictures or videos unhidden. I followed the suit. I've cropped and resized the snapshots to 65% of the game's capture. The words from the game on screenshots masterfully interact with the text of my awesome and colorful best-ever definitive review of Andromeda! You cannot cut out the words from a song, you can't hide the pictures in my review!!! Who needs basic formatting etiquette anyway.In a routine discussion, I comply to the posting rules, hiding the pictures. This is a review, and I chose the format with illustrations embedded and interacting with the text because I happen to like the effect and imo it conveys the Andromeda's feel more than bullet point pro-s and con-s or walls of text. The same way a lot of reviewers did all over the net. You may report the post to the moderators, and I will explain my reasons to them if you wish. EDIT: actually, here we go, I tagged the whole review into the SPOILER tags as a compromise.
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PSUHammer
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Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquistion, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Mass Effect Andromeda
Origin: PSUHammer
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Post by PSUHammer on Apr 12, 2017 16:20:38 GMT
Who needs basic formatting etiquette anyway. In a routine discussion, I comply to the posting rules, hiding the pictures. This is a review, and I chose the format with illustrations embedded and interacting with the text because I happen to like the effect and imo it conveys the Andromeda's feel more than bullet point pro-s and con-s or walls of text. The same way a lot of reviewers did all over the net. You may report the post to the moderators, and I will explain my reasons to them if you wish. EDIT: actually, here we go, I tagged the whole review into the SPOILER tags as a compromise. It is kind of self indulgent, especially when most people don't care and just want to read the review. Most already know what it looks like.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 12, 2017 16:28:28 GMT
In a routine discussion, I comply to the posting rules, hiding the pictures. This is a review, and I chose the format with illustrations embedded and interacting with the text because I happen to like the effect and imo it conveys the Andromeda's feel more than bullet point pro-s and con-s or walls of text. The same way a lot of reviewers did all over the net. You may report the post to the moderators, and I will explain my reasons to them if you wish. EDIT: actually, here we go, I tagged the whole review into the SPOILER tags as a compromise. It is kind of self indulgent, especially when most people don't care and just want to read the review. Most already know what it looks like. I aim to please. Text-based only version is up! ENJOY!
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Post by AnDromedary on Apr 12, 2017 18:57:41 GMT
The good:- Gameplay and combat are excellent overall, with only minor complaints, such as the very little control that we have over squad mates and the low number of skills we can bind. But other than that, fights are super fun and in combination with the open environments, they are probably the best in any ME game to date. - The story is actually pretty good and better than I expected. Maybe this is because after hearing rumors before playing, I set my expectations really low but I was surprised to what a great finale the story ultimately lead. Video game endings are usually disappointing as devs often think most of their customers won't see them anyway, so if an ending actually works, it deserves some praise IMO and this one definitely manages to ramp things up at the end. I don't quite understand the people who write that they were underwhelmed by the conclusion. I mean In the end, you fight against a guy who is torturing and killing your twin sibling to get control of the entire cluster in the interior of an ancient dyson sphere within which a giant aerial battle between space ships takes place, two of which crash in pretty spectacular fashion, so you are also fighting for the 20.000 only humans in this galaxy while you are at it. How much more climactic could it possibly get? I also hear that people complain that the Remnant mystery is not resolved or that we still don't really know much about the Kett. I say: Perfect! This is Mass Effect, I want to fel like a small human in a vast universe. If Ryder could just uncover everything there is to know about all that's going on, the entire setting would loose its charm (which is kinda what happened at the end of the trilogy, I'll remind you). There is a sentence in the post-ending content, which perfectly encapsulates this: One of the "second wave" people, forgot who, says something like this: "We still don't understand much about the Remnant. Yesterday, a remnant ship came out of nowhere, docked with Meridian for a while, than left and flew off into the unknown. I don't know what it was doing or what this was all about. It is these mysterious things that make you realize what a small part of a vast bigger universe we are." Exactly! It was this kind of humbling "smallness" that made the universe in Mass Effect 1 so fascinating. With