I'm enjoying the game a lot but it has major issues. It's effectively a Mass Effect 1 tribute game. I'm about 30 hours in.

The open world of it just sucks, and dilutes what would be an alright game with way too many fetch quests. It's also the definitive nail in the coffin for the Mako. Both the mako and nomad suck. The gameplay I want in a Mass Effect game is shooting and dialogue, that's all. Not driving.

I'm one of those "Mass Effect 2 is the greatest game ever"-people, and it always boggled my mind why there were some who thought me1 was better, especially the people who would bring up the Mako and say it was good. Me1 has the best story, that's about it. Regardless, MEA is ME1 again, so hopefully the me1 fans like it. I'm still enjoying it because I love Mass Effect.

@katygaga: It's really as simple as "I enjoy driving around and none of it is bad at all" for why I like the Mako and the Nomad. Part of what I like about ME 1 and this has again is exploration, in as simple of a way as it has sizable areas again vs the corridors of 2 and 3. Part of the issue with ME:A is the open world is still a bit lifeless, DA:I style, with some exceptions. Besides the ships flying around (although they kind of do awkwardly) there isn't much going on.

I also don't think all the side stuff seems so strong but there is enough quality stuff there. Like with DA:I I have to say don't bog down in the small side stuff because you just really don't need to and it will hurt the game.

I agree there is definitely a bunch of filler fetch quests and the like similar to the side content from Dragon Age Inquisition. However, I think the ratio of worthwhile stuff versus filler fetch quests is much better in Andromeda than it was in Inquisition.

There's generally a handful of pretty good side quests on each planet that have fairly interesting stories and characters, and often these tie together into the overarching plot of the planet. These quests often have specific mission areas with level design and some of them have decisions and cutscenes. In Inquisition, the interesting open world side quests were few and far between, and none of them had cutscenes (always using the terrible third person dialogue camera that was zoomed way out).

Andromeda also has side content that isn't limited to the open world planets, most notably the loyalty missions, and those have the same production quality as the story missions. I also really like that there's substantial and lengthy lead up to the loyalty missions. It's not like Mass Effect 2 where the characters would, at most, give some clues about what their loyalty mission would entail in their preceding Normandy conversations. Instead, each character in Andromeda has significant questlines, often across multiple planets, that lead into and set up the premise for their loyalty mission.

I like the characters quite a bit, so having a bunch of content tied to your squad mates is great. Even the "lesser" quests that precede the loyalty missions are elevated beyond the typical open world quests of the game because of how the characters are involved.

@ll_exile_ll: Yeah I agree with your post. There's enough good stuff to get out of there. Like for me just ignore Additional Tasks unless you pick them up right along your way going to and from on actually worthwhile stuff.

Playing this currently with my wife, I've never played a Mass Effect, she's never been that into games, and we are having a blast she controls the character for the most part I take over in the combat bits. I think that experience alone is making me enjoy this game. We both love Science Fiction, so it's kinda the perfect game to get her interested. The story is good enough and we both kinda look forward to the "jank" when it happens(which is way few and further between than most let on). I love it when she looks at me and mimicks the poor animation, it's becoming an inside joke of ours around the house. That being said I know not everyone is gonna have that experience and for a few of you this game is a colossal let down, but for my wife and I it's been a much welcome change to our routine. I'm excited to play through the rest of it with her.

@artisanbreads: fair point.

its just that the exploratory aspects of both ME1 and MEA are kind of bad. If you cut out all the mako stuff from ME1, id probably like it as much as ME2. And if you cut out all the "get x number of this"-fetch quests and the nomad from MEA, in my opinion, it would be a much more streamlined and better game. Characters, cool story and squad tactics and action are why I come to a Mass Effect game. The exploration you speak of can be received in many other ways that doesn't entail driving in big, boring open environments and then trying to annoyingly drive up a mountain because there's a memory trigger there.

the Hvarl planet seems the best for me so far because the nomad was no where to be seen.

@katygaga: The open world could be better, no doubt. If it was, this would be better (They just didn't execute). I have always gotten that some people liked ME 2 being linear but that was not me, I missed even the big open areas. Even open space has an effect on exploration and pacing and things. This was lost for a while in games where I think scale actually went from bigger to smaller in many games in the PS2/XBOX and 360/PS3 era. FPS games for example went from big open fast games to slower paced, linear corridor crawls.

