RTTP: Mass Effect: Andromeda. I hate this game so much that I'm ashamed.

[SofNascimento]

I don't even know where to begin.

I pre-ordered Andromeda because I loved Mass Effect so much (and I still do when the trilogy is concerned, which are the only real Mass Effect games). But that was against my better judgment. When that game was announced back in E3 2015 I was thoroughly hyped. And it lasted for one year. But at the next E3 it became clear to me that the game was going through terrible development, and so all I could do was open my eyes and prepare for the worst. It was not nearly enough.

Even at my most cynical I couldn't have anticipated the clusterfuck, the disgrace, the utter and complete failure this game would be. Yet I gave it a fair chance. I played it once and I basically felt I died inside a bit. And since then I tried to play it three more times, and it's the third attempt that brings me here. I just can't do it. I hate this game too much.

The first two attempts were short lived, but this third one (after replaying the trilogy), I said to myself I could do it. "Just accept its limitations and try to enjoy the goods parts" I said, and for a time it worked. Not that Andromeda has any good parts mind you, but it has ok parts. The combat for one, can be fun, even if it is a step back from ME3 and especially ME2. But after a while I felt I was just wasting my time doing the same thing over and over again.

And after some 40 hours in, which is an huge amount of time mind you, I just gave up. I just felt the game wasn't worth the clicks needed to launch it. It wasn't worth the energy. And not for the first time I realized how much I loathed it. I wanted the game to exist in some corporal form just so I could smother and strangle it. Feel its life fading away in my own hand.

And that's pathetic. It's silly, childish, petty... probably worse. How can anyone feels such feeling for a game?

I can only answer that question going back to something I alread said: I loved the Mass Effect trilogy so much. It should not have ended like this. And it's been a while since Andromeda disgraced the human race by being released, and that was it for Mass Effect. Not even a remaster since then.

I'm just thankful some people with more knowledge than I do modded the PC versions enough that I can play them with a controller. I can at least have that.

And that's it.

 

[Dark_Chris]

Ashamed of your words and deeds?

 

[HauntedHallows]

I thought the game was fun, but at the same time I did not think 2 and 3 were that good.

 

[terminaljeremy]

I know this is probably the wrong place to point this out but... it's just a game. They're all... just games. If you're not enjoying it, that's okay, just put it aside. Not everything is for you and that is fine. Breathe.

 

[Adder7806]

I enjoyed it. Not a great Mass Effect game by any means but I like the Universe and I'll even take the mediocre offerings.

 

[BDS]

I choose to believe Andromeda simply doesn't exist.

 

[Hero_Select]

I thought the game was fun, but at the same time I did not think 2 and 3 were that good.

Click to shrink...

 

[Jawmuncher]

You can beat the game in like 20 Hours. You really should've done just the Story Missions and Loyalty missions with not much else.

Regardless, I think the title is fine. It's a solid 7/10 and I enjoyed my time with it more than any other Bioware title this gen (Even if that isn't saying much).

 

[Kasey]

I just can’t do it. My friend keeps saying it’s worth a playthrough, but I end up regretting every reinstall.

And it carried the Mass Effect title. So depressing.

 

[RvinP]

I think the game felt like a summer camp, placing flags at some locations to say "I have been here".

A vast contrast coming from Shepherd's gritty trilogy.

 

[olag]

This happens about 20 hours into my yearly replay of dragon age inquisition, I want to enjoy the game and it has some very good aspects but it also has some of the most mind numbing bad design choices I've seen in modern rpgs.

Its okay to feel pissed off or frustrated when playing games, most media is made to elicit some kind of emotional response afterall but just remember to let it pass.

 

[Mediking]

I actually really liked the game. It had great customization and a fun story... it got overblown in hate.

 

[Grimminski]

It's not that bad.

I spent most of February and March on a play through (I had recently quit Paladins, and it was the only thing I played), I enjoyed it, and I wish there some Quarian DLC so I had a reason to go back.

But this:

The combat for one, can be fun, even if it is a step back from ME3 and especially ME2

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I can't even begin to understand. Mass Effect 3 had way better combat than 2, and Andromeda is better still thanks to the jump jets.

 

[LittleBee]

It's ok, no need to be ashamed. It's not a good game.

 

[adj_noun]

I choose to believe Andromeda simply doesn't exist.

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Ah, the Quarian Ark approach.

 

[Tibarn]

I will never understand "hating" a game of all things.