the end of the story, we solved a whole bunch of the immediate problems, we saved the day and we gave a hell of a punch to our enemies. That's enough. Even if they never make a sequel, I am glad they tried to preserve some mystery and didn't just make us king of the cosmos as it were. Another common complaint I hear si that the Archon is not a good villain. Well, I'd agree, he is no Saren but at least he manages to get extra nasty towards the end. I mean, after he killed me by removing SAM and kidnapped my sibling, that was when I really took him seriously. Coryphius was already a joke at that stage of the story. Also, I think the Kett overall work well as a villain race, sort of like the biological equivalent to the Borg in a way. I like it. Finally, they also have a lot of post-ending content which is really well done IMO and helps to make me feel like I accomplished something big that had an impact on a lot of people. - The graphics: Yes, some animations are still messed up but you get used to it quickly and patch 1.05 did a lot of good there, too. In general, the graphics are very good overall, especially the planet environments and above all ... - The galaxy map: This is actually my favorite part of the game. It's exactly what I was hoping for, maybe even more. Finally the planets no longer look like plastic balls but like actual planets, with atmospheres, storms, continents, etc.. Finally I navigate like on a map again and don't push a silly toy ship around. Finally the planets I see actually fit their descriptions. And I can even see the details on the surface like active volcanoes or large canyons and rivers. I didn't mind the travel times between planets at all (but with the patch, those are a non-issue anyway, I'd just have liked them not to show the "Tab to skip" thing all the time now). And we can see where we are from the ship and the lighting in the ship depends on where we are (red lighting for a red giant star, etc.). Brilliant! I know, "windows are structural weaknesses, but in this special case, I don't mind the lore breaking, it's just too beautiful. Seriously, BioWare outdid themselves on that one. Only thing I'd like improved there is that we should be able to visit the Tempest when it's landed. There already is a skybox for the Nexus docks, just add them for the outposts and Aya. I don't want to fly into orbit every time I need to just use the vidcall or something. Oh, and the planet descriptions could be a bit more creative at times (look at ME1 for inspiration there, stoff like the luminescent algae or the Ploba Jupiter brain, the carved moons, stuff like that). - A changing world: It's great that there are new things happening on the Nexus as we progress through the story. Every now and so often, there will be new quests available and the important people like Director Tann or Evfra will have things to say about important events that happened. This adds to the ell that it's a living, changing world on which we can have an impact. Also, the outposts go a long way to help with that. I really like that they worked those out, complete with a bunch of NPCs that you can talk to. It really helps to make the outposts feel like an achievements and not just a map marker (like the inquisition camps were). - The Nomad: The vehicles is really fun to drive and the combination of boost and the 4W/6W drive makes it more than just holding W all the time. Good stuff. I just went back to ME1 with the MAKO and it really makes me appreciate what they did with the Nomad. - The focus on science and exploration in the setup: I really like that we can play Ryder as more of an explorer/scientist, rather than a soldier (like Shepard was). The scanner may not be the most intricate gameplay mechanic ever but it really helps with the feel of being not just there to kill things, so I really like to scan and look for stuff. Being a pathfinder also helps a great deal to make all the filler content seem more fitting than it did in DA:I. We are there to discover things like minerals, plants, etc., that's our job and it makes sense that this is what we do to help the initiative. Overall, I think ME:A is probably one of the BW games where story and gameplay fit together the best overall and to me, that is very important for immersion and the fun I am getting out of even the more repetitive gameplay. - Sound effects and ambient sounds are very good. - The crafting and item system is very nice IMO. There are problems with the UI (which I'll get to) but the actual system is pretty neat and - like in ME3 - I love the diversity of guns and equipment we have. Together with mods and augmentations as well as powers, the possibilities are vast. Probably still needs a bunch of tweaks here and there but in general, it's a great setup. - Performance: This is different for everyone of course but on my not so new system, the game runs better than I'd have expected. It seems like it's pretty well optimized, IMO. Good work on the technical side. The bad:- The setup and the general scenario: While I think the game's plot works very well (see above), it requires me to completely ignore that this is a Mass Effect game because they way they shoved this into the ME universe is disgraceful and doesn't work at all. There