33 Hours played - Quick Impressions Before Launch
Mar 21, 2017 2:26:35 GMT
Reznore, Element Zero, and 12 more like this
Post by ticktak77 on Mar 21, 2017 2:26:35 GMT
So, I got the game 8 days early. Put 33 hours into the game. 100% Planet Viability on the first 3 planets, and I thought I would give my full comprehensive thoughts in a few quick hit points.
STORY / SARA & SCOTT - The clean disconnect from the original trilogy is a welcome thing. This is a story that has a very different tone from the original stories; this isn't about desperation and survival anymore, but about hope, adventure, and exploration. That switch to a lighter tone feels appropriate. After an opening that holds your hand quite a bit, the game eventually delivers a story that has the characteristic mystery, suspense, and engagement that you would expect from a Mass Effect game.
I love Ryder too. It's so refreshing playing a character where you have the freedom to say whatever you want, without having to worry about a "Good side" or "bad side" meter filling up based on your responses. There's a quirkiness to (default male) Ryder that made him instantly more relate-able than Shepherd. His responses, whether I wanted to be goofy, cynical, or pragmatic.
COMBAT - Is probably the best it's been in the series. The jet-pack feature is the one I didn't realize I needed in the series. Not only is the added verticality a real welcome change, but the jet pack increases the pace & flow of combat immensely. Character profiles, which in the past felt like combat-shackles, now can be assumed on the fly, and your favorite ability loadouts can be summoned instantly too. This adds a neat customization variety to the excellent combat. However, profile and ability switching does feel like it suffers from User Interface issues - these features need to be more accessible, rather than buried behind convoluted menus.
Combos also add a neat new element to combat - softening enemies up with primers, and then unleashing devastating detonators which do added damage, adds a fun, more thoughtful element to the combat; combos can really have a huge influence on battles.
The small gripe with combat - gone are any real teammate commands; no longer can you insta-pause the game to tell your squadmate to hit a specific ability, or quick-map a specific squadmate ability. That is a feature that was sorely missed.
RPG ELEMENTS AND OTHER FEATURES - This is the most RPG-heavy game in the series since ME1. There's so many different things to worry about, when trying to perfect your character build. Truthfully, it can sometimes feel overwhelming, though I'm sure many people will appreciate this level of control. All this control is hamstrung significantly by a mess of a User Interface system when trying to sort out your loadout. I still make regular mistakes when spec'ing out my character, even 33 hours into the game.
The Research & Development systems in this game, in theory, represents the best way to get your character the best gear, weapons, and mods for your build. In reality though, it's a ridiculously complicated, poorly illustrated system that was frustrating to try and understand. Research Points, Blueprints, Resources, Weapon Levels, etc., it's not very intuitive, and the game does a very poor job of explaining it to you. Bit of a theme, but it's badly shackled by an awful User INterface as well.
Not to mention, the R&D station on the Tempest sits so far away from your loadout station, it's just a system that was irritating.
After an hour of trying to figure it out, I eventually concluded that I'd be better off just looting and buying my way to galactic supremacy.
EXPLORATION- Simply put, exploration is the very worst part of this game. There's no two ways about it. Almost everything about exploring about this game is just awful, but let's break it down:
a) Space Exploration - Isn't too different to previous Mass Effects; you'll enter a cluster, scan all the planets, collect all your anomalies, and move on. The problem now is the introduction of a truly tedious space travel animation that occurs EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. you move in space. While these animations are beautiful, they are time consuming and become numbingly repetitive after doing it 30-40 times over 10 minutes. They also highlight some pretty bad performance issues when trying to load / render planets. Clearing a cluster now takes 10 minutes.
Planetary Exploration - Is very reminiscent of Mass Effect 1, that it hurts. Planets are huge, diverse, and well designed, but have so few interesting elements beyond the odd Monoliths and a couple of camps dotted around the place. There's such a disconnect between exploring and completing side quests, that it single-handedly ended my play session on two nights last week out of clear irritation. You can travel to one corner of the map, search anything and everything, and return to the center of the map, only to be forced to return to that corner later because a certain side quest wasn't ready for you to complete yet.