You can be disapointted of course, but hate is a stronger word than most people realize, and "hating" a media product sounds strange to me.

About Andromeda, when I watched the gameplay reveal I already knew that the game was not going to be that good, Inquisition and DA II were pretty bad and at the time I didn't expect anything from Bioware. I also felt tat MA 2 was vastly inferior to 1 and that 3 was even worse, both games are enjoyable and far better than Andromeda but the series level was already a far cry from the first incredible game for me, after ME 3's ending I wasn't even hyped for a new ME.

 

[SofNascimento]

You can beat the game in like 20 Hours. You really should've done just the Story Missions and Loyalty missions with not much else.

Regardless, I think the title is fine. It's a solid 7/10 and I enjoyed my time with it more than any other Bioware title this gen (Even if that isn't saying much).

Click to shrink...

But then what's the point? You shouldn't aim to rush a RPG, but to take it slow. That said, I did try to prioritize the main missions and squadmate related quests, but to no avail. Take PeeBee, for example. I tried to like her, or at least to not loathe her, but that was beyond my skills. I couldn't ignore the fact that her loyalty mission was one of the most stupid things I ever experienced in any game.

And everything concerning the Keth?

Jesus Christ how could this happen?

 

[EatChildren]

Funnily enough, I'm on my third attempted playthrough, and I think this might be the one where I finally do it. I'm past the point that always turned me off (Kadara Port), and just cruising along. I'm not even close to loving it but I'm enjoying it enough to see it through this time. I've found a groove, dropped the difficulty, and am just soaking in what I enjoy and ignoring what I don't.

I've got a lot of thoughts on it I'll save for my own LTTP, once I'm done, but yeah. It's an enormously flawed experience, bafflingly so in a lot of areas, undermines its own premise and potential, and is evidently nowhere near as tightly woven or comprehensive as the trilogy (even with its flaws). The production issues are evident throughout.

I think it was always doomed, to an extent. Or it was always going to be an impossible uphill battle. As a mate on Twitter put it, it's a 7/10 game that people were expecting to be an 11/10 game given its predecessors. Thematically, narratively, conceptually; following a three game arc with a persistent protagonist and ensemble cast with enormous climatic narrative beats and several plot threads that transcended across three games is a big act to follow. BioWare just really dropped the fucking ball hard on a lot of the plot points here.

If I could summarise one major deficit in Andromeda that I feel brings down the entire experience from top to bottom, in comparison to the trilogy, is that they chose a premise and setting that should have been rich with mystery, originality, tension, and wonder. And yet so very much of the narrative, even the smaller story beats, are recycled from the trilogy for the sake of familiarity and nostalgia. It's often written like bad fan fiction, from authors who wanted their own Citadel, their own Normandy, their own Shadow Broker, their own Omega, and just forced in whatever they could under a new name regardless of plausibility or originality. There's some great ideas in the premise and story (I like the Scourge, for example), but then you end up unravelling the plot of an ancient, highly advanced species that mysteriously disappeared, leaving behind incredible technology, and you're left wondering who the fuck penned this creative bankruptcy. Like bootleg Mass Effect.

 

[Deleted member 59109]

I mean I don’t hate it to that extent but...yeah it’s pretty bad.

 

[Freezasaurus]

I thought it was okay. It certainly wasn't anywhere near as good as the original games, but I had an alright time with it. Not the kind of game I'm ever going to go back to, though.

 

[SofNascimento]

Funnily enough, I'm on my third attempted playthrough, and I think this might be the one where I finally do it. I'm past the point that always turned me off (Kadara Port), and just cruising along. I'm not even close to loving it but I'm enjoying it enough to see it through this time. I've found a groove, dropped the difficulty, and am just soaking in what I enjoy and ignoring what I don't.

Click to shrink...

Kadara port is still early, even if it one of the worst, most abhorrent moment in a game full of disgraceful moments. So you will need a lot of endurance still.

I think it was always doomed, to an extent. Or it was always going to be an impossible uphill battle. As a mate on Twitter put it, it's a 7/10 game that people were expecting to be an 11/10 game given its predecessors. Thematically, narratively, conceptually; following a three game arc with a persistent protagonist and ensemble cast with enormous climatic narrative beats and several plot threads that transcended across three games is a big act to follow. BioWare just really dropped the fucking ball hard on a lot of the plot points here.

Click to shrink...