Now so many games are open world. Anyways, this one could learn a lot from any number of other open world games that have more going on in their world. Even Witcher 3 manages to do it in an RPG better than this (although that's a high bar, classic game).

So I don't dismiss your view just providing mine. I'm one of those ME 1 fans. I like that ME:A has this sense of exploration and to me using a sci-fi vehicle to run around feels very Star Wars/Star Trek. It doesn't have to be amazing to control to still add something for me.

@lawgamer: And on that point (about SAM). Maybe it's going to reveal something that was obvious from the get-go (or maybe it's not going to reveal it as such), but why does SAM sound like a female, and they keep referring to it as a him? That's rhetorical.

I really hope the Playdate tomorrow isn't from the beginning of the game and doesn't just cover the first hour and half, that probably everyone at least somewhat interested in this game has already seen in dozen other videos. Of course those haven't had the Beast crew commentary over them, but I'd still rather take something 10+ hours into the story or so.

I really enjoyed my first couple days with the game, but it's gotten a little repetitive. The open world stuff just feels like a lot of busywork and not very rewarding, but I generally prefer somewhat linear games to open world so that's purely subjective. My ideal type of level design is more like the Dishonored games, where there are a lot of different ways to tackle each zone but the general path through the game is a straight line. ME:A has some good little areas that feel like the old games but all the driving around gets old fast when you're doing side missions.

I think I'm just going to get to 100% viability on each planet, do loyalty missions and no other side content. If you don't commit to doing everything in the game, it seems like a fine entry in the series but nothing on the level of the original trilogy. I wouldn't say it's as bad as some people are making it out to be, but it's not GOTY material either (not even game of the month honestly).

I'm having a reasonable amount of fun with it, and don't regret the purchase.

A lot of the side quests filed under "Heleus Assignments" are worth seeing, but you can safely ignore pretty much anything classified as a "task" and not miss out on much. The "Allies and Relationships" quests are most certainly ones you don't want to skip.

@ll_exile_ll: Yeah I've been focusing on and enjoying the "Allies and Relationships" quests. It's nice that Bioware sorted the missions like that rather than having once gigantic quest log. I also agree with your earlier post about how it's nice each character has their own questline rather than one specific mission, you get to spend more time with the characters.

The crew in general is a nice bunch to hang with, aside from Liam. I find him annoying for some reason. He's kinda been throwing himself at my female Ryder so maybe that's why, it's unprofessional.

I haven't had Liam or any other character initiate any kind of romance if I hadn't chosen a flirty dialogue choice with them previously. Rather, the thing that annoys me most about Liam is always calling Ryder "pathfinder." When it's random people that don't actually know Ryder personally I'm not too bothered if they use the title, but Liam is part of the squad and presumably a friend. It's just weird. Everyone else on the team calls her Ryder and some call her Sara a lot more often later in the game, but with Liam it's always pathfinder.

Other than that I think Liam is alright. He's not my favorite character, but then the human characters in Mass Effect never are.

I'm 42 hours into the game and I still have a lot of the loyalty missions and other side quests to do so I expect I'm still going to be playing this game for a long time. Overall I'm really happy with the game, it's a really fun game and I love the amount of content it has, but I will say the facial animations are funny sometimes. I have run into some funny glitches and bugs too, the most memorable one was from a romance storyline where I was getting attacked by aliens on Eos during the dialog and the dialog kept going. I like the team in this one, I like Jaal the most, but it's hard to beat Garrus and Wrex.

A couple months before release I actually decided to lower my expectations. I figured the story/writing would be acceptable but most of the game would be just fine. But in reality I got a story that sounded more interesting than it was and writing that is sometimes good and often terrible. Bugs and facial animations issues, and I never expected the awful character creator. Not lettings us control squad mate powers, the awful UI.... The game can be fun sure, but honestly I don't look forward to playing it and haven't touched it in days. If I could get a squad for MP i'd probably hit that a lot.

I've liked it so far. I had a super intense fight yesterday with what looked like the equivalent to Dragon Age Inquisitions dragon fights. I seemed underleveled so it took 30 minutes but it was really intense and fun. The story and characters seem fine but not amazing so far. Played for 15 hours and liking it so far. The facial animations are not as bad as they seemed in the QL. Maybe a combination of custom character and Ultra graphics on PC.

