Mass Effect: Andromeda

So I binged on this game and did a no-life session on Saturday then followed it up with another no-life session in Ghost Recon Wildlands on Sunday and I have to say that between these two games, I wish mass effect had a coop mode like Ghost Recon Wildlands and I'm not talking about the confusing multiplayer in Mass Effect, it took a little time to figure out how to get my friends in my game, unlike Wildlands.
 
I've logged several thousand hours in the Mass Effect universe thus far, from ME1 through ME3. I've already put Andromeda down and I have close to zero compunction to ever load it again :(
 
I find it hard to believe someone would play the ME franchise for thousands of hours and not be compelled to finish Andromeda.

Yea I would have to agree. If you are a fan of ME, than you will like this game. It's not "great" but it is a good game.

It sucks that the mentality of people today is "The internet is bashing the game so it has to suck".
 
nice to know that there probably will be some major changes coming out eventually to character creation, animations, save system etc...I'm glad I'm waiting to play as I think the game will be much better in a month

Lead Dev said in a tweet six days ago that the "banter bug" was already spotted and covered in the forthcoming first patch.

I hope they're careful and don't go "too big/too fast" with the first patch... nice and easy... because no one wants to see them solve one problem and then create two new ones.

Banter bug: Some people have said that making sure all codexes, journals, etc. are read and cleared out "might" clear it up since some people appear to have this issue and others don't. That's an easy step that I've been slacking on because I've been getting sucked into the game.


Tainted: I totally agree with you and a few things gets ironed out...for me personally... this game is awfully good and it's like many others and outlets have said: It gets better as you keep going. Once Eos gets cleared thing really start to open up.

I have 33 hours of gameplay so far and I easily see getting well north of 100 hours out of this on my first playthrough.
 
Just watched the "5 year 40 million dollars" youtube video....

and while I am very aware this video is showing nothing but the bad....

oh man. The faces and the animations.....asstastic.

Loved the entire series, and bought and paid for all of them. I'll be awaiting the "demo" version on this.
 
I keep reading through this read hoping to be convinced to buy this game.

I still have Mafia 3 that I haven't touched and for the life of me can't get into Dishonored 2. I just really need to stop buying games I'm not gonna finish.
 
if you like the kind of grindy completionist rpg type thingies then most likely you will like this game. there are flaws, the animations and such, but overall that is a tiny portion of the game. the story may be a bigger issue for some, but it seems ok to me. the rest is just regular mass effect.
 
Out of curiousity, you guys who say you have spent hundreds of hours playing the trilogy, what do you do after completing it? Is there really that much to do?
 
Out of curiousity, you guys who say you have spent hundreds of hours playing the trilogy, what do you do after completing it? Is there really that much to do?

I replay through ME1/ME2 every couple years or so because the story/characters are that good. I skip ME3 because I really felt it was a downgrade in a number of ways, and it's mostly not needed as it's just the ending.

I'll never play through Andromeda again. It's a snooze fest. The only good thing it has going for it are the graphics, and that means it will only have a good aspect for a short period of time.

I honestly don't understand what people are seeing in this game. If it had good side-quests and more interesting character development and/or better gameplay I could love it - But otherwise it's really shit compared to Witcher 3 and Zelda.

And I really have to point out that all the preview / pre-release marketing they did for this game was VERY deceiving and a complete lie. A lot of the early videos I remember watching made it look like the game had massive planets to explore, and numerous planets at that along with a wealth of side-quests that actually had a real story behind them.

The game has none of it, and really only two of the planets you can actually drive the Nomad around on and they are fairly sparse in content and small at that. The other planets are just hub planets, or so small that it's walking only.

This game is a massive disappointment. Even if it didn't managed to deliver a decent main storyline / character development they could have at least delivered an interesting and expansive open world game. It's none of these things.

I've all but finished the game at this point and I really have to disagree with the game 'opening up' after Eos. I repeat - There is only one other planet besides Eos that is actually somewhat decent in size, and it really doesn't matter much given how shit the side-quests are.

Typical side-quest in this game is; Talk to person X, find stuff at location Y, kill generic bullet-sponge enemies with largely boring combat, return to person X.

Even the character development side-quests are largely similar. At least in ME1/ME2 while the game world was smaller you got some interesting dialog/plot developments, and at least the combat was mildly interesting given you could actually control your allies.

