BSNer MEA Reviews thread (based on completed games)

Not good enough. Still liked it. Would've done something entirely different myself.

Good. 7/10.

If the bugs get fixed then it'll probably be a 8/10 or 8.5/10.

I think it's done a good enough job of drawing a line under the trilogy/Shepard, and successfully taken the franchise off in a different direction.

The technical faults have been documented ad infinitum so, suffice to say that all needs fixing.

Particular things I liked - story, Ryder, characters, combat/thruster, R&D/crafting, the Nomad, the Nexus/Aya hubs, conversational tone
Things I wasn't overly keen on - limited open world with generic Kett/Remnant encampments, the Archon, custom character designer, music (I can't even remember it!),

I'm on the fence re the romances - romanced Suvi with Sara, and now Cora with Scott - whilst I enjoyed Suvi's romance, it was short/limited. With both, I didn't really feel that I had many alternatives - probably Peebee for both but that's about it.

Overall, the game worked for me. Given that most of the team who made the trilogy seem to have since moved on, and that the end of ME3 left me with a distinct downer on the series, this game's done well in re-sparking my interest. Can't wait for the DLC.

So I just finished the game. And I bumped my vote up to great, which may just be the afterglow...

But Bioware games usually flub the landing, but this time, the end was REALLY enjoyable. It had a lot of the better elements from ME2, ME3, and DA2. I even liked the boss fight. Hard enough to be fun, but not just an annoying health whittle. And the end song doesn't suck, though I am constantly amused by Bioware's ending music choice.


Yeah, the animations still aren't good. The creator is painfully limited. There's some wonky design choices, both in and out of narrative. It feels like a few things really needed a bit more polishing, and some chunks of story could have done with an extra editing session. But when all's said and done, I love the combat. I adore most of the characters. There were a lot of good sidequests (maybe too many-- could have whittled those down and beefed up the survivors, but whatever). The worlds are gorgeous, and I liked poking around them. I actually had some fun solving puzzles and jumping around, which usually annoys me in games. And there were a TON of little touches that warmed my heart. So I like it. A lot. It's sure as hell not perfect, but it made me happy and I enjoy the freedom in pacing.

I voted great and i think it's worth every letter of "great".

Even if MEA has some rough spot like the no quicksave function or simply bad point (some of the animation are really bad just like people pointed out but ofc the majority are simply decent) the overall quality of combat,exploration and world building make the whole experience whortwhile.

Exploring is the cornerstone of this game. Finding new stuff on each planet was my primary motivator, completing that quest so you can unlock a new piece of lore or info about remnant,angara or kett gave me almost the same pleasure as speding time with the new crew members.
I find the new companions as charming as the normandy crew in ME1 i want to know more of Jaal or Drak as much as i wanted to know more of Garrus or Wrex.

The combat is exceptional in my opinion the flexibility and fluidness of the various profile the mobility of Ryder during combat is way above the cover system of ME1-3 (even if the auto cover sometime gave my some facepalm moment) but i really didn't liked the removal of the ability to use the companion abiiity for the combo system.

The main story while i find it good have a big lul in the middle due to the open worldness of the game, basically if you spend a lot of time exploring and do side quests the plot lose his sense of urgency.

Side quests are of varying quality some are really good like Jaal personal quest other are simply filler go there-kill x-done but truth be told there is nothing that come close to the bloody baron or the skellige succesion quest of witcher 3 (i'm not a fucking fanboy of W3 but i give creadit where is due those 2 quest are really of superb quality)

Cannot wait for dlc and ofc for MEA2

Cheers

I gave it benefit of the doubt and put it in great as it was great to play a Bioware game and really enjoy it unlike DAI.

I thought the gameplay was very good. I liked how they approached the exploarable areas & the quest lines there were generally enjoyable, applicable to the role etc.

Character: Ryder has a bit too much of his own personality for my liking. I'd much prefer a Me1/2 approach. Felt at times the dialogue tones were too inhibiting. I'd very much have liked options to be more aggressive or direct. At times Ryder was just too passive/naive.
I liked the family angle and how it was slowly revealed, sibling worked well, alec ryder was voiced excellently but was frustrated at dialogue options in relation to alec's choices.