are so many retcons and contradictions, I don't even want to count. I wrote a post about some of the most obvious ones a while ago and now that I finished the game and all side quests, nothing about it has really changed. It's a mess and I really need to turn off portions of my brain to play this game and to have fun, that's how bad this is. - The characters and dialogue: Again, I have written a fairly extensive post about this already but just to summarize, the character writing is not u to what I am used to from BioWare. The squad mates in particular all seem to psychoanalyze themselves in front of Ryder, they tell you their personalities more than showing them and that's not great character writing. Overall, I find that the dialogue seems much less natural than I am used to from BioWare games. Most of the time, when I am in dialogue, I find myself thinking "Aha, the author wanted to convey point x". Now, it may be that this is me getting too familiar with how BW does things in their games but again, going back to ME1 after ME:A showed me that this was not so often the case in older BioWare games. Everything here feels like the authors wrote a lot of concept pages first and then figured out how to shove those into dialogue, rather than thinking about what the characters might actually be talking about naturally. Also, most of the romance related content is particularly cringe worthy in this one IMO. Also, Ryder should be able to have different stances on things. I want to be able to be antagonistic so squad mates if they do stupid things (which is not always the case). I want to express a bunch of opinions, not just the same opinion in 2-4 different ways. That was never the purpose of the dialogue wheel, it was there, so that my character can actually express different opinions depending on player choice. I don't need paragon/renegade back as a system but I still want to be able to act in different ways. - The story: Now, I know, I got this in the positives and I think in general it works but it has a few weaknesses as well, which I want to mention. For one, BioWare played it very safe on this one. They wanted a new beginning in a new galaxy but they were too afraid to really throw us into a new and unfamiliar place. 90% of the game are the familiar Mass Effect stuff, the familiar races, the familiar stereotypes, etc. They even managed to water down the alien characteristics of the existing races and anthropomorphize the crap out of them. The new races are frankly a bit on the boring side. I like the Kett for what is revealed about them in the story but they are ultimately still a general villain race, so we get something to shoot at. Their background certainly offers more nuance and I hope we'll see it in the future. The angara are the real disappointment though, not that I don't like them but they could have hradly gone with more generic rubber forehead aliens than this. At least ME1 had the Hanar and the Elcor, heck, even the Krogan were way more alien than the anagara. Get more creative BioWare. Another point is the whole colonialist problem. It's one reason why I am very skeptical about the initiative's initial goal and also about my own protagonist. Because no matter how you put it, we are intergalactic invaders that need to take up living space (which seems very precious in the Helios cluster). Now, the story spins it so that we are ultimately and unquestionable the good guys in this and while the colonialist problem is mentioned sometimes, it is always a non-issue. Frankly, we got super duper lucky with the angara and their over-generosity (which, given their history is not even very believable). What would we have done if they didn't want us in Helios either? I think this kind of a plot was BioWare again taking the safe (not to say cowardly) option by just keeping this glaring issue out of the narrative. At least post-ending, there are a few terminal-mails on Meridian and NPC comments on Aya that hint that this may become a more visible issue in the future. I really hope that BioWare will go towards exploring this very controversial and politically charged aspect of the Initiative in potential sequels. Mass Effect used to be known for not telling black and white but more morally grey stories, they should go back towards that legacy. - The UI is horrible. Not only are the menus horrible to begin with, they are also bugged (I've got exclamation marks everywhere, so their use is basically zero). Why all those sub-folders within sub-folders everywhere? Why those long lists everywhere? Did anyone in QA notice that scrolling through the lists extinguishes exclamation marks before they are visible? Why lists and lists and lists in the first place? Why do we have extra screens for inventory, loadout, color changes and so on? Just redo the whole thing, it's horrible. - Filler content: As I wrote above, it's already better than in inquisition but it's still too much. IMO, the game would already be better off if the randomized side quests (find 3 random data pads to get the nav point) were gone without substitution. They are useless, we already go through these environments for the good quests, we don't need those pick-up ones. If that were to free up dev resources, rather add 1 or 2 