"We're explorers, and what we do is fun!"

That's basically the personality of your protagonist, who was forced into the position of the crew's leader under pretty dire circumstances. Unlike Commander Shepard, who brilliantly showed the confidence and capability that he/she can lead an entire army, Ryder does not exhibit that. It would be okay if they could lead through a different skill and with better writers, but no. The game expects you to believe that someone oozing the wet behind the ears nervousness and the experience of someone sheltered all of their life just seeing the world for the first time is someone capable of deciding the fate of colonies that are in dire straits.

The game has a real cognitive dissonance problem, as the forced "We can do this!" moods do not reflect the overarching dread of being hunted down by an unknown alien race, being millions of lightyears away from their home galaxy with very limited resources, and trying to settle in a new galaxy that has an actively hostile environment. It's almost like the writers have not actually talked with the game designers and forgot that they were making a Mass Effect game and not a No Man's Sky clone.

Few of the characters seemed to care about the situations they were in, and pretty much every character was either bland, a rehash of a trilogy character, or unfathomably hated. Liam, Cora, and especially Peebee fit the latter bill as though I cannot fault the voice actors for doing their jobs, the scripts they were given... Jesus Christ. I honestly believe the characters were all Dungeons and Dragons players not taking the scenario seriously and finding every opportunity to crack a "well, that just happened" snark in every situation. I've avoided having them as my squadmates because of this.

Ryder's lines are affected too, as he/she constantly quips about certain situations repeatedly like when being overwhelmed by the opposition, they make the same joke of "these guys don't know when to quit!" or "How many of these guys are there?!" When things de-escalate and they talk with whoever was on the other side of the fight, it feels like they never actually got into a life or death situation just minutes before. Again adding to the game's cognitive dissonance problem, Ryder is written to be an explorer excited to see what is out there, but they fight to the death with an alien race hellbent on all other races' demise. Not to mention Ryder use the same lines every time when exploring and solving puzzles in the Remnant Vaults. Like not even variations of the same lines, but the exact. Same. Lines. Again. And. Again.

Vetra and Drack are the only characters I like, and it kind of owes to the fact that Vetra's a Garrus rewrite and Drack's basically Wrex. Both he and Vetra are my go to squadmates because they play off each other very well during their banters, and they at least have some things to say that are worthwhile to listen to, but there are still a few lines that had me roll my eyes. Drack also stands out compared to other Andromeda characters because he's sort of written to be a bit of a open minded grandpa that knows the old ways of living doesn't work anymore and though he enjoys fighting, he doesn't pridefully obsess over it like most krogan do. (Wait a minute, that's basically Wrex again... Huh ...)

Because of EA's obsession with turning as much of a profit as possible, the game uses EA's inhouse engine that Bioware was not familiar with. The engine was not designed to be used for a third person RPG, so much of the code had to be rewritten from scratch. Developer infighting took a huge chunk of the game's development time along with several other political issues between Bioware's multiple studios and those were reflected in the game's haphazard nature, animation bugs, quest marker bugs, and the such. In my 50 hour playthrough with mods, none of the bugs softlocked the game, but there were more than a handful of instances where I was forced to quit out of the game and reset from the last save point.

Even for all of its technical issues and this game being held together by duct tape, judging from a combat standpoint, the game plays fine. The combat is a super fluid ME3 with rolling replaced with jump jets, and the game actively wants you to not overdo the cover mechanics. Gunplay feels great and the sound design is expertly crafted to give the weapons a huge impact, especially when pulling off headshots with the sniper. Graphically, the game has its moments of being beautiful even if there's always a moment of Bioware having some kind of animation jank. Plenty of photo mode opportunities despite that the game doesn't have one (you can mod the HUD to disappear though.)

However, being that the shareholders wanted to populate the gaming market with more AAA open world games, Andromeda took the Ubisoft approach and opted to have very large worlds that are sparsely populated with bloated content. Oxymoronic enough? Basically, the game has few things in large empty areas that require a large chunk of your time to investigate and collect. Much of the containers you find have junk that you trade in for credits - a huge time wasting measure - and instead of using ME2's planet scanner to find minerals to mine, you use a large rover to find places to mine for minerals but the mining spots are all randomized around the placements in the map - another huge time wasting measure.