Story. The remnant were fascinating & i'm genuinely excited to see more of what the builders were all about. The Angaran & Kett were interesting additions. The main problem the story had was a weak antagonist in the form of the Archon. Still lots of the side story content was fantastic, including lots of exploration dilemnas and some genuinely tough choices.

Squad. I love Peebee, Cora & Jaal. Drack is pretty much par for the course as a Krogan. Thought Liam and Vetra were the characters i struggled to grow any attachment to.
Of rest of crew Gil annoyed me from the start, the rest i liked.

Romances. I spent first half of game seesawing between Peebee & Cora. Both were very captivating. In the end the flirty sexual remnant loving Peebee won out though i'm planning to see how Cora pans out with a new ryder. Very nice to see Bioware unafraid to show a bit of flesh & avoiding the tired hookup before final mission approach. After finding DAI in regards romance it's a relief to come away impressed. Though clearly gay men haven't come away as impressed and i can see why after encountering Gil in the game.


Hope someone scuttles the Tempest and builds a proper ship. What a mess, no weapons, no shuttles etc.

I enjoyed it greatly hence the great rating. Only problems were the animations, glitches and the star map with pointless unskippable cut scenes, the whole navigation system was just bad.
I still cannot and will not comprehend why they released it in this state, the facial expressions can turn even the most serious scenes into a parody.

It is probably less considering the actual number of people who tried to play this game but could not finish. I wish there was such option on the poll.

FYI, seems like 383 registered users completed the game as of now. The forum has about 7600 registered users. Looks like 5%. There are plenty of people who play multiplayer and never even tried single player, not sure how many. it might be interesting to see how many people playing but did not complete.

Finally. I can write it here.

I think the game is good, but it could've been better (and, probably, with some luck and patches it still may be).

The Good:
-Characters writing. I'm not sure why some people dislike the new 'cast'. I've been VERY cautious and sceptical, and my expectations were well below 'neutral', but I loved most of them once I knew them better. TONS of amazing banters and character\character interactions, unlike MET, where most we could have is a small talk between the mission and\or remark during the mission. ME3 had got it right with its 'normandy banters', but MEA has MORE of this stuff - Nomad banters, 'field' commentaries, Tempest BBS( maan, loved it - wish they had used it more often).
Once again, I should say that there's a huge difference between the 'bad\unlikable\annoying character' and the 'badly written character'. I thought PB was anoying like hell, but I can appreciate the writer's work - they did good.

-NPC interactions. I had not seen so many of them since..I don't know, it made me think of KOTOR, DAO and 'oldschool' BW. It was refreshing to see it again and to have people who are there just to talk. They express their feelings, explain lore etc. Most of them are not even the quest-givers (although some are).

-Visuals. While some planets are more 'generic' than the others, I think they've got that 'exploring the huge galaxy' right. It's ME1 back again. Havarl, Vaults, H-047c. World-design is good, and even the most 'generic' planets (like Hoth Voeld) had it shining and beautiful moments.

- The ambient music\ soundscape yes, it's actually there and it's good. Its' true that MEA does not have proper 'themes' in its OST, but all the 'background' music is there for the player, and it fulfills its purpose - sets the tone & mode.

- Comabt dynamics It's ok. Note that I'm talking about the overal 'responsiveness and feels' here, not about the skills\profiles system - more to it later. Jetpack, jumps and stick-to-cover work well (most of the times)

- The planetary\side-missions. This game has its share of 'generic fillers', but it also has its memorable minor plotlines and\or quests.

The 'Not so Bad':

- The Big Story Yeah, well...it has flawes, YES. So true on many levels, but neither of MEs was a 'flawless gem' on that matter. Even ME1 (the most consistent one) had some logic issues and those B-movie 'talking villian' Saren\Benezia scenes. And if you love ME2, then there's literally no reasons for you to hate MEA.

- Galaxy map It looks good (breathtaking when you get to it for the first time), but it gets old eventually. It's a nice touch, and we have that 'skip' button now.

