My review for Mass Effect: Andromeda, which I just posted on a dedicated forum. No spoilers, aside from character and race names, so if you feel like reading a giant block of text, here you go.
TL/DR: 5/10 A mediocre game, with little to recommend it to a friend besides the very enjoyable combat.
Well, I finished the game, and since I've been bitching about Mass Effect and BioWare for five years now, I feel obligated to expound a bit on what I thought. I’ll give a grade at the end at that will be composite of several key aspects of the game, namely Story, Characters, Companions, Gameplay, Combat, Graphics and Cinematography. I won’t be rating the multiplayer, since I haven’t played it yet. I assume it will be as good as ME3, although I miss the interesting cast of enemies already. Tsk, now I’m nostalgic for the shudder a screaming Banshee always gave me. ^^
Let’s start with the Story: This aspect of ME:A was what I’d describe as average at best. Aside from some of the plotholes the very expedition to Andromeda raises, „finding a new home“ is not exactly a novel concept. There were no great story twists and, at least for me, the main story was sorely lacking in highpoints, until the last hour. The side stories were no great shakes, either, decidedly sub-par to what I’ve seen in other games. Many defaulted to fetch-quests with little drama or twists at the start, middle or end. 4/10
Characters: Some characters in ME:A were pretty interesting (Kesh, Reyes, Raeka), some were good antagonists. However, a majority of characters fell completely flat for me. I could attribute this to the terrible facial animations and horrible cinematography, but since I was really unimpressed by the Kett and Angara in their totality as well, I think it is more of a writing problem after all.
Aside from the Krogan (which are really hard to fuck up), I found most milky way races to have been turned into alien-looking humans. Many of things which seemed to make Turians into Turians, the Asari into Asari, etc, seemed to be gone. I can understand societal strictures to break apart when you are in a complely new environment, but I’d love to have seen more Turian militarism, Asari spirituality or Salarian opportunism.
The Kett were a terrible disappointment. Emotional ciphers (aside from the Archon), their vile ethical behaviour and religious fanaticism let them be nothing more than antagonists.
The Angara also did not really seem to have much of a culture besides „family“. Their high emotionality did not really shine through in many situations, hence they defaulted more to „really huggy humans“ often enough. 4/10
Companions: Again, a lot of them fell flat for me, especially compared to companions from prior games (and I am not talking about only the trilogy). The problem is that most rough edges seem to have been sandpapered off by BioWare. This was the same problem which I had with Dragon Age: Inquisition (aside from Sera, who turned out to be such a disgustingly slimy edgelord worm monster that it’s reasonable to assume that BW overwrote her terribly).
None of the companions are actively bad. But, with the exception of Peebee (and, believe me, I am as surprised as you to see me write that), they all either have the distinct feel of „Seen that before“ or „Boring“. Hell, I took Vetra as my romantic interest and I ended up feeling bored as hell, kinda like I did with Josephine in DA:I. Still, Peebee raises the cast above the average, so a 6/10 from me.
Gameplay: I, uh, hated that part of the game. The unnecessarily long voyages between planets and systems. The constant driving around in the Nomad for fetch quests. The terrible inventory. Way too much travel time between empty spaces. It’s the open world game plague, I know, but there are ways to make open worlds meaningful. Either by making them small enough with enough reachable objectives to not make you feel like you are wasting time or by filling them with really interesting quests, which do not require you to just drive around the entire gigantic zone to get four sensor readings. I can’t count how many times I spent minutes just trying to get onto some damn mountaintop for a hard-to-reach location, just to get one more scanner result. This is as close to total fail as possible to my taste in gaming and will likely be the reason that this will be the only Mass Effect game I will not replay again. Just like with Dragon Age: Inquisition. Damn it, Bioware. :-/ 2/10
Combat: The only part of the game which really, really worked for me. Individual weapon buffs and nerfs aside, combat is pretty amazing. Not too fast, just like in ME3, but now with more mobility. I’d prefer having more than three powers at once, but then again I really did well with just Charge, Nova and whatever I felt putting into slot three. I have little to complain here, so that’s a solid 9/10.
Graphics: Well. Environmental graphics were very, very pretty, as well as combat animations. However, this is pretty much completely crushed by the terrible facial animations, the single face on every asari (aside from Peebee and Lexi) and whatever botox treatment all humans and asari seem to have gotten during cryo. I think this has been beaten to death already in a thosand places, so I'll leave it there. The patch did make it a little better, but it still is pretty damn bad. 5/10.
Cinematography: Another stinker. There were some nice cutscenes throughout the game, but the simple zoom-in over Ryders shoulder to talk to normal quest NPC’s was just awful and even most normal cutscenes had to people standing around, no dramatic angles, just them talking and sometimes feebly trying to raise their arms from their sides. Not to mention that most character interaction cutscenes on the Tempest start with the dramatic turnabout people know so well from Star Wars: The Old Republic. I felt this was pretty damn lacking, especially since BioWare does know better. That they farmed this out to their junior studio is not an excuse for failing to keep their own standards of the past. 3/10
So, yeah, that’s a composite 4,7/10 for me, rounded up to a total score of 5/10. Guess the combat saves it from the 4/10 I really wanted to give it. A mediocre game, with little to recommend it to a friend besides the very enjoyable combat.
I know that for a variety of reasons we are probably not going to go back to the Milky Way and if we do, it’ll be a good time after Shepard. However, I personally am not feeling it with the story in Andromeda. I hope that this will be a one-time excursion and we then can get back to more interesting locations and people, like what we have in the Milky Way. However, with how things are at BioWare and EA, I fear we are stuck here, with an enemy which is boring beyond imagination and this uninspiring cast of characters.
I am holding out hope that Hack Walters will leave BioWare, too and then a new team will realize what a terrible direction they’ve taken the franchise in and swallow the bitter pill of having to come up with a plot twist which negates the three-colored endings of ME3.
But, if that doesn’t happen, I still have ME3 with MEHEM (Mass Effect Happy Ending Mod, for you guys who are not Mass Effect fanatics ^^). It’s better than ME: Andromeda, that’s for sure. In fact, I think I’ll go back to my playthrough of that and think of better times, accompanied by Tali, Garrus, Wrex and the others. Although I’ll admit, if I could teleport Liara to Andromeda and get Peebee in exchange, I’d take that deal.