On PC, there are a couple of mods that can fix some of the annoyances like that, but no fan patch will be substantial enough to fix what is fundamentally broken about the game. It did not need the tedious open world slop along with the crappy story that will never have a conclusion, as well as the constant Joss Whedon-like cringe-inducing writing that plagues the dialogue throughout the game.

The rushed, tumultuous and haphazard development along with the politics that got in the way of the game's development meant that it was destined to suck anyway. For that, I absolutely despise ME:A for almost all of its worth. I am still committed to seeing this game through to the end in spite of that.

Overall, the game as it stands alone is absolutely below mid, but as a Mass Effect entry, it's a goddamned disaster and as of 2024, it is the death kneel of any new entries to the series. You can probably have some solace that because Andromeda takes place 600 years after the original trilogy, it's pretty easy to dismiss the game and not include it as part of the Mass Effect canon. You can feel pretty safe to skip out on this entry entirely.

Replayed this to see if I could distance myself from the immediate kneejerk hatred it inspired in me at launch, and possibly give this game a fair shake. With the hype and nostalgia out of the way —yeah, it’s still pretty mediocre.

This game’s worst crime isn’t any particular graphics or gameplay deficiency, it’s that this game is soulless and has no love for its own premise. It is dead and joyless game at a spiritual level.

The Mass Effect trilogy is the single most resounding example of a game utterly dedicated and consumed by its premise and world, to a staggering effect that remains unmatched over a decade later. And yet, playing Andromeda, I’ve encountered few AAA games that seem to have been made with such apathy and disinterest.

The spirit of adventure it invokes in this journey to a new galaxy is immediately and brutally crushed by how remarkably soulless and vacant the world and characters of Andromeda actually are. For all its individual flaws and merits, this game is spiritually repugnant in a manner that renders it even worse than the sum of its poorly made parts. It’s a foundational sin that is both unpatchable and unforgivable.

I should preface this entire review with a few things. First, I bought this for $5 brand new still shrinkwrapped in a DVD bin at a gas station and played it for the first time 4 years after its release. Second, the Mass Effect Trilogy is probably my favorite gaming series if not one of my favorite pieces of media ever. I never bothered to play Andromeda at release because I was moving at the time and the reviews clobbered it so bad I never bothered to try. And if nothing else the summary of this review is that, I'm really happy I played Mass Effect: Andromeda.

Mass Effect: Andromeda is a good game. If it weren't for the bugs it might be a great game. And is often the case with these 'disappointment games' like Fallout 4, ME:A, Kingdom Come Deliverance, Cyberpunk etc. you can see just how close to a great game it was. When games crest into the lower boundary of greatness but riddle themselves with bugs and questionable design choices the backlash is even starker than if the game had just outright stunk. It's even worse when it happens to a beloved franchise like Mass Effect. Ultimately, it's very obvious that ME:A was rushed. And we know the adage by now, a rushed game is always bad but a delayed game may eventually be good. No matter the production issues that plagued Andromeda, it was clear it needed more time in the hopper. It needed more time to cook. Much of the issues are obviously due to it getting shoved out the door before it was read.

The Shepherd story is over. Or was anyway, we'll see what Bioware is cooking up for the upcoming 'Next Mass Effect'. It was always going to be impossible for the newest game in Mass Effect to top Mass Effect 3. It's impossible. The starting point of a new entry in the canon could never eclipse the weight of the entirety of the previous trilogy. Phantom Menace and The Force Awakens could never top Return of the Jedi let alone the totality of the Original Trilogy. But Mass Effect: Andromeda pulls off a sort of 'The Force Awakens'-esque attempt at providing a compelling new start. Unfortunately it underperformed so badly that it's questionable if we'll even see Andromeda's threads expanded upon in the future Mass Effect installment(s).

