BSNer MEA Reviews thread (based on completed games)

Just finished it, very disappointed on multiple fronts. Lots of mediocrity, forgettable music, terrible CC, boring companion cast, plot with holes big enough for Tempest to drive through, disappointing but I can live with. Some huge grievances migrated over from Inquisition though.
Dialogue system:
MET:
/ Paragon
Investigate - - Shepard doesn't have enough blue/red points and regrets life choices
\ Renegade
MEA
Investigate -
Snarky yes / \ Yes
Both Paragon choices

Interface. Quest log, shops, strike teams. I think we've found a genuine alien life form. And I don't mean in-game, Bioware didn't get the memo being alien doesn't always mean humanoid with bird legs, 3 fingers and weird stuff in place of hair. I mean whoever designed that, I don't think has interacted with a human-made interface. Windows 3.1 was more user friendly than that.

The side content is actually WORSE than DAI, which was already at a point so low even devs acknowledged it. Go to theese 3/4/5/10 locations and scan things or kill things, typically for some petty stuff Pathfinder shouldn't be bothered with, then return to the <!> questgiver.
Murder mystery! Find clues, interrogate witnesses, accuse suspect, with getting the right or wrong man having consequences. Asscreed Unity had it. MEA, go to this location and scan 3 things.
Angaran special forces ask for knowledge exchange with Nexus. Cool, paintball wargames with Angaras! Maybe pick up some special Angara special force skills or gadgets as reward! Nope, go to these 3 locations and kill things, +500 exp.
Learn Angara laws to avoid diplomatic incidents on their homeworld! Have a learning session, then join Nexus ambassador party with possibilities to improve or worsen diplomatic ties with Angara! Nope, go to these 2 places and pick up 2 things. It is never ever brought up again, you never learn what Angara laws are, you can't offend them if you try.
Worse than Preston's another settlement needs your help radiant garbage.

Loot system. I didn't expect Borderlands itemization but this is bad even for my already low expectations. You either get vendor trash for sale, or mods that you can buy in shop, or weapons/armors that are immediately dismantled because they're worse than your crafted stuff with augments.
For example, you cleaned out a group of Kett and one of them drops exotic alien blaster. If you're level 70-79 it will always be a level scaled Alien Blaster IX, you never get this "cool, these are some cool high level stats, in 5 levels I'll be able to use this", and you can craft a better version with augments at any time you feel like it, and this seriously dampens picking up anything, makes it feel like another chore.

Last Bioware game I buy. TL;DR, Basically what she said, no soul.

Ran into few glitches. Animations were never a big deal to me and are now fixed. I have thoroughly enjoyed the writing.

Add to that amazing combat, great characters, addictive exploration, and what This game is, is pure amazing greatness to me. I can't stop playing.

Despite the CC, despite the bugs, despite weird cisual designs, I ended up truly loving this game.

I felt joy, I cried multiple times, I felt rage and despair, I felt triumph, and I felt fear. I even fell in love. No other game has ever put me so thoroughly in a protagonist's head. When Scott was taken, I felt fury and wrath, to the point that I had to remind myself "Kyra, you don't even have a brother!"

I'm gonna mod the hell out of this game, and it will then be one of my top favourites.

Finished the game on Friday, would give it 6-7/10, if the technical issues get fixed, I would give it maybe an 8.

What I liked

- I liked Ryder more so than Shepard, personality is there and I guess I just like the whole casual chilled tone.
- I enjoyed all the companions, Jaal being my favourite. Nexus character were also cool, liked Kesh, Tann and Addison(even tho she's a...)
- The story was pretty cool, nothing mindblowing I guess, the final area was super sweet though, loved that mission. It was safe all round for me.
- The angara are an awesome species, dig the whole deal about them, squid cat kryptonians, the remnant too, really dig the vaults and they mystery behind them.
- The combat is AWESOME, had a good time with it and switching between profiles is great, am a biotic fighting outlaws and engineer fighting synthetics, always changing up the gameplay.
- The customization of armor and weapons are also cool, the selection is huge.
- Open world was great, loved the environments.
- The Assignments and allies/relationships were good, including loyalty missions.