@ll_exile_ll: Liam is totally the standard "human dude" character they seem to put in all the ME game. Also I take the "Pathfinder" thing as them just setting up him as being Mr. Initiative and super into it all and your role as the head of it. Not saying I like any of it, Liam is a boring character I have put to the side. But he reminds me of Jacob (mostly) or Vega in being forgettable.

Unless something changes, this game will be my most disappointing game of 2017. This doesn't hold up to my standards for a Mass Effect game. I would rather play an HD remaster of the first three games then this. I really hope that if they do another Mass Effect game that they drop the stuff from Andromeda and just make a true sequel to the first three games.

Combat is worse, the writing is worse, the voice acting is worse, the characters are almost all largely lame, the story is more boring than anything in 1-3, and I have a feeling that the ending (if I ever bother to get there) will be a major letdown as well. Also, because of the changes to combat the multiplayer in 3 is even snappier. This isn't rose tinted glasses, this is EA dropping the ball and sending a fan favorite franchise to die for whatever reason.

So after playing for about 40 hours so far, I think the word I would settle on to describe this game is "lifeless." Everything about the design of the game seems designed to kill momentum and excitement rather than build it. That's a combination of design decisions like the god awful galaxy map being two minutes of unskippable animations, planets being filled with meaningless fetch quests, and character and world designs that feel totally uninspired.

Having played the original trilogy, the Andromeda Galaxy just feels so . . . sterile compared to the Milky Way. For example, the original Mass Effect had an entire book's worth of material on the Quarians and their society and culture and how everything fit together. They get driven off their homeworld so they need to live on ships. That destroys their immune systems so they need to live in suits. The pressures of a space-bound existence leads to creating the Pilgrimage, around which is its own sub-culture and rules, etc, etc.. A ton of stuff that doesn't necessarily affect gameplay, but is nevertheless interesting and builds the world out and gives you a sense of place.

By comparison, all you get about the Angara in ME:A is (a) they're solar powered and (b) believe in reincarnation. And that's about it. Of those two, only the reincarnation thing has been touched on in any way at the point I am in the game. And then the game pretty much leaves it as this spiritual thing rather than writing any kind of plausible explanation of the biology behind it. It's just completely disappointing in its utter lack of detail. And all the other codex entries on them aren't reflected in the game in any meaningful way. It's all just text on the codex screen (Un-voiced. Another step back from the original trilogy. I really miss Pedantic Codex Guy).

It doesn't help that the plot is pretty much a rehash of the themes from the first trilogy, but done in a less interesting way. SAM is a stand in for the Geth/EDI, but is far less interesting (and considerably more annoying) than either one. The Remnant are less interesting stand-ins for the Protheans, and the Kett are just biological version of the Reapers, if the Reapers looked like the shit demon from the movie Dogma.

I'm continuing to play, if only because all the meters and skill pips to fill up are creating a Pavlovian response. But I really want future games to go back to the Milky Way, ending of ME3 be damned. Of course, they've definitely dropped hints in game that they're dedicated to Andromeda and that any sequel will be the Reapers. Again. Because apparently BioWare is allergic to originality at this point.

There's no indication that Reapers will be revisited in any capacity, and logically they can't be. 3 of the 4 endings to the original trilogy completely ended the Reaper threat, and the reject ending where the Reapers win was only added in the extended cut. Since they've repeatedly said they aren't going to force a canon ending to the trilogy, there's no way they would declare the 'reject' ending canon and make the Reapers somehow the antagonists of future Andromeda games.

Aside from the fact that this game sets up plots for future games completely unrelated to the Reapers, it would make no logical sense considering we know the Reaper threat concluded 600 years earlier and even if the Reapers won, ME3 establishes that the Milky Way itself was a Reaper experiment. It would make no sense for them to travel 2.5 million light years outside of their control group for, reasons...

Besides, (MEA Spoilers):

The only direct mention of the Reapers in Andromeda is in the "Ryder Family Secrets" quest where it's revealed that the Andromeda Initiative had toiled away as an expensive and impractical pipe dream for a decade until a mysterious benefactor with knowledge of the impending Reaper threat dumped a bunch of money into the project and fast tracked it. There's no indication that the Reapers will be a future threat, their only inclusion is to explain an un-publicized goal of the Initiative and rationalize why such an endeavor with such little face value practical purpose would be so well funded.

