The best thing I can say about Mass Effect Andromeda is that it's playable.

To press deeper, this game represents the absolute worst of the modern video game industry. In BioWare's infinite wisdom, they decided to strip away everything they built in the original trilogy, sacrificing its tight, streamlined gameplay experience for open-world AAA garbage. Andromeda is like a bad future timeline that split off from the first Mass Effect, where instead of what we got in 2 they chose to double down on the boring, monotonous planetary exploration of 1. This is open-world design in its most tedious and least interesting form, and on top of that, hey let's pile on other features that everyone loves, like endless resource collecting, crafting mods and consumable powerups, equipment rarity, pointless 2% percentage upgrades to your powers, and a ton of side content that never amounts to anything more than bottom of the barrel fetch quests. Thus, a memorable action-RPG transforms into a goddamn loot shooter.

Anything you loved about the core experience of the Mass Effect trilogy is practically gone, and the vestiges that remain only serve to remind you how inferior the product is in comparison. Mass Effect was all about hanging out with your cool squadmates in space, getting to know them and becoming invested in their stories, and being presented with difficult decisions that challenge your morals and understanding of the story. Here, your crew are all merely different flavors of bland. I did not care to learn about any of them. I cannot think of a single choice presented that I felt I needed to consider for more than a second. And while I had my issues with the morality system of the original games, replacing it with four personality types that do absolutely nothing to color your character or their experience was a piss-poor alternative.

There seems to be a push to redefine this game as being "overhated" or somehow not as bad as originally characterized, but let me tell you, the massive technical disaster Mass Effect Andromeda was at launch only served to hide that this thing was absolutely rotten to the core. Even with the (slightly) cleaned-up presentation, there's almost nothing redeeming about it. Like many open-world games, it throws a lot at you, keeping you on that grind, where there's always something to do and you never have to stop and ponder about how little thought was put into any of this. It's like fast food, where you can keep shoving it into your mouth, never getting full but never feeling fulfilled.

Congrats to BioWare on developing the Arby's of video games.

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

First I would like to address the bugs. As of 2023, the planets Eos and Voeld have bugs that will corrupt your save files when you die or otherwise need to load. I am willing to put up with a lot of bugs, more than I probably should honestly, but ruining save data is my line. It is completely unacceptable and I do not recommend playing this game on that alone. That said I am too big of a Mass Effect fan and can't stand not finishing what I start so I save scummed worse than I have ever save scummed to get through it... and then there was a bug that said my memory was too full even though I deleted all the saves. Piece. Of. Crap. Anyway, in terms of story and gameplay I liked it but it's certainly a mixed bag. The main storyline on Kadara or Liam's Loyalty mission are as good as the series has ever been, but then on the other hand you have a bunch of diet versions of the Original Trilogy conflicts and Cora humansplaining Asari philosophy to Asari and the game not thinking that's weird. The Angara are easily one of my favorite species in Mass Effect, but the Kett don't really have it to be main antagonists. Would have loved a proper sequel as I don't think it would be difficult at all to smooth everything out but it is what it is.

Now that has been out several years I finally played this game and while it seems like it got a lot of hate on release I actually like it. I think the gameplay is fairly solid. I definitely agree that there are some funky animations and overall I feel like the texture/color of Turians and Asarians (especially) are not great. I had a good time. A bit sad this Andromeda storyline didn’t finish but I am cautiously optimistic for whatever Mass Effect game comes next.

This was 100% a Steam Deck play through and while some of the text was small pretty good handheld game.

Where the hell do I even begin.

Graphics and some design choices are almost irrelevant to me and gameplay is always king. But this one is almost an exception because of the problems I had with it and the experience.

I will say that the gameplay here and gunplay is more satisfying than the original in my opinion since it has been "modernized" although that could also be a double-edged sword.

The story? It was a total meh.
The antagonist was very predictable and didn't got me too invested.

The characters were not as memorable as the previous ones but I do appreciate the originality on some.

The missions were not as good as the OG's.
Overall for me this was a wasted potential. It had good concepts and good steps but it was a total flop by the end of the canvas.

MEA ist nicht so schlecht, wie es oft gemacht wird. Ja, die Animationen sind nicht immer perfekt (Treppen hoch und runter gehen, Gesichter), aber es gibt sehr viele wunderschöne Backdrops.

Die Kämpfe sind sehr dynamisch und bieten im Gegensatz zur orginalen ME-Trilogie keine Möglichkeit zum Pausieren.

Die Möglichkeit, den eigenen Charakter mit allen möglichen Kräften auszustatten und ohne Klassenlimits zu mischen, gefällt mir sehr gut.

Die Companions haben mir insgesamt auch recht gut gefallen. Nur Liam kann ich auch nach mehreren Playthroughs immer noch nicht leiden.

Leider bleiben am Ende viele Fragen offen, da BioWare/EA aufgrund des schlechten User-Feedbacks keine DLCs erstellt hat.

Vielleicht bekommen wir im nächsten Mass Effect ein paar Antworten, aber das könnte schwierig sein, denn das soll ja an die OG-Trilogie anknüpfen ...

I really tried to like this and to finish it but I can't.
The combat is good, the setup is interesting, I liked the idea of focusing on exploration but I feel like Mass Effect games aren't meant to be open world and that was the first of many missteps. It just doesn't feel like Mass Effect. The open worlds are filled with the usual collectathon and get boring so quickly. There's what appears to be an infinite number of side quests consisting of "collect this", "shoot these creatures in this boring place in the middle of the desert".
The main plot is kind of interesting but again, it's kind of a new coat of paint on the story we've seen before. The angara are interesting and their culture is rich but... it's a new galaxy and they're the only new species we find? And they didn't even bother to bring so many of the old ones, how can they not bring back the quarrians at least?
Ryder is dull, the companions are all so boring, and a mass effect game without the characters is just... well... this. If the characters don't interest me the whole experience is ruined, I can't care. And part of the problem is the childish and comedic tone that doesn't fit in the Mass Effect universe.
Mass Effect is one of my favorite series, I don't understand how they screwed up so bad. Generic, flawed and boring.