On the Fence

- Nomad control was a bit dodgy at times on the pc.
- The scanner needs more work or used differently, was kinda annoying at times, stopping and scanning.
- As usual, scanning planets... guess that's just Bioware's shtick.
- The Kett.. I mean, they looked great and I understood the whole deal but was hoping some more definition of their species, but obviously they are invaders and we'll know more about them in sequel(I hope for one)
-The Archon, least Bioware did some Saren/Loghian moments like the perspective of the villain. But yeh, more time with him would have been cool... Least he was better than Corypheas and witcher 3's Eredin.


Did not like

- Character customization, it was poor, just poor.
- Companion appearance customization... yeh, bring that back
- Tasks... less of those or don't populate the map with those. I don't want to see those or it feels so busy.
- THE MUSIC WHAT THE HELL... 2 tracks... maybe 3 I liked... that's it??? bring back Sam and Jack.
- The UI
- Animation and the eyes(fixed)
- Stutter, bugs bugs bugs

I'm about half way through my second playthrough and for the most part I think the game is decent. The Nomad is a lot of fun to drive. The planets are interesting, varied, and also beautiful and fun to explore. And I love the galaxy map and scanning and traveling around in it.  Squaddies are memorable, some more than others, but that's normal. I think where it gets a little uninteresting is how all the squaddies are nice people who just want to help. There are no jerks, and the conflicts are relatively trivial., so it makes for a kind of boring group dynamic.

Another place where the game fell a little flat for me was the enemy. You spend most of your time fighting the main enemy, the kett, and unfortunately I found them to be really dull, both story wise and combat wise. In regards to the story, the kett never felt scary or threatening to me, what they were doing was bad and was important to stop, but it was lacking a level of engagement that genuine fear would have enhanced. (For example the reapers were scary because of what they did to people and how it seemed they couldn't be defeated).

Fighting the kett became dull very quickly because of how repetitive each battle started to feel in a very short time. The kett tech and stations are really cool looking, but after a while they all look and feel the same, and combine that with the limited variety in kett enemies, fighting them just got boring really fast. Even in Multiplayer they are dull, and making an enemy more difficult to kill does not make them more interesting. I believe most people in Multiplayer choose to fight Outlaw not only because it's easier, but because they're a more interesting enemy with a lot more variety that people haven't fought before.

Thank heavens for Kadara, what a great area. Yeah, it's a den of scum and villany but that is a large part of its charm. It was definitely a bright spot in the game for me. Except more time needs to pass before enemies respawn, like in Skyrim where a certain amount of time would pass before bandits would return to a place, but that needs improvement across the whole game.

One thing I would like to add is though the most recent patch took care of a lot of initial problems, this game was released in an unfinished state, as far as I'm concerned, and should they make another ME game I won't be pre-ordering it. I will wait to see some let's play vids and twitch streams from people I trust before I buy it. I have been loyal to BioWare for some time so this is kind of big deal for me. I'm glad they're listening to the fans and all but I no longer trust the people in charge of ME.

Hmm, okay:

Like:

*Hair physics is good. Had good bounce and movement without being ridiculous. Hair is much better. Thank you, Hair Person/People

*Ryder voice actors for Bro and Sis are great. Love them.

*Vistas can be astonishingly gorgeous. Auto pilot driving through the cosmos is friggin amazing..when it's not overdone. (that's been fixed with a "skip" option which is Perfect. BW, please do not take criticism of this mechanic has a cue to get rid of it altogether in any possible future installments. it just needed to be fixed, not ditched...because i know how you like to get rid of things that receive criticism instead of just improving them. don't do that. stahp. please.)

*The city layouts are nice and meandering.

*Love the Tempest design and piloting up front with Suvi and Kallo...and all their comments. Love that.

* The crew really grew on me, and I came to really like them.

*Combat is alot of fun

*Majority of sidequests felt like they were needed and important to the overall goal.

*Loyalty quests were well done and had some meat to them.

*Great banter, when I finally heard it. Makes a huge difference.

*Story had some interesting parts, some good lore, and mysteries.

*Loved how the main character moved. The movement and control of that movement was much, much more agile and responsive.

*The ending was a ton of fun. Action packed, got to see everybody getting together and doing their thing. Then after all that adrenaline, there was a nice cool down epilogue.

