Mass Effect: Andromeda - Is it really that bad?

Off Topic What Else Are You Playing?
1

==This topic might contain spoilers==

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I’m one of those people who has played the first trilogy and enjoyed it. Even though we had to deal with a lot of dissapointments with big titles…I still took the risk of pre-ordering Andromeda. This doesn’t mean I’m a blind fanboii. In fact I avoided all hype as much as possible and went into the game with the mindset: “If it is ok I’ll be happy”. So far the game has been more then just “ok”.

Yesterday I’ve played 14 hours straight taking my game time to above 30 hours in two days. And today I’ve been playing for several hours as well with a short break for nourishments. So far it is actually more enjoyable then expected. The few inconsistencies and bugs haven’t really been all that noteworthy for me. Playing with all settings on High and runs smooth as butter. The game hasn’t blown me away yet, but it is still a good product.

The galaxy map & Mining. is something people have been talking about in a negative way. I’m quite the opposite.
-In ME1 you drove around the landscape too occasionally mine, but on the galaxy map you scanned and just clicked on the planets till one said you could land. However the planets were fairly empty with some scannable objects, crashlanded sattelites, some beastly encounters, your mission objective and mining locations. Still it made you feel like an explorer.
-In Me2 you could fly around, but didn’t add anything. You still just clicked on planets till you saw “land” for a mission. You couldn’t move across the landscape all that much any more. The mining was done through probes and was annoyingly tedious since it was mandatory…if you wanted to have resources to craft all upgrades to make the final mission easier.
-In ME3 they went a bit further. You only landed on planets for specific missions and didn’t roam around on them at all. The scanning was still tedious and dull and quite a chore. Especially since it didn’t really tie in with anything else. You did move across the map from planet to planet as a Reaper evasion mini-game.
-In Andromeda they took away the useless stuff like flying to planets. The probing is nicely streamlined so you can find the satelite/meteor or whatever in that system. And you can then rotate the camera around it to view from all angles in 3d. Even on planets you quickly find what you need and move on. The art looks very nicely done. And even though there is this 10-15second video motion moving you into range of the planet… Going through an entire sector scanning it for 100% completion is so much faster and doesn’t feel like a chore at all. I’m quite pleased with it. I’m happy I don’t have to waste timing flying around a system with no reward at the end other then a grindy chore and having to micro-manage fuel.

When you find a system with a planet you can find the landing zone. And be in the city… Or explore a decently sized open map with thusfar varying environments. Went from a dull sandbox where I had to start my first settlement to some colorful jungles. The maps aren’t huge, but big enough to explore and do various quests. Thankfully it isn’t too large so it ends up getting filled with tons of meaningless collectible crap. When on the planet surface you still also have the mining aspect what you had from ME1. So I feel they streamlined from ME3, trimmed down all the frustrating tedious junk and brought back some actual planet exploration from ME1.

Storywise its thusfar standard Bioware tropes. If that puts you off that is your thing. For me its ok since it has been presented in quite an epic fashion thusfar into the game. Normally in such games you have a main story and then you get disconnected due to many side quests and crap. But since you’re an explorer with no real deadline to beat some enemies plans… It really suits the pace at which you do stuff. Explore planets, try to make them habitable for your people, thaw out pilgrims from cryo and along the way you have encounters with enemies. Gradually you’ll learn what they’re up to, but never do I feel anxious or having to go out of my way or feel disconnected. Yet plenty would hate the “slow” pace of stuff. So far my battle sessions have been few in comparison to all the talking and exploring and questing.

The UI is really clunky and intuitive. This game has so many mechanics that require menu’s. It is quite messy to find what you need. And then it doesn’t always quite work smoothly. Came across several bugs in this area as well.

Graphics and stuff
Atmosphere is presented well, but so far haven’t really been blown away by anything yet. Same for the graphical quality in general. When I started up Witcher 3, Titanfall 2 and such I was in awe at how gorgeous it was. Andromeda is colorful and pretty, but hasn’t delivered the Awestruck experience yet. Aesthetically it doesn’t always match either. Some faces…or entire alien bodies look so out of place. They’re more cartoonish in proportions and presentation so it doesn’t fit with the other “realistic” models. Graphical/animation bugs have been few for me. PeeBee leaning over the railing and after a conversation was leaning in air for example. This was the biggest one I’ve experienced myself. When talking with some turians you can see their tongue move as a stand alone entity and some other minor things I can easily look past.

Some characters however really annoy me. The head of settlements…that women whose “face is tired”… Her dialogue is so flawed. Her sentences are so childish. The things she says in general are so stupid that I actively wonder how someone at the Initiative thought it would be a good idea to put a moron in charge of something so vital. There are a few dialogues that make me wonder if it was written by a 14 year old or if people in real life have degraded to the point that it is what they actually say. Once again it happens so sporadically it isn’t a deal breaker. In general, which the huge amount of texts and interactions, it works well. Even the weird irish accent of my co-pilot has grown on me.

