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[MCD250]

I think the old ME games usually took me about 40-50 hours on a first playthrough, that was while trying to do 100% of everything. Once you learn the games' layout and how everything works, you can cut down that playtime a lot. I think I can usually finish the first three in about 25-30 hours each, that is including the DLC.

Andromeda, I dunno. It took me almost 69 hours to get 94% of that game done. In a second playthrough I could probably cut that down some, but I feel like so much of it is essentially unskippable stuff (e.g., loading screens, traveling from one location to another, etc.) that it's hard to speculate how long a "trimmed" playthrough that nonetheless covered 100% of everything would be.

 

[alexanderftw]

I was wondering if it was longer or if I was just misremembering.

I definitely took longer than 20 hours for the previous MEs I think, though not 60 hours. But here I'm rounding out on 50 hours and still got a bunch to do (and I'm ignoring most of the additional tasks too).

Probably with DLC, I guess you could reach 30 hour content but then again MEA with dlc will probably be 90hours+. Its pretty long and not in a good way. You could probably finish the game in around 30 hours if u'd focus on main mission and loyalty, but you cant sadly, you have to go through a lot of filler bs.

 

[stn]

Is there a point to reaching 100% viability on all worlds? Do you at least unlock an achievement? I'm very close so wondering if its worth it.

 

[luslanz]

Is there a point to reaching 100% viability on all worlds? Do you at least unlock an achievement? I'm very close so wondering if its worth it.

There's a short cutscene.

 

[Springy]

Is there a point to reaching 100% viability on all worlds? Do you at least unlock an achievement? I'm very close so wondering if its worth it.

There's a trophy; a small monument in honor of the short time you have on this earth being utterly wasted. I cherish mine.

 

[Kadayi]

Finally finished the game.

I can't say I hated it, but at the same time, I'm glad it's over with for now. Though it's fair to say that I'd be happy to play further instalments down the road after a long break.

Random thoughts (there will be spoilers): -

Spoiler

The game still needs a lot of patching. I didn't really run into any game breaking bugs, but I did end up with a broken side quest due to a system crash/disconnect, however, there's a lot of jankiness that needs to be addressed, in terms of animations etc, as well as rounding things out. Every NPC Asari/Angaran having the exact same face got a little jarring after a while.

They need to do a better job of explaining the systems. I wasn't even aware of the favourites options and how you could basically change your profile and powers on the fly in the middle of a fight until I was near done with the game for instance. Up unto then I'd just been sticking with whatever powers I'd assigned then and there.

Beating the archon and yet not being able to even wander out onto the tiniest slither of Meridian at the end felt kind of weak. You couldn't even get a decent view from the Hyperion.

Given crafted armours and weapons are always far superior to bought/looted items, due to add-ons .what's the point.? Everything I picked up either got deconstructed for materials or sold.

Environmental vapidity. For the most part, I liked the look of the environments, but one of the big fails to my mind was the lack of substance to the spaces. Everything felt like it was taken verbatim from the concept artist sketches, but with zero consideration as to actual function, and some reflection of that within the spaces themselves.

Less is more. They could easily have trimmed a good 30% of the sidequests/mini quests from the game and still made a substantial game. As it is, you're just bombarded with stuff to do, and it becomes a case of icon overload after a while. A lot of the fetch quests were pointless.

With quests better organisation required across the board. With the sidequests, it isn't clear which planet half of them are on. Quests should have been ordered by location, then who for. Hours of toing and froing would have been saved.

Let me land in the badlands in Kadara straight from my ship. Rather than have to go through the port then the slums etc. It's a simple ask.

Suvi & Kallo need more involvement earlier on. Beyond the Gil/Kallo situation, there's not much talk from either of them and given I opted for Suvi as my love interest over Peebee (which the game basically tries to railroad at you as the preferred romance choice) it was kind of jarring. Also, Suvi was the tamest romance I'm sure. Much like the Asari Journalist, I wasn't sure anything had happened. I'm not saying they had to go all space lesbians, but honestly, as romance options go it didn't feel anywhere near as rounded as others I've seen.

Way too many exiles. The kett are an endless enemy, the exiles, however, aren't narratively. Given the Hyperion is supposed to be the bulk of the human colonists (20K) the nexus was supposed to be a skeleton crew of a few thousand, so it doesn't make even a lick of sense that there would so many exiles out there. Ryders not the saviour of the human race, she's the Ghengis khan of genetic diversity if my slaughter fest is anything to attest to, because I must have killed half the human population in my playthrough.

I'll add more once I've slept on it. The above are my immediate takeaways.