I wasn't expecting a 11/10 game. I don't think most people were. The problem with Andromeda is not that is wasn't simply as good as the other games. Its problems are much, much worse. For one, a week after its release I was expecting something like Gears 4 (or 5). Something clearly not as good as the original games, but that can still remind you why you liked them so much. Andromeda doesn't even come close to that.

If I could summarise one major deficit in Andromeda that I feel brings down the entire experience from top to bottom, in comparison to the trilogy, is that they chose a premise and setting that should have been rich with mystery, originality, tension, and wonder. And yet so very much of the narrative, even the smaller story beats, are recycled from the trilogy for the sake of familiarity and nostalgia. It's often written like bad fan fiction, from authors who wanted their own Citadel, their own Normandy, their own Shadow Broker, their own Omega, and just forced in whatever they could under a new name regardless of plausibility or originality. There's some great ideas in the premise and story (I like the Scourge, for example), but then you end up unravelling the plot of an ancient, highly advanced species that mysteriously disappeared, leaving behind incredible technology, and you're left wondering who the fuck penned this creative bankruptcy. Like bootleg Mass Effect.

Click to shrink...

I think you have a very good point here. Andromeda is simply forced. It wants to force you to like it like the original trilogy, but it doesn't even begin to earn it.

 

[Foxvic]

Game isnt bad in general. Bugs and animations is garbage, but story, locations and combat system is still ok.

 

[devSin]

It's all the worst parts of Inquisition, with none of the good.

Series should have died after ME3. It was a mortal wound.

 

[Salarians]

nothing about this game did anything for me, I’m not normally one to say this but this game was a huge waste of time and I regret playing it
it’s not even bad enough to be interesting, it’s just... nothing

the combat is fine I guess but that’s not why I play mass effect

 

[zoltek]

For a completionist, the bloat is horrendous but if you just concentrate on the main quests and character missions, the amount of hate this game gets is completely overblown. As in if the guys that made Greedfall made this exact game but not set in the Mass Effect universe, the narrative surrounding how good of a game it is would be completely different. With that said, the desert planet did test my endurance... it was the last one I completed before moving onto endgame. For reference, I 100% the game.

 

[Van Bur3n]

Oh, you very much should be ashamed.

 

[Bit_Reactor]

Andromeda has just about every problem a game can have, and then didn't have anything to save it, sans MAYBE the serviceable combat.

Bad Scripting? You betcha. Trigger Volumes that would impede Saving RANDOMLY out in the overworld, a whole broken mission instance where you could just walk back and forth across a line and level up infinitely, the level up system itself being broken, voice triggers typically being repeated ad nauseum or happening out of order, etc. Oh and don't forget when a new game is started it attempts to reload the same instance of the game that was in memory before and the same save states at the same time as a new one causing ridiculous bug outs and broken scripts.

Bad writing. The writing was complete tripe and shit on every chance it had to be a new and unique story. Build up to first contact? Who cares everyone else already did it. Build up to some AI in a underground temple? Who cares gotta move on to fight the same enemy mob again. Romances? Lol if you thought they were bad before wait until you hear the writings of what seems like tumblr level fanfiction made manifest. Hope you liked Firefly because the entire script is read like someone watched one episode of that and then forgot that character writing goes beyond witticisms and snark.

Bad direction. Every Cutscene (when it wasn't glitching by sending people into space, not loading properly, or loading duplicate characters) was boring as hell to watch, and unbelievably dull compared to even some of ME1's brilliant cinematography. Every scene might as well not have animated from the waist down, and when it did it was awful.

Bad mission design. Every mission (when there was anything to do in the open world) would typically be a joke because the open world made snipers and ranged OP as hell, and then in loyalty missions were painfully boring run from room to room to kill the same two mobs again and again. I can't think of one memorable mission in the whole game.

Bad open world. Why go open world if nothing is there making it even remotely interesting? Kadara is the only planet worth even remotely mentioning. You have desert, snow desert, jungle, desert again, moon desert, and tech planet. It's so dull and low effort that I can't even believe they wasted the effort of the low grav planet when they could have made any of the other planets more interesting than a trip to Arizona.

Bad gameplay design. Wanna upgrade your weapons or change your loadouts? Want to test your weapon loadouts without having to load through the planet landing? Want to go through the door to Kadara, a painfully small area, without needing an almost 60 second load screen on the slowest opening door on the planet? Want to explore the planet map without having to sit through long and drawn out processes? Well too bad, because this game fights you literally every step of the way.

