Why is that surprising? I mean we are talking EA here. I don't think they even realize that this is going to make a lot of those whom were waiting for it to be fully patched want to just pass on it altogether.
I think the game got a bit too much hate to be honest. I was hoping to see it improved via further patches, but I never felt it was a terrible game. Same goes for Dragon Age: Inquisition and Dragon Age 2, which also both got a ton of shit from the community.
Both were inferior to Dragon Age: Origins. Origins was a damn fine game. Everything inferior to a damn fine product is not as a result trash-tier.
OK, I know this is going to sound hypocritical, but I DO like the ME series, and I hadn't realized you can get Andromeda now for less than $27 at Walmart, so I picked it up. I figured I need to see for myself before I really judge it. Plus there's no sense waiting for more patching or sp DLC, since there's no hope of that.
Initial impressions are better than anticipated. I can run it on High even on my fairly mediocre spec, and with no lag or stutter. While I expected NPC faces to not be anything to impress, and some of their walking animations to be odd, none of it has been a deal breaker so far. I'm not too impressed with running though, feels almost like you're skating on ice at times.
I've only played up through the part where you make Eos breathable, but have already encountered a fairly significant bug. I thought it would be a deal breaker at first, since one of the shield generators had no prompt to deactivate it. I had to quit and restart that checkpoint and the battle with the Kett twice, then it finally worked.
Other nit picks are that objective tracking is far more confusing than in prior installments. I also don't like that you don't have much of a HUD anymore telling you what ammo is equipped and such. However adding a Favorites feature for loadouts and profiles is much welcomed.
Visually, if you can get past a few NPC quirks, the environments are stunning to look at. Gameplay is also pretty solid, which has less to do with visuals, but since I'm covering likes here, I'll throw that in. It's too soon to tell whether the gameplay and graphics will keep outweighing the nit picks, but so far it looks worth buying. Then again, I didn't pay much for it, and would never have put down $50-$60, or even $40 for it. I guess in some ways their having kinda botched a lot of things made it more affordable for me, but if it comes at the expense of the franchise being in jeopardy, I'd have gladly paid more for a better product.
In some ways, maybe EA just draws a lot of flak more for their reputation than their product, but then they brought that on themselves with the way they've dumbed down their games and made their best devs and writers leave. I know some say it's more about micro transactions, but a lot of that has more to do with appeasing the anxious, than taking out content. For instance DS3, one of the most complained about regarding micro trans, was a game where you could literally make use of anything you could buy via micro trans, if you just patiently played through it. Micro trans is often just a caffeine boost for those that want it all now.
Long before NMS. I've seen every sequel be bashed into the ground for its perceived flaws for at least 10-15 years.
I paid $30 for Andromeda, but in all honesty I wouldn't feel ripped off had I paid $60. It's an above average game. It's not a masterpiece, but few games are.
What's DS3?
Dark Souls III is what comes to mind when I see that acronym, but I'm sure that's not what you're talking about as it has no microtransactions and has nothing to do with EA.
I ran into a bug where I went East on Kadara before North. Word of advice: if you see a small building guarded by a refugee woman with a locked door behind her, don't enter until you find the stoners in the North. You'll break half of the quest if you talk to the people inside (specifically, receive a UV light).
I think if it were made by anyone other than EA it wouldn't have had even half of the bad publicity MEA got. EA is the punching bag of video game publishers.
Some gripes:
-The Tempest design is stupid. Does it even have cannons?
-Tiny little transport shuttles capable of going faster than light? Uh, no. They only serve as transports to and from corvette or larger ships that have FTL drives.
-The ore mining on planets. They seriously necro'd the absolute worst "feature" of Mass Effect 2? Yes, yes they did. And that little probe you drop supposedly extracts these resources? How? This whole aspect of the game is not only tedious (I'm not doing it), it's stupid and Bioware should know better.