Combat is smooth. Even on Normal I actually have to be careful at times. In Dragon Age Inquisition I was constantly checking if it was on Hard since it felt super easy just blasting through everything with no regard of what was going on. Nice to see that isn’t the case here. Still figuring out a lot of the stuff. There are so many mechanics for research, crafting, adjusting stuff, enhancing stuff. It can be really overwhelming to many people I bet. You really need to sit down, read and take your time for it. I don’t mind, but can see others might. Thankfully you can respec yourself and your comrades to try out all possibilities till you find what you like.

As for your companions. I don’t find them all that…present. Their skill development is really limited. And in battle I rarely notice them being there. If Cora didn’t charge in with her biotics and thus be in front of me all the time I wouldn’t even know she was there. Like Vetra with her shots being behind me. I forgot she’s there till she speaks up. This is odd since in previous ME’s I actually used my companions in battle quite a lot. Both in tactical placement and telling them to use specific ammo types or skills to set up combo’s. In Andromeda I feel that I can’t rely on them and have to do everything myself…which is quite overwhelming and adds to the challenge in combat. I create my own combo’s with tech and fire. Really miss having Garrus using ammo types that are too deal with armor, Liara with her specific ammo to debuff opponents and I just use cryo rounds to take it all apart. Not to mention the combo’s we could create with Liara’s Singularity, Garrus’s shots and my skills for example. I miss all that stuff in Andromeda. Plus side is that I’m now playing a character that uses lots of abilities himself…instead of letting the team mates do that.

The way game saving works is terrible. It is through check points and all pc gamers agree that is horrendous. You can still manually save, but there is no quicksave button in keybinding any more. which takes you out of the immersion needlessly. Inside a vault…it becomes infuriating. You can’t even save in a vault at all. So if you run into a “boss” battle and die you get to replay it entirely again…sometimes up to an hour worth of game time. This has caused me to think about quitting the game a few times. Which would be a shame seeing I’m enjoying all the other parts.

These are just my initial thoughts after playing 2 days and having just over 30 hours in the game.

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3

Cheap Imitation?

I do see a lot of missed opportunities and full out lacking of stuff. After 4 days and about 50-60 hours in I’m getting the feeling of being “done” with it.

A lot of elements in Andromeda aren’t that different from the original trilogy. Those weren’t technical achievements either compared to other games released in those era’s. ME never stood out for its graphics and animations. So for that I can be lenient.

Story wise it is standard Bioware. They’re stuck in the old Dungeons and Dragons way of telling stories and never really evolved. Once again. We know exactly what to expect and it has been delivered on. It is nothing high standing or fresh. But the things seen in the early part of the game did made it look epic. Which was pretty much the high note thusfar. As for making decisions that matter…found a handful of those. Just like in the original trilogy its mostly fluffy illusion of choices mattering however. So nothing unsuspecting here either and can look past it. It did evoke a few emotional responses though. I laughed with Liam’s stupidity on his loyalty mission, Peebee’s introduction was…interesting, deciding someone was guilty or not, finding out what Kett really are…but those are all the moments thusfar.

With those two things said. I get the impression a lot of people have different, higher expectations. Expectations based on nothing when looking at what Bioware produced in the past. Even with different management…not much has changed in that regard.

Even the slow starting pace, first mission followed by exploring the Nexus is pretty much how ME1 began. Only difference is that in ME1 you got to meet a lot of different species. In Andromeda we took the key species with us, but…so far I haven’t seen any Hanar, Drell, Volus. Nor has the game introduced any replacement species. The Angaran felt like the Quarian models have been taken and re-used without their environmental suits. In this case a lot of Sci-Fi mystery and intrigue is not present. And it does indeed feel like a dressed down version of ME…cheap imitation.

When going to the planets and trying to make them viable for creating settlements it felt right. You explore, pick up pieces of failed first attempts, and push on. Going beyond where even the first wave of settlers failed, because they lacked a Pathfinder. A desert planet gives off that feel of desperate need and help, but it is also a bland environment. The quests were interesting enough to keep going. However after you did those it was back to the fetch/collectible quests. Scan rocks for a scientist, scan diverse plant life for a scientist, scan x planets for a school project, put beacons near failing tech for recovery… It is what we always had in these games. And I said be lenient, but I’m just too old and tired to care for boring grindy time wasters.

To make an planet livable you also have to activate vaults on each of the 5 planets. Activate three monoliths, go into a vault to reset it and done. I for one enjoy the Sudoku puzzles, but that’s because I do regular 12star puzzle books of Sudoku in my spare time. Unlike many other puzzles in games I don’t enjoy for the same reasons. For once a game has a puzzle I actually enjoy hehe. But it does get repetitive. And inside the vault there sometimes you can go in a different route, find a puzzle, only to realize it does nothing other then remove your path entirely. This I didn’t understand, but had to reload a save game and re-do 20-25 minutes of travel.

The second planet was much more enjoyable. A jungle map which wasn’t too large in size, but enough content to keep me busy for 10 hours. Everything there seemed to have a good decent flow in quest/exploration progression. There was only one fetch quest, but since it was en-route to the main story line it didn’t bother me. It was also motivating since it involved first contact with the Angara and trying to put us in a good spotlight.

Third planet was Snow and cold with lots of hazards. Meaning you couldn’t spend too much time outside. Some people can find this annoying, but its manageable. Once again lots too explore, fair amount of quests. However at this point it started to feel like a drag at times. Having to clear another map, after taking care of the main business, is becoming a chore to try to keep up the 100% completion. Thankfully the next step in the story occurred right on time to draw me back in.