Chief.. I-.. I got some bad news. We've somehow made a worse Mass Effect game than Mass Effect 3. You may want to plug your nose because this one is FOUL.

First and foremost, this game is so.. so... outrageously BORRRRRRRRRIIINGG. It's like they took the most tedious parts of the original trilogy and made a whole game out of them. You travel from nothing planet to nothing planet to do- Guess what?: NOTHING. There's no life, there's no soul, there's not even a light behind the main character's eyes. They're dead on the inside and so am I.

There is no fun to be had and it's a massive slog to wade in. You could take a 2 hour nap while traveling to different planets and you still wouldn't be there yet when you wake up. Which is ATROCIOUS because you're often times being told to leapfrog back and forth from planets you just left.

Your crewmates might as well be made of cardboard who are too scared to speak to you so they email you with important personal information about themselves immediately upon leaving their room. So glad I could customize my own twin to the abomination I wanted him to be, but he doesn't do anything. The shallow ass dialogue options lead Ryder down a path of being the dumbest person alive tasked with the most crucial mission in the galaxy, and yet of course they somehow figure it out through failing upwards at every turn.

There's no real reward for the cleaning up planets other than more enemy shlock thrown at you and I hope to God you like Sudoku because it's a major feature in this game that you have to do multiple times. The power system is stripped to the bare minimum in favor of this garbage crafting system that I couldn't even stand to look at.

It's so bad and no, just because it's 2023 does not make it some underrated masterpiece people were just too mean to back then. This game is still broken as Hell, soft-locks, crashes, and looks atrocious. Characters clip in/out of cutscenes and duplicate themselves all over the place. Enemies and companions T-pose mid combat, doors stay closed when they shouldn't, etc.

The story and characters are so forgettably mediocre that I don't even remember what happened to most of them. Worst of all, it's wildly unfun.

I have changed on a molecular level having played this piece of shit game.

Let me get this out of the way first - the open world SUCKS. Barren and boring. Animations could be a little better esp for a 2017 game, but I'm not really one to care about that sort of stuff in my game anyways so eh.

But I think most the characters and story really outshine that part of the game. The combat is improved from any of the other games in the series. The new alien species they introduced was refreshing and a good fit for the world of ME.

10/10 bc of Vetra my beloved...

2 full playthroughs and 108 hours later and this game is still dog ass.
combat can be very engaging, but one has to qualify that with "as long as you're on a difficulty where the enemies don't become bullet sponges" and "as long as you don't think about the 'profile' system that completely kills the appeal of replayability from a mechanical perspective".
the story and general narrative atmosphere is a mess, the gameplay outside of combat is stale, and the game as a whole is defined by the number of clashing priorities that drag down the entire experience.
andromeda was destined to fail from almost the beginning of its development cycle, and the resulting product is just that; a failure.

Comparando com a trilogia inicial, o Andromeda é um ki-suco de uva entre 3 garrafas de vinho.

Mas como um jogo isolado, ele funciona redondinho em tudo que se propõe. A jogabilidade é funcional e a exploração é satisfatória. A remoção daquele sistema de bondade/maldade foi um erro bem rude. E o enredo é bem qualquer coisa, não é digno de destaque. Os personagens não são interessantes e o vilão menos ainda.

E graficamente falando, achei que ainda poderia ser um game da geração PS3/X360.

É uma daqueles jogos pra se jogar com a mente aberta, sem pensar que é um Mass Effect. Fica mais fácil se você tratá-lo como uma homenagem feita por um fã que tá começando a desenvolver games agora.

A solidly mediocre game. The character animations - even with any "updates" are still worse than Mass Effect 1. It's also graphically glitchy as hell, and there are game breaking bugs still in the game that I first encounted back in 2017 when the game launched. Do like the changes to combat though which drags it up to 3 stars. While I usually have a specific play style with the ME trilogy, I actually enjoyed being able to swap up the skills, and doing it for trophies let me try out things I mightn't have normally. I'm sure I'll come back to finish it eventually and to get the platinum, but for now I think I'm done.

This game makes me so mad to think about. It was an ambitious project that was sadly ruined by a horrific launch that could've been prevented had EA and Bioware not had their heads up their asses and let it stay in the oven longer. All the post-release work was spent on fixing (some) bugs and anything to do with story DLC or a sequel was either scrapped or put in a book that probably no one read.

I feel like this could've been like a "new ME1" for what could be considered an Andromeda galaxy trilogy but due to corporate greed and EA wanting to push a shitty Destiny clone (Anthem) out asap and Bioware's incompetence this game would never realize its potential.

The story and character writing was... whatever, and the exploration was just dogshit, but the gunplay and combat were some of the coolest in the series.

I feel like as individual games (separate from the rest of the trilogy) this one isn't that far off from ME1 level and could've been the start of something special like ME1 was, but due to shitty decisions, it would never be.

While the story isn't as good as the trilogy (and I'd argue 3's gunplay is better), Andromeda is perfectly worthy of the Mass Effect title.

For criticism of the story, I can't bring myself to care about the Kett. I just can't. The Archon is a mediocre villain. If he was intimidating, or had actually intimidating lackeys, maybe I'd change my mind, but he's boring through-and-through.

The crewmates are great--minus Liam. Drack somehow lives up to Grunt and Wrex--something I never though possible.

I do believe a sequel would've improved public opinion on this, considering all the setup for one. It was always meant to kickstart another trilogy, not to be a standalone spin-off.