13 replies to this topic

[Sneaky Snake]

I've played it for around 2 hours so far via the free 10-hour trial the Origin Access gives you. Really liking it so far. Feels very much like Mass Effect, but also brings welcome gameplay improvements and such that we've seen in other games since 2012 when Mass Effect 3 was released.

Overall my impressions are very strong, and I'll almost certainly be picking up the full version of the game. I'm going to play more of the 10 hour trial in order to just ensure that I like it, but so far so good. The graphics, visuals, gameplay are all meeting or exceeding my expectations.

[Cougar]

Even the animations? https://www.youtube....smx9yW5Q&t=212s

The combat looks like a nice improvement, but everything else looks worse...they somehow made planet scanning even more of a chore. Depending on reviews, I may pick it up when a complete edition comes out, but I'm in no rush.

[Atticus]

Thanks for review, Snake. I've been burned by previous two MEs (thought they were way overrated), so I'm on very much the fence about purchase. Seems to be a lot of grumbling on teh internets about this one (although I suppose there's always grumbling on the internets).

CDPR, give us thee Cyberpunk 2077, please.

[Sneaky Snake]

The current animation rage over ME:A seems like a bit of a circlejerk. There are some unnatural and janky animations, but 90% of them look fine and are a substantial improvement over old ME's.

I played Mass Effect 1 once, ME2 thrice, and then ME3 once. I thought all were great (minus 3's ending), but ME2 was definitely my favourite. This game seems to fit right in with them, although it's obviously too early to make a full verdict on it.

[Cougar]

Sneaky Snake, on 18 March 2017 - 12:54 PM, said:

The current animation rage over ME:A seems like a bit of a circlejerk. There are some unnatural and janky animations, but 90% of them look fine and are a substantial improvement over old ME's.

Well, it's the error that makes funny memes. Personally, I couldn't care less about facial animations either.  I am more concerned with the game's writing (i.e "my face is tired").  The ME games already had a pretty clichéd plot and repetitive chesthigh wall shooting, but I soldiered through it because of the occasionally good or great side plot and characters, and the fact that it was a space RPG (!)

I feel like nowadays, though, I can be a bit pickier because of all the RPGs in my backlog...and there are many more space games, although not necessarily RPGs.

[Jan]

Facial animations seem like a bad Team America impersonation, the writing -- at least in the first few hours of the game -- is cringeworthy. When I saw the Mako and the tedious probe and resources collecting -- I just thought to myself: »They haven't learned anything from Dragon Age Inquisition«.

I love Mass Effect, but Andromeda looks like a Teen-reboot of a beloved classic sci-fi novel. I guess I'll wait and pick it up for cheap on PS4 like I did with Inquisition. The old BioWare is long gone, CD Projekt RED is the new king of mature Western RPGs.

[DirtyHarry50]

Space porn with wooden characters, cheesy dialog and humorous facial animations to boot? Plus plenty of bugs and performance issues at launch?

I get this feeling that I'd have more fun in the company of a certain space hamster and their owner than colonizing Andromeda unfortunately.

[DirtyHarry50]

Oh, and if I wanted to play sudoku (I don't, not even a little) I'd buy a sudoku game.

[Cougar]

Sad to see the reviews trash the writing.

Where hast the good AAA RPGs gone? Oh well. I look at this as saving money: I only need to upgrade my computer whenever CD Projekt releases a new game.

[elowel]

Cougar, on 20 March 2017 - 09:53 AM, said:

Sad to see the reviews trash the writing.

Where hast the good AAA RPGs gone? Oh well. I look at this as saving money: I only need to upgrade my computer whenever CD Projekt releases a new game.

The writing isn't really that bad. I think people just want this game to fail because they dislike Bioware, so they're latching on to any issue and blowing it up into something terrible.

[Frost]

Aside from the occasional in-your-face virtue-signaling nonsense (such as a transsexual announcing she's one and who she used to be and how awesome it is in such an utterly hamfisted way that even transsexuals have called it out on reddit as patently ridiculous... BioWare thinks they're Gene Roddenberry, but they aren't) and a few very trite and contrived conversations I'm actually really enjoying the campaign thus far. I'm two planets in and about to start the third. It's trying to be Mass Effect 1 very hard, and while it's not succeeding, it's getting close enough that I'm quite enjoying it.

My main gripe is what a clusterfrak the coop multiplayer is. They literally shoe-horned Mass Effect 3's multiplayer system, complete with the BROKEN netcode and the trading card-based RNG upgrade system that was universally panned all back in full glory. It's been five years, can't they make some improvements? I mean, jeez. Even Call of Duty makes improvements in that kind of timeframe.

[Jan]

elowel, on 06 April 2017 - 01:02 AM, said:

The writing isn't really that bad. I think people just want this game to fail because they dislike Bioware, so they're latching on to any issue and blowing it up into something terrible.

The dialogues are on the level of a teen movie, characters have no depth and meaningful motivations. This is by far the worst writing of any BioWare title. I wasted over 120 hours of my lifetime with Dragon Age Inquisition and even that was better. Andromeda appears to be a middle of the road cover shooter with light RPG elements. Please, EA – for the love of the game – just stop robbing BioWare's dead body.

[Atticus]

Big patch out today. Not that it matters.....

[elowel]

Jan, on 06 April 2017 - 08:43 AM, said:

The dialogues are on the level of a teen movie, characters have no depth and meaningful motivations. This is by far the worst writing of any BioWare title. I wasted over 120 hours of my lifetime with Dragon Age Inquisition and even that was better. Andromeda appears to be a middle of the road cover shooter with light RPG elements. Please, EA – for the love of the game – just stop robbing BioWare's dead body.

I... disagree. I think the writing does a great job of portraying the change Ryder undergoes in going from a follower to a leader. It's obvious at the start of the game they're inexperienced and unsure of how to proceed, but by the end they're far more confident and sure of themselves.
The story is decent; it's a little disjointed - and it just bothers me that certain elements were relegated to side quests - but I think the core narrative idea of survivors looking for a new home is conveyed well.
Which characters do you dislike? Have you fully explored their dialogue? I agree that Liam is boring, but Vetra and Drack especially I find to be incredibly compelling. The more you progress through their story, the more they open up about their motivations, and even fears, as we move this this new galaxy.