Mass Effect: Andromeda Review

I'm not a big Mass Effect franchise fan, by the time I beat ME3 I was so burnt out on it that I didn't want to touch more of the series but I wanted a "quick and easy" game to beat before 2023 came to close and MEA fit that role pretty well. Andromeda isn't a very good game at all, it's about as medicore as mediocre can get but in a backhanded way, the game feels like one of those kinds of games I have to play every once and a while to understand why I like the games I enjoy.

With that out of the way, I would actively talk about the story but I didn't pay as much attention to it as Bioware wanted me to. The story, the writing, the voice acting, the animations are so stiff and awkward that by the time the main villain of the game made his first appreance after the prologue and all he did was just moved around and made blank facial expressions, I basically knew the story wasn't worth my attention, there's probably lots to comment on but the whole everyone trying too hard to sound snarky partnered with the awkward voice acting animations and I couldn't care less. I already am not a big fan of ME2 and 3's writing and MEA seemed to enter into the realm of "soft reboot", I'm not sure if more refrences to past games would've helped but at the same time the game in terms of story has little going for it.

I'll give the story some credit where the villains react to every time Ryder and the crew made a set back to their plans but this feels like it's too little too late. This could've elevated ME1 and it could've helped give the Illusive Man more character but at this point, I just don't care anymore.

Now the big reason why I consider the game to be painfully average and dull: the gameplay. The UI is so bad that even I am complaining about it, everything is presented in a convoluted way and there load screens within load screen when using going to planets, and you need to press the left trigger button and cross just to Tempest.

The big reason why I played this game at all was because the gameplay seemed to be moving away from cover based shooting or at least that is what it looks like, you got a jump pack and a dash button, this sounds great on paper but then the arena designs hardly ever rely on you to use the dash and jump, when they do, all the combat areas have the exact same layouts and the verticality jump pack has is barely even used. The arena design is basically just a floor, 1 platform above that and that's how far it goes. Playing MEA, it's just easier to hide behind cover a lot of the time and occasionally actively move around when tougher enemies with bigger health bars start to actively flank you.

The difficulty is also really messed up, normal difficulty has your shield get taken out pretty fast, and your guns do poultry amounts of damage but on easy, your shield is a lot more resilant and your guns do more reasonable amount of damage. Playing on any difficulty other than easy just means I am going to spend more time hiding behind cover and waiting for health to regen. I got the sniper rifle stat maxed out and my sniper shots were still weak as hell on normal.

Another big issue with combat is that so many of the enemies types are the same thing over and over, ME1 suffered from this addmittedly, but ME1 wasn't didn't have a jump pack or a dash and enemies being damage sponges. ME3 had some pretty solid enemy variety from Cerberus troopers to the various Reaper aliens Shepard fights. But MEA? You just fight Kett and some robots the whole game. You might fight some giant aliens, enemies witha force field and Krogan here and there but this is just too few and not interesting enough when you got dash and a jump pack and outside of the force field enemy where you have to shoot the orb to damage it, the Krogan and bigger aliens just have more health and thats it.

You also don't need to weapon switch that much since weapon switching in clunky due to clicking the touch pad which could have you holster your weapon when you want to switch guns and snipers are the best gun since most enemies are mid to long range with the Omni Tool for close quarters combat.

To give the game some credit the weapon sounds and headshots are pretty meaty. This kind of helped me carry me through the game since good weapon feedback and polish can really stimulate my brain.

The vehicle sections return but they are too few and far between and there is rarely any combat with it on the main story path. So once again too little, too late.

Overall, MEA was mediocre, it's the kind dull that I touch every once and a while just to remind myself of what happens when good game design gets subverted. I probably won't play this game again but at least I finally got to beat the game I bought for $20 on sale for a few years ago.