So what's the hate on Andromeda all about?

How many copies? I haven't been looking nor had any reason to, but nothing stood out to say sales for MEA were on the rise.

Boy, are they all going to e disappointed. 

 I'm sure you'll be disappointed they don't have ryder returning if there's to be another game in Andromeda.

Just imagine the rage if SAM is the benefactor.

Given the similarities between MEA lore and Baxter's Xeelee Sequence, I guess you won't get rid of it. :/

Well it's one game compared to an entire trilogy, and especially for the fact that ME:A had definitely surpassed the trilogy in some aspects like exploration and character interaction.

Regarding the bolded - I have seen this line rendered here hundreds of times, and it has never made any sense to me as an argument.

When I compare MEA to the MET, I am not putting oversized rose-tinted glasses that amalgamate the trilogy into one game. I compare each game as a game, and compare that to MEA.

It is also ludicrous. How many of us "MET lovers" have said we were thrilled with all aspects of each game in the trilogy? Nearly none of us - my criticisms are mostly for ME2/ME3 and their forced, ridiculous endings.

MEA did a couple things right. I am dumbfounded by the idea that character interaction is improved in MEA when all of the conversation facial animations are still 1989-bad.

Exploration? Yes, it is better in some respects - nothing at all what they promised - but better. Wahoo?

Finally the combat. It is not better, it is not more fluid. It is dumbed down and simplified, and that is ok if you like easier. Some of us don't.

I don't dislike MEA. I am disappointed by it. It should have been an improved iteration, nothing removed except things that didn't work.

Instead, half of the powers are gone, half of the aliens are gone. The lack of new aliens would not have been so glaring, if all the original aliens were actually in the fucking game!

An improvement?

No. They had an amazing template, and a well-constructed universe. They downgraded important animations (these games are about the dialog moments every bit, if not more so, than the combat), and the attention to detail and love put into the models and skins for them is a disastrous step backwards to nearly KotOR level character appearance.

That is a massive failing. It is in no way an improvement.

Yeah and they fixed the facial animations.

Having recently played the MET and Andromeda back-to-back on the hardest difficulties, I really don't get why people think the combat or exploration is better.

Everything in Andromeda is a damage sponge while Ryder feels like s/he's made of glass and shooting foam pellets. Exposing yourself to shoot your gun is almost always a worse idea than waiting for your powers to reload to set off a combo that requires no aiming and no thought.

And the verticality and 'mobility' of the jetpack/dash/biotic blinking just makes combat disorganized, not fluid, and definitely not tactical. There's no sense of battle lines and no coherency to your or your enemies' tactics. Shootouts in the original trilogy have a progression and a narrative, and Shepard and his/her enemies both feel lethal, and the squad feels like a team.

When you go into cover there it's because you pressed your luck and need a second before you continue pushing forward, or you've been cornered and need to make good use of your teammates and their powers to support Shep while s/he gets out of the bind. When Ryder goes into cover it's because s/he accidentally zipped into full view of a bunch of enemies like an idiot and has to run and hide for a while hoping no-one gets an angle on them before their shields recharge while their allies are running around fighting independently using their abilities sub-optimally like morons with zero teamwork.

And everything you find and collect in ME1 and 2 is either directly usable or provides a meaningful advantage or avenue of specialization in the gameplay, or adds something cool-looking to Shep's cabin, encouraging the player to check the corners of every map because there might actually be something nice and satisfying lying around there. And crucially, doing so doesn't take hours upon hours of gameplay time out of your life because those maps are sensibly bordered. ME3 has a little more pointless side content, but you can play it like ME2 and get more or less the same out of it. Meanwhile, Andromeda is chock full of totally irrelevant checkpoints and flavorless side quests and collectathons that take you all over huge and sprawling and monotonous maps with nothing interesting or useful whatsoever at the end of 90% of those trips. Just like Inquisition, a good three quarters of the game's content is, literally, a systematic waste of your time.

I sure know which of the two I feel like I'm getting more out of playing from minute to minute.

And that's just the combat and exploration, which could still best be described as good to mediocre in objective terms. The game's story and writing are the real letdowns compared to the original trilogy. It's honestly like they just resolved to only put half the thought into everything that happens in Andromeda.

Something that I recently realized annoys me about the third act is that it presents the main character as having 'picked up' how to control technology nobody else has ever been able to interface with from their AI partner over the course of the game. As if controlling and interfacing with advanced tech on the same level as a sentient AI is something the human brain could just learn to do by watching it happen, unless SAM just gave them a cheat code of some kind which conversely wouldn't be any kind of credit to Ryder at all. The moment is presented as a big personal triumph for Ryder, but it's either completely implausible or absolutely unimpressive depending on what exactly they're doing, and we have no idea which it is because the game doesn't feel like elaborating. Because the writers just wanted to check the 'act 3 low point - protagonist does something cool and things start looking better' box without bothering to consider how it fit with everything else.

And the scene comes off even worse when you put it in the same universe as the heartbreaking DLC story in the original trilogy where a scientist encourages an autistic mathematical savant to engage and reason with rogue AIs with tragic consequences for everyone involved. Because, you know, human nature and machine logic make for a really messy and awkward combination.

I'll always maintain that Andromeda is a pretty good game on its own merits, but people are right that it's certainly a disappointing Mass Effect game.

I played MEA. EA blew it when they did the early release before the Day 1 Patch was ready. The game got review bombed before the release date. There were so many bugs that it wasn't even funny. I had the hard copy on disk for XB1 so I got the patch day 1. There were a couple of glitches, but other than that it wasn't as bad as the pre-release reviews said.

My real complaint was that I didn't like doing the Sudoku puzzles. God they were annoying. The asari all looked alike except for Peebee - they could have used a few more face models. The dialog was clunky and meme worthy a few times - "my face is tired...." What bosh'tet wrote that crap? But other than that, the game play was smooth and they had the combat down.

It did feel stretched out at times. They could have condensed things a bit in places. I really wanted the Quarian Ark DLC and was really disappointed EA pulled the plug. It was EA's fault. They should never have done the early release. Bad idea.

Characters:

Cora "I'm an asari commando" because we couldn't have a real asari commando.
The Salarian pilot was cool
The science officer... I wish I could have taken her on some missions. But sadly no.
Drack. I liked him, but he was a Wrex substitute. The crusty but benign old Krogan.
Vetra was stiff.
And I can't remember the other characters. It's been so long. I romanced that alien dude because it wouldn't be mass effect.

The Kett were a worthy adversary.

But I felt the game lacked heart. I'm hoping that DA4 has something to offer. I liked DAI. I liked playing my inquisitor. I only played the base DAI, but MS had a sale with all the DLC so I got it a couple years ago. I should play it again.