bigger quests then 10 small tasks. It's time way better spent. And don't worry if the game looses a few hours of playtime because of it. Everyone was happy with the dense 40 hour experiences in the trilogy. ME:A is closer to 100 as it is, I doubt many would complain if it were just 80 but without the filler. BTW, the only filler that worked for me was the N7 assignments in ME2. They were also just little BS quests but each one introduced a small but cool new environment. If you wanted to add something like that, it would be really great since ME:A also has the problem of ... - Not enough variety: I get that ME:A is the biggest ME game yet, that's undisputed. But for the marketing team to say last year that "it's the biggest Mass Effect game ever as it has over 100 planets" was one of the most stupid claims they could have possibly made. In fact, i am not a fan of those 5 big worlds, it doesn't go to show the variety that is possible and expected for a space exploration game. We want to be a space explorer because we get to see all kinds of cool alien environments. As nice as the planets we got are, I was underwhelmed by the fact that we only got to see 7 or 8 (2 of which were desert planets btw). IMO, it would have been much better, to have maybe 2 planets to roll around with the Nomad and then a few more small but diverse locations. This might also have helped with intensifying the story content and implementing better pacing in the game. It might also have helped to reduce another problem, which is.... - Backtracking: This is a typical open world problem but ME:A has it to a particularly high degree. Especially in the second half of the game, after you have established all the outposts, you get a lot of quests that require you to fly back and forth a lot between the already established locations. I don't mind a few of those (especially since as I said above, there is some change in the worlds over the course of the game) but in ME:A it gets too much. Before going into the endgame of the story, I spent half a day flying around, chasing quest markers and doing a whole lot of 10 second NPC conversations and mundane pickups and deliveries. More, but smaller locations that are more self contained would have solved this problem. Backtracking should mostly be reserved for the main quests, where it feels like you are doing something really important. (look at Witcher 3 for example, you need to do a fair bit of backtracking for the main quests but the side quests are mostly confined to one location near a town or village). - The music: Now, the music is not particularly bad or anything (in fact, it's very much ok) but it doesn't hold a candle to the trilogy. I realize, given that I adore the OST of the trilogy, that's a high bar to set but music is very important, especially to get the emotional impact that BW is usually going for and I found the lack of any memorable tracks in this one noticeable. Conclusion and hopes for the future:Overall, I really like the game, especially for its fantastic and diverse gameplay. Unfortunately, some of the negative points weigh heavily in my book (especially the background and writing stuff), so I can't say that I really love it and it doesn't quite hold up to the trilogy IMO but it's a good game nonetheless. If I could give BW some advice, I'd say this for future games: You have a really good basis for a great game here, all the mechanical aspects work and they work well together. Now use it. Tweak the balance between open world and story gameplay a little, try to surprise us more, get a little more brave in what do, both in level design as well as story content. I don't want to do all those formulaic repetitive things. We get that you made great mechanics with the Nomad and a beautiful galaxy map but don't try to oversell them. Give us more variety and unexpected things. When I go into a star system in that beautiful galaxy map, I don't want to know in advance that I'll scan 3 out of 6 planets and find an asteroid. I want to be surprised, give me a small landing zone somewhere that I didn't see coming or a derelict space station to explore. Also, hire a lore master and try to at least keep the Andromeda arc half way consistent (and just try to mention the milky way as little as you can from now on, that pot is shattered for good). And go through more revisions when writing your characters, treat them like people, not like concepts. Then, get the composers of the old ME soundtracks back and we should be in for one of the best Mass Effect experiences to date. Well, that turned out pretty long and I hope I didn't forget anything (might edit if i did). And for those of you who like numbers: ME:A gets 78/100 remnant data cores from me. Have a good one! EDIT: Also, just for the funzies and because it is a review as well, I'll leave this here:
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Post by Deleted on Apr 13, 2017 15:01:34 GMT
As much as I complained, I'd say it's a good game. I would NOT say it's a great game. Numerically, I'd give the game a 70 out of 100 - 70 percent being a C average in most cases. It's kinda right in the middle. I paid 25 bucks for the game. I'd say it's worth about 25 to 35 bucks. I would never recommend anyone pay over 60 dollars.
