Shermos
Mar 21, 2017
2
This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Quick recommendation: Don't buy. Not worthwhile for new players, and an insult to the original Mass Effect trilogy, even with its flaws.
Firstly, I want to disclose that I am a long time fan of the Mass Effect universe. I was not happy with the idea of moving the setting to the Andromeda galaxy, throwing away a rich setting and wonderful characters which had been built up over years. A good justification was needed to win me over. I couldn't see it.
Mass Effect Andromeda had five years of development time. The resulting game is something I would be embarrassed to sell with my name attached to it. Most people by now will be aware with the problems with facial and general animation. The game also appears to have a lot of other bugs at the time of release. It is not clear how many will be fixed by patches. This is only the beginning of the game's problems.
The premise for Andromeda does not make sense. We are told the trip from the Milky Way took over 600 years. This is too long even when using cryo sleep. People who stayed at home would continue to advance technologically and develop faster, more efficient faster than light travel. They could make the trip in a fraction of the time, and have already set up a new civilisation by the time the original expedition arrives. This isn't a good start for a game in the sci-fi genre, and the failures of logic and reason get worse.
Bioware is known for telling good stories and creating excellent characters. It failed considerably on both counts. The main storyline is extremely generic. It adds to a feeling that the game is based on badly thought up and written fan fiction. Worse, we are not given enough reason to care about the characters at our sides. The worst examples being the protagonist's father and main antagonist. We meet the father at the start of the game knowing nothing about him. He dies in the very first mission without the game giving us any reason to care about his loss. He had the protagonists job of "pathfinder" already occupied, and he had to be removed. Why not make his death occur later in the game, or else make the protagonist be in charge in the first place? You don't make someone so important die until the character has had enough time to develop. That brings me to the antagonist. He is the big bad, with no depth whatsoever. He only seems to exist to be in the player's way, and we can't reason with him. Not even an alien from another galaxy should be evil for the sake of being evil and incapable of reaching an accommodation with the protagonist. The first time we meet his people, shooting begins immediately, and the player is not even given the choice to try to negotiate.
The dialogue is awful to the point of being unintentionally funny. Voice acting is not much better, although I don't fault the voice actors for this. They had to work with terrible writing, and it seems as though they aren't able to get a feel for the setting and context their dialogue was being delivered in.
Combat is the game's only redeeming feature. People who enjoy shoot 'em up games will probably enjoy this component and the multiplayer section. That said, it is not ground breaking, and the AI enemy is average at best. Squad mate AI in the single player section is terrible. The developers somehow managed to make it worse than it was in the original trilogy. I wanted to shoot one of my "Companions" to save the enemy the trouble, but the game wouldn't let me do so.
The following point will matter to long time fans of the Mass Effect series. Andromeda gives the big FU to the established lore from the original trilogy. The trip to a new galaxy should not be possible with the technology available at the time the sleeper ships are supposed to have been built. Only a hand wavy explanation is provided. The expedition members seem have access to technology which didn't exist in the original games. This wouldn't be an issue if the expedition left after the events of Mass Effect 3, where we could expect technical advancements to have taken place, even in the aftermath of the Reaper war.
Bioware wanted to move the setting to Andromeda, and have the expedition leave before ME3 to avoid dealing with the consequences of the ending choice of the trilogy. We were told they especially didn't want to choose a canon decision. The new game renders this change of setting pointless. One of the choices was synthesis between organic beings and artificial intelligence, a choice which was very unpopular with the vast majority of the fan base. We learn that everyone in the Andromeda expedition has been physically linked to an AI called SAM. Nevermind that AI research was considered highly illegal in the original trilogy. This is a huge slap in the face to the fan base. A canon choice appears to have been chosen anyway, so why bother with the setting change? Why throw away so many characters and places we love?
