Oh boy! Here we go! A topic for what might be the most controversial game of the year! For this second look, I’ll try to keep things as spoiler free as possible. I believe most of us on the gaming side of STEEM have heard of the Mass Effect franchise and if you haven’t, then you definitely have after the hilariously controversial Mass Effect Andromeda released back in March. Mass Effect Andromeda received middling reviews by major outlets and had a negative reception among gamers, fans and non-fans of the series alike.
The main things that stood out were the sheer number of (sometimes hilarious) bugs and a fair number of very badly written lines.
However there were other complaints, such as companions not being as good as in the other games and that the quest design wasn’t very good either.
After beating the game and revisiting it one more time I’ll like to comment on each one of these things individually and a little more while all the crazy reactions have calmed down.
So I’ll start by saying that I am a fan of this series and that’s the only reason I kept my order of ME A despite seeing all the negative news before launch. Now that has been settled I can confirm that the number of bugs in the game (at least at launch) were quite startling, from NPCs straight up disappearing to the game actually crashing (I played the ps4 version). The framerate was also pretty bad in many areas, the NPC models looked hilarious and weird and some quests were broken. This game was shipped in an unacceptable state and deserved all the criticism it got on that front.
As far as the writing goes, most of the truly terrible things are during the first couple hours of the game, from there it’s fine, nothing exceptional but just fine.
The main story is disappointing compared to the other games and there’s no real sense of urgency either, but from listening to the developer commentary, this seemed to be deliberate. While that may be the case I can’t say that the campaign kept my interest much, I liked the thought of going into uncharted space and exploring what was out there, but it turns out, it wasn’t much different to the Milky Way galaxy due to a limited addition of new alien species. However, much like Witcher 3, each zone has its own main quest (think Bloody Baron for all those who played Witcher 3) and those proved to be much more interesting than main story.
The characters are also a step down from the previous entries in the series with too many of them being unappealing or forgettable. I personally used the same 3 characters for the majority of my playthrough and despite doing the loyalty missions for all of them, didn’t really enjoy the others much. Some character interactions were also far superior to others.
However, the game can be genuinely funny and goes for a much more playful tone than the more serious trilogy. I think that works here when you get a full perspective of what they are going for with this particular adventure.
Lastly I’d like to talk about the gameplay, oh boy, all I can say is thanks to the build a class system, the gameplay is the best and most fun it has ever been. If there’s one thing that truly felt improved it was the combat.
On a side note, it came to my attention and that of many gamers that a lot of Mass Effect Andromeda’s troubles were due to mismanagement and the use of DICE’s (Battlefield/Mirror’s Edge) frostbite engine. So while the delivered product was unacceptable I do think the blame cannot be solely shouldered by Bioware Montreal and should be placed on EA and BW as a whole.
Overall I did enjoy the game but I’d only recommend it to long time Mass Effect fans and even then get it cheap and there’s a chance that you may not enjoy it. Bioware Montreal has also been doing some fixes for the technical problems and while it will most likely never be perfect, it should be a lot better than it was at launch (and it was a bit better when I revisited it). If I had to attach a score to this game, overall as a fan and someone that liked the combat, I'd say 7/10, which seems high but I did genuinely like what I played.
If you liked this, let me know and I’ll do more.