Not as bad as I feared it would be, although not as great as I felt it could be.
PC version reviewed.
Mass Effect: Andromeda is an RPG published by EA and developed by Bioware for the Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC.
This review has spoilers!
I don't really like the direction EA have gone with by getting rid of physical PC copies of their games, but I was pleasantly surprised to find you could actually play the game after 42% of it had downloaded. You could access at least the first couple of planets and a good few hours of the story. It certainly lessens the impact of losing the simplicity of putting the disc in your machine to play.
GAMEPLAY
Character creator is very lacklustre. There's no excuse for something as bad as it is too, while Inquisition was far from my favourite game, the character creator was at least decent enough, yet this game running of the same engine manages something far worse. How is that even possible? Compare it to something like Fallout 4 and it's quite frankly disgraceful. I remember hearing Bioware helped EA Sports with FIFA 17, so why couldn't they help Bioware with character creation? The FIFA games have a decent creator in them.
The first couple of open worlds are basically the same worlds in No Man's Sky in the vein that they look quite nice but are largely empty bar a few scattered outposts. It's kind of laughable that Bioware were boasting about the size of many worlds in the game when most of them are literally wastelands. Bioware also seemed desperate to separate themselves from No Man's Sky, when the worlds in both are pretty easily comparable, and if anything the worlds in No Man's Sky feel more alive.
Something that even No Man's Sky managed to do was at least have a day/night cycle and dynamic weather on worlds, yet Andromeda fails to have either of these things. It seems strange to release a game in 2017 and still not even have such features. On the bright side the open world is still better than Inquisition, but that isn't really saying much. I think Bioware just need to drop the open world stuff though, they're much better at the linear things.
The Nomad, because calling it the Mako would've caused a riot, isn't really that much better. It does control more nicely, but the amount of times it can't quite go up a hill, or it slides around can be annoying. Quite frankly I think it shows that it isn't that great for the fact I'm even comparing the two. The game fails to really provide a reason as to why you use the Nomad over a shuttle, or even just fly around in the Tempest most the time.
Talking of the Tempest, that brings me to the galaxy map. Because of the Tempest having windows that game takes much longer to go from planet to planet, as it has to load in the window view. However whenever you go to any planet the process is far too long. Your ship turns to whichever place you want to go, boosts up its engines and crawls across, shows you a nice view of the planet you're trying to go to and then shows you the overview of it. It's so very annoying and makes exploring space a pain. If they just reduced the time it took, or made it like the galaxy maps in the original trilogy this wouldn't have been a problem (It seems Bioware have now fixed this in a patch).
Enemy spawns are dreadful in the main enemy outposts. Often when inside them after you think you've cleared them you go up a staircase and all of a sudden another ten of them spawn out of thin air. Half the time I'm not even sure it's supposed to happen as they often spawn behind you in you places you've already gone through. The first big enemy base on Eos bugged up for me too and couldn't be completed. I actually had quite a few missions on Eos bug up.
Space Sudoku is rubbish. Oh, sorry, I mean glyphs.
Combat is probably the best the series has had, Mass Effect finally has a jump button too!
Multiplayer is a solid enough experience. Learning the best ways to utilise the different characters and making use of the new jumping mechanic is pretty cool. I do wish that they'd expanded this mode more though, as outside of the updated characters and combat it's pretty much the same as ME3's. It would have been awesome to see full co-op missions or at least some more game modes, rather than just the same couple of objectives.
Whilst taking away control of your companions special abilities seems like a pointless change, I do think it's worth pointing out that the AI can actually be useful, at least Drack, who runs around the battlefield smashing every enemy he can with his battle hammer. Wrex and Grunt were amazing squad mates but I really felt like Drack had a presence in battle that Krogan should have that perhaps Wrex and Grunt were slightly lacking. Watching Drack running around taking out plenty of enemies on his own really helped make him feel formidable.
Armour comes in different parts, I'm glad this game didn't follow the trend of making armour one or two pieces and instead kept it in separate parts so you can mix and match.
The more linear missions carry the game over the dull open worlds. Side missions can be a mixed bag, some can be quite interesting and others you'll just want to ignore. There are quite a few boring fetch quests too, although they are easy to ignore. There are plenty of ways to get planets to 100% viability, meaning you don't have to do plenty of missions you might not like. It's pretty easy for me to say that the linear missions are where the game is at its best, rather than the open world segments.
STORY
Characters are good but not on the level of the best of the original trilogy. It was a nice thought to include loyalty missions, Liam's is fantastic and the rest are better than the bland open world ones. However I don't believe you can actually fail them like you can in Mass Effect 2. That was somewhat disappointing and slightly odd from a story perspective (I know you unlock extra skills after completing them instead), I mean some of them you could seemingly mess up pretty bad but would work out anyway.