Eh, not so much:

* Profiles..eh.

*Inventory: I have to carry around this stuff I want to keep, yet I can't equip it in the field? I've got a sniper rifle in my inventory, but I can't pull it out and use it when the time calls for it?

*Crafting..uh, Idk. I've done alot of crafting in my gaming life, but I found this set up confusing with too many unnecessary steps. I liked the augments, but everything else..eh.

* Npc posture and movement, or maybe just the human npc's? They walk and stand like they're constipated. They have this constant bent knee, butt poked slightly out stance that makes me think they need to take a dump. The main character moves and walks great. From what I remember, the aliens move and walk great. What happened there?

* Too many desert, desert like worlds. Havarl, Voeld, Habitat 7 were amazing worlds. Eos, Elaadeen, Kadara- where we spent most of our time were far too similar. Far too mundane. Boring sand is boring. If you have to do sand in an attempt to show desolation maybe make it a sparkling black sand..with crystalline particulates that kick up as the Nomad rides over it, billowing out into strange images. Occasional lightening bolts, or meteorites striking; maybe sinkholes that randomly open up in front of you as you're driving. Just something different than yet another desert world.

* Too much back and forth. Too much backtracking. Too much chasing people/things around. You gotta go over here, then over there; get back on the ship; go through all the loading screens; go to another planet; then get back on the ship; go back to the quest giver and we all say , "Hoorah!" Or, chasing signals and that type of thing. Drive all the way over there..oops not here, maybe over there; drive all the way there, not here, either..hmm. And so on. I cannot express to you, BW, how much I despise that type of thing. I just want to go to the spot and start the mission. Don't waste my time jerking me around.

* CC: ...hmm, okay see the thing is I'm not interested in EA's "Amazing, but wait there's more..!" facial scanning tech. Keep that shite over at NBA2K. Comprehensive character customization is a staple. Why would you foist that crap on us, BW? And it's not because of the Family thing. You can customize your twin, and your father comes out looking any kind of way he wants to, sooo...

*Dialogue options: I want more options to express frustration or anger.

* If you're going to make a sexy cut scene option for one character, you make them for all. I know you feel like, well, more players are going to see this material so we're going to put all our resources and effort into those scenes and whatever for everybody else; but last I checked we all pay the same amount money for these games, and deserve the same quality content.

Like I said before, overall, I had a good time with the game, but when it was frustrating, it was very frustrating. You did some amazing things, but I want to see a more consistent level of quality across your games. Everything from planet design to character design/animation to romances.

And more worthy adversaries, please, instead of muahaha villains.

Finished yesterday night!

Yes
- the solar systems, they looked great, I know many people wanted to skip the travel from one planet to another but I didn't mind, really. I have a crazy collection of screenshots !
- the krogans made me feel at home
- the angaras
- Jaal (and his wonderful romance), Drack, Vetra, Liam, Lexi, Avitus, Kandros, Evfra
- the familly Ryder quest. I thought it would be terrible at first because I really never liked the father but then, the quest change in the middle, with Jien Garson's murder and, OMFG, the last memories, I had an heart attack ! I felt like I was in ME again.
- the happy ending and at least the last mission was Epic
- the nomad
- Voeld when it has northern lights everywhere
- and strangely enough, my Ryder's brother, Scott... He grew on me all of a sudden on the last mission !
- new dialog system for Ryder
- the architects fights