Non-spoilerly: -

Undeused vidcom. I'm sorry but the amount of BS go here/come here quests that could have easily been managed via the vidcom was insane. Sure in TW3 or DAI, you need to have a face to face because you're in a medieval fantasy world, but a lot of that in MEA could of been done via the vidcom and without needing to land the ship and waste time.

I think game designers need to respect the time of their players and understand that creating needless time sinks doesn't serve any good purpose.

 

[Scrotum Phillips]

FINALLY just beat this game after 85ish hours. Overall, I'd recommend it...with some major caveats.

The mainline story and characters I thought were mostly well done. The main issue I have with this game is just the sheer amount of "filler" thrown your way. It's like they forgot to edit this game and every single idea made it in to this game. The amount of repetitive tasks and characters honestly detracted from the "meat" of this game. I'd often go 10+ hours between steps in a mission basically making me forget why/who/what I was trying to do in the first place. This game should have been 40% as long as it was, in my opinion.

I'll keep this non-spoilery, but here's an example. There's a mission where you have to choose helping between two races. One of them was fresh in my mind while the other I vaguely remembered from maybe 30+ hours before in the game and I completely forgot their significance. I made my decision and got serious flak for that. Some of the "major" decisions just felt forced and that they didn't really provide much context or depth in why you might choose between different options.

Other major negatives for me:
-Performance/glitches/polish. This has been covered ad nauseum, but this is possibly one of the "roughest" games I've ever played. Unacceptable really. It did however get significantly "cleaned" up from the latest patch. Still, doors not opening, enemies glitched out and other basic things were common occurrences in this game. Had to reset my game atleast 7 or 8 times during the duration of this game (most came pre-patch).

-Loading screens. This was absurdly bad on launch day when you couldn't skip through some animations, but thankfully they fixed some of that in the first patch. But still, the 'fetish' that apparently someone has at Bioware for watching ships land and take off needs to be addressed. It's interesting maybe 3 times, not so much the 85th time.

-Exploring. This was just done haphazardly in my opinion. So much of my time was spent driving around the Nomad finding basically nothing of consequence or interest. It was just "checking a box off."

-Journal. Crazy they basically copy/pasted this from ME 3.

-Research/development/skill tree. Overly complicated and just felt it wasn't implemented in a user friendly way.

-Conversation options being greyed out when there's new content in them. This is/was insanity! I didn't figure this out until I was 80%ish into this game. How/why did anyone think this made any sense?

Positives

-Combat. Better than ME 3 which was the peak of the series until Andromeda in my opinion.

-Removal of paragon/renegade. Fun to play a Mass Effect game where I didn't feel locked in to choosing a certain option every time.

-Characters. Jaal, Pee Bee, Drack and Vetra were all enjoyable and likely some of my favorites of the first 4 games.

-Missions found in Priority missions or Allies/relationships folder. These were largely good!

Overall, I'd recommend this game. I'd STRONGLY recommend playing this game by basically ignoring the "additional tasks" category. Skip the filler, you won't miss much at all, I promise.

Loved ME 3 MP, but gonna step away from this game for a bit before diving in to that.

Really interested in seeing where they go for the next game/DLC. Interested to see if they "refine" this formula or start something completely new. Whatever it is, I'm sure I'll be looking forward to it.

 

[VenomousCoffee]

Wait, there could be new conversations in greyed-out tabs?! Are you shitting me?

 

[Madness]

Wait, there could be new conversations in greyed-out tabs?! Are you shitting me?

You've missed out on a but if you haven't done some of the grey ones again especially doctor lexi after key loyalty missions. A lot of banter dialogue is also missed if you don't switch up sqaudmates and just drive around after key events. Just poor QA control again.

 

[Karu]

I seem to have arrived at the last mission chunk at the 18 hour count - I don't want to critize the length of the main campaign, that was always there in the series, but overall it is so incredibly bland and same-y, it's shocking. Of course, I will have the last mission and the epilogue in front of me, but with a set-up that lame... man, it can only be disappointing. Inquisition had a similar problem in its second half, but at least they got the first act right with a killer final at the end of the first act.

 

[MCD250]

Really interested in seeing where they go for the next game/DLC. Interested to see if they "refine" this formula or start something completely new. Whatever it is, I'm sure I'll be looking forward to it.

Oh, I wonder about this too. I remember the first DLC for Dragon Age II, Legacy, was specifically designed and developed to address some of the criticisms aimed at the base game. And it was pretty good, honestly. But then there was the first DLC for Dragon Age: Inquisition, Jaws of Hakkon, which basically doubled down on the original game's template in a completely new area. So yeah, I'm keen to see what they do. If the first DLC turns out to be, like, a new planet where you do much the same thing as in the main game, well...

