Although a former Mass Effect fan (especially of 1&2), I skipped Andromeda at its release. The game was received as well as a new COVID-19 wave, with scornful memes, reports of ghastly bugs, video montages of dreadful animations and embarrassing scenes; to be fair, the Mass Effect 3 ending had also poisoned the well for many. Last year, during lockdown, I finally tried it.
The bad:
The so-so:
The good:
This is the polar opposite of the first Mass Effect, which had the best world-building, writing and lore but also the worst combat in the series; the second had okay combat, amazing companion quests but a so-so main plot, and the third some of the best moment in the series (the Genophage), but was also very linear and with a dreadful ending.
Considerably lowered expectations helped me enjoy Andromeda, although it feels like a missed opportunity.
The bad:
- For a game about space exploration, this is stunningly unimaginative in terms of worldbuilding, planets (desert planet, ice planet...) AND creatures (TWO new races compared to the fifteen or so introduced in the main series);
- The bad guys are generic space orcs and their leader (the Archon) is the weakest BioWare villain ever;
- While writing is decent by videogame standards, some dialogues are clunky and badly in need of a new draft.
The so-so:
- Party members, BioWare's secret sauce, are... okay. They are mostly a bunch of likable characters, although none of them is a classic BioWare companion like Garrus, HK-47, Mordin, Bastila, Wrex, Morrigan, Jolee Bindo, Legion, and the list goes on. A few of them are too blatantly a retread of previous ones - take Drack, who is fine but essentially Wrex 1.2.
- There is a lot of content here, although much of it (like in Dragon Age: Inquisition) is typical open-world busywork, following the philosophy that if a quest is worth doing once (say, activate an alien beacon), it's also worth doing many times again and again with minimal variations.
The good:
- The premise was a clever way of getting around the Mass Effect 3 ending, which seemingly nuked the chance of a direct sequel with vastly different (and mostly nonsensical) possible outcomes to its infamous final choice;
- The combat is fast, energetic, the best seen so far in the series;
- Ground exploration with the "Nomad" vehicle is also the best Mass Effect has to offer;
- After years of patches, bugs and facial animations appear to have been mostly fixed.
This is the polar opposite of the first Mass Effect, which had the best world-building, writing and lore but also the worst combat in the series; the second had okay combat, amazing companion quests but a so-so main plot, and the third some of the best moment in the series (the Genophage), but was also very linear and with a dreadful ending.
Considerably lowered expectations helped me enjoy Andromeda, although it feels like a missed opportunity.