Nope
- well "dislike" is a very nice word for what I will wrote, so I will say "hate" the glitches. I was certainly cursed with my copy, I had so many of them. I get used to play with 80% of them but the last 20% were killing the immersion, especially when you have to reaload your game... I feel so disppointed by BW for releasing an unfinished game (do we know why ? is that because of EA or because of BW itself?). Just curious : for those who played the trilogy or/and the DA games, when they came out, were they that bugged? Because this is the first time in my life I play a disaster like that. And I feel so unlucky when I see some of my friends who had only minor glitches.
- I had the same problem here than on DAI : Few prioritary missions and pleeeeeeeeenty of stuff to do. So, you do your mission, it takes you 1h and then you do other stuff during 20h. Each time I came back to the main story, I was like "eur... what happened already?". The romance suffer too from this narration. I would love for the next MEA to have many secondary missions really included on the priority quests and main story (I still don't get why the turian and Asari arcs were not prioritary missions + they could have been far more developed than what we had, especially the turian arc... ). And with real consequences.
- Musics... I can remember 2 musics from the entire game : the galaxy map and the Architects fights. The musics are something really important to me, I can't believe how inexistant they are in the game...
- CC lack of options
- animations... also when I see the improvements of the faces with patch 1.05, which came out just 10 days after the game was released, I would have loved to wait + 6 months and to have a better quality product and less glitches...
- Main story is a bit warmed over. All the time I was like "hey it's like the collectors, hey it's like the protheans, etc..." .....Isn't it a bit too simple to find another great civilization who have done the terraforming job for us ?
- a regret : the lack of imagination for the planets... Ice, sand, Yellowstone.... well, yes, but... I don't know, I was waiting to see very different worlds, not something so closed from what we already all know on Earth.
- SAM ... please shut up !

I have few quests to finish and that will be all for me. No NG+ for now, not until all the patches and dlc come out.
Talking about DLC, Jien Garson's murder and Quarians ark DLC would be interesting.

For the next game, because I think there will be a next game, I hope we will have more originality on the main story and on the planets we will explore, more memorable new characters (I also don't mind to see characters we already know having a far more interesting role, like Kandros who spend 90% of his time near a console... poor guy), more new aliens, and..... less glitches. I beg you, for my mental health, less glitches.

So I give the game a 14/20 and voted "OK".
Without the glitches, it would have been 15/20 / "Good".

All the sour-grapes guys all over Internet posted their reviews with pictures or videos unhidden. I followed the suit. I've cropped and resized the snapshots to 65% of the game's capture. The words from the game on screenshots masterfully interact with the text of my awesome and colorful best-ever definitive review of Andromeda! You cannot cut out the words from a song, you can't hide the pictures in my review!!!

It is kind of self indulgent, especially when most people don't care and just want to read the review.  Most already know what it looks like.

The good:
- Gameplay and combat are excellent overall, with only minor complaints, such as the very little control that we have over squad mates and the low number of skills we can bind. But other than that, fights are super fun and in combination with the open environments, they are probably the best in any ME game to date.

- The story is actually pretty good and better than I expected. Maybe this is because after hearing rumors before playing, I set my expectations really low but I was surprised to what a great finale the story ultimately lead. Video game endings are usually disappointing as devs often think most of their customers won't see them anyway, so if an ending actually works, it deserves some praise IMO and this one definitely manages to ramp things up at the end. I don't quite understand the people who write that they were underwhelmed by the conclusion. I mean How much more climactic could it possibly get?
I also hear that people complain that the Remnant mystery is not resolved or that we still don't really know much about the Kett. I say: Perfect! This is Mass Effect, I want to fel like a small human in a vast universe. If Ryder could just uncover everything there is to know about all that's going on, the entire setting would loose its charm (which is kinda what happened at the end of the trilogy, I'll remind you). There is a sentence in the post-ending content, which perfectly encapsulates this:Exactly! It was this kind of humbling "smallness" that made the universe in Mass Effect 1 so fascinating. With the end of the story, we solved a whole bunch of the immediate problems, we saved the day and we gave a hell of a punch to our enemies. That's enough. Even if they never make a sequel, I am glad they tried to preserve some mystery and didn't just make us king of the cosmos as it were.
Another common complaint I hear si that the Archon is not a good villain. Well, I'd agree, he is no Saren but
Finally, they also have a lot of post-ending content which is really well done IMO and helps to make me feel like I accomplished something big that had an impact on a lot of people.

- The graphics: Yes, some animations are still messed up but you get used to it quickly and patch 1.05 did a lot of good there, too. In general, the graphics are very good overall, especially the planet environments and above all ...