In some ways no matter what Andromeda did it was doomed to fail. And I can't help but re-read many of the old Andromeda reviews and feel they were being very unfair. People don't compare WandaVision or the upcoming Black Widow to Endgame. Generally, consumers understand the difference in a reboot and an existing franchise and the expectations should be adjusted. I don't feel as though Andromeda was ever afforded that leeway. Instead it was lampooned when I felt it should've received the same cautious optimism as The Force Awakens. Sure it was a mile wide and an inch deep but it gave lots of questions and exposition from which to build more games. Now the tough bit was absolutely the bugs. And even this far on from release, the bugs are abound.

I'll start with the bad. That's what we're here for in an Andromeda review. As previously mentioned, the story is thin. There's lots of half-baked sort of ideas flung at you quickly that go a bit nowhere. Even the actual conception of the Andromeda Initiative feels undercooked. Nearly a million people seemingly from all edges of the Milky Way amassed what has to be trillions or quadrillions of dollars to construct ginormous ships filled with bleeding edge technology that allows them to move significantly faster than the speed of light without the mass effect relays. And all this went largely under the radar and was done without assistance from governments. They game tries to salvage this later by adding in the story of the mysterious benefactor (in side missions no less!) who apparently was well aware of the Reapers already. Which adds some value to why this initiative was undertaken but doesn't really fit with how the Milky Way responded to the Reaper threat prior to the start of ME3.

But even after you give the benefit of the doubt for this thing, there's many more half-baked ideas. Many more. The Scourge is this spooky thing that is never really explained past being pockets of bad energy capable of causing whatever needs to be explained at any moment to move the plot. Then there are these mysterious robots related to The Scourge called The Remnant which are just as mcguffin-y. Then we get our big bad. A Reaper/Collector knock-off almost in The Kett. The Kett are an alien species determined to assimilate all other species into their own for genetic perfection. The Scourge is barely explained, The Remnant are barely explained, the Kett are just bad guys with a very simplistic goal and then you're off. Have fun.

It's not bad. There's just not a lot of meat on the bone. You want to know more about each and all of it but there's not much to get. You're constantly trying to unravel the mystery. But it's not like ME1 & ME2. In the ME Trilogy you are awash with lore in the codex and an established galaxy where you know all the major players. You're unraveling what ends up being a colossal mystery with galactic implications but it's the only thing you really have to figure out. In ME:A you have to learn everything. All of it. Every planet, every character, every ship, every weapon, every new species. Everything is new. Which makes everything feel thin rather than full. You have questions about everything which makes it easier to find cracks in the lore and the narrative. And the game can't possible take time to pump you full of all of that info so instead it's a little breakneck pace through the game, leaving you without bearings for most of it. Mass Effect's strength was its absolutely fantastic lore and Andromeda sort of ditches a lot of that to establish something altogether brand new.

What I was upset with was what I felt to be a half-step between two better decisions. If Andromeda was actually completely empty aside from maybe some non-spacefaring pseudo-primitive civilizations it would've given you a sandbox feeling of starting from scratch. The game could've leaned harder on exploration. Maybe even a secret as to why the cluster is totally empty. Alternatively, you could have just had Andromeda be as or more developed than the Milky Way. Chock full of an existing well developed galactic government that we now have to embed and navigate. With their own feuds and stories.

Instead Andromeda opens with aliens shooting you. Shortly after you find there is one scattered alien race in the cluster hiding from everyone and spread very thinly on 4 different planets. Meanwhile the Kett try to genocide them. Two players, both mysterious, both hurting for lore and interactions to flesh them out. It's both too much and too little. Half-baked. I never feels very satisfying. And where the narrative ends up taking the story of either race is all the more unsatisfying. There should've been a great opportunity here for a sandboxy sort of outpost/city management element a la Ni No Kuni II. It's never bothered with. You click a button on a planet after doing a few missions and a city spontaneously appears.

There's also plenty of plotholes and dropped story threads like the Ancient Angaran AI, the dead Salarian Pathfinder, Turians never getting a new pathfinder, choosing the Collective or Outcasts, saving the Angarans from the Exaltation facility instead of blowing it up. Sure there are choices to be made but there's no more Renegade/Paragon meter and it doesn't seem like the choices impact the story in any fashion other than a line in an HNS email or a single line of dialogue with a shipmate. Nothing feels all that weighty.

