BSNer MEA Reviews thread (based on completed games)

Having now played a fair amount of the Multiplayer I can report that my impressions are only slightly better than for the Single Player.

Progression is slow and grindy, powers are dull and unispiring, action is so frenetic that any "team" cohesion is hard to develop, there are few stand-out weapons, and just as many bugs as SP.

"Meh" is the best way to describe the whole game.

I've not played HZD yet, but I think that could be coming sooner rather than later for me. I actually find myself wanting to play ME3 MP once more!

Apparently there's another DA in development, Well I might pick it up when it's been discounted. 

My honest opinion is that the game is very beautiful, but it seems to have sacrificed some of its original soul for that beauty. And like any deal with a devil, you can't help but wonder what it was that made them do it in the first place.

Pretty games are lovely, and ME:A does not disappoint. With the exception of Elaadan (too much white sand, reflective), the land was gorgeous. I get that the lands needed to be inhospitable looking, but really? Two deserts? But all in all, this is a minor complaint. The major complaint was animations. I didn't play much before 1.05, so I didn't see a lot of the terrible ones. But the scene where the Pathfinders all meet for the first bottle of wine had stiff, unmoving faces with only mouths moving badly. If this was what it was like before that, I understand why people were upset.

The gameplay was also very smooth. Jumping around with the jump-jets was fantastic and never got old. I tended to pick a gun and stick with it, but I really liked using Remnant guns, and the old-school Scorpion pistol. The enemies themselves were different: Roekaar and exiles were similar, but kett and Remnant were alien and fought very differently. That was good.

The plot reminded me of Firefly, which I liked, but the impetus was never really experienced. I understood Ryder's mission, and cerebrally, I got it. But emotionally, it just felt like a joyride. Everyone was off to have a good time exploring, like the seriousness never snuck up on them. I'd be annoyed if everyone wangsted about it, but I wanted at least someone to feel like this was so important.

The characters, at least the major ones, fell flat. Minor characters had a smidge of personality and it worked, but the vocal direction was very inconsistent and so the major ones bothered me. The minor characters on the Tempest: Suvi, Kallo, and Lexi, were likable (if in a superficial way, despite Suvi's talk of faith). The major characters just seemed annoying. Peebee gets a slight pass because she seems intentionally like a troll, but only Vetra (and, to a lesser extent, Cora) didn't make me roll my eyes in how ridiculous they were. Liam felt forced, Drack was a walking cliche, and Jaal was just aggravating with all his whining. Likewise with the other major characters in the story, I only really gravitated towards liking a few (most of the named salarians, NPC Ryder, and a few others)

This worked in the game's favor for villains, because the villains both large and small were very good at making me hate them. Not as much as Kai Leng, but from Annea to Sloane to the named kett, I did enjoy putting bullets into those people.

And then there was the controversy. The devs really shot themselves in the foot by promising to make changes to appease the SJW crowd. They're never happy, don't even bother. There's valuable resources to fix for all, yet the whiny minority seems to think they're the only ones who get to decide what is wrong.

its a good game

I truly enjoyed the game. It felt like an extention of the Mass Effect series. It was familiar and new. Just as with the original series, the longer I played, the more connected I felt with the series. I obsessively played it and valued the character development. I do hope that the articles that focused on Bioware just updating multi-player is just a rumor. I will continue to buy day one and support Bioware.

I want to sincerely thank the people that ranted, whined, and scathed about the facial animations and the few quests that were bugged. Thanks for being an awesome fan that ruins good series due to your absolute bitterness. Thanks so much.

Ok, so I'm really late with this. Only just finished the game last weekend (Xbox One S, 145 hours, 98%, Sara Ryder Infiltrator on Normal, romanced Suvi, concentrated on Casual/Compassionate dialogue)

Just started another run as Scott. This time I'll be concentrating on Biotics and the Professional/Logical side of the dialogue. Will probably romance Cora.

Clearly I enjoyed the game a lot and it's still holding my attention enough to replay it but I voted Good rather than Great because there were a lot of places where I felt it let itself down.

I'm not one to care much about animations or the odd bug but there were other disappointments:

1) Lack of squad control compared to ME3. I realize it's more realistic not to be micromanaging squad mates to the extent of exactly what powers to use when but, without that, I barely noticed what they were doing most of the time. I never felt it made the slightest difference who I took on missions other than to hear different banter while driving the Nomad.