- The galaxy map: This is actually my favorite part of the game. It's exactly what I was hoping for, maybe even more. Finally the planets no longer look like plastic balls but like actual planets, with atmospheres, storms, continents, etc.. Finally I navigate like on a map again and don't push a silly toy ship around. Finally the planets I see actually fit their descriptions. And I can even see the details on the surface like active volcanoes or large canyons and rivers. I didn't mind the travel times between planets at all (but with the patch, those are a non-issue anyway, I'd just have liked them not to show the "Tab to skip" thing all the time now). And we can see where we are from the ship and the lighting in the ship depends on where we are (red lighting for a red giant star, etc.). Brilliant! I know, "windows are structural weaknesses, but in this special case, I don't mind the lore breaking, it's just too beautiful. Seriously, BioWare outdid themselves on that one.
Only thing I'd like improved there is that we should be able to visit the Tempest when it's landed. There already is a skybox for the Nexus docks, just add them for the outposts and Aya. I don't want to fly into orbit every time I need to just use the vidcall or something. Oh, and the planet descriptions could be a bit more creative at times (look at ME1 for inspiration there, stoff like the luminescent algae or the Ploba Jupiter brain, the carved moons, stuff like that).

- A changing world: It's great that there are new things happening on the Nexus as we progress through the story. Every now and so often, there will be new quests available and the important people like Director Tann or Evfra will have things to say about important events that happened. This adds to the ell that it's a living, changing world on which we can have an impact. Also, the outposts go a long way to help with that. I really like that they worked those out, complete with a bunch of NPCs that you can talk to. It really helps to make the outposts feel like an achievements and not just a map marker (like the inquisition camps were).

- The Nomad: The vehicles is really fun to drive and the combination of boost and the 4W/6W drive makes it more than just holding W all the time. Good stuff. I just went back to ME1 with the MAKO and it really makes me appreciate what they did with the Nomad.

- The focus on science and exploration in the setup: I really like that we can play Ryder as more of an explorer/scientist, rather than a soldier (like Shepard was). The scanner may not be the most intricate gameplay mechanic ever but it really helps with the feel of being not just there to kill things, so I really like to scan and look for stuff. Being a pathfinder also helps a great deal to make all the filler content seem more fitting than it did in DA:I. We are there to discover things like minerals, plants, etc., that's our job and it makes sense that this is what we do to help the initiative. Overall, I think ME:A is probably one of the BW games where story and gameplay fit together the best overall and to me, that is very important for immersion and the fun I am getting out of even the more repetitive gameplay.

- Sound effects and ambient sounds are very good.

- The crafting and item system is very nice IMO. There are problems with the UI (which I'll get to) but the actual system is pretty neat and - like in ME3 - I love the diversity of guns and equipment we have. Together with mods and augmentations as well as powers, the possibilities are vast. Probably still needs a bunch of tweaks here and there but in general, it's a great setup.

- Performance: This is different for everyone of course but on my not so new system, the game runs better than I'd have expected. It seems like it's pretty well optimized, IMO. Good work on the technical side.



The bad:
- The setup and the general scenario: While I think the game's plot works very well (see above), it requires me to completely ignore that this is a Mass Effect game because they way they shoved this into the ME universe is disgraceful and doesn't work at all. There are so many retcons and contradictions, I don't even want to count. I wrote a post about some of the most obvious ones a while ago and now that I finished the game and all side quests, nothing about it has really changed. It's a mess and I really need to turn off portions of my brain to play this game and to have fun, that's how bad this is.

- The characters and dialogue: Again, I have written a fairly extensive post about this already but just to summarize, the character writing is not u to what I am used to from BioWare. The squad mates in particular all seem to psychoanalyze themselves in front of Ryder, they tell you their personalities more than showing them and that's not great character writing. Overall, I find that the dialogue seems much less natural than I am used to from BioWare games. Most of the time, when I am in dialogue, I find myself thinking "Aha, the author wanted to convey point x". Now, it may be that this is me getting too familiar with how BW does things in their games but again, going back to ME1 after ME:A showed me that this was not so often the case in older BioWare games. Everything here feels like the authors wrote a lot of concept pages first and then figured out how to shove those into dialogue, rather than thinking about what the characters might actually be talking about naturally. Also, most of the romance related content is particularly cringe worthy in this one IMO.
Also, Ryder should be able to have different stances on things. I want to be able to be antagonistic so squad mates if they do stupid things (which is not always the case). I want to express a bunch of opinions, not just the same opinion in 2-4 different ways. That was never the purpose of the dialogue wheel, it was there, so that my character can actually express different opinions depending on player choice. I don't need paragon/renegade back as a system but I still want to be able to act in different ways.