Exploring Aya and taking care of side business and some loyalty companion missions was a nice change of pace. When resuming the open map of the Badlands I just lost motivation to keep going. Needed a break before finding the will to clear yet another map and push on. Not to mention that on this planet the exiles from the Nexus have settled down. Humans, Turians, KRogan etc have already been here and seen everything. So not much in regards of being the first explorer. It is just being the Pathfinder trying to find the Vault and make this planet habitable climate wise. While having a small carrot of story progression as reward in front of you.

I do like how loot, stores and crafting are not mutually exclusive sources of finding gear. The Angaran 4 helm you can find as loot or buy from stores. If you invested your tech development points you can even get it through crafting. Thing is that with crafting you can add some additional components for some cool bonusses/effects for that extra min-maxing action. This means that everything I find…I sell. Everything I need…I craft from resources found all over the place without even putting effort into it. Just mine rocks you walk past, occasionally put up a mining probe when driving a planets surface, or use AVP points to unlock scientists that give gradually income of a specific resource. You can end up with a lot of money, spending none, and still have top of the line equipment through crafting.

Which begs the question. What is the point of currency anyway? We’ve come to a new galaxy where our currency is unknown. No one should’ve been willing to trade for our currency. Trade I could understand however. Breaking apart stuff to get resources to craft something new I could understand as well. How it sits now all currency gained is useless…there is no real money sink. The currency are resources from mining used to get what you need.

And a lot of streamlining should’ve been done in menu’s. It is so unintuitive where some things are and how the interaction with the UI is.

Companions in combat have grown in use as they leveled up. Gotten to the point where I actually try to find companions that use skills that setup opponents for a combo. PeeBee can use Singularity and lift opponents up in a stasis field. With my tech skill of shooting two things I can make them all explode in a wide radius for bonus damage. Biotic, tech and fire combo’s is what I do regularly clearing large packs of opponents. While I focus on taking down shields, and some armor through fire/incendiary, Cora has focussed her biotics to take down armor fast. So that works out nicely. We’re getting some group synergy going. Still it doesn’t feel as versatile and trustworthy as in previous ME’s. I still rely mostly on myself for the bulk of the work instead of squad unity. Which is a shame since I really loved that.

Overall combat encounters aren’t all that interesting. In the open world maps you encounter Kett and Remnant. Remnant are found near tech/machine obelisks and are easy to take down. They’re always the same untill you enter a vault and occasionally run into something much bigger. Unfortunately that change of pace rarely occurs. The only, somewhat, interesting fight was against The Architect. But he was easy to figure out, never a treat and actually rather underwhelming.

The Kett’s drop ships are a nice touch and they also have some barracks and base of operations here and there. Sounds cool and logical, but after a while I just run past all those small drop ship locations unless there is a quest. The Kett you encounter in the field are always the same grunts. So once you know how to deal with them it is just a repetition of moves and move on. There are two or three high ranked Kett, but those get just as repetitive since they all used the same move set as one another. Shoot the yellow orb, the shield drops, unload with all your skills and repeat a few times while managing their incoming support.

As for wildlife itself… Some Eiroch’s and such. But they rarely get in your way. So nothing really noteworthy here. Which is a shame. Threats on planets are mainly environmental or either Remnant/Kett encounters. Which get dull quickly. I did enjoy taking down a few of the Kett bases, at times being rewarded with story progression. But other then that nothing to speak off.

I still enjoy how the galaxy map exploration and probing works. That 10second animation doesn’t bother me at all. I like looking at probed sattelites and debries in 3d. And overall the time it takes to 100% scan a system is still faster and less grindy/annoying that in previous ME’s.

The bugs and glitches encountered still have been on the low end for me. Kett jumping out their drop ships stayed in the air floating. When I hit it then all of the Kett suddenly glitched out of that 1 opponent. Spawn Point glitch basically. Animation on Kett not working. Instead of running for cover they glided. In the nake scene with Liam and Jaal I saw Jaals upperbody floating above the table…while JAal and Liam were having a conversion on the other side of the table. When dashing to cover behind a rock I feel through the world map once. No gamebreaker since I spawned on top of the rock shortly after…with the Mako falling on my head. PeeBee resting on the railing on the Tempest in the wrong direction after conversing with her. Those were pretty much the only issues that I’ve noticed after 50 hours.

If I were to give Andromeda a number at this point… It would be around a 7,5 It isn’t bad, but it sure isn’t great either.

4

It would appear that they sacrificed quality for quantity. Which is the opposite of what I expected from Bioware games of the past…but is pretty much par for the course with EA.

5

In a lot of the areas I agree quantity over quality. The World design is well done. Although the inspiration of what kind of a world is lacking. You got a desert world, a sandy/rocky/desert world, an ice world in contrast there is a jungle, a “moon” planet and regular earth like world. So nothing all that crazy.

