Mass Effect: Andromeda - Review

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Mass Effect: Andromeda - Review

Postby Doodle Dee. Snickers » Tue Mar 28, 2017 1:46 am

Well, here it is, the game I've been waiting years for. Because I have a lot to talk about, I'm going to eschew my usual broad review and roll with a +/- system. Anyways, let's get to it with just the broad summary.

Mass Effect: Andromeda takes place six hundred years after ME2. Four arks--Human, Asari, Turian, and Salarian have been launched to the Andromeda system, along with a space station to act as a processing center for future settlers(which carries a contingent of Krogan with it). I said all that to point out that if you were a big fan of one of the less prominent aliens in ME, they do not make an appearance here, although it's hinted that you may see them in a sequel. As is Mass Effect tradition, everything's fucked the second you wake up and roll into your habitable plane, as you're attacked by aliens on a mostly hostile world that was supposed to be habitable.

You make contact with the station that was sent along to find that you are literally the only ark to show up, as the rest have been lost, and they task you with finding ways to settle these hostile planets.

Anyways, to the plus/minus

++ Environments. I'm usually not a fan of multiple plusses, but this is a particularly amazing thing. For those not in the know, each planet you set down on is open world, and they look incredible. Each planet has their own theme, and the galaxy as a whole is beautiful and lends itself to the theme of exploration.

+ Gameplay as a whole. I wasn't incredibly taken with Inquisition's base-building system, but it's such an integral part of the story here that it meshes pretty seamlessly. And there's a ton to do, from deciding which blocks of settlers to wake out of cryo as you gather more resources, what research you want to do, weapon and armor crafting, scanning (which I'll get to in a bit), side missions to send teams on to gather rewards (which you can go on yourself in multiplayer, though I haven't tried, as much as I adored 3's multiplayer), etc.
+ Settling planets. Even if it's just a number (that, in fairness, does yield rewards), increasing habitability of your outposts is pretty cool to me. Maybe that's because you actually see the outposts (and even the station, for that matter) improve as you improve them. The way it works is that you do sidequests across the planets that increase their viability.
+ Scanning. One new feature is the ability to use your omni-tool to scan your environment; sometimes just to solve puzzles, but often to gather information on the thing you're looking at, which I thought to be a clever way to add context to this new alien galaxy in a way that makes you feel even more like an explorer. Also, it gathers research points.
+ Combat. This is more reminiscent of 3's combat, true, but there's far more variety, and it's faster and requires more mobility. It's also definitely more difficult, and in true Bioware fashion, your squadmates are worth jack shit in a fight. That said, I do enjoy that you're also not locked into a style from the very beginning. You get to split your points between being a soldier, a biotic, and an engineer, and you can mix and match however you want. The ability to spend research points to craft weapons, armor, mods, and augmentation also allows for a much greater flexibility, and I have to give some praise to Bioware for breaking this far out of their normal comfort zone.
+ Mobility. You can actually jump now, hurrah.
+ Main Character. Ryder is a bit more lively than Shepard. There's a little more in terms of options for the dialogue, and the main character comes off as more light and fun than Shepard, though they're still a little bit of a shell.

+/- Space Exploration. Scanning planets and anomalies was cool, but it could often be slow because of the way the ship shows you traveling to each planet and system.
+/- Maps. Kind of weird after I praised the environments, but when you're in a cave or facility, you can often get lost or have difficulty figuring out where you need to go.
+/- Crafting. I do like it, but it can also feel occasionally uninvolved, and I never felt much need for it unless I just wanted a new badass-looking set of armor.
+/- Story. This is a big one. The story is much less dark than the OT, which I suppose makes sense since this is more an adventure than the geopolitical wrangling and moral dubiousness of the OT. It's a much more upbeat adventure, is what I'm saying, and though that's fine, it just doesn't feel the same here. The writing is...not as good as the OT, if better than DAI. It can often be a bit too contemporary; lines of dialogue that can sometimes make you cringe as it's not something you would expect spacefarers thousands of years in the future to say. It is nice to see them breaking out some fucks and shits, now and again. It can often be funny, but the delivery can sometimes be off, and the story as a whole I had figured out about a third of the way in. Voice acting was also pretty varibale. This leads to the second problem, which is...
+/- Characters. For the most part, they can be a little flat. Vetra (the turian) was good, Jaal (of the new alien species) was good, while Cora and Liam surprised me by being the first two human characters in a Bioware game (with the exception of Bastilla in KOTOR) that I didn't immediately hate. Otherwise, though, the rest were something of a wash. There are a few standouts among the secondary cast, the ostensible leader of the friendly aliens (more on that in the negatives) and the bickering heads of the station administrators, but there's just not that many redeeming factors here.
+/- Alien Sudoku. This is a thing that happens to solve puzzles. Perhaps you'll like it, but I happen to hate Sudoku. Moving on.