And then there's the bugs. And even 4 years later boy are there a lot of bugs. Plenty of bugs. Many bugs. I didn't experience any of the super distorted faces or t-posing that was commonly posted when the game released, but I did experience my fair share of bugs from simple to gamebreaking. Stuck on map geography, items teleporting or falling in cutscenes, characters teleporting during cutscenes, characters randomly sprinting all over the place, enemies getting lodged in map geography or under the map leaving the game to think I'm in combat perpetually and more than that. Bugs, bugs, bugs.

A few notable bugs include a second duplicate Cora roaming around in her room on the Tempest after completing her loyalty mission. Two fully interactable Coras standing there. Two duplicate Drack's for a moment during the Archon ship mission. Talking in unison like some sort of haunting polyphonic demon. Eladeen at one point just completely broke. Landing on the planet would leave me perpetually falling through map geography and re-spawning only to do it again. Couldn't move around, couldn't teleport. Didn't matter if I left the planet and did other missions and then came back. Same thing would happen every time. Eventually this was fixed by me timing my pause well enough to fast travel to another location on Eladeen. Where I was still stuck unable to move. I reloaded the autosave several times where eventually things stabilized enough for me to finish the lone mission I had left on the planet. Though the entire planet was still going berserk with random broken mesh models and such jutting up through the ground and out of buildings. After I completed my mission and left that time, Eladeen seemed to be back to normal each subsequent visit. But it was very nearly gamebreaking and savebreaking.

A few other bugs were recurrent. The infinite loading screen bug, the permanently super zoomed in camera in the nomad bug, total loss of audio on random occasion, quest notifications in the journal that wouldn't clear, codex notifications that wouldn't clear, Habitat 7 showing Ryder-I and then reverting to Habitat 7 again in the system map screen from the bridge, my Remnant VI sometimes randomly spawning on The Tempest or in the Nexus shrieking and clicking as it went. All of these are common glitches and can be found with a short Google. Bugs that have existed since launch but never addressed because the game launch was too much of a disaster to warrant sinking more resources into it.

I can understand the sheer aggravation of spending $60 on what was supposed to be a new installment of a legendary gaming franchise only to be hit with this bug riddled mess. I can understand because I've played Fallout 4. Unlike Fallout 4 though, Mass Effect: Andromeda does have some positives and redeeming qualities that make it something worth playing for the couple of bucks it tends to cost nowadays. And for $5 it was still better than similarly glitchy snafus like Fallout 76 or Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

Andromeda does get a lot right. Genuinely. While the story is thin there are enough bones to build on for sequels. I was interested in the outcomes. I do want to know more about the Jardaan, the Ancient Angaran AI, the Quarian Ark, the kett. I was invested in the outcomes of these things even if it was sort of shoddily developed. The story threads are interesting enough for me to want to see more. And while the narrative has its jank I truly loved the characters.

The characters are a love/hate thing for me. Some of the voice acting is downright terrible. I'm stunned Kumail Nanjiani let his name be attached to this or that Bioware even hired him because Director Tann is terrible. Terrible voice acting. Nakmore Kesh and Nakmor Morda are also absolutely terrible. Completely dreadful voice acting. The dialogue sometimes is just as awful. Liam for instance is a solid voice actor but his script sucks. Cora is the same way. Decent to good voice actors but the dialogue is very shit.

But it's not always this way. Characters like Vetra, Reyes, Drack, The Moshae, Jaal, Archon, Suvi, Kallo. Even SAM. Great voice acting and pretty good dialogue throughout. You spend a ton more time on your ship and interacting with your crewmates and squadmates. You really develop relationships with them in ways you never did in any previous Mass Effect game. Even the crewmates I didn't like (specifically Cora, Liam and Peebee) I felt attached to enough that I wanted to do well for them. You hang with them a ton. And their loyalty missions are branching and varied meaning you have to usually perform a few quests in addition to talking to them to actually complete their stories and win their loyalties. Unlike ME2 or ME3 where you just had to talk to them enough between campaign missions to unlock their only loyalty mission.

