Clarification

Overall Conclusion: Okay Mass Effect 3 spin-off, bad if you are looking for a 2017 game.

Overall Visuals: ME3 with some upgrades, the upgrades attempted on Human faces were a mistake.

Character Visuals: Aliens seem fine, but the Humans look anywhere between terrible to fine.

Terrain/Environs: Environments look pretty good, and the new alien designs are interesting. Especially the not so ancient Ancient structures.

Gameplay: ME3 with some minor changes, Ammo mods are not back(as I had assumed from the stream I had seen)

they are the MP consumables brought into SP. Jetpack is fun to use.

Framerate/Settings: 45-60 FPS High(Autodetect)

Problems: Depth of Field issues resulting in conversation backgrounds looking like garbage even when relatively close to you.

And faces sometimes being out of focus instead of the background.

Animations being janky or not playing in conversations. Sometimes resulting in T-poses.Weird postures and walking animations,

could be a result of the new movement system, animations look more natural on uneven surfaces.

**EDIT**

The UI is terrible in the same way as the other Mass Effect Games, same goes for the Character Creator.

**2EDIT2**

Echoing voices in conversations(Talking to Nyx in her room)

**3EDIT3**

Forgot to mention the 'travel time' between objects in the system and cluster view. It's already getting REALLY annoying.

PC Specs

So can you actually progress as far as you want into the game in those 10 hours? From what I understood you are stopped at some point even if you dump 10 hours into it which still gives you just a vertical slice of the game. I'm talking single player only, I'm sure they let you play multiplayer as much as you want until you run out of time.

Looking forward to trying it on my own today, I've fear great things, horrible things, middling things, things that elude to much better once you get out of the trial stuff. Looking forward to shaping my own opinion, i really hope they are positive.

Wait, did you actually get T-poses? Woah. I can't remember the last time I saw a T-pose glitch in a game. Maybe, Game Room?

I'd be interested to learn how the larger arc of the story develops.

@sackmanjones: You get stopped at a certain point in the story on the second planet, but you can faff around on the planet for the full 10 hours if you want to, not that I would recommend that, unless you want to turn ME:A into Dragon Age Inquisition before it's even out :)

From the looks of it that would mean turning it into a better game so I would recommend everyone faff around at an extremely accelerated rate.

Ok so this confuses me. For any that watched it, Brad stopped that stream yesterday cause he said they were coming up on the point where they weren't allowed to show anymore. But it sounds like maybe the trial actually lets you play further than that. So is EA actually stopping press from showing more of the game but letting streamers show a bit further or does the trial actually cut you off at that point as well?

@neocalypso: I don't remember where Brad stopped, but I think it's more or less the same point.

It's hard to believe that this game is using the frostbite engine just look at Mirrors edge catalyst and BF1 both have fantastic facial animation how did they mess this up so badly?

@jec03: Hard to know for sure, perhaps they are using old UE3/4 assets or the team is too fresh or maybe they spent too much time on the environments(which are quite good).

Whatever the reason there isn't much that can be done about it now, let's hope the next one does it better.

I agree with most of OP - lot of people are (rightfully) making fun out of facial animations but the stiff writing and dated combat system (boy that AI is basically not existent) are much worse aspects of the game.

Kinda sad as I had a soft spot for the initial trilogy.

I had such high hopes for this game but people across the board are echoing the same statements so for now it's a pass.

Using the same engine doesn't automatically make the facial animation the same. If you have (not to sound harsh) incompetent animators but the best technology in the world, it is still going to look bad.

I'm pretty sure BF1 used facial mocap. This isn't practical in a ME game considering how much dialog is involved.

@neocalypso: You can play up until a certain plot point in the story where you get a pop up screen announcing the end of the trial. You can still go back and explore the rest of the planet you're on within the 10 hour restriction, though.

It sure is nice of EA to give us a game break between Zelda/NieR and Persona 5!

Well i guess I won't buy it now as this seems like the worst game of all time. Okay Mass Effect 3 spin-off !?!? What the fuck does that even mean? Considering its literally a 2017 video game then I think its great if Im looking for one thanks! If you are going to bash the game then give me real reasons as to why its bad.

@nedshead said:

I believe it means he's saying it seems dated, and not a huge step in progress from 3. If you're looking for what the game offers then that's totally cool, but he explained his impression of the game just fine. No need to come in here defensive.