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cratto
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Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquistion, KOTOR, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda
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Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquistion, KOTOR, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda
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Post by cratto on Apr 13, 2017 20:02:55 GMT
This is based on a 98 per cent completed game.
The Very Good
Combat. I think they nailed the inclusion of jump (and the knock on to evade), cover and enemies also make use of it (though see below).
Environments. Most of the planets are genuinely beautiful to look at.
The Good
The voice acting for the Ryders (especially fRyder).
Crafting. Is not bad and it was good to see it included in the game and was, generally, done well.
The Nomad. I like the Nomad. A lot.
The Meh / Okay
The rest of the cast. Some of them are good to very good (Drack, Dr Lexi, Vetra, Suvi, Kallo), some is okay (Peebee and Jaal), and some are downright awful (Liam, Cora, Gil).
The Story. It's really just a rehash of Mass Effect 1 without the galaxy in peril or the really engaging enemy. Unlike Star Wars which needed a return to the start to save it from the prequels. Mass Effect really didn't need it. It needed a good, thought out story.
Exploration. The world's you land are large but don't seem to be full and very same-y.
The Slightly Below Average
The Dialogue and The Ryder Character. The very good voice over work can't really overcome the fact that the Ryder character is well written (a young character who suddenly becomes a messiah like character only able to save the cluster when everyone else couldn't). There's some good dialogue but a lot of it seems to be aimed at a teenagers ('Haha. I shot you in the face').
The Kett. Boring.
Enemy AI. This gets better as you go up the difficulty level and relies heavily on hordes on lower levels.
The Bad
The inventory system. Is frankly awful and not well structured (and lets the crafting side down).
The CC.
Romance. I'm not even referring to the treatment of LGBT community in this. I'm saying it's just bad. Really, really bad. 'Pretty good banging' it is not (in part because most of it is just not).
The Really Bad
Lazy Animation. FRyder's default, the bad facial animations, the repetition of faces. Hopefully this can be fixed with later patches but for a 5 years in development AAA game, I'm not sure this is good enough.
The Bugs. This is a very buggy game. Plot busting, moment killing, can't complete, falling through the floor. I can go on and on.
Overall
ME:A is not a bad game. ME:A is not a good game. ME:A is an okay game.
I think there's potential to push it into a good game but it will never be a great game.
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Conquer Your Dreams
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Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, SWTOR
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Post by Conquer Your Dreams on Apr 13, 2017 21:58:59 GMT
Ok, 6/10 will say. Hate the ending. Archon seriously a joke of the year.