This let you bond with these characters. I especially loved the clear personality options you were given to talk with each character in the game to develop Ryder's personality how you liked and letting you foster specific sorts of relationships with each character you interacted with. A great innovation in the conversation wheel, and all the better when it made it very clear what actions and dialogues could be romantic. I also loved the running personality report by Lexi in the codex. Vetra, Drack and Reyes are three of my favorite characters in the entire Mass Effect canon and they are total shining stars of the game. The Archon is a really good BBEG like Harbinger but there's also a solid cast of bad guys too, like Primus, the Archon's Sword and Aksuul. The villainy feels a bit deeper and more engaging than in the original Mass Effect Trilogy. It's not developed as well as it could've or should've been but it's fun nonetheless.

There are supporting characters that have moments too. Keri T'Vessa is quite good, so is Sid Nyx. I liked Kandros and I fucking hated Addison but hated her in-universe. Her character was written in a way that made her dislikable, I didn't dislike her for meta reasons. Evfra was similar to Addison in that he was well-written and finely voice acted, I disliked him as a character within the story. Mass Effect has always been a trilogy about relationships and that's always what I cherished about my playthroughts. Mass Effect: Andromeda nails the character relationships in my opinion, and not only will I never forget Ryder, Vetra, Reyes, Drack but I will be very sore if they don't get anything else added to their stories in future Mass Effect installments.

Andromeda's characters can be good when allowed to be but where it really does its work is in the combat. Combat is fun and it's the best in the series. I wish taking cover was easier than the game made it out to be, I also have serious qualms with how hard the game is at the start. But ultimately the combat is quite good and the range of motion provided by the jetpack is tremendous. You get a crapload of skills to toy with and you can build a Ryder that functions in whatever way you want. I found that any build was feasible on even the hardest difficulties and it really is one of the best examples in any game of allowing a player to choose a playstyle that fits them. While some skills, armors and guns are better than others, nothing was such a hindrance that you couldn't complete the game anyway doing it how you chose. For me that was sniping every thing I could from distance with the Black Widow and getting in close and hitting people with my Krogan Hammer and charge biotic power otherwise.

In combat your teammates could often range from overpowered to useless. Their AI didn't always seem to be the best. Sometimes they'd run in and obliterate opponents and perform their combo moves. Other times they'd seemingly stand facing the wrong direction taking loads of gunfire with no retort. This could be alleviated somewhat by how easy it was to command them, but it is nothing like the squad based combat of ME2 & ME3. I found myself usually leaving my teammates to their own devices and shooting my way out of trouble. It worked most of the time but I did miss telling Garrus who to concussive shot.

The exploration is also great, except for when it isn't. Some of the planets are quite scenic and fun to drive. It just sucks the first three planets you go to are the worst. Eos and Voeld are not fun to explore nor are they very pretty. They're boring worlds. Havarl is aesthetically quite nice and unique but it sucks to navigate. The map is unreadable, can't use the nomad, everything is layered with weird entrances and exits and the map is full of so many god damn constantly spawning enemies that it actually makes things quite hard to do. Even routine things. But, Eladeen, Kadara, H-047c, and Aya are all quite pleasant to be on, complete tasks on and move about. You end up spending a sizable chunk of the games second and third acts on Kadara and Eladeen. I only wish there were a hair more to do on H-047c as I thought it was a super cool and unique planet to only spend two missions on. No reason a mining outpost couldn't have been placed down there with a tiny handful of tasks to do.

The open world is a lot of fun and an improvement on ME2 & ME3. But the worlds are only semi-open. Never have I played a less open open world game. Lots of invisible walls or out of bounds markers, lots of time spent in small areas of the map. Not much procedurally generated or emergent gameplay. I hated that often I would see somewhere I wanted to go or I had bumbled my way into a faster way to where I wanted to go only to get hit by an invisible wall or an out of bounds timer. I also was FREQUENTLY frustrated that I would stumble into a building or camp or crash site, fight some enemies and scan some things with my scanner only for there to be nothing. Then I'd find a quest later that would make me go back and do it all again. If it's an open world I should be able to discover these things openly, not have to hope I pick up the right quest or be railroaded into them. A huge positive though was the Nomad. The Nomad was great to drive, fun to drive and I often found myself wasting significant amounts of time wedging the Nomad into places it shouldn't be and then having to spend a ton of time getting it unstuck again. Similar to your horse in Skyrim. It was fun.

