In the light of mixed reviews: Pre-Order cancelled?

You're so edgy dutch

What an accurate representation on a fan forums site.

No. As many gripes as I have with the game, there are bright spots and it's only ten hours.

I haven't pre ordered so I can't cancel anything, I've played a number of hours of the trial and I don't mind the game but the biggest thing that will probably detract from my experience is if the story telling and the dialogue becomes too weak and cliched. The power of the original Mass Effect game was it's story, cast of characters and dialogue despite not having the best gameplay. Similar to Dragon Age Origins, didn't have the looks but had the story, characters and dialogue.

One other thing, as a non American it's really in your face that space faring humanity in the distant future seems to only be American. Unless you are an alien nearly every human in the early access trial is American. Why??

I realise the faces in the character creator offer different cultures but I think a huge opportunity has been missed by such a large franchise to really mix things up with multiple cultures having their voices included, not just their look. These guys surely have the means for that don't that??

So has the reviews effected my desire to buy MEA?

No, not really.

The more I read reviews the more it seems the only two things the reviewers can agree upon are that:
Its a video game.
Its a Mass Effect game.

Yes, a lot of complaints have been directed to how buggy the game is, but some of the reviews I have read/ heard, by players and not professional reviewers, one said they hardly had any problems at all with the game or the facial animations...and noted that you had to deliberatley go out of your way to break the game and do some of the more egregious animation issues. And another one noted that when they played the game a while ago it was more buggy then it is now.

Which brings me to my own interpretations. Now I have not gotten my hands on the game yet so opinions can vary wildly from being seen to actually being played. But, everything looks solid and fun to me. Two notable exceptions, the Foster Addison animation, and one of the flirt scenes, but the game just looks really...really....really solid.

But there are four main complaints that reviwers and players are focusing on.

The game is buggy-Don't really care, I don't honestly mind bugs (as long as they aren't game breaking or force me to restart/ make me unable to finish quests)
The facial animations- Don't really care about graphics, and honestly I am not noticing as many of them until they are deliberatley focused on in some of the forum posts/ reviews. I mean I did not even see anything wrong with the animations with the VGA trailer until they were brought to my attention.
The CC is terrible- again final reservation until I actually play the game but the CC honestly looks amazing and the best I have seen in a BioWare game. It seems like, despite maybe having limited options, that the game lets you create some really amazing characters.
No saves during priority missions- this is the first complaint that really bugs me...but then people have already found work arounds so don't think it will be a big deal at the end of the day.

And as far as the complaints about the writing and stuff? I mean this is BioWare, granted their is some reservation since the lead writer I am not familiar with any of her work but I have always felt BioWare has done solid writing and well executed. Even my least favorite BW game I thought was pretty well written...so...that's not that big of a concern and honestly it baffles me.

Which leaves Side Quests, which generally I do not care about side quests in terms of quality, but it seems like most people think its a vast improvement.

I think the thing that led me to refund is that, while I liked the combat, what story there was and the companion interaction, once I got like 15 hours in I was flooded and flooded with side-objectives and a ton of them were like DA:I. The already cumbersome and borderline stressful UI, the bloated galaxy map and the unstoppable stream of even more side-quests the more objectives you complete on the individual planets it just got too much.

Every now and again the game did seem to have peaks of highly prescripted moements and cool scenes that alternate depending on which squadmember you have with you, and the first vault also had a great in-game setpiece moment... but the flood of filler adds up to a detracting quality towards my enjoyment and I just had to stop because I wasn't enjoying myself, I was just feeling stressed and distracted constantly from trying to focus on the things that I felt were worthwhile (which feels like below 50% of what is in the game).

Bioware really needs to either go away from this open world format or stop with all the objective markers and the checkboxes. I had to calm myself from almost slamming my keyboard when I noticed that each time you click on a random planet in the Galaxy Map a "Found 12 out of 50 planets in the Heleus Cluster" appears. Everything that could've felt unique or immersive ends up feeling artificial and quantified. If there was a great story that had me intrigued or at least thought provoking character interactions I could forgive those things but all this game seemed to have going for it is some good atmosphere, banging (which I don't care for by exclusion) and a "bro" shooter which is cool at first but I quickly found to get in the way as I just don't care to upgrade and manage my equipment just so I can shoot more stuff that's barely relevant to any story.

No, my preorder is not canceled. The reviewers on sites such as Gamespot seem to have the exact opposite of my taste in games, so I don't worry about the scores they give when deciding to get a game.

The day I actually take a "gaming critic review" seriously is the day pigs can fly. I can never take IGN or GameSpot seriously as they are infamously bad. The only review site I see as being somewhat credible (depending on the editor) is Game Informer, and they gave MEA a solid 8 out of 10. Joe Juba said it was fun and a Mass Effect game, but suffered from a lack of polish. That seems to be the general consensus from the more reasonable reviews on metacritic. From the 10 hours I played in early access, I'd say that review is more than reasonable. Personally, I was having a blast. Unless the game just takes a turn for the worst, it's more or less a solid 9 in my book at this point from initial impressions. I can't wait to play the game again in less than three hours!

Considering that "professional" reviewers have no idea what the fuck they're doing and unwashed user masses are full of whiny brats and stupid trolls, I don't care about any of them at all. I've played trial and it was great, so no worries here.

If I had, maybe I'd cancel it but my position remains the same as it did before. Wait on friends opinons and maybe get it on a sale a few months from now

No way, thru Korean VPN playing now and having a blast. I am on PC but I haven't noticed any glitches so I consider myself lucky. Animations are not super but ok, nothing game breaking. Played about 11 hours. I frankly don't care less what those professional reviewers profess, they can keep their opinions and stuff it up their a....