As a pretty big Mass Effect franchise fan (read all of the books too), I am feeling a bit let down, even with the tempered expectations. Weirdly, not at all for the same reasons most seem to be complaining about though. I feel like I'm about halfway through Andromeda, since I've gotten 100% viability on all major Planets, but haven't rescued all Arcs or furthered the main plot. The animations everyone complains about are a bit off putting at times but for the most part are just comical and forgivable. The story is passable. It isn't winning any awards but it could also be worse as many RPG's are, but it definitely isn't on par with previous entries into the series. The dialogue is fun at times, and I like the kinda quippy personality my Ryder has, but I kind of prefered the more defined Paragon/Renegade choice system. The combat is actually rather fun 95% of the time, that is now that I actually have Health/Shield levels above 400 each (I think mine are 525/675 now) because playing a Biotic with low Health/Shields was dicey early on, especially against my first Architect. That first Architect fight brings me to one of my biggest complaints, the auto saves and inability to manual save to certain parts of the game. I get not giving us the ability to do a manual save during certain sections of the game, but why is it that those same sections seem to also not have any form of checkpoints. Fighting an Architect for 15-20 min (Biotic with only an Auto Rifle and Pistol, yeah, it wasn't fun) and dying on the very last part of the Boss and having to completely redo the entire fight is the absolute worse. There should be checkpoints with the auto save feature far more frequently. The other major complaint comes from the sheer volume of game crashes and bugs. I played for 4-5 hours last night and had I kid you not 5 game crashing or freezing issues that forced me to restart the game entirely and pick up from an auto save, often back tracking 5-10 minutes or more. This is the buggiest game I've played in years. That's not even mentioning the obscene amount of double Squadmate, teleporting to new locations after a conversation trigger, random guy walking in front of conversation, crazy floating enemy who hasn't been touched, and other garbage I've seen so far. My favorite was fighting a Fiend I dodged his charge like Normal, the game glitched and when he smashed the ground my whole screen went black, I heard the sound of my health completely depleting like I had died but nothing happened. Sounds still kept working, even a Quest finished, but I couldn't do anything. For all it's horrible shortcomings though, it has some pretty high highs. The Liam Loyalty Quest has so far been my favorite mission and reminded me the most of the type of random goofy stuff the original Mass Effect Trilogy would throw at you.

Overall, while I am disappointed in Andromeda as a Mass Effect fan, especially from a technical standpoint, I still think if they can patch out a lot of the bugs soon it's still a cut above most other RPG's out there. Even if it isn't up to the sheer outstanding quality of it's predecessors.

By the time it was released I assumed it was just going to be dumpster fire with biotic and tech abilities the way people were sobbing on the internet. Have played like 15-20 hours and bar the voice acting of a couple of major(ish) players i like it. Never been one to really bother about big open work jank of which there is a fair amount in this (and all games of its ilk) and stuff like the weird mouth animations i noticed like once or twice before shrugging it off. Game is a 7 as the reviews overall seem to suggest, problem is a 7 in 2017 equals dumpster fire on the internet.

Enjoying it, while acknowledging it's no Mass Effect 2. It's about what i expected including the online reaction.

Basically, it's Dragon Age Inquisition in space. Which is alright by me to try something new with Mass Effect. I do miss some stuff about the old series. There's some good stuff and some bad stuff here, but I honestly can't take any vitriol for this installment seriously. The Internet rage over anything the "fans" don't like about Mass Effect is so blown out of proportion. It's an average game at worst.

I'm having a blast with this game. The only minor gripe would be the overly long planet scanning/transitions, but I played through Bloodborne at launch, so I'm familiar with excessive loading times.

As much as I love the Witcher 3, the load times in the PS4 version were appalling, to the point where I played on a lower difficulty than I would have liked to, because the wait after dying was just awful. Andromeda's load times are so much better, and no one seems to be praising the game for that. Fast travel is actually fast.

Yeah, those planet transitions, though. Those really need to be fixed. Even worse, apparently they're not even hiding a load time. Some developer(s) actually thought that was a good idea.

I've put just over 30 hours into the game and I'm going to stop and come back to it in another 6 months or so. As someone who considers Mass Effect 2 to be my favorite game of all time and the reason I became a game designer, this is severely disappointing. The only reason I stuck with it for so long was the combat.