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NeverlandHunter
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Post by NeverlandHunter on Apr 13, 2017 22:06:40 GMT
I decided to buy this game because I like BioWare and I like their formula for games, even though it's the Dragon Age series that I'm a big fan of. I only ever buy one game full price every year, so choosing Mass Effect was a pretty substantial decision. Andromeda, post patches, was worth the money, but initially (that would mostly be pre patches) disappointing. It felt rushed out and sloppy in a lot of places and even though I'm glad patches have fixed so much, I wonder how the heck the game was released with so many glaring little issues that could have been fixed up like they have been. It's really aggravating, and my love for BioWare makes me want to shift all the blame to EA, but this whole fiasco reflects poorly on the both of them. Technical issues aside, it's a good game. There's a lot to do in it and a lot to enjoy, and I think the worst sin of Andromeda's is only being good in comparison to it's great predecessors, which can make it seem much worse than it is. Comparisons might be unfair, but people have come to expect a certain level of quality to BioWare games, and missing any of the marks will spark up controversy. With all that said, Andromeda is still good because it has moments of greatness, even if they live amongst awful. Here are some of my stray likes and dislikes, loves and hates: Hate: -The character creation. This won't matter very much to many people, but character creation is super important to me. Being able to customize a character makes them mine, and I've always loved spending hours tweaking looks and messing around in the character creation in every BioWare game I've played. This should be in the Love category, and yet it's one of the biggest disappointments in the game. It is a HUGE downgrade from Inquisition. You're locked in to lip, eye, nose, ear, and head shape depending on the head you choose and you're back to gendered hair styles. If it's been made simple so that daddy Ryder's face would match up, then WHY does he look more alien than the aliens for 1/3 of the head choices? And WHY does it matter how light or dark I want my Ryder's skin tone? Why would that be something that should be locked in? And also WHY can't I customize the default Ryder's face?? It was stupid with Hawke and it's stupid now! -Waiting for doors to open. I miss the days that simply pressing A (Xbox user here) would open a door, now we must hold in Y and sometimes Y thinks you're not paying it enough attention, so it makes you hold it in for a good 5-7 hours seconds. I know, that doesn't sound so horribly long, but when you're going back and forth between the same two areas and the door keeps stopping you for that long, it really breaks the flow of the game and it makes me incredibly frustrated. -Creepy eyes. They're pretty much gone with patches, but I dealt with them long enough that I feel that I still have the right to complain. -BioWare showing off their cool planets. Patches allows us to skip it now, but I'll never forget that initial nightmare. -SAMs repeated lines. Yes, SAM, I realize it's hot. Yes, SAM, I realize I'm now at a safer temperature. Yes, SAM, I am going to continue to ignore multiplayer. Yes, SAM, I know about the glyphs and I know I'm supposed to look for them. Yes, SAM, I guessed using my primitive human brain that I should use my scanner. -Choosing a dialogue option for Ryder and her saying something I did not expect at all. The original trilogy, DA2, and Inquisition could have this issue at times. Accidental flirting was a thing in the original Mass Effects. But the level of disconnect between what the line reads vs what is actually said is mind boggling at points. Think Fallout 4, which I played with a mod that just showed me what would be said. At points in Andromeda I would be staring down the dialogue wheel, feeling like it was almost a game of chance. Would that make Ryder say something really stupid? What would she say if I chose that? Early in the game I was scarred away from the casual option (the hypnotic spiral) because of something Ryder said that was so corny and so moronic. I used it only a few more times in the entire game for fear of Ryder saying something that would make me question why anyone would follow her orders. -Puzzles in the vaults. I didn't mind doing the glyph puzzles, although the inconsistency was obnoxious, but jetpacking (or whatever they call it) back and forth across a room to switch on this console, then that console, and then realize you were Y-ing the wrong console (even though you were facing the one you wanted to Y) and getting attacked by remnant was not fun. Puzzles are fun when the tension of having to figure them out leaves you so satisfied with your own brilliance, but the in vault puzzles were too obnoxious, too frequent, and too obvious a game mechanic to be any fun. Seriously? Did this great and mysterious alien race that came before just like messing with people, because why else would they have