Replaying Andromeda one year later. God i like this game. am i the only one?

Inadequate is too strong a word. The VA's aren't bad (there are weak moments but they do a solid job overall) and there are plenty of good moments (and weak ones, too, but hey, the whole Trilogy has ups and downs). The real stinker is the fact that a lot of moments, good or bad, are drowning in static/limited animations of variable quality and awkward looks thanks to the models.

Then there's the issue of screentime. Andromeda, like the trilogy, have its main companions and the sorta-not-really-main-side characters. I like Kallo, Suvi and Gil, for example, yet their presence is only important for key moments in the main story. They don't get loyalty missions, just personal side-missions, much like various crew-characters in ME2/3 do, yet in the older games they still felt more ingrained.

Then the companions themselves - they also have widely different screentimes. Drack is hands-down my favourite of the bunch followed by Vetra. Drack gets plenty of screentime, Vetra... Not so much... Whereas Peebee has more than pretty much everyone last I checked (and I'm not a fan). This means that you tend to miss out one way or another and makes it easier/harder to like/dislike a character due to everything being based on the often conflicting party banter rather than actual presence...

In short, it wasn't inadequate, just improperly handled. There are still really good moments and we clearly have some good characters, just underused or overcut and left hanging on unimportant side-conversations.

There is only one character on our 'team' that I can genuinely say gets right up my nose for various reasons. Otherwise, I have my favourites but I like the group as a whole. That wouldn't happen if it was all 'inadequate', in a game where chatting to people is about as common as shooting something.

There's no friendship-paths in ME:A - you can make decisions that annoy certain people (temporarily in terms of companions, permanently for static NPCs) but ultimately it boils down to LI's and friends. You're clearly friends (or at least super cordial) with Cora from the start, so aside from the middle-ground where she's confused over the new PF decision and doesn't know how to react to you, it's a straight line -- the differences often come in emails. Example, if you tell Suvi you're not into the whole religion thing she'll send an email about it. Any decision like this has the branching-path icon, so you'll know when a response has SOME kind of effect, however small it may be.

You get lots of them before/during/after Liam's loyalty mission - I make a habit of grilling him hard over his nonsense. You'd think someone who keeps mentioning 'crisis response' would refrain from acting like a mid-life-crisis-manchild when he ends up in his own crisis, or resort to stupidity like "If you take a heroic chance, it should work, because reasons" mentality when his plan fails (unsurprisingly because his plans are stupid). He really is a total ass. I've never encountered a character before with such scatty writing - he's friendly to you constantly, bitter/pissy to almost everyone else during missions, and his antics contradict his background. In short, he's a constant self-conflict which makes no written sense through the game.

I don't hate him, but gawd-dayum, get some consistency.

On topic, I deleted my 75% complete save after 55hrs just to start over with my Custom FemRyd and make a save in-line with my genuine decisions. With talks of ME5 on the horizon (however slim it may be) and with my replayability waning after three days of hardcore ME:A'ing, it'll soon be time to shelve the game until new ME content comes out. I've had a blast with this game, both at release and a year later -- there's no sense regreting a purchase that has easily burned hundreds of hours. Just a shame it didn't hit its max potential, but I'll never call it a bad game, just not a 'great' one.

I added the gif for you...

Nah, she's second. Liara the Creeper will forever hold that title.

And yet ME:A does it a bit more than the rest. You can read up in the codex to see Ryder's general response tallies for example, and those 'decision' options during crew chats also effect their codex entries; eg. if you debate about 'god' with Suvi, you'll get different emails and your friendship is described in another way (albeit in a purely text-based manner). Similar regarding how attatched Peebee gets with the crew. Just light touches but no hard branches, which I'm fine with for what was meant to be the 'first' of a possible new series.

What I mean to say is that, gameplay wise (no reading), things are handled similarly to the previous games - a straight line with dialogue variations but ultimately still boil down to core choices, like loyalty missions et al. We'll never know how they effect the future unless we get a sequel/more content that alternates based on this, but it's safe to say you get along with everyone in general, even if some of them can refuse to talk to you over certain matters (Drack, Jaal etc).

Ironically, I found the chit-chat a bit more streamlined in ME:A, even if it falls into the same pitfalls as other games. Example, even though the "Kallo/Gil" fight option is often greyed out, Kallo still gives different updates on it after each mini-fight if you click it anyway (Gil doesn't, unfortunately) - same with Cora regarding the Asari ark (up to a point), or Lexi when describing crew members after events relevant to them. Then of course they all have their own take on key events that have happened, so even if you have no new selectable dialogue options, at least the crew tend to have at least something to say.

Prime offenders are Vetra (her loyalty is mid-way and the early-game doesn't give her a lot of new things to say), Cora, Drack (until Eladen). It only becomes really noticeable if you're checking in on them constantly. I know it's hard not to do this on every tempest visit, but it felt more active than older ME games. Example, I don't bother with Liam much at all. He ALWAYS has something to say due to this avoidance, the start of movie night, his loyalty mission being one of the later ones, and having input on pretty much every key development, so each visit is guaranteed something fresh at least, complimented by the fact I only bother talking to that idiot when I feel I have to.

In older ME games, once things were greyed out, it was almost always a case of that character having absolutely no input at all outside of key moments.

The byproduct of open world games I think.  You can accelerate the conversation paths pretty quickly and yet still have tons to do.  Even if Cora had triple the dialogue tree as Miranda it would likely feel like you ran out first because the timing is not hard wired to be spread out over the game. Its hard to balance as a player, I've had games where I didn't get through most of the crews dialogue trees because I advanced the story and completed tons of missions before returning to the ship, basically clearing a planet then heading back. And then there are timers I'm pretty much done with their trees and still have 1/2 the game to go.

Eww...that's just nasty. Sleeping with a blueskin.

If you wanna sleep with a parasite, then more power to ya. Me, I would rather sleep with a real woman.

That's just how things go these days. A lot of faith is put into external reviews and first-impressions by most people, whereas I'd never allow someone else to dictate what I may or may not like - only I can do that for myself in an accurate manner. Unfortunately, thanks to the power of the internet, it's just easier to let the masses make decisions for you. It's hard to ignore pages upon pages of memes and bad reviews no matter how accurate or inaccurate they may be.

As such, I buy based on my own judgement - hence less opportunity to fail. I saw all the animation malarky but wasn't off-put by everything else the game was offering, so I rolled with it. After all, it was Mass Effect (so a little bias was also involved) -- turned out to be one of the best purchases I made that year, even if it was far worse pre-patch // at release than it is now. Both playthroughs massed about 100-200hrs each as a semi-completionist who enjoys multiplayer, so two plays @ 300-500hrs + variable extra is far more than I would pump into certain other titles of the same price. I paid more for games like Destiny 2 which literally lasted me 2 days before it got shelved, and they cut corners to sell what should have been existing content as DLC to add salt to that wound.

TLDR - ME:A has plenty wrong with it, but I stand by my opinion that it had a solid game underneath the problems and just needed more time to streamline the quibbles rather than be rushed out so quickly. For what was meant to be the first of a new trilogy, it was a solid foundation, even taking notes from ME1 in terms of 'future game' build, but alas, we may never get to see Andromeda's story progressed with that crew. I wager any new ME attempt will be yet another fresh-start, and that, ironically, might put me off it this time - it was hard enough to accept this wasn't a Sheperd game, but to dump another crew behind? Bah.

I’m still enjoying this game quite a bit. Heck I’m playing it right now.