Maybe my standards have changed since Witcher 3 and Zelda, but I really can't find anything I like about this game besides the graphics.
 
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Out of curiousity, you guys who say you have spent hundreds of hours playing the trilogy, what do you do after completing it? Is there really that much to do?
There are lots of side quests in all 3 enough to keep you busy for around 250 hours each. between the side stories and everything yeah also i have about 40 hours on andromeda and only 20% of the helios cluster done...
 
There are lots of side quests in all 3 enough to keep you busy for around 250 hours each. between the side stories and everything yeah also i have about 40 hours on andromeda and only 20% of the helios cluster done...

You aren't missing much.
 
By the way, is it possible to rearrange quick slot skills? No matter what I do I can't seem to figure that out...


I find it hard to believe someone would play the ME franchise for thousands of hours and not be compelled to finish Andromeda.
According to Steam I've put about 900 hours in ME1 and ME2. I somehow doubt that I can reach anywhere close in this...
 
I've logged several thousand hours in the Mass Effect universe thus far, from ME1 through ME3. I've already put Andromeda down and I have close to zero compunction to ever load it again :(
Several thousand hours? Even a completionist playtrough takes about 40 hours for any of the three. Several thousand hours is by definition at least 2000, which means you finished the games 50 times as a completionist or at least 75 times regularly. Sounds pretty far fetched to me.

And what made you put it down? The game is not worse than any of the three before it. I think you just hyped yourself up to "I'm going to hate this"

The game really picks up when you get to Aya / Voels. I'm starting to really enjoy it to the point of being unable to stop playing at times. I just keep going forward. Yesterday I thought I'll go maybe 2 hours tops, ended up playing for 4, and the only reason I Stopped is because it was already midnight, and because I've lost some progress.

That happened because I was so eager to go forward that I missed some enemies and it turns out if you do that the autosave will not save despite progressing in the mission.
 
I keep reading through this read hoping to be convinced to buy this game.

I still have Mafia 3 that I haven't touched and for the life of me can't get into Dishonored 2. I just really need to stop buying games I'm not gonna finish.
I'm glad you brought up those two. I have them too, and I'm in the same shoes. Played Mafia 3 about 3-4 hours, and Dishonored about 1-2 hours. I'm about 16 hours into Andromeda and no inclination to stop, probably will break 100 hours. Which is irrefutable proof that ME:A is much better than those two games, neither of which had this kind of backlash against it.
 
What the public has to be lucid enough to realize is that both of these statements are true. Each person needs to come to their own conclusions about this game, not adopt someone else's.

--



I finished HZD, including every side quest, and Platinumed the game. I'm 40+ hours into ME:A, and on my 5th explorable planet. They both have their merits. ME:A is enjoyable in many aspects, but HZD is infinitely more polished, focused, well written, beta tested, modeled, rendered, pieced together, and what we expect from a AAA title. ME:A is not a bad game, fun in many aspects, but it comes from a pedigreed Developer and most agree the release build resembles an Alpha more than a Release Candidate "Gold" build. ME:A obviously has some addictive aspects, and a great deal of potential, but it is potential that should have been realized PRE-RELEASE, not post. The state at which these two games were released is incomparable.

What is so wrong with ME:A? On PC performance could be better, but I'm playing at 4k with everything maxed just a bit scaled down resolution (90%) and its running mostly at 60 fps.
I haven't encountered any bugs. Face animations could be better but it doesn't bother me that much.
I don't know how ME:A plays on PS4, but Horizon is a PS4 exclusive, so it's easier to optimize and test.
 
There are lots of side quests in all 3 enough to keep you busy for around 250 hours each. between the side stories and everything yeah also i have about 40 hours on andromeda and only 20% of the helios cluster done...
250 hours each? Each of the first 3 games only takes 15-20 hours for me on a single playthrough while being a completionist...
 
Finally got solid gametime in this past weekend and the game is an easy 11/10 for me. I'm not sure why there are "imma neva gonna replay" people, this seems like the most replayable ME for me.
 
Finally got solid gametime in this past weekend and the game is an easy 11/10 for me. I'm not sure why there are "imma neva gonna replay" people, this seems like the most replayable ME for me.

There are numerous well thought out reasons that are listed in this thread.
 
I'm actually a little more bummed about the "banter bug" then some of the facial animations.

Fuck that makes sense. I was getting banter sporadically, and usually only in the nomad for some reason.
 