-Don't want to say much on this one because of spoilers but messing with tech you don't understand can have very bad consequences. Yet no one on your crew is all "wait a minute!"
It got torn apart by survival horror fans for being too actiony. However even the writer of the original game said it made sense to change the formula to more outbreaks occurring, which of course means more action and more weapons needed. You can only have so many ships and corridors before it starts getting stale.
I can't say I agree at all on what I'd be willing to pay for Andromeda. After playing through it more, mopping up side tasks along the way borders on feeling monotonous and boring. There's also a lot of repeat unskippable cutscenes with very plain low res textures you have to wade through when boarding or docking the Tempest.
I finally met the Angara on Havarl and am starting the first mission with them to access the vault. Hopefully it will pick up from here in graphics and gameplay. I have to say though that my initial impression of this planet graphically was somewhat skewed by the cutsene of landing on it having very jerky animations for the huge flying creatures.
The more you play this game, the more the many little flaws stick out like a sore thumb.
I concur with unskipable cutscenes. Even worse, you can't pause the game during dialogs or cutscenes. Game made me burn some fries in the oven because of that.
I only noticed jerking when it's likely streaming more of the world (unavoidable). You should check your framerate: graphics settings might be too high.
Edit: The thing that is annoying me the most right now is how long animations take to get around the galaxy. They clearly prioritized cinematics over gameplay in that area and considering scanning planets is a pretty monotonous task, drawing it out is frustrating.
Yes. I also agree it got cool before then to hate on new games. If you actually didn't have any problems, you were not only uncool, but an obvious fanboy, because gosh, all the cool people couldn't run the game for squat.
Edit: The thing that is annoying me the most right now is how long animations take to get around the galaxy. They clearly prioritized cinematics over gameplay in that area and considering scanning planets is a pretty monotonous task, drawing it out is frustrating.
Well, I just played 3 hours, I liked ME 1-3 a lot, with last update if you don't ever played ME1-3, the game it is ok(if you can buy as me, at 50%), but if you played those before, this one it is mediocre. If there was no Mass Effect in name, well, the game wouldn't have so much negative reviews, but they used some ''parts'' from ME1-3 and wanted the money of fan players(easy money, right?), but was a fail in the end, from the point of view of a fan of ME universe, it is ok though as generic game, at 30EU, mediocre, but it is summer and no Witcher 4 in sight(or something at same quality)...
Did you try Nier Automata? Cause it's an open-world RPG through and through (ok, most of the time) and one of the best at that. It's just that it's... really weird
I also had second thoughts, what with all the android samurai maids and bullet-hell action scenes, but I ended up being as immersed in the whole thing as I had been with The Witcher 3 on its best days.
Wha... HOW? I min-maxed the shit out of everything and didn't get further than 50 hours to complete it. Did you take sightseeing tours across the empty wastelands or what?
ME:A... I really don't know what to say. It felt generic, the narrative was weak as hell and the end of it just feels like you've completed chapter one and the story now has to take off... but ends, the gameplay and combat was OK but far too easy, and the lack of character classes makes any replayability pretty much zero. You can just start your completed save and re-roll to whatever you'd like. Also the 'open world' maps felt artificially limited both in size and the pathing, basically you're just following the road and it takes you past every hot site, no real exploration required. And if you do worry about missing anything, don't worry, there's a map marker to point you there. Weak stuff.
As a continuation of ME series I understand many of the choices they made, but underneath that, if you really think about it, all the design choices show that Andromeda is dragging out the franchise into Assassins Creed / Far Cry territory: we've seen it all, we've seen it too often, and it has lost its novelty altogether and never gets to be as engaging as the trilogy before it.
Think about it, honestly, how often has ME:A really surprised you, either gameplay or story wise? While in earlier installments you'd suddenly gain access to that second primary weapon class in a collector ship; or the Ship AI comes to life and becomes your companion; or the background of all the diverse species of the universe gets fleshed out (even going as far as adding entirely novel entities and even fleshing those out too!); in ME:A all of that is a given, you get all the toys to play with right away, all the personality and character of the diverse species is nullified 'because we're all friends now', and you start ticking all the boxes towards completion. Even the conversation options are dumbed down to irrelevance.