- The story: Now, I know, I got this in the positives and I think in general it works but it has a few weaknesses as well, which I want to mention. For one, BioWare played it very safe on this one. They wanted a new beginning in a new galaxy but they were too afraid to really throw us into a new and unfamiliar place. 90% of the game are the familiar Mass Effect stuff, the familiar races, the familiar stereotypes, etc. They even managed to water down the alien characteristics of the existing races and anthropomorphize the crap out of them. The new races are frankly a bit on the boring side. I like the Kett for what is revealed about them in the story but they are ultimately still a general villain race, so we get something to shoot at. Their background certainly offers more nuance and I hope we'll see it in the future. The angara are the real disappointment though, not that I don't like them but they could have hradly gone with more generic rubber forehead aliens than this. At least ME1 had the Hanar and the Elcor, heck, even the Krogan were way more alien than the anagara. Get more creative BioWare.
Another point is the whole colonialist problem. It's one reason why I am very skeptical about the initiative's initial goal and also about my own protagonist. Because no matter how you put it, we are intergalactic invaders that need to take up living space (which seems very precious in the Helios cluster). Now, the story spins it so that we are ultimately and unquestionable the good guys in this and while the colonialist problem is mentioned sometimes, it is always a non-issue. Frankly, we got super duper lucky with the angara and their over-generosity (which, given their history is not even very believable). What would we have done if they didn't want us in Helios either? I think this kind of a plot was BioWare again taking the safe (not to say cowardly) option by just keeping this glaring issue out of the narrative.I really hope that BioWare will go towards exploring this very controversial and politically charged aspect of the Initiative in potential sequels. Mass Effect used to be known for not telling black and white but more morally grey stories, they should go back towards that legacy.

- The UI is horrible. Not only are the menus horrible to begin with, they are also bugged (I've got exclamation marks everywhere, so their use is basically zero). Why all those sub-folders within sub-folders everywhere? Why those long lists everywhere? Did anyone in QA notice that scrolling through the lists extinguishes exclamation marks before they are visible? Why lists and lists and lists in the first place? Why do we have extra screens for inventory, loadout, color changes and so on? Just redo the whole thing, it's horrible.

- Filler content: As I wrote above, it's already better than in inquisition but it's still too much. IMO, the game would already be better off if the randomized side quests (find 3 random data pads to get the nav point) were gone without substitution. They are useless, we already go through these environments for the good quests, we don't need those pick-up ones. If that were to free up dev resources, rather add 1 or 2 bigger quests then 10 small tasks. It's time way better spent. And don't worry if the game looses a few hours of playtime because of it. Everyone was happy with the dense 40 hour experiences in the trilogy. ME:A is closer to 100 as it is, I doubt many would complain if it were just 80 but without the filler.
BTW, the only filler that worked for me was the N7 assignments in ME2. They were also just little BS quests but each one introduced a small but cool new environment. If you wanted to add something like that, it would be really great since ME:A also has the problem of ...

- Not enough variety: I get that ME:A is the biggest ME game yet, that's undisputed. But for the marketing team to say last year that "it's the biggest Mass Effect game ever as it has over 100 planets" was one of the most stupid claims they could have possibly made. In fact, i am not a fan of those 5 big worlds, it doesn't go to show the variety that is possible and expected for a space exploration game. We want to be a space explorer because we get to see all kinds of cool alien environments. As nice as the planets we got are, I was underwhelmed by the fact that we only got to see 7 or 8 (2 of which were desert planets btw). IMO, it would have been much better, to have maybe 2 planets to roll around with the Nomad and then a few more small but diverse locations. This might also have helped with intensifying the story content and implementing better pacing in the game. It might also have helped to reduce another problem, which is....

- Backtracking: This is a typical open world problem but ME:A has it to a particularly high degree. Especially in the second half of the game, after you have established all the outposts, you get a lot of quests that require you to fly back and forth a lot between the already established locations. I don't mind a few of those (especially since as I said above, there is some change in the worlds over the course of the game) but in ME:A it gets too much. Before going into the endgame of the story, I spent half a day flying around, chasing quest markers and doing a whole lot of 10 second NPC conversations and mundane pickups and deliveries. More, but smaller locations that are more self contained would have solved this problem. Backtracking should mostly be reserved for the main quests, where it feels like you are doing something really important. (look at Witcher 3 for example, you need to do a fair bit of backtracking for the main quests but the side quests are mostly confined to one location near a town or village).