The actual story of finding remnant vaults follows along the same path that Horizon Zero Dawn did with its old world ruins, however Andromeda fails to create that compelling narrative that Zero Dawn did so well. I was eager to see how the world came to be in Horizon, the narrative was compelling and kept me wanting more, yet Andromeda just feels bland in comparison. It never really made me care much about how each planet came to be. If you've played Horizon you'll also notice quite a few other similarities between the two that seem to be funny coincidences.
I was very happy to see that once you finish the game you continue after the ending, no being placed in events before the final mission nonsense, and there are actually a few things to do too! I really hope more games do this if there is no excuse not too, as it really sours the experience after the end for some games. I actually think Mass Effect 2 may have been one of the few games that actually continues after the ending like Andromeda does, so well done to Bioware for doing that again. Now everyone else needs to start doing it too.
The ending left too many answers open and it all seems rather well set up for DLC. Bioware are keen to remind you after the ending about the Quarian Ark that is apparently "waiting" and yet that wasn't the most frustrating part. The most frustrating part was doing the very long fetch quest to unlock a few memories and learn about the benefactor, who they then fail to reveal. When the mission is called "Ryder family secrets" and only asks more questions than answers, that leaves a sour taste. Despite the ending being frustrating, it was really cool to see your whole squad join you for the final battle.
The actual purpose and power of the Kett was too similar to that of the Reapers for me. Both have the power to convert other forms of life into their own and both are intent on conquering the galaxy, the only real difference being their motivation for doing so.
Getting worlds to 100% viability doesn't actually really seem to impact much. I completed almost everything and only a handful of missions actually impacted the ending. I thought it was a bit of a shame, considering how boring some of those quests were.
The nods to the original trilogy were nice, although it was a bit odd that Shepherd never heard of the Initiative. I also wonder why when creating Ryder you're asked about Shepherd being male or female, as from what I heard throughout the game, Shepherd's gender is never referred to.
GRAPHICS
Animations are janky and occasionally even broken, quite a few of the human characters have really generic faces with few ranges of expression. A lot of humans in game looks fairly similar but the biggest problem is actually with all the other species in the game who all seem to be based off the same face model, bar a couple of exceptions. The only real difference between most of the other species faces you'll find are the colours, not the actual facial structure. This really shows in a mission with a Salarian disguising as another Salarian, only to be found out and revealing his true face, where the only difference is that his face is blue, rather than the other Salarian whose face was orange.
Plenty of people have been saying it but some of the human faces really do look terrible. Why Addison and Suvi, who are both fairly big characters in the game, have the be-musingly terrible faces they do I really don't know. Some of the characters look like they were made by robots trying to create their best representation of people - with limited resources. Male Ryder's face doesn't look that great to me either, it is better than most human faces in game, but does his face really look like a leading character of a AAA franchise to you? I thought he looked like a generic player in FIFA before realising almost every other human character looks worse. Female Ryder, Cora and Liam are the only ones that I'd say look at least to a decent standard.
Holograms eyeballs also show up when talking, which doesn't look right.
SOUND
The soundtrack is fine, not as good as the original trilogy though. I was kind of disappointed that it seemed no song from the original trilogy was reused, not the main theme, not "Vigil". I can understand they really wanted to start anew but why not include just a small snippet or something?
I've seen complaints about voice acting but I thought it was fine. Whilst very occasionally there may have been a random NPC who sounded a bit dodgy I actually enjoyed some of the main characters such as female Ryder and Drack.
VALUE FOR MONEY
I'd imagine it the main story probably takes around 20 hours. It took me just above 50 hours to complete the majority of stuff, outside of some of the really boring fetch quests and generic tasks. There's also multiplayer to take into account, which will add any number of hours on depending on how much you enjoy it.
OVERALL
I liked Andromeda in some places, however it fails at quite a few things that a release of such calibre should be getting right, that I can't really call it a great game, even though I want to. There isn't actually really a huge glaring flaw in this game, but many of the small problems it has add up to a big one. I think that big thing missing quite simply is detail. Some odd animations have always been a part of Bioware games, but at times they're downright broken here, almost every alien species has the same face whilst the human ones are poorly made, and the open worlds are dull and don't feel very lifelike. The phrase "size of an ocean, depth of a puddle" is often overused by people these days and yet I can't help but feel this game really is an example of it.
I still enjoyed my time in Andromeda, it started off slow and did gain some momentum. The combat is the best the series has to offer and whilst the characters aren't as engaging or compelling as in the original trilogy some of them still hold their own, even if the actual story is a little below bar. The foundations have been built for a whole new series and if you enjoyed the original trilogy you should still enjoy this for the most part. You may even enjoy it more if you haven't played the other games.
People were willing to let the original Mass Effect game off for the blatant flaws in its combat because of the strong story, and with Andromeda those tables have turned the other way. With so many good games around now though these flaws aren't so easily ignored. However even with all of that taken into account, I still had some fun in Andromeda.
