Struggling to get through Andromeda after LE Mass Effect trilogy (LE-MET)

I'm not sure the above accurately summarizes the strengths and weaknesses of MEA's mechanics.

Yes, they removed the ability to command squaddies to use a specific power; but leaving it at that is misleading. To counter this change, several other adjustments were made.

First, you can still command a squaddie to use a power. They will use the one that makes contextual sense. A bit of specificity is lost, but not function.

Secondly, the Ryders are no longer constrained by universal cooldowns. Instead, their powers each have individual cooldowns. This means you can chain your own combos. There is an Armor Mod (Fusion Mod of Adrenaline) available early in the game that resets all cooldowns on a kill, effectively removing cooldowns from the game entirely. Too powerful? You bet.

In regard to crafting, you can scavenge or buy gear; but this gear will be trash compared to crafted gear. The correct criticism of crafting is not that it's unnecessary, but that it's game-breakingly powerful.

Moving on to skill points and development, there are zero useless skills. The way this was accomplished was brilliant. Every point you spend passively boosts lots of other things, even if you never use the individual skill upon which you spend it.

For example, don't like biotics? Okay. You still have shields/barriers. Every point invested in biotics is passively improving your barrier. That's one simplistic example. It goes deeper than that, and is one of the best design choices they made.

You can bring a powerful build fully online very quickly and never change beyond the three active skills required. Yet, your Ryder will still dramatically increase in power as you invest in "unrelated" skills because their offense, defense and resilience will constantly be improving.

This doesn't even go into the importance of developing multiple "skill loadouts" for different playstyles. One player might use dozens of combinations of skills, while another uses the same three active skills for 150 hours. Regardless, each player benefits from gradually developing everything because of those passive, universal benefits.

I'll not touch on the subjective stuff like "quality of writing", character likeability, etc... Each player can judge those for themself.

I don't want this post to sound passive-aggressive or confrontational. I just found the synopsis misleading.