The worlds themselves are nicely filled with like debris, rock formations, flora and fauna. But it isn’t as densely filled and “alive” as a Witcher 3 nor like Dragon Age: Inquisition for a more realistic comparison. This makes the worlds themselves feel rather vast and empty. To some degree understandable since the HEleus cluster is having issues with the Scourge phenomenon that is destroying stuff. As Pathfinder you have to make the planets livable again. Over time however, after giving your settlements time, nothing seems to change. Only thing that goes away are the climate hazards.

As said the wildlife itself isn’t really there either. So far the Scourge isn’t explained yet. What it does exactly, how it appeared, why etc. Up to this point it feels like a cheap way to explain why all the planets are so boring and empty.

The Remnants have no explanation either then that they’re a 300 year old machine race. Kett however do get a decent story development going after quite some time. As usual the loyalty side missions are done…well. Not as great as some like Garrus for example, but they’re good enough.

Been thinking a bit about the combat system in this game. You can have three active skills at a time. This setup can be bound in a favorite list so you can switch between four different load outs. Every time you switch you have to wait 15 seconds or so before using the skills of the new load out. This means you can NOT switch skills on the fly during a battle unless you want to wait 15seconds firing a weak ass weapon instead. You’re effectively dead in the water if you do this. Something you don’t want during the occasional “boss” battle. For trash encounters, which is the majority, switching is not needed.

Thing is…you always encounter the exact same opponents thusfar. A “task” as side mission for Apex asks me to scan 50 different opponents. Well I scan EVERYTHING and only got to 15-20 different opponent types thusfar. This includes all Remnant, Kett and Initiative opponents. If they’re suddenly going to throw in the remaining 30 opponent types they’re a bit late with that in my opinion. A lot of people would’ve already tuned out by now.

That said. Going through the same opponent packs means you quickly settle into a pace that you know what to do and optimally. I grabbed Overload, Concussion Shot and one other tech skill. With these three I can do two different combo’s by myself. Fire and Tech. I can tear down opponent shields easily and through fire the armor goes down fast. Now throw in your companions that can fill different tactical needs and the question comes to mind: “why even use different profiles?”. I maxed my three skills and maxed out all passive skills to boost my survivability and effectiveness of skills.

Since you keep leveling, way beyond, the amount of levels I assume to end with… There are a lot of unspent skills. These can either go in your tree to boost profile bonuss or experiment putting points in other skills and see how other profile load outs work. For example I know have a load out using Singularity, a Turret and a Remnant pet that I unlocked. Working on a third profile as well. They’re weaker then my main profile and the time it takes to switch between profile skills is too long making it not interesting at all. I could create profiles for range, close combat, oh shit survival or something…by why? when my three skills already do the trick in all the situatiosn the game has thrown at me.

Sure the maps are designed in such a way that the use of jetpack comes into play. More mobility and levels adds, in theory, to more tactical opportunities. However the opponents rarely force me enough to make use of those. It is normal that you go to the highest floor and just shoot everything below you. Of course they jump up as well making for easy targets while they’re in the air :wink:

Coming back to cheap… Like using the Scourge thusfar as excuse for empty worlds. Battles with The Architect are just as uninspired. Shoot at its three “legs”, hit the face when the npc’s tell you, avoid incoming waves of spawns, strafe left and right to avoid beam charges… repeat till the legs and face are broken. It looks impressive, but its all so easily to avoid that you know that the battle is won long before the end. Making it a tedious HP Pool slagfest. When you encounter another Architect on another planet you do the exact same…but now you also have to manage the environmental hazard that slowly drains your life. Meaning that you find a platform with a device that counters the environment effects and has enough space to strafe left and right while also containing ammo refill boxes. jawn

That said. Ammo refill boxes…normal, standard nothing weird. However the health refill boxes is new. And quite frankly annoying. During the slightly more difficult, as in boringly lengthy, battles, it comes in handy. But I’d rather still have access of medi-gel health potions to use when I see fit. During the earlier levels my health dropped hard and fast and only way to recover shields and half health was to hide behind cover. This effects combat pace, game pace and leads to frustrating situations early on. After lvl20 you’re can pretty much go Rambo on their asses. Which his nice. Running in, seeing the target with shields, popping overload and all skills that also has a radius. Clearing out half of the group before the fights even begin. Downside is that I pop my skills and then ignore everything running to the objective, use my skills, run to objective. This reduces a lot of the quests from exciting and challenging to just a quick task to do and move on to the next without any thought. I even went up a difficulty trying to compensate for this to no avail. Meaning the difficulty curve in this game is off.

50+ hours in thusfar. Still have Kadara and that other sandy planet with the Krogans to do. They’re the last two planets left to do in regards to settlements and quests. Scanned everything. All systems are at 100% explored and overall Heleus completion is only at 48%. Wonder how much more I can expect…and if it’ll get more exciting. The latest Kett development does have me guess if this is just the first installment in a new trilogy. There is more to the Andromeda then just Heleus. And there is more to the Kett then just the Archon. And the scourge, whatever it is, seems to be contained to Heleus so there could be other threats elsewhere that are more interesting. With more interesting planetscapes and alien races.

Other then a few moments of thinking about quitting I keep going. 12-14 hours a day since release. So it must be doing something right. Most other games I stop/take breaks every 2-3 hours or so since I can’t stand certain elements. Or there is too much going on at once so need a break to process it all. Andromeda’s slow, relaxing pace seems to suit me.