2) For a long time squad-mates had nothing new to say. I found out later that it was because I was concentrating on viability of the various worlds while not progressing the main quest but, at the time, it was very frustrating when nobody had anything new to say mission after mission - including the character I had chosen as my love interest (Suvi). It was also annoying because the same dialogue trees hung around so you could never tell whether it would result in a new response or not (and it invariably didn't). I know a recent patch addressed this a bit but I don't think the fix worked very well. It was still highlighting dialogue lines that had nothing new in them. The trilogy was much better in presenting completely new dialogue options each time without leaving old ones around that just end up having the character repeating themselves.

3) Talking of repeating themselves. A lot of the ambient dialogue while walking around the Nexus seemed to be the same every visit even when it was patently not relevant to the situation any more.

4) The game was giving me numerous options to flirt and have casual sex or one-night stands but what's the point if it's just going to 'fade to black' every time? Even Suvi, my main romance, just did a fade to black which was pretty anti-climactic for the culmination of a game-long romance. It didn't have to be the adult content that was being hyped on twitter prior to the game but at least Trilogy-levels of culmination would have been nice. What's worse is the game rail-roaded me into sleeping with the reporter after I had finally established the romance with Suvi. I wanted to be loyal but there was no option to turn her down just because I'd been flirty with her prior to getting with Suvi

5) The Codex/Journal/Inventory etc. were really annoying in the way that they were inconsistently flagged as unread when they weren't or not flagged when they were. Plus once the unread option is on a different page to the first or last one it's impossible to locate because you wipe out the flag while scrolling before you even see it. There's no 'mark all as read' or ability to just show unread or sort by unread. It was really annoying trying to make sure I caught everything.

6) I really disliked Gil. He came across as an arrogant, inconsiderate bastard and yet somehow the game seemed to think we were best of friends by the end of it. Not in my head we weren't!

7) Maybe the decisions I made will have an impact on future DLC but I found a lot of them to have had no repercussions or relevance at all. E.g choosing to drill for water for this other group on EOS instead of gas for the colony. The decision was never mentioned again one way or the other!

8) The story didn't have the kind of pacing that the trilogy had. That's almost certainly because of its open world nature and the desire not to punish the player for wanting to explore it but you can't get away from the fact that if you let the player dictate the pace instead of the story dictating the pace then the story and the impact of the story is going to suffer.

I don't want to come across too negative. I still voted Good, I found the game pretty compelling and enjoyable and I'm looking forward to my re-play and to future DLC. I just think they missed the boat on a few things that would have made it Great.

Very honest and fair,  pinkshoesrus!

I loved ME:A. Tbh, it's not the best ME game and it had a rocky, bug-filled launch, but it is my favorite ME game thus far.
It deserves the "great" rating it got from me.

*continues playing ME:A*

This game is okay, it's nothing amazing. The gameplay is good but the whole experience is dragged down by a mediocre story and boring writing.I'm tempted to say that if they knew Andromeda would turn out like this, they shouldn't have bothered making it.

I'm someone who usually plays just one game at a time and plays it to death. I played ME3MP right up to the point MEA dropped came through my letterbox.

I'm dropping MEA today. I'm not some moron proclaiming I will "Never buy another Bioware game" but they've lost their shine. I certainly won't be pre-ordering another or buying it on day one.

Just bought HZD (Horizon Zero Dawn) and the contrast with MEA is stark. The game oozes with detail and you can see the care and attention in every frame. The animations are superb, the game play varied and the graphics, even in lowly PS4 HD, are jaw dropping. Never mind The Witcher (which I didn't rate) HZD shows that there are still great games from studios who aren't just phoning it in.

Not only is HZD superior to MEA but it also betters DAI (IMHO) - [sorry to Xbox players - I hate console exclusives too].

From all the news related to various staff being moved between EA studios to work on first person shooters and other pointless grunt fodder, it seems that BW has finally been completely absorbed into the EA collective. I look forward to Mass Effect Need for Speed II.

Over and out.

I finally got what this game reminds me of. It is a giant full priced Citadel DLC with people you barely know.

While this is a good example of better RPG design, we should note that the trilogy didn't track companion approval of Shepard either. This can explain why Dragon Age is better than Mass Effect, but not why ME:A is worse than the trilogy.




I don't see the problem, but I suppose this properly belongs on a spoiler board.