The nomad is the mako's sloppy, larger, stronger cousin, which admittedly does benefit from it's own upgrade tree, but a lack of true weapon systems on it makes it almost as equally as frustrating as the mako was. No mini-map and an awful planetary map makes exploration the exact opposite of fun, that it had me longing for ME3's equally awful-but-slightly-better scan and probe system. The fact that certain key planetary points just magically disappear on your mini-map once you explore them, even though you may routinely need to return to said points
SIDE MISSIONS - If exploring represented the worst part of this game, then the side missions are a close second. We were told to expect side missions that borrowed from games like Dragon Age and Witcher 3. 33 hours in, and I can only think of 2 side missions that were memorable in anyway. The rest of them are some variation of [ GO HERE, SCAN / FREE / FIND / KILL / REMOVE / SCAN / COLLECT THIS, RETURN HERE). Fetch quests are the laziest forms of side quests in this game, and given how massive these planets are, there are A LOT of them.
Clearing a planet to 100% viability often involves you having to do 50 or more of these fetch missions, with some mundane forgettable narrative thread thrown on top.
Thankfully? You don't need to complete all side missions in order to achieve 100% planet viabilty.
Unfortunately? Your journal fills up with all these mundane side quests remarkably quickly, which is a problem for those like me, who obsess over being completionists.
POLISH - If I had to highlight the biggest issue with Mass Effect Andromeda however, it's that the game badly lacks the sort of finesse and polish that one comes to expect from Bioware. Technical issues are at every turn in this game, that it's distressing. Now is probably a good time to address the hooplah around the facial animations - it's not great, but is something that is easily overlooked.
Things that can't be overlooked?
The game telling me to level up my squadmates, even though they haven't levelled up.
Or the conversation bleed that seems to happen no matter where you are on the Nexus.
Or subtitles barely being visible in many conversations.
Or the inventory telling me I have something new, even though I don't.
Or the Codex having a button to MARK ALL ENTRIES AS READ, which only wants to show up half the time.
Or the consistent frame drops, frame hitches, freezes, crashes, infinite load screens...
You get the idea. The game is a technical nightmare at the moment, which really hurts the overall experience.
None of them are particularly gamebreaking on their own, but combined as a total package, they irritate, annoy, frustrate, and ruin the gameplay experience.
OVERALL - Sara & Scott Ryder's struggle to rise above the legacy of their father, seems like a metaphor for Andromeda relative to the original trilogy. Perhaps we set our expectations too high. Andromeda is a game that has a good story, an interesting cast, and a very likeable lead character. It has a compelling combat system, and has the usual Mass Effect feel and fun. However, some really poor design decisions related to exploration, combined with some lazy side missions, really pulls the game back from being great. All that combined with the host of technical issues this game suffers from, means that Andromeda really struggles to be a great game.
8 / 10.
Would love to hear other people's opinions now that the game is out.
STORY / SARA & SCOTT - The clean disconnect from the original trilogy is a welcome thing. This is a story that has a very different tone from the original stories; this isn't about desperation and survival anymore, but about hope, adventure, and exploration. That switch to a lighter tone feels appropriate. After an opening that holds your hand quite a bit, the game eventually delivers a story that has the characteristic mystery, suspense, and engagement that you would expect from a Mass Effect game.
I love Ryder too. It's so refreshing playing a character where you have the freedom to say whatever you want, without having to worry about a "Good side" or "bad side" meter filling up based on your responses. There's a quirkiness to (default male) Ryder that made him instantly more relate-able than Shepherd. His responses, whether I wanted to be goofy, cynical, or pragmatic.
COMBAT - Is probably the best it's been in the series. The jet-pack feature is the one I didn't realize I needed in the series. Not only is the added verticality a real welcome change, but the jet pack increases the pace & flow of combat immensely. Character profiles, which in the past felt like combat-shackles, now can be assumed on the fly, and your favorite ability loadouts can be summoned instantly too. This adds a neat customization variety to the excellent combat. However, profile and ability switching does feel like it suffers from User Interface issues - these features need to be more accessible, rather than buried behind convoluted menus.
Combos also add a neat new element to combat - softening enemies up with primers, and then unleashing devastating detonators which do added damage, adds a fun, more thoughtful element to the combat; combos can really have a huge influence on battles.
The small gripe with combat - gone are any real teammate commands; no longer can you insta-pause the game to tell your squadmate to hit a specific ability, or quick-map a specific squadmate ability. That is a feature that was sorely missed.
RPG ELEMENTS AND OTHER FEATURES - This is the most RPG-heavy game in the series since ME1. There's so many different things to worry about, when trying to perfect your character build. Truthfully, it can sometimes feel overwhelming, though I'm sure many people will appreciate this level of control. All this control is hamstrung significantly by a mess of a User Interface system when trying to sort out your loadout. I still make regular mistakes when spec'ing out my character, even 33 hours into the game.
