Unpopular Opinions?

Unpopular opinion? Well, I freaking love this game. The next book can't come out fast enough, and since it looks like there will be two books, I'm hoping we get two DLCs. I love this game a lot and hope to see full trilogy.

Enemies are in camps. The lack of civilization isn't meaningful. I understand that you don't like the Andromeda's enemy placement, but the way you're stating it makes it sound like you don't like it because it's just easier to find your enemy in the OT, rather than whether it makes sense.

"Driving around to get to your quest" is not combat. That's gameplay and that's a separate issue. Your original statement was about the combat and people shooting at you from behind you, and I tried to explain why that made more sense than the much more linear enemy encounters in the OT.

FWIW, I totally agree.  Melee combat isn't fun.  It wasn't fun in ME2.  It was even less fun in ME3.  The open world random shuttles aren't fun either.

More unpopular opinions:

1) Sometimes I think Andromeda was sponsored by Tiny Buddha, MindBodyGreen, etc.  Enough about journaling and authenticity and empathy and feelings and coloring books already!  I say this as someone who loves Tiny Buddha

2) The more I play, the more I get sick of babysitting Jaal.  If there was ever a character who shouldn't give classes on mastering emotion, it's him.  Not really crazy about emotional expressiveness as a root for developing a fictional species, but most of the other Angara are fine.

3) Havarl is the best planet, followed closely by Eos.

4) Liam and Cora are my favorite characters, followed closely by Kallo and Vetra.

5) Amidst the game's vastness lies probably one of the best 30-50 hour games Bioware has ever made.  I'm not a huge fan of hopeless situations and grim settings.  Montreal's writing team brought a naive freshness to ME that's been missing since the first game.  They have a heck of a lot of potential.  I hope they'll be given the chance to develop their chops in future games, but I'm not very optimistic. 

6) No matter how hard I try, I really don't care about the choices on Kadara.  Reyes is a compulsive liar.  Sloane puts heads on spikes.  Other than that, they're six of one, half a dozen of the other. To quote Ryder: "Is everyone on this planet a lying a-hole?"

7) Environmental hazard is the most annoying game mechanic Bioware has ever put in a game.  Voeld could be an interesting planet, but the persistent environmental hazard ensures I'll never fully explore it.

Maybe a full melee class might be fun, but on my setup, melee's pushed off onto the "F" key while every other weapon skill is mouse-based.  It's inconsistent, immersion-shattering, and disrupts the flow of combat.  Stun-locks are even worse.  The game trains you to hold keys down constantly ("E" for Kadara Port, anyone?), but to break a stun-lock, you have to tap repeatedly?  It works against the overall game flow and the whole concept of muscle memory.  Half the time when I'm trying to fire up the scanner ("G"), I end up bashing things with the @#$@#$@ hammer

The Asari sword is worse.  You do some weird animation that messes with your sense of direction, and the camera ends up screwy.  There's no minimap-- speaking of that, bring it back, Bioware!-- to help you get your bearings back.

I wish they'd fix it or abandon it completely.  Then again, this is the "unpopular opinions" thread

HERE WE GO!!!

1.) The original ME is actually pretty shit...

2.) ME:A is a great game.

3.) There is a bit of SJW bullshit in ME:A (but not much, thankfully.)

4.) ME3 is the peak of the OT.

5.) Acquisition by EA has been largely a plus for BioWare.

^{Might add} MOAR ^{in a later post... depends on the level of flame I receive.} 

LOL, no flames here. 

Disagree vehemently on #4, though.  I hated everything about ME3 except Thane's death and James Vega's character.  Those were well done.  Everything else was either cheesy, depressing, or a blatant ripoff of a far better science fiction series.  Thresher maw thumpers?  Seriously?  I thought I'd at least get to ride the sandworm!  And that was the best mission.  Progress was gated behind weird, untrained combat mechanics like those horrible turrets or the laser pointer gun.  Nothing made sense.  The music was awful.  I missed 99% of side objectives because the devs completely got rid of maps.  Having to "play" Shepard's stupid dreams.  Just blah.  The ending was the least of the problems.  I only have three playthroughs of ME3, and I've played and replayed every other Bioware game (except the ungodly horror of DA:I) at least eight to ten times.

#3 I pretty much agree on.  ME3 and DA:I were a lot worse.  Andromeda's writers seem to be more obsessed with pop psychology and "mindfulness" than crusading or giving us teaching moments.

More unpopular opinions:

1)  What's with Bioware's recent obsession with pushing parenthood?  Gil's storyline was abominable, but the random conversations floating around were worse.  Especially that one on Eos that begins right after you plop down an outpost, and concludes with "There's never a 'right time' to have a child!"  That terrible quest where you track the irresponsible pregnant researcher across the cluster, only to give her a video pat on the back.  SWTOR was full of baby-pushing too.  I think Iresso's romance was the only one that didn't end with some cringeworthy conversation about parenthood.

2)  Why does Bioware always have the boring slow hobble sequence in every recent game?  It's nowhere near as bad in Andromeda as in SWTOR, ME3, or DA:I, but it's still there.  The first contact one made sense, but the stagger to the door thing should have been a cutscene.

3)  Enough with the trash-talking bosses already!  This isn't an MMO.

4)  The best and most enjoyable weapon in the game is a modded, upgraded Nomad.  Road Rage, Insanity version makes me almost enjoy the open world.

The pronouns thing?  The worst part was they shoved that conversation onto the only lore-incorrect species LOL

The problem with the whole SJW thing is that everyone defines the term differently.  Pretty much everyone points to the same story items as some kind of problem, but what they point to as the cause falls in line with whatever their whole life narrative is.  I mostly use "SJW" as a convenient label for the crappy, crusading representation that those who don't share trans-sexuality or genderqueerness or anything else shove into every interaction because they, and only they, have "empathy."  You could have some real representation if the writers knew what they were talking about, and really "got" their issue du jour, but they took the easy way out too often.  It's like they think they get it, but their "empathy" is shallow.  They collapse dimensional characters into a cutout to promote an agenda instead of making them people.

Krem's stupid conversation was pretty blatant, along with IB's ambient dialog after.  "You're such a man, Krem."  Dorian's personal quest too was way over the top.  IB representing BDSM "correctly," even though enough critiques from actual participants said Bull did it all wrong LOL  Steve Cortez' grief and Shepard's after school special handling of it.  If they'd just put glowing neon arrows around each of those characters and said, "look how progressive we are," it might have been less blatant. 

It really bugs me, because I adored Dorian, liked Cortez, and I'd have killed to have Krem as a companion instead of Iron "Teaching Moment" Bull.  Bioware wasted some real opportunities.

Yeah, the pronouns bullshit and Hainly Abrams as a whole both set off my "forced message/diversity" alarm. Abrams is basically another shoehorned in character stuffed in for them sweet sweet progressiveness points and not an actualized character in the slightest. BioWare's goal with said character was "trans character?" "check."

DA bores me to tears, so I can't comment on that. 

There's a specific reason why they do that: Virtue signaling. 

I was ready to put a bullet in his head by the end of my first interaction with him.

I know a snake when I see one.