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And I didn't read any of them.
I read every reason and none seemed well thought out. Or is that what you were referring to also?

All I see is childish butthurtness. There are clearly issues with the game, but none that make it unplayable or bad.
 
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On PC performance could be better,
I don't think that's warranted. 1440 ultra on a 980ti and solid 60 fps. That's very respectable. There are indy games that run much worse with a tenth of the graphical fidelity.
 
Lead Dev said in a tweet six days ago that the "banter bug" was already spotted and covered in the forthcoming first patch.

I hope they're careful and don't go "too big/too fast" with the first patch... nice and easy... because no one wants to see them solve one problem and then create two new ones.

Banter bug: Some people have said that making sure all codexes, journals, etc. are read and cleared out "might" clear it up since some people appear to have this issue and others don't. That's an easy step that I've been slacking on because I've been getting sucked into the game.


Tainted: I totally agree with you and a few things gets ironed out...for me personally... this game is awfully good and it's like many others and outlets have said: It gets better as you keep going. Once Eos gets cleared thing really start to open up.

I have 33 hours of gameplay so far and I easily see getting well north of 100 hours out of this on my first playthrough.

Eos is definitely a bit of a drag. Voeld can drag on and on too. When you start getting really tired of a planet I move on to the next one and just come back later. There is plenty to do in the game. I'm at 65 hours into the game and I'm only 45% done with it.
 
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I'd like to try out some new builds but it seems the game has a fun bug where many of your researched augments simply don't show up on the craft menu. You're supposed to get 1 aug when you research it but it doesn't seem to always pop.
Right now precisely ZERO of my yellow augs show up during weapon crafting. I'm basically stuck with what I'm currently wearing since I can't craft anything better.
 
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I read every reason and none seemed well thought out. Or is that what you were referring to also?

All I see is childish butthurtness. There are clearly issues with the game, but none that make it unplayable or bad.

I read one realllly stupid reason and decided to skip any other further reading as soon as someone started having a hissy fit about a video game.

This thread is Deus Ex Mankind Divided all over again. It'll take a few month or so for it to clean up and the butthurt to go away.
 
I've logged several thousand hours in the Mass Effect universe thus far, from ME1 through ME3. I've already put Andromeda down and I have close to zero compunction to ever load it again :(

I find it hard to believe someone would play the ME franchise for thousands of hours and not be compelled to finish Andromeda.

Yea I would have to agree. If you are a fan of ME, than you will like this game. It's not "great" but it is a good game.

It sucks that the mentality of people today is "The internet is bashing the game so it has to suck".
I've logged well over 2000 hours in my countless replays of the ME series and have my complaints about MEA. Despite those complaints, I still intend to play it to the end. Right now, I just play an hour or so, then do something else. I can go for hours on end with the original games, but breaking up my time on MEA is keeping me fueled just enough to continue playing.

I remember feeling disappointed and bored to death with Oblivion. After several attempts to play, I just quit. Some months later I got the urge to try again and was hooked. I ended up thoroughly enjoying Oblivion and all the mods that supported it. I've replayed it several times, too. I hope for the same with MEA.
 
Eos is definitely a bit of a drag. Voeld can drag on and on too. When you start getting really tired of a planet I move on to the next one and just come back later. There is plenty to do in the game. I'm at 65 hours into the game and I'm only 45% done with it.

That's one thing that I really appreciate: You can come and go as you damned well please any time you want and there's always something different to do to forever avoid "The Hinterlands Trap" effect. ;)
 
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Found a neat way to play a "mage" no guns build: Research the weapon augment that restores 25% shields while your clip is empty. Then craft a gun with a low clip/ammo count, doesn't even matter what it is, use something light like a pistol.

Then take the Biotic Lance skill, at the max rank it will drain your Shields as ammo. Then simply keep your gun's clip empty OR drain all of your ammo, and you can spam Lance infinitely. Keep in mind it requires shields to fire, however you will generate 25% shields per second while your clip is empty. You can then pair Lance with 2 other Primers and just blow shit up.

Tested on Insanity and I melt enemies in about 2 or 3 hits.
 
Having put in about 10-15 hours in to ME:A, the story feels too much like a rehash of the ME1 story to a point of where I think they just changed some nouns and verbs, and called writing done. The derpy faces and bugs have already been mentioned to death. I'm not really feeling this game, and I don't really know if I will finish it.
 
I keep checking in to see if they fixed anything, doesn't look like it. I really want to like this game I just can't right now.
 