The game takes a semblance of choice at the beginning of the game and then ignores it the rest of the game. The only dialogue options are usually "yes" or "yes but sarcastic". The two new races are god awful and terribly characterized, the new galaxy relies far too much on the old galaxy's content and races, and several plot beats or story beats are not only optional but painfully obtuse and almost irrelevant to the main overarching story of the game. I can't believe how many hours I spent going into this game with a "surely this can't be it" attitude. Only to find myself wanting. It masterfully does less than even the OG Mass Effect 1 did with its material, despite poaching half of it. A true feat.

My face is tired indeed.

For a completionist, the bloat is horrendous but if you just concentrate on the main quests and character missions, the amount of hate this game gets is completely overblown. As in if the guys that made Greedfall made this exact game but not set in the Mass Effect universe, the narrative surrounding how good of a game it is would be completely different. With that said, the desert planet did test my endurance... it was the last one I completed before moving onto endgame. For reference, I 100% the game.

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False Equivalency. Not only is Greedfall made by a (MUCH) smaller studio, they haven't had YEARS of making and perfecting the formula in a pre-established franchise before. Bioware not only had the resources but the experience and catalogue of content to look back on, and even if you want to use the Frostbite excuse have DragonAge Inquisition, which despite mixed opinions now was a GOTY contender when it came out and still holds up ten times better.

I think it was always doomed, to an extent. Or it was always going to be an impossible uphill battle. As a mate on Twitter put it, it's a 7/10 game that people were expecting to be an 11/10 game given its predecessors. Thematically, narratively, conceptually; following a three game arc with a persistent protagonist and ensemble cast with enormous climatic narrative beats and several plot threads that transcended across three games is a big act to follow. BioWare just really dropped the fucking ball hard on a lot of the plot points here.

Click to shrink...

There's really only so many times between film criticism and game criticism that I can hear the "fan expectations" excuse and not roll my eyes with it. They had a perfect opportunity for a fresh start barren of the original baggage from the ending to 3 and they did nothing with it. Both on a writing and gameplay level. They could have easily started a new series with a fresh start and people could have been down for it, but the game was crap and broken on release.

They had the PERFECT opportunity to breathe new life into the series and go in a new direction to deter that baggage and instead did even less than the first game in the series. There's nothing about fan expectation involved. If the game had been competently written, made, and clearly not rushed out the door we could have this conversation, but as of Andromeda's release none of that came into effect when looking at Andromeda, that fails to do even the bare minimum of what is expected of a title of this caliber.

But then what's the point? You shouldn't aim to rush a RPG, but to take it slow. That said, I did try to prioritize the main missions and squadmate related quests, but to no avail. Take PeeBee, for example. I tried to like her, or at least to not loathe her, but that was beyond my skills. I couldn't ignore the fact that her loyalty mission was one of the most stupid things I ever experienced in any game.

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At least Mass Effect 1-3 had the balls to let you get people you didn't like killed or ignore them altogether :P

 

[matrix-cat]

It's a real shame. I still feel like the scorched earth, "we're going to a whole new galaxy" approach was the right one after the ME3 ending, but they just botched it terribly. An uncharted galaxy... that is already completely colonised by the time you get there so you aren't actually discovering anything for yourself. Exact equivalents for every traditional Mass Effect touchstone, character archetype, spaceship, etc. Welcome to the new Mass Effect where it's just the same thing as the old Mass Effect but worse.

I don't think it's, like, completely moribund from top to bottom. It's a competently-made, functional Ubisoft-style checklist-ticker. But there is nothing in there that I would ever want to go back to. No characters, no story threads, no alien politics I would like to see followed up on. Nothing in that game grabbed me. It feels like Andromeda should have started where the game ends, because the only interesting things in the story happen in the final couple of chapters, but instead I was just so exhausted by the dull leadup to it that I don't even care any more.

And this is all without even mentioning ludicrous stuff like every Asari in the game but Peebee having exactly the same face model, or the inexplicable sitcom writing tone of the whole game. None of the choices you make matter in the least. By the end of the story they just start doing brazen space magic with no attempt made to square it with the hard sci-fi tone Mass Effect used to go for. Just bury it. Write it off. The Andromeda Initiative was a bust.

 

[Arklite]

Personal feelings will be what they will, but intense hatred can be remedied with any amount of normal rational. Andromeda is a flawed copy of better games, but that's really its biggest crime, otherwise it's just solid/mediocre game.

