#Wanted to polish and tweak it more but my document crashed right after this save soooo it's gonna have to stay like this

[cobbssecondbelt]

Reflections

[rebel666]

Mass Effect Andromeda 10 Hour Review (Spoiler Free[mostly])

Firstly, I’m basing this off of playing via PC. I have a mega processor that can handle it but my graphics card is at the minimum requirements and was comfortable with medium but I was able to play on high (didn’t try ultra but will once it comes out and I have more time to tweak my settings). I cannot speak for those playing on consoles or those playing with other settings on their PCs. I also don’t have a fancy or expensive keyboard or mouse. My keyboard is an old beat up Logitech basic keyboard (with most of the keys worn away) and mouse is an Azza weight controlled gaming mouse.

As for my knowledge on Mass Effect games, I have been playing Mass Effect (pretty much nonstop) since it first came out in 2007 so I have spent almost 10 years being in the fandom. The only other fandom that has kept me around this long is Pokemon. I played them all on the 360 and PC. I didn’t move to playing them on PC until after ME2 was released. Mass Effect 1 will always have my heart (because of the Mako) but Mass Effect 2 gave me the one character I wanted to romance (Garrus) and Mass Effect 3 finally allowed me to kiss said romance. I will admit that I played ME2 the most based solely on the story and character interactions. I will also mention that I played over 400 documented hours of ME3 MP and was on the team who was the second worldwide to defeat Platinum. In case any of you wanted to test my validity.

 10 Hour Rough Allocations:

Character Creation: 0:25 (I designed my Ryder and kept my sibling default) First Zone: 1:45 Nexus: 1:30 Space Exploration: 0:30 Second Zone: 4:45 Multiplayer: 1:00

 Pros:

Holy moly the planets! They are so vast and beautifully wonderful! I spent hours wandering around (even to places I shouldn’t have been yet and nearly dying every time from hazards) and upon reaching the top most location I just had to take a moment to look around. The details to the landscapes definitely precede all previous games. Not to mention how many systems we will be able to explore. You get just a glimpse at the galaxy map and it is massive! It’s huge! Like Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy definition of space HUGE. You see all the speckled dots of systems and planets waiting to be revealed. It’s such a tease! There’s definitely going to be so much to explore. Probably more than all of the previous games combined!

Space travel is VERY different than before. It cannot be compared to the previous games. It is very immersive, brings you right into feeling like you are there on the bridge traveling between planets. It’s really unique. It’s a little more time consuming but you get used to it. When it comes to scanning, it’s not like ME1 or ME3 where you just tap the planet for items and not like ME2 where you’re probing every little thing you can. Instead of constantly probing like in ME2, your science officer will tell you if there is or isn’t anything to scan for (which helps so much) or if you should just skip to the next. You can even scan the entire system you traveled to for anomalies!

I really enjoyed the layout of the Tempest. It’s easy to get around and I really love the view from the bridge. From what I’ve seen, certain characters have their spots they tend to be in but they do move around and all the areas are easy to access with ladders that connect the levels. There are no elevators that you have to select levels on and wait to load anymore. It definitely feels like home. And to be honest, there are areas that remind me a bit of the layout of Serenity from Firefly.

For me, the story drew me in pretty quickly. So many things happen. The game throws you right in and I had to slowly gather my bearings much like the Pathfinder did in the game. It doesn’t start all sugar and rainbows and you being the badass like Shepard. However, it gives you a sense of progression the more you proceed and that gave me a sense of accomplishment. As well as a sense as to how dire your role is in this new galaxy.

The lead enemy guy is a very curious character. I’ll leave it at that. His body language reveal so much in the brief moment he was on screen. I would share in full detail but that would be too many spoilers. (You can contact me if you want to know my thoughts on him.)

This “animation failure” everyone had I only experienced once on one character – Addison. There was also one instance where the lips didn’t match up but that could have been caused by multiple things. Everyone else didn’t have issues at all or was so minimal that it hardly bothered me. In fact, there was an extreme attention to detail on the motions/animations of your direct crew (which I’m going to be spending the most time with anyway). I could watch Vetra move around for hours. She’s so fluid. I can definitely see more attention being given to the aliens than the humans in game but it really doesn’t ruin my gameplay.

The whole crew is very loveable. I seriously cannot hate any of them. They are all unique and bring their personalities to the table. You get to talk to everyone on your small crew and they all have their reasons for being in Andromeda. Feeling so different than any of the Normandy crew but still making you feel right at home in the Mass Effect universe. Even the starting human squadmates are enjoyable. Picking one of them to romance is honestly going to be one of the hardest decisions of all the BioWare games ever. I mean it. I don’t know who to pick! (And I usually know ahead of time after reading lots of spoilers and teasers.)

One thing that already makes this different is the amount of female characters. Female aliens especially. Previously it felt like every character was male but now it feels more balanced!

