70 hours in, i cannot get most of the complaints. At all. UPDATED OP#2

Do I get you right here? You like to explore boring empty areas over the feeling the devs put something there for you to explore? Well, one never learns.

No Man's sky made it onto Angry Joes worst games list under it's own steam for starters. One of the select few reviewers I take at their word, since they mirror my own tastes. So if that was the intent, they stole from one of the worst.

Yeah, sure. If they created growing settlements or outposts, if they provided for a thriving world after kickstarting the old engines, if they delivered on where NMS failes, if, if, if ...

Truth is, NMS tanked,since they couldn't deliver on the concept. Bioware didn't even try to deliver on the concept but used the same static environments they always deliver. Hell, DAII got a lot of flak for their static city but as compared to what Andromeda shows us, Kirkwall was more alive than any of the planets, apart from dropped in enemies and the same critters on each and everyone of them.

There's no difference.



Hey, I'm not actually sold on the whole concept. I didn't like zone mowing in BG1, and the modern equivalents don't work for me either.

One thing Bioware has consistently done better than CDPR is character arcs. Characters matter, They matter alot in RPGs. And when you sideline them for sake of...what-the-fuck-ever, which is what CDPR did, you will get rightly criticized. You either fully develop a character in one game and let them go, or you have the foresight to carry them through a sequel. CDPR failed so bad in this regard that TW3 became a bitter sweet experience for me. Then again, I feel DA has the right solution to all of this: game sequels are not contiguous, but simply in the same setting. 

Why would you play a game for 35-40 hours if you weren’t invested in it...

Andromeda lost me when they expected me to care for my dad because the story expected me to.  Actually, almost all video games that place me in a role where there is a family connection central to the plot irks me because they are so poorly done on average (Fallout 4 for example).

- Andromeda continued to lose me when I realized the vaults were all the same, essentially.  And Sudoku... And squad mates that were just there for the sake of being there.  Biggest annoyance was when I reloaded saves and tried different dialogue options only to find they all filtered back basically identical responses - the dialogue in this game is just smoke and mirrors giving the illusion of choice.  Military or science?  Who the fuck cares, the game sure doesn’t.  

You know now that I think of it even on my initial run of ME I was having fun but not really invested till Virmire. At that point it was like "man the shit just got real." ME2 however I was in the moment I saw Martin Sheen lol.

This is fascinating. It took you that long to get invested in 1 and 2? 35-40 hours? 
I probably got invested in 1 by the end of Noveria and in 2 while playing Horizon. 
Meanwhile, I don't think I ever truly got invested in MEA's story. I and 2 kept me guessing about what was going on for awhile, whereas in MEA there wasn't too much to conceal/reveal. Aside from mineral scanning, the settlements were probably my least favorite part (as they were in FO4). Maybe I'm just not really into the colonizing thing. 

How did the game "expect" you to care for your dad when they clearly offered two lines near the very beginning where Ryder could indicate that he/she never really knew his/her dad.  He/she could also say in a few places things like "He was difficult."  You were also given the option to side with Dunn instead of him.  You could avoid collecting the memory triggers and did not even have to visit your sister... garnering her ire in the process.    

The vaults are not all exactly the same... and certainly not the same degree of sameness as all those warehouses in ME1.  I've only done the two so far - Eos and Havarl; but they are quite different from each other. 

Sudoku is completely avoidable by using a remnant decryption key.

The squad mates each have different support powers.  Yeah, it would have been nice to be able to direct when they used them like we could in the earlier games, but they were still useful and different squad mates mesh differently with my particular build of Ryder. 

ME1 had many places where making a different selection on the wheel resulted in the PC uttering the exact same line.  I've not run across any of those in ME:A. 

The Pod choices do give you different perks, so some people probably do care from a gameplay perspective which perks they unlock first.

Pretty much.  I don't need a hell of a lot of time with Alec to be sad at his death at the implied history, and Alec was really a big bad ass. 

I think it probably originally was supposed to be a gut punch - or they wouldn’t have bothered to put so much effort into his appearance vis-a-vis the cc connection, and not to mention his voice actor... but then they realized nobody cared because the writing doesn’t exactly pull you in (hard to accomplish in 5 mins), so they added the nonchalant “I didn’t really know my Dad” perspective.

They really should have removed Ryder’s smirk when she says her dad is dead though.

I wonder if people were affected by the Human Noble's parents dying in Origins despite knowing them for 10 minutes. At least Andromeda expands on Alec's character later on (provided you collected the memory fragments.)