I will say, for anyone grinding their teeth trying to get through it or whatever, Andromeda finishes strong, with its final scenario being a lot closer to what ME3's last stages should've been. Andromeda is to Mass Effect as Invisible War was to Deus Ex. They can't fill the same shoes but when nothing else even tries, they at least scratch an itch.

 

[AJ_Wings]

The lack of originality is what killed this game for me in terms of alien races, worlds, concepts, politics...etc. They had the opportunity to go to a completely different galaxy and utterly botched the execution.

 

[Umbrella Carp]

EDIT: MMMm nevermind

 

[Deleted member 49535]

What saddens me the most is how it marked the death of BioWare in a way. I still rank Mass Effect and Baldurs Gate 2 as some of my favorite top 10 games, but that BioWare is gone.

I know this is probably the wrong place to point this out but... it's just a game. They're all... just games. If you're not enjoying it, that's okay, just put it aside. Not everything is for you and that is fine. Breathe.

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You are on a video games forum. Expect people to talk about games.

 

[EatChildren]

Kadara port is still early, even if it one of the worst, most abhorrent moment in a game full of disgraceful moments. So you will need a lot of endurance still.

Click to shrink...

Nah. I'm pretty well past Kadara Port at this point. I just don't think, even with all my rampant Mass Effect fan disappointment (Andromeda could be my biggest disappoint this entire gen), I'm as overwhelmingly repulsed by the end result as you are.

matrix-cat covers much of how I feel. The entire game is, for most part, competent enough to function despite the production issues. When I think absolutely monstrously awful games I don't think Andromeda. Some of the missions are still neat (I like the loyalty missions for most part). I do like some of the exploring. It's visually spectacular, absolutely stunning at times. There are good ideas within the framework of so much...crap. And the general feel of character movement and combat is pretty good (except for the bullet spongy enemies, hence me playing on a lower difficulty).

I'm not ashamed by Andromeda, I don't think it's disgraceful. It's more just the total embodiment of "disappointing" and "underwhelming". I know people were pretty divided on the whole Andromeda Initiative thing, but I do still feel it was the best case scenario to continue the series without disrupting the canon. The problem is that the writing is just so unoriginal and reliant on nostalgia pandering at the cost of originality, and the dialogue and tone so unusually off and disconnected from the premise, that the entire framework falls apart. It's hard to be interested in even any good part of it when none of it is really interesting enough to invest in. Mix in a fubbed production cycle that results in so many lesser components as others have mentioned (clumsy menus, checklist content, repeated character models, asset inconsistencies, etc) and you end up with a game that doesn't feel anywhere near as focused and tightly directed as its predecessors.

It's a weird thing to note, but the little details just aren't there either. I just wrapped up Cora's loyalty mission on the Asari Ark. It was fun, I really liked it. But almost every asset in the ark, like warning signs and whatnot, are in human English. The crashed escape pods and vessels related to the Turian Ark found on planets use the default human dropship model. It's nitpicky, but these are detail issues that the trilogy never had. One of the strongest aspects of the trilogy is location hopping and seeing the detail put into making each species and their societies unique. Right down to the technology.

Andromeda not only fumbles its own originality by recycling Mass Effect trilogy tentpoles under new names, but it can't even get the core detail right. Which isn't surprising given how rushed the final stages of production were.

 

[NinjaBoiX]

I will never understand "hating" a game of all things.

You can be disapointted of course, but hate is a stronger word than most people realize, and "hating" a media product sounds strange to me.

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i think it’s absolutely OK to “hate” a thing in media, especially if it impacts your life.

For example I really hate certain aspects of modern pop music, and it impacts my life because I can’t get away from it, it’s everywhere.

But yeah, hating a game that you could quite easily just ignore is probably a bit weird.

 

[Admiral Woofington]

As I told my friends when I finished it and they asked if it was worth it:

I thought the game was a game that outside of the hilarious bugs, would have done just fine it done by another studio. Being tied with Mass Effect, and Bioware for that matter, meant people were going to demand nothing but the highest quality (well at least for what they consider highest quality).

I do not think the game is bad. I just think it's an ok sci fi title and a mediocre mass effect follow up that only continued the downward trend from 3.

 

[hydruxo]

It has the most lifeless open world planets I’ve ever seen in a video game. Just dull as hell all around.