Honestly I'm glad they're not DLC-festing this release, let Bioware move on to the next clusterfuck so I can ignore it. This dev is quickly moving towards Ubisoft quality and ME:A is a perfect example of it.
Oh and last but not least, speaking of generic and 'done before'... put the Kett architecture side by side with Warframe's Grineer... its painful. Once that was in my head, game was utterly ruined. THEY EVEN STOLE THE GODDAMN CROSSHAIR.
Did you try Nier Automata? Cause it's an open-world RPG through and through (ok, most of the time) and one of the best at that. It's just that it's... really weird
I also had second thoughts, what with all the android samurai maids and bullet-hell action scenes, but I ended up being as immersed in the whole thing as I had been with The Witcher 3 on its best days.
Wha... HOW? I min-maxed the shit out of everything and didn't get further than 50 hours to complete it. Did you take sightseeing tours across the empty wastelands or what?
there are a ton of side missions and hidden locations to go to on each planet. I literally did every single thing there was to do. I just found stuff, same as TW3 if you get off the path. There are even a couple monoliths to go deep underground and explore that aren't part of the story line. One is on the first planet you colonize. I roleplayed it. The characters dont know there is a main script to follow, so just like with other RPG's I don't let myself get forced down a path. I get to things as I feel like.
...well, was able to DL, install, and get the Frosty Editor to detect and cache ME: A, but when I try to import this extracted mod, it doesn't even recognize the files. Have you installed this yourself? I am following the instructions exactly. The first file is designated as "ShorterLanding&DepartureCinematics1_00.fbmod", and when I browse to it's location with the editor, it is invisible. I've also tried pasting it's name into the editor where it says file name, and still no go.
...OK, the mod is now installed. The problem was the so called "suite" the mod page links you to only has the editor, and not the mod manager, which is what installs the mod. However despite the mod now showing as installed with the check mark verifying it, when trying to launch ME: A via the mod manager, which is said to be necessary, I get an error box after it tries to load that says "The requested operation requires elevation" (cue U2 LOL).
I have to say I was skeptical about trying this, as I am most mods, because there always seem to be some kind of problems. Can anyone explain what this means? I can only assume that it's maybe because this mod doesn't yet support the latest patch (1.10).
there are a ton of side missions and hidden locations to go to on each planet. I literally did every single thing there was to do. I just found stuff, same as TW3 if you get off the path. There are even a couple monoliths to go deep underground and explore that aren't part of the story line. One is on the first planet you colonize. I roleplayed it. The characters dont know there is a main script to follow, so just like with other RPG's I don't let myself get forced down a path. I get to things as I feel like.
Gotcha. ME:A didn't get to that level of immersion with me, felt too artificial for that (thinking about it, this may be the reason for the outrage over the crappy animation work). But I did have this much slower pace with the earlier games, so I know what you mean even though those aren't that 'open' as this one.
I think that's the problem with this concept of an open world; you get hammered with map markers and progression bars and for me, that means my MMO grinding-mode gets triggered, I blaze through to end game and focus mostly on progressing. You see, I also found those secret underground tombs, it really wasn't that 'hidden' once you know the hints to look for, and the scanning business wasn't a real challenge either... I was only motivated to do them all because they gave a shiny mod at the end With TW3 though, the world and the story was interesting enough to make me slow down, but with DA:I and now ME:A, that just didn't happen. In essence these are all 'Ubisoft formula' open world games. Unlock the world, scour the markers. I think the formula's spoiled for me by definition
That said it would be nice to see the next ME really go back to a more linear, branching approach.