Andromeda is also chock full of content. It's a huge game. I clocked in around 200 hours and I still didn't 100% it. I'm at 96% with a handful of tasks remaining that I may or may not go back for at this point. The game just had an insane amount of things to do and while some of the task quests were lame fetch style nonsense, plenty of side quests throughout the game were so good I'm stunned they were optional in any way. There was a lot to do and most of it was fairly well designed. Since the planets were usually fun to muck about on, it was fun to drive and jetpack all around from one destination to the next. Questing was fun. Sometimes even felt MMO-esque in a good way. The Architect fights were fun and challenging, especially the one on Voeld. One of my most fun combat moments in any Mass Effect game was the architect fight on Voeld.

The final mission was kind of a mix. Overall I quite liked it. It felt epic. I liked all my relationships throughout the game converging. Bradley and Reyes and the Moshae/Evfra all coming to help. It felt a lot like the final dungeon in FFXIV Stormblood expansion. Super cool and cinematic. But the actual very final fight against the Archon and Architect was a little anti-climactic. It felt too easy and too quick and the stakes didn't quite feel high enough to me. I never gave a single fuck about my sibling in the game, the voice acting for Sara Ryder was awful and she spent 3/4s of the game in a coma. I just was not invested at all. Ultimately no one died anyway besides Dunn, who you'd only talked to for ten minutes at the start of the game, so I just didn't feel all that interested in the outcomes and stakes of the final mission. Sucked the wind a bit out of something that was pretty cool all around otherwise.

Andromeda was pretty. If nothing else at all. In upscaled 4k on the PS5 the game really had gorgeous moments. The takeoff transition scenes were almost always picturesque, notably leaving Kadara and leaving Eladeen with the spitbugs trottring around. The solar system planets to scan often looked quite pretty and the shot of the Ark Hyperion hitting the ground during the final mission on Meridian was wallpaper worthy. The Tempest is not as pretty as the Normandy on the inside and lacks a lot of the same charm, but the exterior of The Tempest is gorgeous. There were tons of interesting locales and screens, graphically the game was awesome. The graphic quality while talking and certainly the romance scenes were quite rough, but those aside the game delivered. It was always pretty walking around on a planet and seeing ships overhead or docking at spaceports. I won't devote any time to really talking about it, but the soundtrack was also great just like the original trilogy.

In the end Andromeda isn't a bad game. At all. Not in the least. Andromeda was a rushed game. Not enough time to flesh out story beats and narrative components. Not enough time to squash the bugs that plague the game even today. Not enough time to deliver the experience ME fans demanded of it. Whatever Bioware did behind the scenes that caused so many pitfalls is not something I know, though I'm sure the story has been told. But it is definitely reflected in the work they produced. A game with a truly delightful little nugget of potential and absolutely no polish. If Andromeda were bug free it would've been The Force Awakens at its worst. A thin but exciting reboot for the franchise. Worthy of a 4/5 rating or so. But the bugs really drag it down. The only reason I'm still giving it a 3.5/5 is because the game still delivers so much. The characters, the gargantuan amount of content and the visuals are too good to ignore. It's worth playing in 2021 for the pittance it typically costs nowadays. And I'm really hopeful we haven't seen the last of Ryder and crew.

Nem acredito que é do mesmo lugar que saiu a primeira trilogia Mass Effect e Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Um jogo completamente sem sal, não te deixa esquecer que esta jogando vídeo game e não é no bom sentido. As sides quests dão a sensação de que muitas estão ali só pra encher linguiça, o jogo evolui graficamente, mas o que seria meio obvio dado a tecnologia disponível pra fazer o jogo mas fica só nessa melhoria mesmo. Não tem pause no meio dos dialogos (um jogo de 2k17 po) e os olhos dos personagens são tenebrosos. Bem tosco, a história poderia ser bem aproveitada se fosse bem feita.

Completamente artificial e vazio. PAIA demais