- The music: Now, the music is not particularly bad or anything (in fact, it's very much ok) but it doesn't hold a candle to the trilogy. I realize, given that I adore the OST of the trilogy, that's a high bar to set but music is very important, especially to get the emotional impact that BW is usually going for and I found the lack of any memorable tracks in this one noticeable.



Conclusion and hopes for the future:
Overall, I really like the game, especially for its fantastic and diverse gameplay. Unfortunately, some of the negative points weigh heavily in my book (especially the background and writing stuff), so I can't say that I really love it and it doesn't quite hold up to the trilogy IMO but it's a good game nonetheless.

If I could give BW some advice, I'd say this for future games:
You have a really good basis for a great game here, all the mechanical aspects work and they work well together. Now use it. Tweak the balance between open world and story gameplay a little, try to surprise us more, get a little more brave in what do, both in level design as well as story content. I don't want to do all those formulaic repetitive things. We get that you made great mechanics with the Nomad and a beautiful galaxy map but don't try to oversell them. Give us more variety and unexpected things. When I go into a star system in that beautiful galaxy map, I don't want to know in advance that I'll scan 3 out of 6 planets and find an asteroid. I want to be surprised, give me a small landing zone somewhere that I didn't see coming or a derelict space station to explore.
Also, hire a lore master and try to at least keep the Andromeda arc half way consistent (and just try to mention the milky way as little as you can from now on, that pot is shattered for good). And go through more revisions when writing your characters, treat them like people, not like concepts. Then, get the composers of the old ME soundtracks back and we should be in for one of the best Mass Effect experiences to date.

Well, that turned out pretty long and I hope I didn't forget anything (might edit if i did). And for those of you who like numbers:
ME:A gets 78/100 remnant data cores from me.

Have a good one!

EDIT: Also, just for the funzies and because it is a review as well, I'll leave this here:

This is based on a 98 per cent completed game.

The Very Good

Combat. I think they nailed the inclusion of jump (and the knock on to evade), cover and enemies also make use of it (though see below).

Environments. Most of the planets are genuinely beautiful to look at.

The Good

The voice acting for the Ryders (especially fRyder).

Crafting. Is not bad and it was good to see it included in the game and was, generally, done well.

The Nomad. I like the Nomad. A lot.

The Meh / Okay

The rest of the cast. Some of them are good to very good (Drack, Dr Lexi, Vetra, Suvi, Kallo), some is okay (Peebee and Jaal), and some are downright awful (Liam, Cora, Gil).

The Story. It's really just a rehash of Mass Effect 1 without the galaxy in peril or the really engaging enemy. Unlike Star Wars which needed a return to the start to save it from the prequels. Mass Effect really didn't need it. It needed a good, thought out story.

Exploration. The world's you land are large but don't seem to be full and very same-y.

The Slightly Below Average

The Dialogue and The Ryder Character. The very good voice over work can't really overcome the fact that the Ryder character is well written (a young character who suddenly becomes a messiah like character only able to save the cluster when everyone else couldn't). There's some good dialogue but a lot of it seems to be aimed at a teenagers ('Haha. I shot you in the face').

The Kett. Boring.

Enemy AI. This gets better as you go up the difficulty level and relies heavily on hordes on lower levels.

The Bad

The inventory system. Is frankly awful and not well structured (and lets the crafting side down).

The CC.

Romance. I'm not even referring to the treatment of LGBT community in this. I'm saying it's just bad. Really, really bad. 'Pretty good banging' it is not (in part because most of it is just not).

The Really Bad

Lazy Animation. FRyder's default, the bad facial animations, the repetition of faces. Hopefully this can be fixed with later patches but for a 5 years in development AAA game, I'm not sure this is good enough.

The Bugs. This is a very buggy game. Plot busting, moment killing, can't complete, falling through the floor. I can go on and on.

Overall

ME:A is not a bad game. ME:A is not a good game. ME:A is an okay game.

I think there's potential to push it into a good game but it will never be a great game.