I'm playing the game on the configuration you can see in my specs and I've had zero problems so far. Literally I mean - no bugs, no crappy performance, no nothing.
Obviously I'm playing with an X360 pad, so if that's a dealbreaker for you then yeah... But I mean, it's 2017 and if you're an RPG fan who has missed three Dark Souls games, I don't know what to tell you
I finished it at 101 hours, 30/55 achievements got. Did not play APEX at all.
I didn't care for the end at all. The whole mission, people were talking left and right but I wasn't listening to them because too busy shooting. Same goes for the boss fight. And after the boss fight, it all just felt kind of wrong/forced, not unlike ME3's ending pre-Extended Cut.
Many dialogs throughout the game were cut off by other dialogs. I gave up trying to listen to them all because of that. Dialogs should have been queued instead of single-voice.
I can sum up MEA in two words: missed opportunity. Details below.
The fact the game only added three new species (remnant, angara, kett) surprises and saddens me. That said, Mass Effect has had that problem since the original (krogan, hanar, quarian, asari, turian, elcor, volus, batarian, rachni, geth, reaper, prothean). Mass Effect 2 only added drell and collector. Mass Effect 3 added leviathan and the reaper subspecies. I think this is one of the many reasons why Mass Effect is still king.
And let's be honest, kett are basically organic versions of the reapers. So obvious and so bland story wise. It was pretty obvious to me from early on in the game that angara were related to remnant. I figured ancient angara created remnant, not the other way around. That said, can I say the game ever truly surprised me? No, not really.
And the exiles: only created to offer the player variety on planets. Easy to explain story wise and saves them a lot of production costs by not creating new species. We're talking a new galaxy here. MEA should have matched or exceeded ME in terms of new species, ergo, no reason to create the exile faction. Bioware missed a huge opportunity there, and I mean HUGE. Frankly, I think they blew MEA on that fact alone.
Bioware kind of wrote themselves into a corner too. Missing Quarian/Elcor/Volus ark, Jaardan, Scourge, and no doubt more kett. Kett is just stupid. Reapers were awesome because they're a mysterious enemy. Kett? Not much mystery, more just a pain in the ass that needs some medication. Kett should have been like a batarian species that the Initiative beats into a corner and forces the player to choose between annihilation or change of ways (scientific solution to their lack of reproduction). The game should have focused on the Scourge as the primary antagonist because that's most analogous to the reapers.
And the colonization? I expected these outposts to be a strong supply of missions and completing them would cause the individual outposts to grow. On the other hand, every outpost (except Eos) only had one quest: pacify architect. How droll!
None of the choices really felt that major going forward. Game was narratively extremely linear.
I liked the old Mako way more than Nomad. Because gun. Because thresher maws. Because getting out of the Mako and killing targets yourself gets more XP. Because gun is OP.
Also droll: looting system. You're never going to open a random container and go "oooo I need to equip that right now!" On the flipside, there's spectres on the arks, there's a research and development system, yet they didn't create expensive-to-research-and-develop Pathfinder gear based on ME Spectre gear. That "oooo I need to equip that right now" factor.
Playing through it, I called it an above average game. Looking back now, I call it average. It could have been a fantastic game but...
-animation issues are abundant and everywhere
-should have been a lot of new species and a lot more first contacts as a result of that
-colonization/planets should have been smaller with more of them.
-colonies should be able to grow in a meaningful way by helping the colonists out.
-should have had legendary weapons that are preaugmented and premodded and armor that has a biased fusion mod.
-get rid of the damn mining system they necro'd from ME2 that everyone loved to hate.
-add incentive to explore galaxies: in the previous games, almost every system existed for a reason (derelict spaceships had an associated mission for example), not MEA. Most systems have no value except to be scanned by OCD players.
I want to see a sequel but the game design formula has to change: spam new species which creates conflict amongst them the player has to weave through (diplomatically or with force) with a overarching narrative focused on the Scourge (a mysterious threat to them all).