6

The combat is actually far better than any of the first 3 games, even the multiplayer part of ME3. There are a lot of very interesting ways to build your character and the combat flows very smoothly.

There are lots of little flaws with the game. The GUI, especially the map and save system, make me wonder what the hell the designers were thinking. And some of the facial textures are pretty bare boned and rushed. But to me the gameplay is superb and the story is at least immersive and suited for a semi-open world game (I generally don’t like open world or sandbox games).

7

The combat is smooth, but i wouldn’t say great/better when looking at all the other aspects that make up a combat encounter/experience. The combat is smooth and responsive, but so very very dull otherwise.

It is true that you have plenty of points to max out many skills. And with profiles you can indeed switch load outs of skills. However the way this is done makes it pretty useless to do so. Not once did I run around thinking I had to switch profiles to suit certain circumstances.

I switch on rare occasion a profile to see the other skills in action, but for realsies I don’t use them. There are indeed many different ways to build a character, but profiles is not the way. It isn’t just switching profiles and having different skills at your disposal. You also should switch gear to get the bonusses that go with it…which isn’t the case and thus leaves me with weak secondary load outs.

8

I don’t really see what you are getting at though. Just because you don’t NEED to switch profiles doesn’t make the combat bad or limiting. 3 powers on separate cooldowns, shooting, meleeing and commanding your squad around gives you plenty of stuff to be doing during combat.

And for character building there is a staggering number of effective builds. You have 3 different active powers you select out of 24 very distinct choices (giving a lot of possibilities) and you can combine them in any way you like. Each skill gets 3 different evolution choices (and unlike ME3 most of these are much more balanced and difficult to choose from rather than one clearly being better). Many of the abilities also have alternate modes.

You also have all the passive abilities (with procs) to combine with your skills. And your choice of profile is another major consideration. A Vanguard with Charge, Annihilation, and Lance plays very differently to an Adept with the same active powers (or a Sentinel for that matter).

And unlike what you suggest, switching your profile and power set, is actually useful. You can even get cute with powers that don’t automatically go on cooldown.

I enjoyed ME2 and ME3 (ME1 was pretty rough for gameplay) but they simply didn’t have anywhere near the same variety, flexibility, or mobility in terms of combat and character building that MEA does.

9

Combat =
-smooth controls
-mobility
-environmental design
-skill design
-weapon design
-difficulty scaling
-opponent diversity
-varrying opponent skill sets
-opponent AI
-finding a decent balance/challenge between all these elements

ME3 lacks severely in almost every aspect of what makes for good combat. It is smooth, it is mobile, it has some decent environmental design and ok skill design. And that is where it stops.

The opponents are ALWAYS the same with the exact same attack patterns. Even bosses are the exact same and not challenging. The Architect takes 15 long boring minutes to defeat and you do this 3-4 times throughout. Difficulty scaling and interesting battles are non-existing in ME3.

Me 3 has delivered only a half decent combat experience in that regard.

Commanding your squad around is a no-go in ME:A unlike previous installments. You can command your squad to take a certain position, but that is it. And even on Hard that is not needed since they do it themselves if needed. And you can’t command your companions to use x skill so you can get a guarenteed combo/synergy attack going with them. You have to listen to what a team mate says as to get a hint of what they’re about to do. I just use PeeBee at the moment with her Pull that primes opponents. Then Dracks can throw Incinerate to combo… and hopefully the AI can figure that out and make it work since I got absolutely no say in the matter. And I can’t rely on them to prime opponents for me to combo off reliably either so I just set myself up for combo’s and walk through groups of opponents like rambo. This is something that is a hell of a lot worse then in previous ME’s. I takes away the tactical aspect of RPG combat.

ps
around 65 hours in and just found out something that has been so very annoying in combat. When using cover I was always facing to the right forcing me to keep that in mind when using cover. By accident I pressed the C button and voila…now I can also switch to the left hand side. Just like mission extraction (T) the keybinds nor ingame messaging never mentions this unless you stumble on it.

10

It’s difficult for me to argue about your experience with a world boss since I haven’t fought it yet, but I strongly suspect it could be done in significantly less than 15 minutes. I also don’t really think using a world boss is a very good example of discussing combat in a general sense though.

I personally think there are plenty of interesting set piece battles, particularly on main missions. I’m not going to argue the AI is great, but compared to most games, and earlier ME games in particular, it is pretty good. The enemies advance and flank you much more aggressively than previous games which means you can’t just sit back in cover.

As for switching to left handed stance, it IS mentioned in key binding as “Change camera perspective” or something. It’s fairly important to this style of game to open up approaching enemies from the other side so I was very happy they added it. Previous ME games did not have the option at all.

11

All three times took between 15-20minutes to beat The Architect. Can’t see how you could do it a lot faster. I played it as optimally as possible since it is quite a dull predictable battle. So want to get it over with asap. And its not the only one…just the most clear cut example of how to make fights seem artificially difficult by making them a battle of attrition.

I agree that opponents in this installment are more aggressive. If you stay in cover too long they’ll throw a grenade to make you move. As for trying too flank… that is something I haven’t noticed. What did happen is that I got flanked because a second drop ship spawned opponents behind me. However none of this really matters when you unload your skills and just blow everyone up before they get even near you.