 

[Sterling's Gold]

Bad direction. Every Cutscene (when it wasn't glitching by sending people into space, not loading properly, or loading duplicate characters) was boring as hell to watch, and unbelievably dull compared to even some of ME1's brilliant cinematography. Every scene might as well not have animated from the waist down, and when it did it was awful.

Click to shrink...

Thank you for mentioning this; I feel like it rarely gets talked about in regards to this game.

Part of what made ME1 feel so special when it released was the blending of traditional BioWare roleplaying with cinematic flair. Right from the start I remember being impressed by the handheld shot following Shepard during the game’s opening on the Normandy. Nowadays, this isn’t particularly mindblowing, but coming after KotOR and Jade Empire camera work like this was a revelation. Much of the cinematography during the Citadel battle at the end is really quite impressive to this day. Everything in Andromeda is so flat and looks like it was shot by an algorithm.

Even just normal conversations are almost entirely just reverse angles indistinguishable from KotOR. BioWare put a lot of effort into making dialogue scenes in ME2 more dynamic with characters actually animating doing things (you know, actually acting) and inserting a lot more mid and wide shots to break up the flow of a scene. Andromeda is back to KotOR talking heads 99% of the time.

 

[Bit_Reactor]

Thank you for mentioning this; I feel like it rarely gets talked about in regards to this game.

Part of what made ME1 feel so special when it released was the blending of traditional BioWare roleplaying with cinematic flair. Right from the start I remember being impressed by the handheld shot following Shepard during the game’s opening on the Normandy. Nowadays, this isn’t particularly mindblowing, but coming after KotOR and Jade Empire camera work like this was a revelation. Much of the cinematography during the Citadel battle at the end is really quite impressive to this day. Everything in Andromeda is so flat and looks like it was shot by an algorithm.

Even just normal conversations are almost entirely just reverse angles indistinguishable from KotOR. BioWare put a lot of effort into making dialogue scenes in ME2 more dynamic with characters actually animating doing things (you know, actually acting) and inserting a lot more mid and wide shots to break up the flow of a scene. Andromeda is back to KotOR talking heads 99% of the time.

Click to shrink...

Scenes like the lighting where Jack hung out, the Sniper scene in 3, and other shots in 1 like the reaper coming to merge with the Citadel are all shots that are completely lacking in Andromeda. They TRIED to copy it with the ship going into the techno planet but by then there was nothing else to enjoy.

But I shouldn't be surprised when the game couldn't even make a functioning character creation because they couldn't get their obviously just face scanned human models to work right. Just a damn shame.

 

[newmoneytrash]

don’t be ashamed. the game is fun to play. you don’t have to feel bad for liking bad games

 

[Sou Da]

Why do you find a way to make the same thread every other fucking week?

 

[Linus815]

Andromeda sucks. It's just so bland. Even the music is bland, in a damn Mass Effect game, aside from like, one track. That plays all the time.
The open world is downright awful, they manage to somehow both feel small and empty. They feel like MMO zones.... and funnily enough most of the side content feels like MMO quests too. Considering that Dragon Age Inqusition had a similiar problem, I suspect bioware might have a real problem when it comes to designing open worlds.

It was not enjoyable to traverse in the game whatsoever. And there was no real sense of exploration and wonder. That's a pretty fucking big flaw in a game where you literally go to another galaxy. The new species (or lack thereof) was so disappointing as well.

What is there to even like? The combat? I'll admit I had some fun with it, but ultimately it's still not that great when comparing to other third person action games. ME games never really had particularly amazing combat but they did their job, and most importantly other aspects of the game were so good that it didn't matter much. Yet in Andromeda the combat stands to attempt to carry the entire game on its back and it can't. The auto cover system got in the way too many times and the combat profiles while a neat idea just didn't feel well implemented at all, as after the initial first hours I just gave up on bothering with it and never had any issues throughout the whole game, which made a major mechanic feel pointless. Maybe it's needed on higher difficulties but normal should provide the "optimal" experience, right?

And yet I kept playing... only because I was desperately searching for something to latch onto. Maybe the next planet will be fun to explore. Maybe the next chapter in the story will get real interesting. Maybe I have yet to discover a major character that will be great. But no. It never happened.

It's painfully mediocre from start to finish. It's a competently made game, but competent is not really what youre looking for in Mass Effect game. Andromeda just feels like a series of compromises. It does not feel like the developers intended game at all. And so it lacks, well, soul.