@mezza: Yeah Im sorry about that. Just very sick of people bashing the game. I have no problem with people disliking things but would like to see some valid points as to why its bad to which I don't think where given in to much detail. How does it feel dated? And the animation things has been killed to death and I don't think its as big an issue as others but that is just me. A lot of time its feels like people bash on Bioware because EA owns them and I find that endlessly frustrating.

Understandable, I'm a big fan of the series honestly so I'd probably be in the same spot as you if I were in a different mood today. I can't give any specific examples because I've only just started playing the intro. The only way I can explain it is if I imagine myself in a situation where I have no knowledge of when this game comes out ,and someone told me it was the year after ME3... I haven't seen much that makes that claim hard to believe. Aside from the environmental detail and some of the current gen graphical tuning of course. There's a weird lack of polish that gives the game an odd feeling, and has made me wonder how some of these things got past the developers. From what I've experienced so far through videos and my currently on going trial session, of course, which is only a small sample admittedly.

(I have enjoyed what I've played so far, but I can see where people are coming from on a lot of these issues)

Almost used up my alloted 10 hours of the access thing. Loving every second of it. You people are crazy.

I did have one question. How do you see how much time you have left with EA access? Does it just pop up messages every so often?

I'm three hours into the trial and enjoying it so far. It's definitely Dragon Age: Inquisition with a Mass Effect theme though.

I second this. I look at it this way, "mole hill plus internet/gaming community equals the biggest of mountains"

Right and if you didn't like Inquisition you probably won't like this. What gets me with that is some are upset and surprised that it is similar to Inquisition. Bioware straight up said they where using Inquisition as a blueprint for all their games going forward

I'm only a few hours in, but my impressions when actually playing it have been better than my impressions from watching the same section played. I feel like I lucked out in the character creator and got a Ryder that actually looks kind of okay. The facial animation ain't great, but I haven't hated some of the character moments I've gotten by digging into the dialogue trees a bit more, and the little touch that is the jump pack has made getting around in the larger areas feel way better than past games.

Still, though, my enjoyment here (and whether I finish it) will depend pretty much entirely on how the story develops. The opening "oh well I guess you're the pathfinder / chosen one now" stuff was a bit discouraging, but part of me's hopeful that's simply a matter of them wanting to get the justification out of the way so that they can dive into some deeper intrigue with a little more haste. There's been hints of that, but I'm way too early to tell whether any of those hints will develop into something more gripping, story wise.

Definitely intend to keep playing for now, though. The environments look really nice, I appreciate the no nonsense, you-can-figure-it-out-on-your-own-cus-cmon-it's-an-rpg approach they've taken to introducing a lot of their systems, and just picking it up made me realize that even a middling Mass Effect game has something going for it that so many other games don't, that being an interestingly built out and thoroughly detailed universe. Just hope the story they tell makes good use of that universe, or I may end up hopping off midway through like I did ME3, given the raft of amazing new games I still need to check out.

Maan I'm so bummed hearing about this game not being awesome. I really wanted it to be awesome.

Despite the derpy animation or lack thereof + the dead eyes, I am still looking forward to playing this game. I am ready for some more Mass Effect and if its just good instead of great, then I can live with that.

@essi2: Thanks for this, saved me a purchase. Gonna save my money for prey or put it towards a switch.

EDIT: Decided to wait to play a little more to make major judgments.

Also finished the early access demo latee last night, ended up putting just a hair over 7 hours to get to the story cutoff and finish all the side content with story substance.

Overall, I'm coming off about the same as @essi2 here. The game is disappointing in its overall jankiness; really just feels like EA pushed Bioware into this date when it wasn't ready for it. You can see SOME shortcuts in world building and general story set-up, but you see it far more clearly on the technical side.

The characters are really all quite promising, and charming in their own ways. If I complete this game, it'll be them that keep me coming back, much the same as it was for me in DA:I.

Agreed 100% on loading times. They are killer, especially for something small like going between planets to scan in the galaxy view, or between parts of the nexus on that tram. it FEELS worse than bloodborne, because you're having to load so often. Granted, I have it installed to a bone-standard 7200RPM drive. Would love to hear if an SSD gives a real performance boost, as I imagine it would.

I ran it on high at 3840x2160 and performance outside of the aforementioned loading transition and animation jank was totally decent, even on my modest graphically powered machine. See specs below.

