What were your thoughts on the romances?

Honestly, we have to also think most of these romances are meant to carry over to a sequel. So if they give you all the romantic content on one go, they will have less ideas for that romance on future installments. With Dragon Age they have to do their best in one go because you only get to play as that protagonist once. With Mass Effect Andromeda I think they have a good starting foundation in general compared to ME1 to move on forward with. Instead of having a bunch of last minute additions/options. They still definitely need to improve quite some, but I think its better overall compared to how we started on ME1.

So far, I only had one playthrough and romanced Peebee and Keri. Flirted with Vetra and Suvi just for the fun of it. They're nice, I like how Peebee slowly get attached to Ryder, lika Isabela did. I got emotional when Sara affirmed that she wanted more, and Peebee jumped on her. But I'm tired of romancing asari, that doesn't care about genre and it diminishes the f/f value, and I'm still salty about Cora being straight, so it kinda of influence my opinion.

And it really bothers me that people like romancing turians so much. It's just being different for the sake of being different, and romance them just because it's a game. You can't properly kiss them, just tangle tongues, and it turns out to be just a silly joke. Humans and turians can't go down on each other, because they can die, and can't have some good hump because turians are mostly covered in metal. They're only good for asexual relationship.

I've only romanced Cora so far which, in my opinion, is one the "best" romances in the game in the way it was handled and made. Basically, I think every romance should have had the same treatment: satisfying build-up, a few confessions, some nice one-liners, interesting banter in the Nomad and such, possibility for the LI to be jealous of others and an explicit romance scene with two different outcomes. Also, the animations in the sex scene were A+. So, when I watched other romances (Gil's, Suvi's or Vetra's) I felt really disappointed for other players looking forward to these romances and who got the short end of the stick to be honest. For example, Gil's is very weirdly paced like someone's already mentioned, the whole baby thing is messed up (the implication that Jill is "pressuring" her gay best friend into procreating...), Suvi's is very sweet but could have used two outcomes too and not just one without any sexual implications that some players might have wanted and Vetra's... Well, let's just say that steak was disappointing on so many levels. From what I've seen her romance is sweet too and I find she's a great squadmate but that last scene? I'm so confused.

I also agree that though Reyes didn't get full treatment and so no sex scene, his romance is really nice and my male Ryder actually almost went for him before locking in with Cora. I think if he'd had more scenes/content I would have gone with him, but since once you finish Kadara you basically never hear about him again until Meridian, I just couldn't decide on him. I don't know. I love Andromeda, I really do, but I really feel like the team could have used another year to polish animations and possibly add a bit more content for these romances. I love the romance-related banter in the Nomad though, some of it is priceless.

Yup. Anders cropped up frequently so I'll use him as an example: some people felt Anders was written to be straight if romanced by female Hawke and *bisexual if romanced by male Hawke because of things such as how his conversation with the former leaves out Karl whom he loved and was once in a relationship with.

Note: *Well, gay but I think he and Isabella can still reference something regardless of his romance.

Thank you! This is one of the main reasons I hate the playersexual route - they always create the characters from the straight perspective first before changing a few lines of codes to make them available to the same sex. It just comes across as lazy and unfair to me and they almost always never feel like they were created to be equal from the beginning or at least lean more towards the same sex than the opposite one, especially for the guys. I mean, look at this:

Zevran: Tells you straight up that he prefers women to men and the way he describes his past makes it seem like he learned to seduce men because of his job, not because he naturally likes them
Anders: Clearly straight in DAA and despite what the devs say, the most playersexual character in the game as he only tells male Hawke that he was in a relationship with Karl and not female, so you could argue, and be right, that he's straight on the female route
Fenris: Only has consensual sex with a female outside the PC
Iron Bull: Only talks about his conquests with women, several NPC women mention their flings with him while no male NPC does that, and the only gay content he has is tied solely to the gay character
Kaiden: Straight in ME1, turned bi in ME3 and some of his scenes with femShep were cut from the male romance
Reyes: You get to meet his ex-girlfriend but hear nothing about any of his male conquests. Of course, he does send you an email, I think for males only, that says he prefers guys over ladies, but it still seems pretty disingenuous that he tells you in an email and doesn't proclaim it to everyone like Zevran does

Not to mention that the playersexual route always feels like it's hiding gay guys from their straight audience. With set sexualities, at least you know that a certain character is always gay and you just can't hand wave it away and pretend their straight.