And yeah the animations are what got memed to death but that's probably the least of the problems of the game. Though it does have to be said that it just shows another aspect of the game that was a result of compromise - Bioware clearly isn't comfortable with Frostbite (as later proven by Jason Schreier's reporting on Anthem) and I suspect it also played a major part in Andromeda's issues and limitations.

The funny thing is that I often forget about this game even existing, and I'm baffled that it relleased in 2017. From that year, I still vividly remember AC Origins, another third person action rpg. And that game, set in Egypt, provided that sense of exploration and wonder that I was looking to find in Andromeda. Exploring a single pyramid legitimately felt more enjoyable than anything I did in Andromeda, lol.

 

[EatChildren]

I will say, despite their challenges with Frostbite, when it all comes together Mass Effect: Andromeda is a hell of a looker. The asset detail is outstanding, and the game is pushing Frostbite to its limits. It does, most of the time, look legitimately like Mass Effect taken to an entirely new generation, as it should. Frostbite in particular with the internal res scaling up above native with TAA produces incredible image quality.

 

[AWizardDidIt]

Probably the most disappointed I've been with a product in my life. Mass Effect was my favorite game series. Andromeda is just... it's like *everything* about it just aggressively underachieves in comparison to previous games. It was supposed to be a return to the exploitative aspect of Mass Effect 1 but somehow forgot to actually make worlds worth exploring. The characters are all a huge downgrade. It frustratingly squanders most of the actually interesting narrative threads it has, leaving them incomplete for a sequel that will never come. And rather than continue on those interesting narrative threads, it goes for a white savior narrative involving a native race and invader race that compete with one another in outdoing just how blandly uninteresting they are.

Even the combat which, on paper should have been the best in the series, somehow doesn't live up to its potential and falls short of Mass Effect 3 for me. I think it's mostly in the encounter design. Instead of handcrafted levels, the mostly open areas of Andromeda just don't feel very fun to fight in.

The Tempest was pretty cool, at least.

 

[Sterling's Gold]

the reaper coming to merge with the Citadel

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That was such a good sequence, especially the way it was edited to sync with the music:

 

[Tibarn]

i think it’s absolutely OK to “hate” a thing in media, especially if it impacts your life.

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Well yeah of course, if a media product has propaganda or ideology that will impact against something essential on your life, be it directly or indirectly I can understand it. But when talking about most fantasy products it's hard to understand.

Maybe you can hate how a company that you loved has changed to worse as an abstract idea, but hating the company or their product is not going to end well, as there is lots of factors (especially human factors) that shouldn't be hated.

I think that frustration should be a better term for the feeling of not liking a new product on a series you loved.

 

[TacoSupreme]

The true galaxy brain move is to recognize that Mass Effect 1 and Andromeda are the standouts of the series, sandwiching two inferior, although entertaining in their own ways, offerings :P

 

[EatChildren]

The true galaxy brain move is to recognize that Mass Effect 1 and Andromeda are the standouts of the series, sandwiching two inferior, although entertaining in their own ways, offerings :P

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I'd believe that if Andromeda did what I loved about Mass Effect 1 well. But in my opinion it does not, and largely misses the mark on everything.

 

[jerfdr]

I completely agree, OP. This game was one of the biggest disappointments in my entire gaming history.

A tangential note: what I can't understand is why people heaped praise on Dragon Age: Inquisition, and still do it to an extent even now. Inquisition is plagued by mostly the same problems as Andromeda, and is basically of the same level of quality overall (maybe a little better, but only ever so slightly). To me Inquisition was almost as much of a disappointment as Andromeda, but apparently this view is not shared by the community. I mean, in my opinion, Dragon Age 2 was a considerably better game than Inquisition. It at least had entertaining story and quests (yes, suffering of reusing of locations, etc, but still), while Inquisition feels like 90% MMO-style filler crap.

 

[Jegriva]

I can't even begin to understand. Mass Effect 3 had way better combat than 2, and Andromeda is better still thanks to the jump jets.

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It's an unusual opinion, I agree. Combat was what saved the gameplay of ME3.

 

[Deleted member 59109]

The lack of originality is what killed this game for me in terms of alien races, worlds, concepts, politics...etc. They had the opportunity to go to a completely different galaxy and utterly botched the execution.

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Yeah seriously. Mass Effect 1 introduces you to so many new interesting races, planets and story/lore concepts. Andromeda has two new very human-like races and extremely bland locations, at least the ones I managed to somehow play through.