A lack of imagination and user friendliness; my thoughts about ME:A

So I've finally finished my first playthrough of the game, did about 80-90% stuff that is available in the game I believe, Dunn survived in the end. I have some thoughts about the game. I won't mention bugs and animation issues, because I didn't encounter any game-breaking bug and the animations have been talked to death and they didn't bother me much.

The combat: Starting with the strongest aspect of the game. I love the move to a hyper-mobile style with the high jump and the jetpack, the skills that pack a punch, the kick of the weapons. The combat kept me playing in the most sluggish of points in the game, so kudos to BW Montreal for that. One issue that I have is that at the open map sections the usual range is very long, making most weapons outside sniper rifles obsolete, and all weapons start severely underpowered making it hard to play through insanity where the enemies quickly surround you and take you down. Crafting your own weapons is wonderful with the special modifiers you can add to the weapon, but it is a bit of trial and error to see what works. I had wasted a Black Widow with the beam augmentation, making it 4 times weaker than it should have been. The profile system is a decent idea on paper, but in reality the really long cooldown limits you. You have to get used to use your 3 powers and immediately switch profile to minimize downtime.

The UI is bad. Why do I need to click 4-5 times to approve something? Why assigning skills and profiles is so unreliable that I find often myself with the old skills? Why I have to navigate through a huge number of folders instead of straight away knowing what I have and what I haven't? Why separating research and development? They should have built upon the ME3 UI, instead they had to reinvent the wheel o_O.

The narrative: as the title says: a lack of imagination. The devs should have hanged the following in their office: "A Reaperless Galaxy". You can get the imagination run WILD here, but they opted for the classic "convert more to us" enemies with an unseen empire in the background, more ruins with hidden power, and more humanoid species number 251. I found the background information about the Jardaan more interesting than what we got in the main game. I've wanted to be the first to reach a galaxy where the highly advanced Jardaan, with advanced terraforming technology to be in a war of their lives against an overwhelming enemy. That overwhelming enemy can be a gray goo entity, a Zerg or Flood style swarm, even a synthetic army that rose to power and upgraded itself by reaching a point of technological singularity. The options are many. Hell, even the Kett can be more interesting, for example make them a some sort of an advanced AI and organic hybrid, and for god sake give them a leader that does not look like he has a severe Napoleon complex.

There are stuff that are tucked in here. Liara's cameo is very problematic for me. It undermines the credibility of her, that she knows about the Andromeda Initiative and doesn't tell Shepard at any point (not to mention the voice acting, like Ali Hillis said: "not this again "). In the mission with the Salarian ark the choice to save the Krogan scouts vs the Salarian pathfinder feels jammed in without a buildup. The first contact with the Angara is too brief and lacks impact, they starting to trust you way too quickly after you snuck to Aya, there are more examples like that. Another example is the Remnant drive core from Elaaden. Didn't the Krogan boss told that she plans to create a bomb to hit the Nexus with it? Why does everyone forgets that after we get that drive core?

There are interesting plot threads in here. The Ryder family secrets quest did surprise me in the end. We still have to know who is the benefactor, as well as the issue of the Quarian ark which is clearly a DLC bait, as well as dealing with the Archon's second in command and possibly bringing the might of the empire on the Heleus cluster.

The ending mission is spectacular, this is what should have been in ME3 instead of the COD mission we got there. It is very satisfying to see every ally you gain in the entire course of the game to help you, after such a polarizing game it leaves a good taste in the mouth.

The characters: ok, some characters suffer from bad writing making them obnoxious, a prime example for me is Gil, and Peebee for a lesser extent. I know it is a youtube comment level of opinion, but I feel like they are written for 8 year olds but tucked in with some sexuality.

BW should have played with the botanist angle of Cora more, rather than making her mention the Asari commando training every 5 sentences. It is told that she is "by the book" but I don't see that much when interacting with her. Please show, don't tell. Besides, the issue of the pathfinder successor should have been much more significant. She learned to trust Ryder far too quickly, negating any possible character development.

Liam is the resident "boring human male". James occupied that slot the best in all the games. Liam is pretty incompetent and I wonder why he is in the team. For a "crisis response specialist" he does very little crisis response. Besides, it feels that he is written to seem cool to 13 year olds. HUSTL? really? Getting naked for no apparent reason? Drinking beer 10 minutes after liftoff? Thats not professional at all.

I liked Vetra. I liked her soft side and protectiveness for her sister, her smoothness when dealing with people, her being sassy, the fact that everyone important in the Nexus is familiar with her. I heard that trying to romance her will lead to a dissapointment on that regard, but I didn't see it so no comment here.

Drack is cool I guess, but he is more of Wrex from ME1. I love Wrex, but I kinda wish for something a bit different. Besides, when I saved the Salarians it felt weird that it didn't have any lasting consequences with the relationship with him.

Peebee gets on my nerves. She isn't bad or incomprehensible as Sera, but she is selfish, reckless, and talks like a bad disney character. I wish I could kick her out of the ship after her loyalty mission. Sadly she is the only unique and by far the best looking Asari in game, so there is that. Her suddely forgiving Kalinda made me WTF? Also, almost no apparent character development for her. I want to see her slowly learns to work in a team after being a lone wolf for some time.

I grew fond of Jaal, that heavy emphasis on family, the eventual communication with the entire team, openly discussing his life and feels with them and Ryder, that weird but eventually endearing talking style. I saw some people dissapointed by him, I wasn't. Not any new species character has to be a troll like Javic.

Lexi and Suvi are OK, Kalo Jeff gets on my nerves. I wanted to kick Addison and Tann in the teeth, especially Addison which is incredibly tactless and has hidden agendas, trying so soon to suddenly befriend Ryder after establishing Prodromos. I liked Reyes as a character, he is a good gray moral character, and the game will benefit from having more like him.

I would conclude that the characters are often hit and miss. Thats disappointing in the grand scheme of things, because Bioware biggest strength suppose to be their characters.

Soundtrack: after the magnificent OST of ME3 and Inquisition, this is a major letdown for me. It is not bad, but it is unremarkable, only the menu theme is memorable out of the bunch. Guess I had to expect that from Pessano, everything I've heard from him was forgettable and just "there", no lasting impact. I wish they brought back Sasha Dykcian and Chris Velasco for the entire game. Well, hope remains for the inevitable DLC. Inquisition had the amazing "Lost Elf" and "Dark Solas theme" from Trespasser, so one can only hope the ME:A DLC will follow.

Everything around: The save system. Why disable saving in priority missions? The travel animations were horribly going through every single time, but luckily many became skippable in 1.05. Why do so many quests involve planet hopping? Why so many "collect 20 space bear asses" quests? I don't think the DA:I template works well for a Mass Effect game, and Bioware for the 2nd or even 3rd time doesnt do it well. Too much recycled stuff, too many Super Mario platforming, at least it is not as bad as DA:I this time.

The CC is terrible, no need to elaborate that, enough people did it already.

The Nomad is a significant impovement over the Make, I will give them that, but it doesn't make sense for it to not be armed. At least it doesn't handle like a floating drunken rhino and it doesn't have a paper tissue armor like the Hammerhead.

Conclusion: IMO Bioware fucked it up compared to their standards. It lacks the design and narrative imagination to keep things interesting (ME2 for example was very imaginative), the combat is great but in other areas the game sometimes makes it very hard to like it. But I'm a patient person and in my view Gameplay > story, so I give it a 6/10. 

BONUS QUESTION: How you would rate the game if theoretically all the technical, animation and UI issues are solved? I would bump it to 7/10 at most I think.