I've worked out a route through the game that will allow me to experience the good parts of it but I want to start again fresh because I'm kinda burnt out on it right now. 30 hours in and I don't feel like I've experienced much, just spent time doing uninteresting quests. The squad don't really have much of a personality except Jaal but that could be due to him being a new species.

While other Bioware games have had their flaws, this game problems stem from fundamental design choices. That combined with all the other smaller problems just makes the whole thing disappointing.

I played the ten hour trial on PC. My experience was worse than expected across the board. Fuck that game for ruining that franchise's future.

After the Internet shit storm surrounding this game my expectations were low, my enjoyment and fondness after playing are still very high, actually my favourite game so far this year and even though I recognise Horizon for being basically a masterpiece I've put it on hold for ME:A. I've always had a soft spot for humorous animations though and I'm a bit disappointed they improved them.

The only real disappointment for me is the restrictions on only having 3 abilities and not being able to pause and use squad mates tactically.

Finished it at 104 hours played, level 55ish. It feels weird coming out of a Bioware game having really enjoyed the combat (once I found what I liked, which took ~25 hours) but ambivalent about the characters. I buy BioWare games specifically because of the characters, so that's a real bummer. But it had some big moments, you can clearly tell what sections got the most time/care put into it. Some of the later sections had some great atmosphere, I was tense and slightly sweaty.

I think it's worth trying; get used to and find what works for you in combat (try changing the difficulty too), it can be buttery smooth and really entertaining. Play the parts you want to, feel free to skip any parts you don't want to...it isn't some grand masterpiece but it can be a lot of fun.

I guess I was pretty excited about Andromeda since I was playing through the original trilogy last year; not exactly "OMG! This is the best game ever!" but enough for me to be pretty interested. But as word of mouth came along with the trailers and eventually it's release, I did become a little less excited about it. And now after actually playing it for 10 hours; yeah, the criticisms are totally justifiable. I haven't come way down on it nor do I spout out phrases like "This is the worst game ever" or "It ruined Mass Effect", but calling Andromeda the "direct to video Mass Effect" is suitable. The combat is great, reminds me of Vanquish and Warframe which works for me since I'm value gameplay over story. But everything else around it feels immature and a little boring in terms of characters, overall story progression, and technical stability. The uncanny valley/dead eye look of the humans and Asari is as distracting as the exaggerated cartoony animations in certain scenes. And, I mean, the game is on Frostbite. I know that a 1060 is a relatively modest card, but why am I still getting Unreal 3's texture pop-in, in a game released in 2017?

So, all 'n' all, it's like Fallout 4 in that it's disappointing in some ways, but I still meets my relatively low hype for games, though Fallout 4 is more enjoyable for me. I have mild hopes that patches will make it better, but I'm more or less okay with how the game is now, save for some frame rate issues I'm having and other technical issues that I've been hearing about.

VA bad, Animations bad, Writing bad, Bad bad, everything bad

Pretty much sums up my feelings with about the game. I beat the game over the weekend at about 40 hours in. I couldn't stand the side quests (didn't go out of my way to do any of them) so I pretty much main lined the game. I did spend a lot of time on the Nexus talking with teammates, but that didn't really help build my attachment to any of them aside from Jaal and Drack.

My 3 biggest disappointments

1. Dialogue Options: Felt like Ryder had zero personality and all the dialogue options were essentially the same. After a while I sort of stopped caring what I picked. I actually enjoyed the few times where Ryder actually showed some emotion and dropped an F-bomb because he was angry. I really wish there was more of that kind of emotion from him. Didn't get attached to his character at all.

2. Story: Pretty much everything lawgamer said. The final sequence in the game didn't really do anything for me and I wasn't scared of the Kett at all. The Archon actually seemed like a deluded idiot more than anything. As for the remnant, I almost forgot they existed at some point other than for some convenient story points and an excuse for more enemies to fight.

3. Bugs: I had numerous hard crashes and really bad times, one being near the end of the final battle. One of the worst technical experiences I've had with a game. Even my girlfriend (who pays attention to games from a distance) could tell this game was a mess just by watching me play.

Positives

1. I enjoyed the combat quite a bit.

2. Environments looked pretty cool in places

3. MP is pretty fun.