- The skill\combat system It's a mixed bag. Not being limited to the class is fun...but being limited to 3 buttons is not. By the time you get enough skillpoints to experiment with alternate profiles, you might think something like 'why even bother?'. Some may find more use to the profiles, but I've barely switched it

The Ugly.

- UI And before someone comments on the ' evil cnsoles and gamepads' - NO, it's not 'optimized for the gamepad'. It's just a messy and non-intuitive and non-user-friendly UI, with awkward menus. People have to google for the basic features like 'how to use the consumables' (or 'how to return to Tempest on a certain planet').

- Crafting I was surprised to see how lacklustre and ruined the system is. DAI had great crafting system, and I was expecting MEA to follow the model...which it did...in theory. Crafting is OP (as usual), but we only have ONE armor-set per 'class'\gameplay. There's only ONE craftable armor with tech bonuses, one with biotics, one for the headshots etc. So, basically it's like ME3 with its 'class-specific' components, but you have to craft and upgrade them (and I think ME3 had MORE variations, actually -e.g. recharge speed vs tech power).

We only craft for Ryder (because squad uses their 'iconic' outfits). Remember Liam explaining how we have all kinds of guns and mods? Well, he had lost his interest in that variety, along with the rest of the squad. They won't change their weapons, not even to the same-class weapons...and guess what? We still see 'the magic Avenger' in some cut-scenes.

The UI is especially bad with this one. Good luck trying to find out how to reuse the same augmentation!..
(hint - you need to unequip the item and destroy it. Then you get your mods back. One heat-sink per inventory, man!)

- Some side-missions. I've listed some as good, but there were some really terrible ones too. They are not that numerous though, and on your second PT you may just skip this shit and avoid the suffering. Not spoiling the details here - if you're into spoilers, there are some threads running in the 'spoiler' zone.

- Character screentime - it's realy NOT equal, and while I understand that it's impossible to 100% balance the story with writing obectives like '20 minutes per each character', Id rather see more 'equality'. Writers should remember that forcing the characters onto player is generally not the best idea, it may hurt even the best-written ones. I know that BP (or Liara) are not responsible for such a treatment, but it's there and it's annoying.

- Sudoku. It's less PITA now that they have patched more keys and made them cheaper, but man.. whoever thought that playing sudoku (LOTS of them) is mandatory for the Mass Effect  game should get some rest. Mini-games are fun when they are played for fun (aka 'optional'). 

-boss\encounter design A huge step back after ME3. Rannoch Reaper? Tuchanka Reaper? Fighting Harvester or escaping banshee? Taking down the thrasher maw? Forget it. We've got 1 mini-boss (reused several times, I think I had killed 5 or 6 of them, and I had skipped some content), 2 'big mobs' (destroyer + fiend) and a dragon huge and optional worm-like thing.

The Final Fight had essentialy same thingI've been shooting for 100 hours with the same objectives borrowed from the multiplayer. I'd never think that I can possibly bring ME2 human reaper boss fight as an example of anything, but at the very least it was different.   Basically all the encounters had strong 'MP' feeling about them - fight the wave of generic goons + take care of the 'boss' (which has same reused mechanics). The fact, that squad has issues with targeting specific boss parts (floating orb, which keeps the shields on) did not make it any more enjoyable. 

If you make a game based on an established IP, you actualy stay "on course" or add something new, you usualy (and should not) go back and take away.

The characters are not bad, true.

But their lack of interaction with the story (everything Ryder does) makes them very unmemorable.

Squad banter in the field, we had it in ME already, and people loved it, so we got more of it in DA2 already, and even more in ME2/3/DAI. So nothing new.
Squad on tempest...we had it from the very first game, now they added some "live" to it by moving the crew around. And giving them some "off mission" lines. That is good. Having them in our "base of operations" is actualy soemthing we had since KOTOR.
Squad on hub worlds with a few lines... again nothing new, we had this in DA2 ME3 and DAI.