In the earlier part of the game there is a mission with the Kett. You have to battle quite a lot of them while trying to turn of the alarms. It was a challenging interesting fight at that point. They still managed to hurt and the powers didn’t outright kill them yet. You had to use cover at times, you had to flank them, you had to use different tactics and heights of the map. Unfortunately difficulty scaling is horrendous. The further in you get, the worse it gets.

Once you pass lvl20 your skills are strong and you should have tier 4 gear giving enough bonuses and defenses. Not to mention your companions are getting more powerful as well. Around this point on it gets skewered. You simply end up overpowering pretty much everything. With an ancient Eiroch I did nothing and Dracks just killed it faster then I even could using my own skills. When encountering opponents I just casually walk to them and use a combo to clear a pack, incinerate the one next my team takes out two or three as well. Hover in the air killing two. when my powers are off cool down I repeat if there are still some alive. Now imagine being lvl45 and having yourself in t6-7 gear, maxed out skills and maxed out companions. Nothing survives long enough to be a threat. Those that do survive long enough are dull mechanics wise.

Which brings me to the novelty of hovering. In combat this makes you more vulnerable and an easy target. So I only end up using it too surprise that 1 or 2 remaining enemies holed up behind a rock. Otherwise I don’t even bother. Even when you grab the passive that gives increased damage absorption while hovering… Not using it. Was a cool novelty, but it wears out soon enough. Did get the achievement of 100 kills while hovering, which was my major motivation for it.

I do use the jet-pack a lot for the multi-floored levels to get as high as possible as quickly as I can. Or when moving from one building to the next to cross any open cliffs between those two.

Even though I’m in general enjoying the game. There are many things where I wonder what the designer was thinking. For example the conversation trigger. It only lets you prompt the dialogue when you approach the NPC from the front. Really annoying when half of the npc’s are facing walls or stand in cramped corners. Have to get in some really small sticky areas to start a conversation. Thankfully the jet-pack can get me out of those or I’d have to re-load or something for getting stuck hehe. Why not let the player activate the conversation from any direction and just have the NPC turn before the actual interaction occurs.

65+ hours in the game according to Origin. Time to do some groceries. Then resume with the last planet and some loyalty quests. After that probably run around the galaxy. The game gives quests that bring you back to previous planets for a short visit. Would be nice if the planet showed some change due to the Vaults. That isn’t happening. Which I can understand since it would take a lot of work to re-do parts of world design and such. Wonder how much there still is to go. If the Heleus counter (54%) is about how much content has been cleared thus far… ouch. That means I’ll be 60% after completing this last planet and 40% of other stuff still to explore :open_mouth: Going back to work tomorrow. Hoped I could finish the game in the days I had especially taken off to play this :stuck_out_tongue:

12

Hi Gibly,

I agree with much of what you say about Mass Effect Andromeda (the Scourge being a cheap reason for the barren planets, squad mates not being as useful, etc.). I also agree with you on the things I like (slower-paced, exploration feel).

However, your comment about “what’s the point of different profiles” prompted me to make a suggestion: try a higher difficulty, preferably Insanity (maybe after you beat it and take a break for awhile so the story isn’t so fresh in your head).

I dove right in with Insanity difficulty and it has forced me to discover deeper strategy in the game that I could simply ignore and breeze through on a lesser difficulty.

For example, on Insanity, it is incredibly useful to use the different Profiles on the fly. The higher difficulty has also really has pushed me to think about and evolve my strategies in order to conquer new bosses. For example, my first fight with the architect took me around 15 tries and ranks as one of the top 10 most intense fights I’ve had in my ~25 years of playing video games. I started as an Engineer Profile but re-spec’ed my character to Infiltrator and crafted a custom sniper rifle for the battle.

Playing on Insanity has also made those common ‘trash’ encounters exciting still, because if I am not very careful, I will die easily from any of those so I always have to be on top of my game which keeps me engaged.

Sounds like you have already poured dozens of hours into the game and are near the end, but this is just some food for thought if you have an abundance of time and decide on another play through.

13

I’m enjoying it, even though the combat can be plain frustrating. Enemies or allies can bug out at the most annoying moments. Squad size is a bit small in my opinion.

Animations can indeed be awkward, but I laugh at it most of the time, not in a bad way.

Some of the real issues, for me, lie with the protagonist’s personality, which is WAY too bland. The game reminds me of much of the weaker points of Dragon Age: Inquisition (which I loved overall.)

And this is highly subjective, of course, but so far I’m not hooked on the main storyline. It definitely cannot compete with its predecessors, even if Mass Effect 3 was a slap in the face for many reasons. Not least the ending, but also the Leviathan arc being DLC and the Prothean pre-order bullshit.

Definitely good to be playing some Mass Effect again though. Its really not that far removed from the older titles in feel, but it is less focused for sure.

14

Welcome to the thread and partaking in a possible discussion.

@HubJub
I can follow what you’re saying. Playing on higher difficulties, in most games, requires you to make use of every mechanic the game has to offer. You basically try to min-max to get through. While lower difficulties require less knowledge of the technical side of things and have a more relaxing story experience.