Maybe you should go play the early access version, and give us your own subjective opinion on why the game is GOOD. Don't forget this is Giant Bomb, man. It's not like people are just on here shit-posting.

SPECS

Honestly this review is exactly the kind of thing I expect. The gameplay has been done better, the animations have some noticeable issues (or glaring flaws) and so on.

Yet think about the Mass Effect series, and what people loved about it. Now go back up and re-read the OP's review for a second. Missing from that, to me is "Story" "Character's' "Desire to play past the point allowed" "Judging meta narrative over sub-plots" "How is the multi-player?"

You know, all the stuff that people liked/adored about the last games? If this game is "An Ok ME3" and by that its "cause the gameplay/graphics are meh but the story/characters/multi-player are good/great/plenty of fun..then by god I'm sold!

I understand if people pass on this game, certainly if things like animation and game-play are the tipping point for you, fair enough. For me? I could care less about all of that if the story and writing is decent/good. Just my two cents.

@mr_bones: Granted I haven't hit the Nexus yet but my load times have seemed very reasonable so far on a 7200rpm HDD.

Friend sent this to me earlier and it made me laugh. I have to say I am glad that I didn't watch any pre-release videos until the Giant Bomb playthrough. ME2 is one of my favorite games of all time and this looks like they took several steps back from even that. I can only feel like this may be part of why EA was so hesitant to go super hype mode for this in terms of marketing and wait so long to show anything substantial.

I just hope the multiplayer is fun. My friend and I played like 80 hours of it in ME3. I have a feeling this game will be on my "biggest disappointments of 2017" list. :(

@bladededge: The story seems promising and the characters might be atleast on-par, but personally I don't feel like I got enough character interaction in the short while the demo lets you play to make any sort of judgement on that.

And yes, 7 hours is or atleast feels short, feels like the game has barely started. I'm very much looking forwards to continuing on the 23rd when it's out in Europe.

As for the multiplayer, it's an improved version of the ME3 multiplayer.

I've played about an hour-hour and a half on pc. Curious to know how it's running on console cause I think I'm still gonna stick with my PS4 version simply because.... I don't know I've always played mass Effect on a console so its kinda stuck with me like that.

But right now I think this game is gonna be just fine. The faces and animation have their bad moments but I don't think they look NEARLY as bad as people are screaming about. Especially the freeze frames people have posted. Combat has been enjoyable too, I mean it's the first hour of an RPG that's meant to be played for dozens and dozens of hours, of course you won't have all the fun stuff until you start digging in deep. The base felt good though, biotics are still fun, shooting feels solid and I do like the jump jet quite a bit. Only thing that irks me so far is the soft cover, I'm with the GB guys and much prefer the tactile feel of pressing a button to get into cover.

So right now, I feel much better about the game, glad I was able to kinda see for myself and make my own opinion of things. Opinions are cool!

Sounds about right. If structurally it is better than DA:I (the areas in that game were so strangle restrictive and lackluster, they felt like little play sets at times) and the narrative end of things is done well enough I will probably get it.

@bladededge:

I totally agree. I ended up putting in 110 hours on DA:I for exactly the same reason (though in the end wished i had put about 30 less in pursuing side content). It just feels like to me this game could've been so much more than it is. From the technical jank to the seemingly very writ plot setup. Hopefully it'll tie into the existing fiction and out-grow its setup in ways that surprise me, but so far I'm not certain I see that happening.

I'm definitely buying the game. I like hanging out with the characters enough that I need to see where it's going. It just feels like EA managed to turn what should've been a home run into a base hit over deadline concerns...I really wonder what this game could've been if Bioware had been given a year more of dev time.

Fair enough. I am currently playing and am liking more then most it would seem. Can't deny the rough edges and the humans for sure look weird at times. I think the environments look pretty good and has solid voice work so far. The dialogue has been cringe worth at times but not as bad as some of the previews I have read. I agree with you about the characters they have a ton of potential and I am interested to see where their individual arcs go at this point. The biggest thing I like about this game right now is the sense of adventure and exploration and the story its telling so far Its fun to just explore and discover things. Not going to say this game is perfect because it very clearly has some issues but so far Im more positive then negative on the early part right now.

@sammo21 said:

Friend sent this to me earlier and it made me laugh. I have to say I am glad that I didn't watch any pre-release videos until the Giant Bomb playthrough. ME2 is one of my favorite games of all time and this looks like they took several steps back from even that. I can only feel like this may be part of why EA was so hesitant to go super hype mode for this in terms of marketing and wait so long to show anything substantial.