magic light puzzles to open their doors! Dislike: -The Angara. Let me say that I don't dislike them from an in-game perspective. They're perfectly alright. Adequate. Nothing special. And there's the issue. We're in a whole new galaxy and we get the Angara, who other than having cool eyes, are pretty boring to look at. Now, I think the Asari are also pretty boring to look at (yes, yes, they're hot, so whatever) but their species is also fascinating. They are long lived, so they struggle with interspecies relationships with aliens that aren't as long lived. They have biotics, and mind melding, and an interesting societal structure. What do the Angara have? Emotions and big families. That just sounds like my family! And even their hate for their oppressors, the Kett, isn't as interesting as say the Qurians and the Geth or the Krogan and the Salarians. Late game spoiler The reveal that they were created by the same beings that created the Remnant is interesting, but I also think the initial impressions the Angara left are important. -The ladders in the Tempest. Why can't I just jump down? It takes so long to slide your way to the floor and then this nauseating shift in perspective happens. This really is a nitpick, but you're moving around so much on your ship that it starts grating as much as the doors. On a side note: They're so much better than the elevator from Mass Effect 1 that was on the Normandy, at least. -Sometimes I really couldn't stand scanning for items and /or finding things in an area. Having your hand held by the game while you just want to be left to your own devices can be annoying, so I appreciate the thought that went into not having a quest marker float over the data pad you're supposed to pick up, but there were times where I felt that the game was laughing at me as I made the 34th circuit around the area I was supposed to be in search of the special alien plant amongst all the other alien plants. At one point in the game I spent about thirty minutes looking for a glyph, while in Voeld, that ended up being right next to a glyph that I had already scanned. What does Ryder's squad think when she's on these Easter egg hunts? -The infamous "My face is tired..." and other awful pieces of dialogue. There's way too much bad writing in this game for a game company that's known for its writing. I have never before in a BioWare game completely skipped companion/crew dialogue. I've read ahead (I keep subtitles on) and then moved on to get through a conversation faster, but I've never just blatantly mowed through their conversation without any interest in what they're actually saying. Yet, I did it in this game. Some of the conversations got back so tedious and redundant that I began to have a strong distaste for a couple of characters. The opposite is supposed to happen through conversation! The goal is supposed to make me like them more, not make me want to leave them at Kadara Port! -Ryder's lack of genuine emotional conflict. Her dad dies, her mom's dead and that means a lot because we were told it does, her twin is in a coma. Does it phase her? It doesn't seem to. Cora and SAM seem to care more about Ryder's losses than she does. -Everything wants to kill you! I understand the planets are hostile, but you would think that there would be some type of alien animal species on one of these planets that would decide the shiny creatures that walk on two feet or the super big shiny thing speeding towards them might not be something they should mess with. And this might seem like a huge picking of the nits, but after hearing Ryder shout "let's to do this!" as I pass squishy green bug creatures, and then "that's done!" after I've zipped away, for the hundredth time, it becomes a big enough dislike that I'm going to complain about it. -Ryder's repeated lines. "Let's do this!" and "That never gets any less terrifying." (it obviously doesn't, since you say the same thing for every vault we fix) are just annoying. Enough said. -Ryder's panting and other noises. It was too noticeable in the beginning of the game, although I did either start to zone it out or they patched it so it didn't happen as often later on in the game. Disappointed about, IE, it could have been great: -Overall, your squad. The best squad mates in Andromeda are awesome, but compare them to the best of previous Mass Effect games or the Dragon Age games. The worst squad mates in Andromeda aren't awful, they're just bland. They incite no deep emotional feelings in me, either good or bad. They're just there, sometimes annoying, sometimes trying too hard to be a character I'd like. -Ryder's family connections. I know DA2 wasn't very well received, but I think that game did family a whole lot better than Andromeda. Hawke's family felt important, they mattered. The death of family members was sad because you had relationships with them. I was excited about having twin Ryder in the game, but boy was that excitement misplaced. They're barely utilized at all, and Ryder's relationship with her twin and her father, was hard to wrap my head around because of Ryder's emotional disconnect. The