Most Underrated Game: One Year Later

Oblivion also became a real boring slog of a game after awhile - closing Oblivion gates; and the leveling system just made it worse.  I don't consider a game where one wants to ignore most of it because it's so repetitive to be a great game.  One of the things I really liked about ME2 and ME3 and ME:A is that Bioware avoided the assigning of such repetitive radiant quests.  In ME:A, there is some repetition and enemies respawn in those areas... but they are random encounters, not generally assigned quests.  Assigned quests, even the "fetch" ones, are usually limited to 3 locations.  You're never asked to scour every planet collecting Nirnroot equivalent.  You don't have 35 potential settlements to build.  You're never told that part of your job is to set up 50 mass relays.  If you like that sort of thing, then you probably like Bethseda games enough to hump your way through all the bugs without complaint.  Good on you... it's not for me.

The thing about Oblivion's leveling system is that, more often than not, just by playing the game, you wind up at a higher level without obtaining the maximum skill-up points at each level... so you wind up being weaker than the enemies regardless of being at their numerical level.  You can, of course, "train" to ensure you get the +5 bonuses in your selected skills... but training in and of itself is boring and repetitive and it impedes enjoyment of the game.

How is it metagaming?  As backup, I stated that I've seen Youtube blind playthroughs that wound up following the main Archon questline... That is, they determined that it was more urgent than sorting out the krogan issue Drack brought up (based on just what was said at that meeting and probably that they talked with Gil about the device they picked up on Kadara... which indicates that the Archon may now know where Tempest is).  As a result, they wound up not going to Elaaden until after they finished the main story.  There is nothing in what Drack states at that meeting that indicates his issue is more urgent than the Archon mission or even the mission to H-047c, (ETA after reviewing a save file to refresh my memory:  However, there are multiple opportunities introduced at that meeting to drive home the importance of chasing the Archon.  Drack's email (transcript of Strux's audio log) is also extremely vague and even indicates that Drack himself "doesn't know what to think").  There is nothing in it about building a bomb or attacking the Nexus... all of that is revealed after you meet with Strux on Elaaden.  Clearly, the game is more encouraging the player to stick with chasing the Archon at that point without actually preventing the player from pursuing the other issues presented at the meeting.  They do name them all "Priority Ops" but I honestly had no difficulty in discerning which op was actually the most urgent one... particularly after speaking with Gil just after the meeting. 

Now, it is possible, I think, to trigger the meeting without having actually picked up the transponder (can't remember exactly right now).  I think the meeting is triggered the first time you leave Kadara and go back to Tempest.  Of course, that likely means you've already put a pretty low priority on getting that transponder... chasing other side quests on Kadara and then leaving the planet once without getting the transponder (perhaps to just talk to the crew??? - not sure why you would leave Kadara without getting the transponder first.

... and in my opinion, it is a way better game than ME1.  The combat is far superior... more fluid, more interesting, and with much less time spent fiddling in an inventory screen, repeatedly scrapping a ton of the same old junk items you collected in ME1 after having repeatedly to go through a ridiculous hacking minigame to open the crates to collect those junky, uninspired items.  ME:A had 1 minigame that you only had to repeat 22 times during the entire 100+ hours of gameplay... but it was totally trashed by the so-called critics online.

The universe (i.e. galaxy map) in ME:A is far more detailed, colorful and interesting.  Yet, how was that received by the critics?  ME:A's wonderful animations of traveling through space were instantly panned as boring and repetitive... despite the fact that they even change and adapt if you approach the same planet coming from a different angle.  While, at the same time, they are lamenting the lack of an animation for climbing in and out of the nomad (something that ME1 never had either).

The planet environments are more varied and interesting than ME1... yet the meme machines focused on the desert ones... stating point blankly and erroneously that they ALL were deserts.  Havarl was totally not desert and totally alien in appearance.

Even though the alien facial animations from the get-go were great, they focused incessantly meming Addison's "face is tired" line.

Even though the bar fight with Drack is well animated... they focus on Morda's... implying that all the animations were all bad.

Even though there are great lines and moments in Andromeda... like the conversation with Drack during the "How to Act Tough" quest, they point blank state that ALL the writing is bad... which could not be further from the truth.  There were also atrociously bad writing moments in ME1 (for example, Benezia's death scene - horribly written and horribly voiced by a major actress)... Yet, they focus only on the better lines and do exactly the reverse with ME:A - focusing only on the poorly written moments.  They're biased as F***... and were intentionally over-trashing a game to gain sensationalistic clicks to their own sites.

They're sites have evolved over the past few years into cheap meme machines rather than reliable critiquing websites... and what are we, the consumers of their critiques, left with?  We're left if a TON of erroneous data released in a race (as each new game is released) enhanced with childish antics for "entertainment" value and half-finished wiki guides year's later that still contain a ton of bad information.  We're left with being told that such antics are 'brilliant" even though they don't really contain any valuable insight into the game itself.  It's a problem that has been growing in the industry for years... it just culminated into the "perfect storm" with Andromeda... and the franchise paid the price.