Is ME:Andromeda worth getting?

Yeah, but ponytails rank higher on the girly looking list


Means the genre is doomed. Everyone has a fucking hard-on for HZD and Andromeda's got a bandwagon of it's cool to hate to contend with. As for the Zelda game... well.


Vaults, planet story arcs (Kadara Leadership, Elaaden colony, Voeld and Havarl seem mostly Vault related, skip H-047c as it has little to none planetary arc), Memory Triggers (Best. Sidequest. Ever.), Loyalties.

That's about it for a barebones, only "essential" playthrough.

I love all of them.

Same here I love all 4 of them too. Granted MEA does have some technical issues but Bioware are slowly but surely getting rid of them I feel on the patching side .My first couple of playthrough's were a bit rough and difficult to get through some of the problems however now since the last couple of patches the game I'm finding is pretty smooth. It still stutters slightly in the heavily populated areas like the Nexus for example I'm finding but it's a lot better than it was when the game came out. 1.06-1.08 has definitely helped the game start running nice and smooth. Even the combat is feeling more fluid now

I may be more resistant to stuff needing fixes...





...but I still tell you, Andromeda's worth it.

I just did a cool PT where I waited to do the hunting archon quest till last and focused on planet/side stuff and loyalty before that. While I was not doing PB's quests for that run I could have saved some of hers until directly after archon's ship due to triggers and it would have worked out just as well I think. This run was probably the best feeling run in terms of making sense of the game's pacing and timing for me because I went directly from hunting the archon to the city to meridian and it fit really well. PB's could have been done post game I suppose or even squeezed in right after the archon's ship which I think synchs up with Kadara bar stage so you are mostly near the end of it. Saving a few short loyalty missions might work well here to help with triggers. I was really surprised at how much smoother the flow was by putting off Archon's ship till almost last (for me last actually) and surprised at how much more sense it made. From my perspective, chasing after Archon early on seemed to shift focus to that as a priority. My Ryder was focused on what he was specifically tasked  to do, create outposts and then go after archon when he felt they were ready to take him on. The pacing is still a little weird as they write it as if you have to get to his ship right away, but my Ryder viewed it as Archon needed Moshea's help to try to know more about it therefore Archon wasn't going to be able to do anything with it if she knew nothing about it so that could wait. If he could have used it he would have used it already. So no real rush to chase that down. That really changed the pacing so much.

Not really, a lot of side missions only become available when you unlock the planet they're on, which is done by progressing the main quest, which also unlocks the loyalty missions. Having said that, you can easily just pursue the main quest and loyalty missions and practically ignore the bulk of the side missions. I'm just doing them because I'm RP'ing a proper scout Pathfinder.

A word of warning though - contrary to the hysterics, there's quite a few side missions that are really, really good.

You've never been able to do just every side mission first in any other ME game, including ME1.  Some of the planets in that game only opened after you did Feros and others only opened after you did Noveria.  The paragon/renegade morality missions only unlocked once your P/R bars were above a certain level and the Luna mission only became available after you hit Level 20.  ME:A appears to work in much the same way... certain side quests will unlock when you advance the main story far enough to open up the planet those side quests are on, others will unlock after you do other side quests and some will close if you advance the area they are located in beyond a certain point (because something else starts to happen in that spot).  As always, you have to wait until the squad mate gives you their loyalty mission.  A big difference is that ME:A is just so much longer a game than any of the Trilogy games.  It's not that you play both twins in the same playthrough.  SilentK was referring just picking and choosing which side quests each individual Ryder does in different playthroughs rather than trying to make one Ryder do everything available in one playthrough of the game.  The game is really just too long to be effectively played as a completionist.

I don't tend to ignore side missions, when I get a game I like to experiment everything the game has to offer. And I have the awful habit to do every side mission, even if they are incredibly boring. That's really the only reason I prefer to do them 1st, if the game keeps breaking the main quest I sometimes forget what happened in the story and, when I return to the main missions quests I'm like "but why am I doing it?"


Well, well, it seems I'm presented with a fine challenge. I think I'm starting to like the game already

I also enjoy playing games as completely as possible... but these open-world games are just getting too long and I'm finding more and more that I'd rather forfeit some side quests and continue to drive the main story forward.  I'm also a pretty slow and methodical player overall, so it would probably take me twice as long as the average person to complete.

The point is that you were never able to just do side quests at the beginning and all the main quests lumped together at the end.  You've always had to drive the story forward to unlock more quests and some quests were always expire if you didn't get them done before moving the story forward.  The side quests get mixed in with the main story.  When there are so many of them, it's easier to lose sight of what the main story actually was as you do a myriad of side quests.  It's a problem not unique to MEA.  I had the same difficulty with TW3.

Still, I wish you all the best with your play through and I hope you succeed in making it 100% complete.  I'd be curious to find out how many hours total it takes you.

No such thing as a JRPG really.

Anyway, I would say to the OP, get it when it's relatively inexpensive personally. It's not a bad game game overall...but it can be better. It's just very average/above average at best. 

Unlike Inquisition, Andromeda is actually a very fun game. The only reason I wouldn't have recommended Andromeda would be the face animations, they were really a disaster at launch. No matter how much I liked the game.

Now I can recommend it absoluteley.