Out of curiousity, you guys who say you have spent hundreds of hours playing the trilogy, what do you do after completing it? Is there really that much to do?

I have 6 play throughs of Mass Effect 1, nearly two dozen play throughs of Mass Effect 2 and probably somewhere between 7 and 10 play throughs of Mass Effect 3. I've also logged countless hours modding and playing multiplayer in ME3. Currently, between multiplayer, the trial and the full game I've got 75 hours in Mass Effect Andromeda. If you don't spacebar all the conversations and are a completionist like I am, each play through takes a lot of time. It takes me about 19-22 hours to do Mass Effect 1, 42 hours for ME2 and 47 hours for ME3. (With all DLC's for all three games.)
 
ME:A isn't the greatest ever, but there are definitely some things I like over the first 3 and some I don't, but that's ok. I'm still enjoying it. Isn't that all that matters in the end "poor" reviews aside? I feel this way about movies. I like some movies that reviewers hate and dislike some movies other reviewers love. I also feel like some reviewers are on a mission to troll and trash others just because which is just sad. Let's all just enjoy what we play and if you don't like it, that's fine too. There of course is always room to be critical (in a helpful way) and still give credit where credit is due IMO.
 
ME:A isn't the greatest ever, but there are definitely some things I like over the first 3 and some I don't, but that's ok. I'm still enjoying it. Isn't that all that matters in the end "poor" reviews aside? I feel this way about movies. I like some movies that reviewers hate and dislike some movies other reviewers love. I also feel like some reviewers are on a mission to troll and trash others just because which is just sad. Let's all just enjoy what we play and if you don't like it, that's fine too. There of course is always room to be critical (in a helpful way) and still give credit where credit is due IMO.


It's rare that I see the likes of this:


http://www.businessinsider.com/mass-effect-andromeda-is-better-than-the-reviews-say-2017-3

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikka...ndromeda-really-does-get-better/#1c0e0e724142

http://www.pcgamer.com/how-mass-effect-andromeda-builds-on-the-series-legacy/

http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/23/15029264/mass-effect-andromeda-relationships-final-fantasy-xv-rpgs



^^ Seeing the likes of these and more confirms for me what I have said a few times in this thread: Deadline-itis. It was huge here.

Being in a rush and deadline-itis was definitely a factor in some of the early negative reviews that did this game a disservice and at least some of the outlets are "walking back" and essentially admitting what a bunch of us know now: You can't rush something like this and it definitely gets better as you go further into things.

This game is huge. To try and rush something like this for some deadline was never going to work. This isn't a COD game that can you spam through in a few hours, take a couple of jaunts on MP, and then write up the easy cruise control review because we all know what we're going to get there.
 
ME:A isn't the greatest ever, but there are definitely some things I like over the first 3 and some I don't, but that's ok. I'm still enjoying it. Isn't that all that matters in the end "poor" reviews aside? I feel this way about movies. I like some movies that reviewers hate and dislike some movies other reviewers love. I also feel like some reviewers are on a mission to troll and trash others just because which is just sad. Let's all just enjoy what we play and if you don't like it, that's fine too. There of course is always room to be critical (in a helpful way) and still give credit where credit is due IMO.

Some thoughts about the experience so far:

Animations aside, In a lot of technical areas Andromeda is the best Mass Effect game to date. This game almost feels like it was actually properly developed for the PC. The game runs good and has a lot of options menu items that PC users expect that we've rarely had in console ports.

My biggest problem with the game is that it radically redesigns elements of the trilogy that worked well. Armor customization and the journal come to mind. I hate how you can't change your armor load out in the color customization menu. The rest of the menus are fucking trash. The quest log / journal is a cluster fuck. I erroneously thought that it wouldn't display your current active quest in the upper right hand corner of the screen. That wasn't true. You can hit "Q" to show it. You can also adjust the behavior of the active quest in the game play options menu. BioWare still can't fucking put the helmet toggle options in a menu that's easily accessed. The crafting and research menus aren't too bad amazingly enough but I'm sure they could be done better. The vendor menus for buying and selling items suck ass. I don't like the way its displayed or the way you sort things. Even when items are "sorted" they are only sorted by type. There is no way to sort by quality, level, rarity or anything else. The map system is generally good. Much better than what we had in earlier games. Really though, the more linear games (ME2, ME3) just didn't need it.
 
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