A critique on MEA's problems that are NOT about the animations.

You're kidding? His past, his action, his mistakes and regrets, what it feel to serve on  human ship, jokes, reaction to event, analysts of event on hand and thought on next action, moral support, and his own philosophy of him self and turian mind sets.

Jacob isn't boring, the probelm is he is surrounded by wacky colorful characters to the man. He is the only relatively normal person on the ship. Sure, no one is going to love him like he is Mordin or Jack, but he serves his purpose. You need to have  stand by characters like Jacob, or Pressly or Steve Cortez to keep the ship from feeling like a three ring circus. Maybe, if there is a criticism I could level at Andromeda is that there arn't any patented Mass Effect stiffs on board, everyone is a colorful freak.

the boring repetitive tedious fetch qusts,
and boring exploration
and asari clones

me1 was established in a developed galexy so it has an advantage of having thing there for yoy to find. MEA is in a new galexy with nothing developed or established yet out side the angara and the kett which make sense because it would unlikely find one race of aliens in a cluster.

Yeah, but if BioWare can rule-of-cool in catsuits and whatnot despite established lore, I think they might as well rule-of-cool in something that adds genuine intrigue and variety to the game. If we're already breaking the rules, break them in the direction of interesting stuff.

Hell, if we really wanted to stay within lore bounds, we could have reasonably encountered something more Rachni-like.

I agree that you could have had more variety of alien races, but to have the main sympathetic race in the series be utterly inhuman looking is not a reasonable suggestion. As far as the Kett go, if would be even more lazy to make them a bunch of space monsters when we just got through that in the last series. These guys feel more like the Romulan empire than they do Lovercraft monsters, and if we actually see more of their empire and government in future installments, it will be the first time we have a true alien opponent in ME that is not an unknowable fright from beyond dark space. I know someone could say that ME is being Trekized (my word so don't steal it), but do we really want everty iteration of the franchise to be all about fighting giant things that want to gobble up the galaxy? That sounds lazy to me.

I look forward to seeing how the characters grow and develop in subsequent stories if they chose to do an Andromeda 2.

Are you serious? Our first encounter with Peebee is her jumping on us and sitting on us. We don't have the option to dodge her, we only have the option to push her off. But in the words of the lead, Who would want to? And she also asks any Ryder to have sex in zero g, even if they haven't flirted with her at all or are actively pursuing another romance.


Anders in DA2 has one flirt in a dialogue where the player can gain rivalry (which in that game is not the same as disapproval) and Kaidan? The majority of straight male players aren't even going to see Kaidan in ME3 because he died at Virmire. And in order to get his romance scene we have to buy him whiskey and select all of the investigative dialogue options. If not for the Internet showing complete playthroughs and romance scenes I bet almost zero straight guys would have ever known Kaidan could be romanced by male Shep in 3. There are way too many hoops to jump through to get there. Neither of which need a stick to be beaten off, unless by that you mean not having to acknowledge a man expressing any attraction to another man at all.

It's telling that you reference two bisexual males as romances you think are "forced in our faces" and not the ultimate writer's pet Liara, whom the trilogy assumes as a default romance option if Shep isn't actively engaged with someone else. I would consider her more as needing "beaten off with a stick" since I never romanced her in ME1 or ME2 and yet one of my first Citadel dialogues with her in ME3 is asking if we could be something more. No, Liara, if I wanted to be something more with you I would have made that known in the last two games.

I could live with the animation issues and bugs, as has been pointed out, every game has them. I did not like the Angara, I thought they were too ordinary. Yes, a 5-foot jello mold with some kind of electric shock powers would have been awesome as a squadmate. I think its more about not having to do as many animations, just re-skinning "generic character #4" or whatever. But some people like the angarans, so that is somewhat a matter of personal taste. The Kett, similarly, I did not feel were exceptional villains, felt too much like collectors, but you have to have someone to fight, after all, it IS mostly a 3rd person shooter. Again, some people seem to like them, so its a little subjective.

My real problem is the weak storyline. SOOO many plotholes, so many times I just said, "Wait,what? Why?" Starting with the fact the Hyperion couldnt avoid the scourge. They had plenty of time, the bridge crew, engineers, med staff, and more were up and working long before Ryder, it was easy to see, being almost the size of half the cluster...why???

Viability process was solve 3 puzzles, push a button x5 planets.

Because your crew is handed to you, there is only the 6 loyalty missions outside the Kett storyline. I thought the characters were a stron point in the past. In contrast, ME2 had 8 recruitment missions and 10 loyalty, which cemented each character's personality, for good or bad. This got traded for more open world quests which I dont think worked as well. I would have traded 20 fetch quests if I had a long mission to save Drack from being a Kett prisoner to recruit him, for example

Lack of impact. I would have liked to see the planets and outposts change more, making it feel like I was really having an impact. Maybe having your base outpost, a little more at 75%, and max at 100%. At the end of my game, Eos hadn't changed since the first time I left. (Except no more radiation).

I'm sorry, I don't consider that the start of the romance. It is completely different then being confronted by two characters that will come on to you, and instigate a romance line without your consent unless you immediately shut them down hard (in Ander's case taking a huge hit in approval). Since I have only romanced Pebee so far, I don't know how hard it is to avoid the romance, but it is irrelevant, because all I said was that Bioware has done this before, not deny that they have also done so here.

Also, why are you fixated on male players? If you haven't experienced Kaiden's scene with femShep in ME1, where you have to tell him off or get stuck in a conflict with another potential LI (Liara asks if you and Kaiden are in a relationship, even if you completely rejected him in the previous scene) then you can't debate that point with me. Let me be clear, I have NEVER played as a male protaganist in ANY Bioware game and can not even begin to discuss doing so, either as gay or straight. I have romanced males as a female protagonist, but that is all. Also, your reference to Liara is making my point, Bioware has done this before. Be mad at them, not me.

One particular playthrough, I had Wynn go full-on senile.  In the chat where she talks to the warden about her romantic involvements, she referred to both Leliana and Alistair, like every other sentence.  Apparently, the code goes back and forth in checking the relationship points with each of them - it was pretty funny.

In my games, he sometimes hangs it all up at the Hanged Man.  Poor guy.