game seems to want to make it seem like the Ryder twins are close, and yet Ryder seems to give zero thought to her sibling. Here the game deserves another unfortunate comparison to Fallout 4, but at least in Fallout you could play it like you were a devoted spouse and parent, even if you most likely were too preoccupied with doing everything else. In Andromeda it's hard to play a Ryder that cares deeply about her family when she never seems to feel her losses. The family elements were badly implemented when they had the potential to be really engaging. -The music. It barely registered to me. I love listening to video game soundtracks, but this one was lacking in a lot of ways. Like: -The feeling of exploration and discovery. There's so much to do and to find in this game, and it really fits with the premise (it makes more sense to go around looking for plants in Andromeda than it did in Inquisition). You feel like a space explorer. New discoveries are exciting. Jumping down into a gravity well for the first time was exciting. Looking down below the ice in Voeld and seeing whale like creatures swimming beneath me (and then jetpacking onto the nearest ridge in a knee jerk reaction from being freaked out) was incredible. Riding out in low gravity on an asteroid was a lot of fun. It was these moments that really made the game enjoyable to me. -The Nomad. There was nothing like the feeling of self-satisfaction I got from forcing the Nomad over a ridge it was having issues getting up. Sure, it's ability to survive my abuse isn't very realistic, but it sure was a lot of fun. -The combat. Fast and fun. And I had a jetpack. That makes everything better. I'm not a fan of shooters in general, but even I couldn't help getting pulled into the action. Smashing down on enemies from up above or using the Asari melee sword to ninja slash them, was awesome. -The environments. They looked great and the small touches, like a cliff you don't notice as you're blindly speeding along in your Nomad, rain effects on the armor, and ice that makes your Nomad slide, were something else. -Background characters' conversations. There are some really funny and really eye-opening banters during the idle conversations of the NPCs. -No visual for picking up plants or minerals. This one is only appreciated so much because of how much it was despised in Inquisition. Love: -Crew interaction. It really did a lot to make the characters seem alive with their own lives and experiences. They seemed less like characters made just for you and more like fleshed out, dynamic people. -Your crew moving around the Tempest and enjoying shore leave. This is such a minor detail that adds so much. Just like with crew interaction it makes the characters feel real and less like static video game creations waiting for the player to make them react. -Loyalty missions. These are really highlights of the game and have become an important part of recent BioWare games. The loyalty missions are interesting and diverse. They add a lot to the story and lore and they bring out the best in your squad mates. -Perfect moments. The introduction of Drack, maybe cliche, but it felt great. It was very Krogan. Dad Ryder's death, although very expected and not as emotionally impactful as it could have been, was nicely done. I was panicking along side of my Ryder. The Charlatan's reveal. The introduction of Aya and the Angara (their comments and their stares made the walk through the city uncomfortable). -Choices that made me pause and think. Sometimes they were little choices, like taking sides when your crew is disagreeing. Sometimes they felt huge, like (Elaaden) deciding whether to give the Krogan the core. or (Voeld) destroying the AI. or (retrieving the Moshae mission) destroying the whole facility or trying to get out as many Angara as possible and leaving it intact. Sometimes you had no time to think and had to make a snap decision that you might regret right after like (Kadara) saving Sloane. The decisions felt big, and they made me think and feel something. They dragged me into the game and made it seem like fates and people's lives were resting on my choices. -The Ending. The game went out with a bang. You had characters from all across the game show up. You had great visuals and the feeling of high stakes. I felt like some of my choices actually had meaning (although how true that is will be discovered upon a second play through). The moment where Ryder gets hacked into made me go "oh, shoot" (censored because I had a toddler audience). When it switched to her twin I was genuinely pleasantly surprised to be able to play as them. And when Ryder went to take control of the Remnant and use them, I was completely invested. It was a badass moment and it got my blood pumping! All in all, now that it's most glaring technical issues have been taken care of, I'd say it's worth its price. I don't think this is Game of the Year material, but I do think it's a solid setup for future installments, that will hopefully learn from its mistakes so that they can be great.
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