My personal enjoyement of romance and the character is not impeded by the fear that some othe player somewhere in the world might god forbid enjoy a relationship with that very same character in a way other than mine. Hells, some folks enjoyed chain-killing the characters I was crazy about, let alone kissed them with a different gender protagonist than mine. I rarely think about what someone else might be doing and with whom in the game while I am playing it.

Canon, always the foe, I suppose. Canon and wanting that One True Way of interpreting each character...

I honestly couldn't care less what people headcanon these various character's sexual orientations to be. BioWare games are about the player being the hero. This is your own personal story. The game should be as accessible to the player as possible and provide them with as many options as possible. There will always be someone that believes this character is straight or that one is bi. But, does it really matter in the end? It's a game. We are all here to enjoy the experience and have fun. Does providing more options for everybody really ruin the overall experience?

I think the romances themselves were shallow and uninteresting. The one saving grace I thought was Peebee's. Because it really made the asari bonding process feel like it was something special, something deep and melding. The dialogue was cheesy, I think. But, just like cheese, it was also good.

Cora's was meh, mostly just there for sideboob and Scott's thrusting butt.

Liam's was also meh. I don't have too much to say about it.

Vetra's didn't feel like romance. It had the Vakarian vibe down pat. But I never saw that relationship as romantic. It was a great buddy relationship.

I never liked Jaal, so I've never seen his romance.

Reyes's plot was kinda like a heist movie. It's wasn't terrible, but it wasn't what I tuned in for, and the fake-out-make-out just made sense, it didn't feel like a romance.

I love Suvi, but her romance didn't really do it for me.

Gil's was just "so what?" I think the controversy, and the whining of the gay men upset that they got "shafted" is the only reason I haven't forgotten he was even a romance.

I like Avela, but I've never seen her romance. Ditto with Keri.

Without two additional options, which are only opened to 33% of female avatars, the choices of males in DA:I for a female avatars are between an aged biker gang looking child-killer who states in dialogue 2 that he'd rather do his duty, and a fat guy who has extremely odd sexual preferences. It's not exactly a celebration of romantic love among the cool adventuring band. It's actually the only part of gritty realism left in the franchise. I played a gay male for that reason. Changing gender was easier to me than changing the race I wanted to play to have a less gruesome romantic experience. If there is one game that would make me worry about BioWare's feeling about girls who play games, it would be Inqui.

I have a feeling that number of players that wanted to be able to romance Cullen on any gender and race PC exceeds the number of female players that were truly taken by that exclusivity of Blackwall's romance.

Where Cullen has an exacting height standard for potential mates, Dorian lightheartedly mixes and matches "those disgusting oxmen" with "amatus, you are the hottest thing in Thedas, my lovely Quanari you....". If I am expected to explain away the second, it is silly to confront me with the sudden rigidity of the first in the name of character development.

You feel that fairness is having everyone silo'd with one romance per, depending on their gender. My feeling is that fairness is allowing everyone to fall in love with whomever they will.

I can't care less how many romances what gender gets, so long as I get to build a PC I adore and discover a romance that sweeps me off my feet. And I dislike having to adjust the variables for the second playthrough after researching all my options in the first one. I wanna get what I want right away.

Do bisexual romances offend some sort of sensitivity in the community, similar to non-virgin girls considered inferior/spoiled back in the day or something?

And if that means that heterosexual and homosexual romances are completely neglected that's fine for you? Well to each their own but when I found out that Suvi was a lesbian (a character I kind of wanted to romance as male Ryder) I was fine with it because lesbians got to have at least some representation. I kind of don't want that to go away.

Not neglected, but left to the individual player's choice to interpret it as they wish. I like how DA2 did it. I did not have to play a female to romance Anders, and it was great.