- Absence of more aliens. This was one of the biggest irritants. Compared to the like...twenty of the original series, there are the five who came to Andromeda, plus the two you meet when you get there--one bad, one good. It leads to my biggest complaint of Andromeda: that Bioware seemed to have forgotten why people like the series in the first place. Sure, the exploration and setting of a wide open space game is cool, but most people are in this series for the aliens. Since the aliens you broguth with you don't really conflict with one another and the new aliens are already at war, the political aspect of the OT is gone.
- Graphics. A lot of fun was poked at this game for the facial animations, but I didn't have dealbreaking problems with it. Perhaps it's an issue with the default character, which I never use in these kinds of games. With that said, though, while the environments are great to look at and a lot of imagination went into creating the setting, the characters are a mixed bag. The Asari are all puffy-faced now, for some reason. Some of the characters don't have that much texture work, while others (Liam is a good example) are much more detailed. So it's a 50/50 for me, the characters aren't animated as well as the OT, but it could also be because they're livelier than before, occasionally moving around as they talk instead of just standing stock still.
- PC Port. It's a bit of a mess, which is surprising, because that's not usually a problem with Bioware games. It's nothing game breaking, just some textures that take forever to render, some of the graphics are messed up on the Tempest, and a handful of other minor issues.

So overall, it's strange that a series in which I ignored the flaws in its gameplay in favor of its story has now flipped the script. I'm more enamored with the gameplay here than I am the story. Perhaps it'll be fixed in a sequel, I can only hope. In the meantime, I kinda stand where I was before. I like this game a lot, but I'll freely admit that it's because I'm biased towards this particular series and its lore. If you're not a fan, you should probably give this one a pass. If you are a fan, you'll probably like it well enough, but it doesn't hold up quite as well against the first trilogy.

*EDITED* To add a couple points I forgot to speak to.
  • 5

Last edited by Doodle Dee. Snickers on Tue Mar 28, 2017 3:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Mass Effect: Andromeda - Review

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Tue Mar 28, 2017 2:05 am

Voeld. Just, fuck Voeld.

Also, I seem to have developed a fetish for the detection of anomalies.

In seriousness, the graphics are a bit overhated. Does no one remember the invisible drinking and wonky gun based cutscene animation from the trilogy? I remember Feros being glitchy as hell. And yet, I've seen videos of people manipulating the animations of ME:A and presenting those twisted animations as the actual product. Some people are jut really determind to hate anything Bioware related because of DA:I.
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Re: Mass Effect: Andromeda - Review

Postby NathanLoiselle » Tue Mar 28, 2017 2:51 am

Would you say it's GOTY material?
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Re: Mass Effect: Andromeda - Review

Postby Doodle Dee. Snickers » Tue Mar 28, 2017 3:04 am

Deathclaw_Puncher wrote:Voeld. Just, fuck Voeld.

Also, I seem to have developed a fetish for the detection of anomalies.

In seriousness, the graphics are a bit overhated. Does no one remember the invisible drinking and wonky gun based cutscene animation from the trilogy? I remember Feros being glitchy as hell. And yet, I've seen videos of people manipulating the animations of ME:A and presenting those twisted animations as the actual product. Some people are jut really determind to hate anything Bioware related because of DA:I.


I didn't mind Vould.

But as for the graphics, I didn't really care that much because yes, the graphics of 1-3 weren't exactly incredible, either. But they're definitely a negative, even if they don't make it the worst game of all time.

NathanLoiselle wrote:Would you say it's GOTY material?


Probably not, because it won't appeal to a broad enough stretch of gamers for GOTY.
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