But what they removed:
In almost all conversations (and thus decision making) we had in previous games, we saw our squad there and they were doing something, sometimes just standing around, but their poses and face expressions (as low as they were) gave us a hint about their feeling, but most of the time they had somethng to say, giving valuable (not realy vital) insights, maybe even changing our prespective. THAT made the crew/squad good and memorable (Garrus was actualy not such a great NPC in the first ME). Now, in almost all major conversations Ryder is alone and during minor conversations the cam just zooms in on Ryder, the NPCs we talk to walk offscreen so we barely hear them and our squad is somewhere far away so we dont hear them either. Except for a few cutscenes, the crew is missing, thats why they are so forgetable.

Banter, chatting at the base, "personal" (loyalty missions) is all good stuff, but char involvement is NECCESSARY.

"A game is a series of meaningful choices" - Sid Meier.
This is a completely subjective opinion and supposed to be considered as such.

Completed the game yesterday (96%). MEA is a light-hearted adventure with overwhelming feeling of discovery and exploration.

Here are some thoughts:

• Graphics are adequate (animations, textures, etc). Space looks gorgeous and I got used to some scenes (to hide loading screens?) being unskippable. I guess, instead of 2.5D maps, a couple of menus would be sufficient (but less impressive).
  
• Sound (soundtrack, VA) is not annoying, which equals "good".
  
• The plot is a little tricky to describe - linear Priority missions are sad (I can't plan and have to rely on dumb luck and Deus ex Machine). The last few missions severely limited player's agenda,
  
  SPOILER: Click to show
  the only way to progress was to disobey orders (without suffering any consequences), instead of at least trying to reason (from persuasion to blackmailing) with Tann.
  In comparison, Dishonored 2 and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided both had large maps and multiply ways to achieve objective (neither was an RPG, though). Meridian did show impact from the previous choices, which is ultimately good.
• Too many cut-scenes, where it should have been gameplay sequences - 
  
  SPOILER: Click to show
  fight in bar with Drack, climbing with Vetra or poker with Gil.
  Assassin's Creed III done it right - in one of the missions the player had actually not-to-lose a checker match for several turns.
  
• Companions are great (except for one time, when
  
  SPOILER: Click to show
  one of them bribed an Initiative worker and the player couldn't do a thing about it, it hurt my Lawful Neutral alignment badly).
  I think, Liam's Loyalty Mission had a lot of self-conscious irony from Bioware. Combat-wise it's hard to attempt anything more tactical, than "let's focus on that enemy". Lack of control is disappointing. SAM is one of the best aspects of the game, both gameplay- and story-wise.
  
• Gameplay (excluding Priority Missions) is diverse, challenging, and enjoyable. There are freedom of movement and possibility of different approaches. I tried to play as an Infiltrator with only melee weapons and was quite successful at it (Observers, Architects and kett-in-bubbles being exceptions). The combat could be better with more attack options for melee weapon (attack chains, parry, block, roll, etc.).
  
• Dialogues. It wasn't always obvious if a reply is a variation of "okay" and irrelevant or if it affects quest's outcome
  
  SPOILER: Click to show
  (e.g. in "Contagion" difference between "save the hostage/destroy the terrorist" was clear; in the Task on Kadara with SOS signal, it was not).
  Sometimes neither of options was close to my choice
  
  SPOILER: Click to show
  (e.g. "Little Things That Matter" missed the opportunity to give up "the first human born in Andromeda" for adoption and throw the thief in jail).
  
• Side quests in general are engaging and challenging ("Scan 16 minerals" included, because those were hard enough to find).
• Crafting could be worse, could be better.
  
• The Nomad is one of the best transports I've ever used.
• CC was too hard to use effectively, so I chose the default face for the 1st PT and set to show helmet "as equipped" (the game occasionally took it off, though).
• UI is fairly comfortable after some time - I was able to use keyboard only for navigation through menus. Inventory lacks function to sort content and limited to 80 items (these aspects combined make it somehow bearable).
• PC controls are comfortable, it's possible to bind 2 button to 1 action (separately for Nomad, normal and travel parts) and support for 5-button mice.
  

As a side note to the main story line - apparently Unit 731 will provide background for villains for many games ahead. Gamers must not feel any sympathy to antagonists, so it must be either zombies or robots or very unethical people. _/sarcasm
As a side note to the world-building - the Abyssal Worm
_{/no sarcasm}

Edit. Added completion rate, UI, PC controls and moved examples under spoiler tags.