The Research & Development systems in this game, in theory, represents the best way to get your character the best gear, weapons, and mods for your build. In reality though, it's a ridiculously complicated, poorly illustrated system that was frustrating to try and understand. Research Points, Blueprints, Resources, Weapon Levels, etc., it's not very intuitive, and the game does a very poor job of explaining it to you. Bit of a theme, but it's badly shackled by an awful User INterface as well.
Not to mention, the R&D station on the Tempest sits so far away from your loadout station, it's just a system that was irritating.
After an hour of trying to figure it out, I eventually concluded that I'd be better off just looting and buying my way to galactic supremacy.
EXPLORATION- Simply put, exploration is the very worst part of this game. There's no two ways about it. Almost everything about exploring about this game is just awful, but let's break it down:
a) Space Exploration - Isn't too different to previous Mass Effects; you'll enter a cluster, scan all the planets, collect all your anomalies, and move on. The problem now is the introduction of a truly tedious space travel animation that occurs EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. you move in space. While these animations are beautiful, they are time consuming and become numbingly repetitive after doing it 30-40 times over 10 minutes. They also highlight some pretty bad performance issues when trying to load / render planets. Clearing a cluster now takes 10 minutes.
Planetary Exploration - Is very reminiscent of Mass Effect 1, that it hurts. Planets are huge, diverse, and well designed, but have so few interesting elements beyond the odd Monoliths and a couple of camps dotted around the place. There's such a disconnect between exploring and completing side quests, that it single-handedly ended my play session on two nights last week out of clear irritation. You can travel to one corner of the map, search anything and everything, and return to the center of the map, only to be forced to return to that corner later because a certain side quest wasn't ready for you to complete yet. The nomad is the mako's sloppy, larger, stronger cousin, which admittedly does benefit from it's own upgrade tree, but a lack of true weapon systems on it makes it almost as equally as frustrating as the mako was. No mini-map and an awful planetary map makes exploration the exact opposite of fun, that it had me longing for ME3's equally awful-but-slightly-better scan and probe system. The fact that certain key planetary points just magically disappear on your mini-map once you explore them, even though you may routinely need to return to said points
SIDE MISSIONS - If exploring represented the worst part of this game, then the side missions are a close second. We were told to expect side missions that borrowed from games like Dragon Age and Witcher 3. 33 hours in, and I can only think of 2 side missions that were memorable in anyway. The rest of them are some variation of [ GO HERE, SCAN / FREE / FIND / KILL / REMOVE / SCAN / COLLECT THIS, RETURN HERE). Fetch quests are the laziest forms of side quests in this game, and given how massive these planets are, there are A LOT of them.
Clearing a planet to 100% viability often involves you having to do 50 or more of these fetch missions, with some mundane forgettable narrative thread thrown on top.
Thankfully? You don't need to complete all side missions in order to achieve 100% planet viabilty.
Unfortunately? Your journal fills up with all these mundane side quests remarkably quickly, which is a problem for those like me, who obsess over being completionists.
POLISH - If I had to highlight the biggest issue with Mass Effect Andromeda however, it's that the game badly lacks the sort of finesse and polish that one comes to expect from Bioware. Technical issues are at every turn in this game, that it's distressing. Now is probably a good time to address the hooplah around the facial animations - it's not great, but is something that is easily overlooked.
Things that can't be overlooked?
The game telling me to level up my squadmates, even though they haven't levelled up.
Or the conversation bleed that seems to happen no matter where you are on the Nexus.
Or subtitles barely being visible in many conversations.
Or the inventory telling me I have something new, even though I don't.
Or the Codex having a button to MARK ALL ENTRIES AS READ, which only wants to show up half the time.
Or the consistent frame drops, frame hitches, freezes, crashes, infinite load screens...
You get the idea. The game is a technical nightmare at the moment, which really hurts the overall experience.
None of them are particularly gamebreaking on their own, but combined as a total package, they irritate, annoy, frustrate, and ruin the gameplay experience.
OVERALL - Sara & Scott Ryder's struggle to rise above the legacy of their father, seems like a metaphor for Andromeda relative to the original trilogy. Perhaps we set our expectations too high. Andromeda is a game that has a good story, an interesting cast, and a very likeable lead character. It has a compelling combat system, and has the usual Mass Effect feel and fun. However, some really poor design decisions related to exploration, combined with some lazy side missions, really pulls the game back from being great. All that combined with the host of technical issues this game suffers from, means that Andromeda really struggles to be a great game.
8 / 10.
Would love to hear other people's opinions now that the game is out.