I just hope the multiplayer is fun. My friend and I played like 80 hours of it in ME3. I have a feeling this game will be on my "biggest disappointments of 2017" list. :(

A lot of people underestimate the size of CD Projekt Red. The WItcher 3 had 200 people working on it.

seems like my time may be better spent on trying to complete the me thrillogy first. not that this looks terrible, but i have higher priorities. i did jump into da:i fine with limited da experience though, so meh. but i think i'm fine for now, being more of a fair weather me fan mostly by proxy.

@nedshead: i think they're more upset that ea has chosen to go hard on that route, rather than making something closer to the old games. i personally don't mind it, but i see that others are disappointed. still a bit too much hate for this out of the gate.

Don't forget the massive Bioware witch hunt that has been going since DA 2. Not saying backlash wasn't warranted but that game plus a lot of peoples disappointment with Mass Effect 3 has left this perpetual target on Biowares back that they just can't shake. Things seem like they got better with DA: I but not much.

Yeah we're starting to get dangerously close to that old internet mentality of wanting something to fail in some of the posts I've seen across message boards. I can see the dead eyes and weird mouth animations and it is a bummer (especially since the 3 year old Inquisition did a decent-good job at this). Aside from that I'm still excited for it, especially the skill variety in combat and exploring bigger, Inquisition-style hub worlds.

For those being legit in their disappointment, I feel ya. We all have our priorities and hangups that might seem superfluous to others but are very real to us and I had that feeling very recently with regards to Breath of the Wild. To each their own; there's certainly a lot of quality games out already in 2017 (with more on the way soon).

Dare we say, "...it's the best time to be playing video games."

Add in more fuel with the hate Inquisition got for having a trans character, bi-romance party members in most of their games the past decade, being singled out as a SJW company, etc. The internet salt for Bioware is real.

And i have burn a large amount of calories staying out of all those conversations, for my own sanity. I am bioware fan i know they aren't the same company as they were in the beginning, but i still love the games the produce.

I'm about two hours in and I like it a lot. I don't care too much about the faces. That's too not picky for me to care. I could end up hating it, but at the moment I'm happy about my purchase.

My one complaint would be the character creator isn't that great. I may be blind, but it annoyed me that I had to change to a different preset just to change the bridge of the character's nose.

@shorap: who was the trans character? played 50 hours and never noticed...

Iron Bull's Lieutenant

Which would have been ignored had they made a great game

I just finished up the portion of the single player that they let you do for the demo, and I have to say... I'm feeling so much better about the game than I was after watching the Giantbomb video. I got basically none of the graphical glitches they had. Not sure if that's because I'm on PC or just lucky. A lot of the awkward animations are there of course, but I'm not spinning the camera around on Ryder every scene so I don't have to look at his eyes. The story is working for me better than I thought it would. It's nothing special yet and the "pathfinder" thing is referenced way too much, but I find myself wanting to see whats going to happen. I also like the characters more than I expected. I made sure to go through every characters starting conversation once the ship launched and so far... (incoming spoiler section for anyone who hasn't done/seen the trial)

Liam, Lexi, and Vetra are my favorites out of these initial dialogue tid bits. Liam is a strong contender for being my bro on the ship like Garrus was, but we'll see where he goes. Mass Effect human squad members have traditionally ranged from average to horrible, so I was pleasantly surprised when I found myself enjoying sitting down with Liam for a beer.

For me Mass Effect games are carried on the backs of the universe and the characters. My initial impressions of the characters on the ship is very positive, so that's been reassuring for me. I'm not sure how interesting the universe is going to be, but I'm hoping for the best. I'm glad I decided to take a dive and risk being disappointed rather than just go off of the games coverage. I think this will at least come out as a good game for me. Probably not great like Mass Effect 2, but I feel better about the game right now. To be honest I think I would recommend that any Mass Effect fan try to take a look for themselves. The trial is a good opportunity to see which side of the coin you land on. This may be a game that's just going to be very divisive, and will depend on how much you can tolerate a bit of jank. I'm notoriously easy-going and tend to not be the most critical gamer, so your mileage may vary depending on how high your personal bar is.

Now I'm going to use up the rest of my trial in multiplayer. I want to try out as many of the skills as possible, so I can get an idea of what I want to use in combat in the main story. Seems like a good way to do so.