However in the past 3 games the insanity difficulty often felt arbitrary and just very unbalanced. Often also showing the lack of proper difficulty scaling since the game became easier and easier the further you went. But of a reverse if you ask me. I expect things to be relatively easy early on and get the player into the saddle before ramping up the difficulty/challenges.

I’m also someone who usually plays for a relaxing experience on normal. Maybe go to hard if I like the game and spend time delving into the mechanics, but rarely go to the highest difficulty. Except for DA:I which even on the highest difficulty was just plain…easy.

In MA:E if you go to a higher difficulty after you gained certain levels already the flawed difficulty scaling still makes the game relatively easy. However I can see how the game can be challenging in the earlier parts of the game. Since even on normal I had to take some battles with a careful patient approach. You can’t take many hits at low level so had to be careful hehe. On Insanity I might get outright killed I think :smiley: The previous ME’s had the same flawed scaling as per many claims from many people.

Still I am curious. Could you provide examples of how you used profiles and if you set each one up for different purposes with totally different skills. Or did you use overlapping skills for each profile etc. The only way my battle strategy evolved is to equip and use different weapons depending on circumstances. I like the Charger Pistol/SMG against The Architects legs, the Valkyrie Rifle with Flak/bouncing ammo on his minions and sniper for his face. Reason I switch is for better ammo conservation since it is such a lengthy battle.

@Zoso
I see what you mean with the story line. In my opinion this is an issue with open world(ish) games in general. The way story telling is done needs to somehow evolve and adjust to the game style you plan to provide. In a lineair setting you have a more predictable way of making gamer progress and thus know roughly when they need to encounter new story progressions. And cut down on the amount of side stuff so the main story still stays fresh and connected in the players mind.

Open World(ish) games have so much side content that people can easily get disconnected from the main story. You can attempt to create a world wherein the effects of the main story have some effect on the citizens/quest givers. Thus the side quests can still somehow be in contact with the main story. In fact it can be used to create a more emotional band of the player towards the villain. Simply because the player can see the villains effect on the world. This is not as easily done as it sounds though.

In the case of ME:A they simply choose a story of exploration. Which explains how and why you travel around the new galaxy. Have to settle/explore new planets and take care of business there to make it habitable. You have smaller scaled quest lines and stories to get connected with the new worlds and possible inhabitants. However you never really get in touch with a main story. Sure the Kett get introduced and the Angara often mention their troubles/trauma’s etc caused by this. Yet never do you get truly connected and invested. You get connected with Jaal and the stuff he has to deal with, but the rest of the Angaran population is so mistrusting themselves that I’m putting energy into that relationship and not getting the time to care about the Kett. Who are the reason the Angarans have trust issues, but you simple don’t really care for that since you’re to busy proving yourself.

After 65-70 hours, Heleus explored for 66% so not quite at the end it seems, in I’ve got settlements on all planets. I know the location of the Archon’s ship that I need to launch an attack against. However through the game thusfar you only encountered the Kett in a meaningful way … less then a handful of times. You get a cutscene during the tutorial area, a cut scene later, then a story development on a planet, kett involvement with a loyalty quest and that is it. Activity wise you skip the dropships entirely after a short while only to deal with a 3-4 meaningful Kett bases/barracks. So get a Kett connection going, with a very nice twist, on Voeld only to have it fade away from you afterwards. There are two/3 more planets to explore afterwards before the next story element occurs. Seeing each planet took me 10ish hours to complete entirely…It is easy to get disconnected with the main story and not feel invested in it at all.

As for the main character being bland… Yeah I guess. It has to be a blank slate so many people can recognize themselves in him/her. Developing a personality through your interactions and responses. There seemingly is an underlying dialogue system that tailors your responses depending on your previous interactions. Thusfar I haven’t noticed this at all. Yet the character does interact with stuff I’d say or do in a lot of the situations. And I also like how you can interrupt conversations and the outcome is neither black or white. I really dislikes the outdated meaningless paragon systems. Rather have something like Alpha Protocol. Where you gained, or lost, standing with people depending on your interactions. So with some you were more savy and others flirty where needed. Or you roleplayed with a steady personality and accepted the consequences of not befriending some.

I too enjoy traversing and exploring the galaxy. It isn’t like we have many sci-fi RPG’s and even this is gradually moving more into a sci-fi FPS direction unfortunately. But it does feel lacking in many areas.

15

I just don’t see how they can go from a really good character customization in ME2 and 3, to …THIS!

It really ruined the rest of the game for me. I have NEVER seen such ugly faces on a high profile game like this especially after 5+ years of development. I tried to get a refund but EA/Origin won’t let me. I didn’t even get past the creation screen. I thought, “well…i’ll just refund it and buy it when it’s patched and improved…this is heinous.” …But I think this is what we are stuck with…

I have friends who agree. They waited so long for such a terrible, buggy, poorly written game. I would be furious.

16

So you didn’t get past the creation screen/tutorial yet have strong ideas about the game that you didn’t even play? That’s rather…moot…opinion wise.

