Dragon Age:Inquisition VS Mass Effect:Andromeda - which one did open-world better?

MEA, definitely.

I hated walking around and picking up an elfroot every three steps. I actually loved the Hissing Wastes just because I didn't have to pick up stupid garbage crafting materials every five seconds (and watch a 4 second animation to do it *shudder*). MEA has just the right amount of nodes to pick up and mining if I don't want to bother with hand gathering at all.

Mounts in DAI were pretty but useless; the Nomad is fun to drive. Gather X collectables in MEA is better since there are fewer of them, though I would prefer we didn't have to do that at all. MEA had interesting things to discover when you just drove around off the beaten path. Doing spastic jumping to get 140 shards in DAI was really painful and frustrating. I liked the jumping puzzles in MEA because there were fewer of them and the jump jet is just fun to use.

DAI was a slog. I couldn't play it more than once. I've already started my second playthrough of MEA.

Open world- MEA
Story- DAI

Overall I said MEA but it isn't that clear cut. MEA does better with their overall questing but DAI had more environmental variety. That said I think DA 4 can stick to the semi open environments if they streamline it a bit, fill it with better questing and make the zones feel more organic and less artificial. However in ME's case it just does better with smaller more linear level design. There is a reason why MEs 2 and 3 had the most environmental variety, faster pacing, and more engaging experience. Those games kept you on the move and I never felt like I was wasting my time.

While i thought some of the DA:I maps were impressive ( Arbor Wilds, Trespasser, Emerald Graves ) others were blah ( Hissing Wastes, Emprise du Lion ).
ME:A is much better regarding the layouts, Elaaden reminded me of MTbiking in the Moab/Fruita area .
Nomad's handling varying with the terrain is well done although some situations are dumb. ( riding over an entire camp and not damaging anything ) . I had a few chuckles driving over outlaws, (which worries me.)

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out of topic side note: i had never bothered doing sudoku in my entire life, i now have and officially hate them . What next, "hidden words"?

MEA for me. I still haven't finished my first PT of DAI, and not sure I ever will. Enjoying MEA despite its shortcomings, and will likely more PTs.

Mea had the better open world

DA I is the better game.

Well, there's pros and cons for both. DA:I had more varied, more interesting looking locations whereas with ME:A, the only location that truly looked unique was Havarl. However, ME:A's sidequests are, slightly, less boring and tedious than the ones in DA:I. At the end of the day, both games could use a lot of work in their "open world" aspects.

Overall, I'd still say I like DA:I more than ME:A. The facial animations were better (by far), I like the characters in DA:I more overall, and I also liked DA:I's story more (the story in Inquisition wasn't exactly a masterpiece, but I liked it more than ME:A). Oh, and I didn't run into nearly as many bugs and glitches in Inquisition as I have in Andromeda.

They both had their flaws and their good points.

I felt like MEA had made improvements on a lot of the things that I didn't like about DAI, but the thought of replaying the first chunk of MEA just sounds tedious, whereas I did a second runthrough of DAI almost immediately.

Neither really, it takes away from the story and characters. It gets boring after one PT.

Since I am more of a ME fan than a DA fan it hurts me to say this but I think you are right. I think part if it is for the most part the DA team that worked on previous games also worked on DAI and also DAI wasn't a semi reboot they had previous plot arks and returning characters they could work with.

Although entertainment factor within story is much better in MEA I would say. The main plot at least plays like a decent/good action shooter thing. DA:I's story is kinda decent on paper but the execution and pacing was just so bad. It tried to be like a mystery plot but it felt perfunctory

People seem to forget DAI is 3 years old and had major limitations of older consoles holding them back. I expected a hell of a lot better from MEA. The fact that people are debating this shows how badly Andromeda failed in its open world and its questing in general. With all things considered, DAI wins.