There is a lot of dialogue and even BioWare themselves confirmed that this has the most dialogue than any of the previous game by a mile. Which I really prefer. This is a RPG and I want to talk to everyone. There’s so many conservations happening and the banter on the operations deck is one of the best (the only thing I’ll say here is Girl Scout cookies).

The combat is well polished. Like nearly flawless. The fighting felt fluid and definitely had its challenging moments. I went for a more tech based route to start (since I usually play as Engineer/Soldier). There are a lot of new skills to try and the skill tree is very reminiscent of ME1 (which was my favorite of the three) mixed with ME3. There are a lot of weapons you’ll remember from before and some new ones. One thing I will suggest is combining jet pack and melee. That is a ton of fun. Try it once… you’ll see.

The Nomad. Now I’m a hardcore Mako lover. Anyone who knows me knows I’m obsessed with that vehicle. However, I do really enjoy the Nomad. It took a few minutes to get my bearings with it but once I did I was able to climb over virtually anything! It even got me to the top of the map where I thought it would have issues. With it being able to hop from terrain mode to speed mode, it made traveling a lot more user friendly. I will admit though… I do miss shooting things.

The music is fantastic and I could listen to for hours (and I most likely will).

Within the 10 hours I played, there were already two characters from the previous games being mentioned. I won’t name who or go into much detail but it’s nice to hear some familiar voices and meet some of the family.

Overall it all feels like you’re coming back home to Mass Effect… just in a different galaxy.

 Cons/Bugs:

Multiplayer has the most issues… which is shitty for me because I love ME MP. On PC, everyone’s mic is automatically on (unless you mute it) and it took multiple tries to silence people. I don’t think people even realize it but it’s annoying when their game is blaring into your ears while you’re trying to play. And then the lag… it was really difficult to play with so many lag issues. I would jump and return right to the original area, a bunch of running in place instances, and such. It was tough to bear through but I managed 3 matches (only 1 with extraction). But to be honest I had multiple issues with ME3 MP when it first came out. Hell, I was one of the few with the rare Black Hole glitch. (Trust me that sucked.) Andromeda MP has a lot of potential and is definitely challenging. Just needs a bit of fixing. (This could also explain why the beta for MP was never released.) Once it is fixed, it’ll be fun.

As for single player, there are little things that were buggy. Like I could not change the color of my Pathfinder’s armor. No matter what I did and how many times I tried, it reverted back to the black/red combo. (I was trying for a white/orange/black aka Cerberus colors). It was extremely annoying. I tried it multiple times and even reloaded the game but still had this issue. It allowed me to change my casual outfit with no issues though!

The only other major problem I had was when my game got stuck on the map screen and wouldn’t let me escape no matter what. I had to shut it down and restart. I had another instance where I was stuck on the menu screen and it blacked out and crashed.

I had a few other bugs but reloading it fixed them. These bugs included minor things like the omni-scanner having issues staying on.

The interface on the PC is a little weird. There are two. One that holds the main journal/skills/saves/etc and one that opens up for loading saved games. It's a little weird and I wished they kept it as the original style.

Now as for that “walking” bug people experienced, as another friend put it, “I actually had to go out of my way to get the weird walking animations, I ended up sprinting at a staircase and erratically moving the joystick back and forth to get that odd walking animation for like ten seconds. But I had to purposefully do it to get that animation weirdness." Two others and I also had to purposefully do it to get that odd walk. So don’t believe everything you see/hear.

 Final notes:

There are a lot of reviews out there that range from blindingly negative to absolutely positive. Some say the animations are game breaking while others haven’t seen it in their playthrough. Some even complained there is too much dialogue… in an RPG… yeah, I’ve seen those complaints. I suggest you take all of the reviews with a grain of salt, including mine. Why? Everyone will have different playthroughs. Some will experience zero issues while others will have loads of issues. Many have praising results while others have critical opinions. One thing is certain though, 10 hours is hardly scratching the surface of this game. I would suggest you try it for yourself (rent it if you have to) before you succumb to others opinions. If you like it, if you don’t like it, at least you experienced it for yourself. And also don’t attack others for having a different opinion.

As for me, I feel right at home. I feel like if you loved the exploration, the story, and the romances in the original trilogy then you’ll really love Andromeda. I am really looking forward to how vast this game is going to be and know I’m going to be putting in easily over 100 hours in the single player (and another 400 hours into multiplayer once it’s fixed). One thing I am going to do differently this time around is take my time. I will admit that I rushed through ME3 (mostly to get to the Garrus romance scenes asap) and felt like I missed so much that I had no choice but to play a second time to really absorb it. But this… this I really want to enjoy. I want to take it all in. The one thing it does do is make you feel like you are right back in the Mass Effect world. I’m ready to return. I’m ready to continue my adventures as the Pathfinder. I’m ready for Andromeda. (And I’m going to secretly hope for that one Volus to roll out of cyro.)