I agree that character creation is limited. It takes a lot of effort to make a somewhat decent looking character. When in animation the facial expressions are…exaggerated and weird. No real character is truly attractive and just average looking people. Still I’ve been happy with my male pathfinder. His facial expressions weren’t that bad…gladly.

As for looking for good/great writing… Not a single Bioware game ever had that. Not even KOTOR 1 and 2 did. In that regard a lot of people just have expectations that are not realistic and thus end up getting disappointed. However the disconnected main story experience I’ve touched on that in a previous post. Yet that is an issue with pretty much every open-world(ish) game anyway.

As for bugs. Currently 70+ hours in and only had 12-14 occurrences of bugs. Nothing game breaking although I can’t complete 1 quest due to something. I mean I did complete the quest and got the reward, but it is still listed in the logs. a few graphical glitches, a spawn proxy error regarding drop ships…but nothing major. If you want bugs go play your average Bethesda game like the Elder Scrolls or Fall Out. They’re much worse and more often.

ME:A has shortcomings, but bugs and those other bandwagon responses are not a part of it.

ps
72 hours in. 74% completion rate at this time. Noticing a change in story telling. It is nice that after completing the loyalty missions the companions still come at you with small side quests. At this point hunted the Archon and things are more…honed it. A few companion side quests as round up for the romancing and stuff. But you get all the Kett and main story involvement. Finally you can get connected and not lose that connection due to many side quest distractions which is nice. The exploration bit is over and time to get to business so the speak.

Drack the Krogan is my favorite companion. At times he sounds like an older retired Duke Nukem hehe.

17

What amount of time played should I complete that I may properly and respectfully express on this “rant” section how much I hate the initial character creation enough that it makes me lose interest? I didn’t know there was a grand rule to these things or some sort of universal qualification system.

If I played 70 hours and then came here to complain about how much I didn’t like the game, you would legitimately tell me “you played 70 hours! You must have liked it! Your comment is moot!” so, yea…

18

While the core gameplay loop is pretty smooth, it comes across as not having been in development long enough, heck, bugs wise it feels more like a Bethesda game than a Bioware one. Though perhaps not quite as buggy, as most of the quest triggers work.

Gameplay wise I only have one complaint - my companions come across as pretty useless and I end up having to kill nearly everything and while the gameplay change to more streamlined combat makes it flow smoother, the loss of being able to pause and direct your companions does limit gameplay options and reduce team effectiveness compared to the prior games.

Writing wise, the central story is pretty mediocre and full of holes, while not the best writing, though companions are interestingly much better written (I <3 Drack), while world building needs more detail and entries in the Codex. And further more issue with world building also plays into the hubs with even the Nexus feeling smaller than the Citadel in the first game, and there’s also a significant lack of real reactivity in the world. You do multiple quests that should have knock on effects, such as recovering the other Arks, which should result in more buildings in the settlements + quests as a result along with more of the Nexus opening up. But of course this doesn’t happen and so it feels more like you haven’t had that big a continuing visible impact on the worlds you visit.

The world maps likewise end up feeling a bit empty, sure there’s plenty of stuff, but often it’s copy-pasted or lacks story stuff and quests, and while they’re big, compared to The Witcher: The Wild Hunt they come off as smaller. Which is a bit odd given they’ve had 5 years to make this, plus The Wild Hunt to show how to do things right.

So yeah, with 60+ hrs in it, I can say it does feel unfinished and probably could have benefited from more development time and better quest designers and writers. In other words, it’s not bad and is usually rather fun to play, but could be so much better.

And I suspect this is because EA’s running two or more projects at Bioware at the same time, namely there’s a new Dragon Age game being developed at the same time ME:A was in the works and it’s sucked up much of Bioware’s talent pool.

19

Bioware…? oh yeah i heard of them… they used to make those good AD&D rpgs more than a decade ago. :rolleyes:

20

After first stating on a twitter that the devs can’t fix most of the key issues a new message has come out. Apparently they are working on many things. Wouldn’t expect anything less to be honest. All the big buggy games have done this. It is just that regarding ME:A the community is excessively vocal overreactions while many other big titles don’t get half as much attention when they fuck up. You didn’t see that with Skyrim, Fall-out and Witcher games…to name a few.

The news page https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/03/30/mass-effect-andromeda-patch/

I seriously doubt many people from the ME:A team were already working on Dragon Age 4. DA4 is mostly still in conceptual/prototyping phase. Maybe some extremely early alpha production. That is usually done by entirely different people than those working on the actual world design/lore/character details you get much later on in development. That group of people was done when ME:A went to the next phase in Alpha. So you could have them twiddling their thumbs or already let them start on the conceptual/prototyping/pre-production of a new project…which makes more sense.

21

TBH… Anything ME had a big name behind it, and so a lot to live up to. When and where it fails, it looks much worse because of the past greatness. Much like Diablo 3 looked even worse, simply because so many people loved Diablo 2. Having this come out and be…Meh is bad enough. Having it filled with huge, visible bugs that should 100% have been fixed before release? That just makes it look like Bioware doesn’t give a crap. And TBH, do they? Come on, how many face bugs do they have? You can’t really MISS those, while checking for bugs. They’re pretty dang visible. I think Bioware just shoved ME:A out to get quick cash, not really to make a worthy addition to the name.