 

[Razgriz-Specter]

You've missed out on a but if you haven't done some of the grey ones again especially doctor lexi after key loyalty missions. A lot of banter dialogue is also missed if you don't switch up sqaudmates and just drive around after key events. Just poor QA control again.

Yup.
Miss a lot of stuff depending on the squad you have.
Had Peebee and Cora forever and Cora eventually became mute, switched her with Vetra and suddenly it was some amazing stuff.
Vetra & Peebee are amazing together.

 

[Confidence Man]

Got as far as the Meridian mission, haven't touched it in a week or so and probably won't bother finishing it. Not sure how far I am into it or how much I have left and I can't say I care. Sad to see how far this franchise and Bioware has sunk.

- The way they handled squadmates in general is just terrible. Can't customize their weapons or armor at all, a paltry amount of skills to upgrade, and no combat tactics to utilize makes their presence nearly irrelevant. I ignored them in combat while they flitted around, maybe killing an enemy or just getting downed themselves, I never really cared or was invested in keeping them around. I did a couple loyalty missions before wondering why I should even bother as you only unlock one last tier of largely pointless skills. Literally the worst implemented squad mechanics in all four games and that's saying something.

- The remnant is just an awful, uninspired addition to the game; aesthetically and mechanically repetitive, I was bored of their crap before I left Eos, only to find the same nonsense repeated on every other world. The game would've been so much better if you had to find unique solutions to every planet's issues, but that would've required something more than copy/paste design.

- The Kett, just another boring, one-note enemy who are only there to be cannon fodder for all the repetitive encounters. And how many times do I have to fight the same mini-boss with the drone? Ugh.

- I would rather have had a contrived Paragon/Renegade system that encouraged character definition instead of "here's some dialogue choices that don't really matter".

- On a positive note I liked the variety in weapons that you could craft with all the different augmentations, of course this undermined having to go out and find or buy better equipment.

There's probably a ton of other little quibbles I have but it's not even worth talking about. Bioware is simply done in my eyes and anything they put out can be easily ignored in the future. Guess I'll have to just hope for Obsidian or someone to kickstart a sci-fi, planet-hopping, squad-based RPG.

 

[Orochinagis]

Good lord, after doing several missions on Aya, I returned to the tempest and got 4 more missions on that planet plus the exiled planet.

Liam is starting to get annyoing with his reverse racism, the angara dont care about your race Laim, shut up

 

[K.Jack]

So there's a bug, where merchant inventories are empty, between levels 60-71? Just found this out the hard way.

Bioware pls fix,

 

[sangreal]

So there's a bug, where merchant inventories are empty, between levels 60-71? Just found this out the hard way.

Bioware pls fix,

a bug? I don't believe you

 

[K.Jack]

Really sucks, as I have no AR scopes in my inventory, and badly need one for my Valkyrie VIII.

 

[Razgriz-Specter]

- The way they handled squadmates in general is just terrible. Can't customize their weapons or armor at all, a paltry amount of skills to upgrade, and no combat tactics to utilize makes their presence nearly irrelevant.

Definitely one of my main negatives.
Honestly its something the game could use in the current state.
Looting armor and weapons or developing high end versions for them within the restrictions of materials is clearly a missing layer to the game.
Maybe even mods,etc specific to each race.

 

[Springy]

Really sucks, as I have no AR scopes in my inventory, and badly need one for my Valkyrie VIII.

Not just vendors. There is no equipment for those levels. Don't open any APEX item boxes: they'll be empty. Save them for when you reach 71.

 

[Karu]

How is the inventory management and such on PC?

Played DA:O, DA2 and the entire ME trilogy on PC, but had to switch to Playstation for DA:I and now ME:A and it is kinda annoying - with kb and mouse it's probably more easy to navigate and handle, no? Their crafting systems and such are bogged down by the UI so damn much. Same goes for The Witcher III - why can nobody figure this shit out?

 

[Kadayi]

You've missed out on a but if you haven't done some of the grey ones again especially doctor lexi after key loyalty missions. A lot of banter dialogue is also missed if you don't switch up squadmates and just drive around after key events. Just poor QA control again.

I noticed this when you talk to SAM about unlocking memories, but I didn't realise it extended to your crew as well. That is pretty bad.

 

[ChubbleDucks]

Currently 55% after 50hrs playtime and still enjoying it.
It's got underlying issues as mentioned by others but I can ignore majority of them. I will probably do most of the additional tasks as that's the sort of player I am and if I see a quest marker on the map I like to clear it.

My Sara Ryder is romancing peebee and wondered if there is a 'love' scene between them as it hasn't occurred yet? Done her loyalty mission and are officially a couple.

 

[Spacecowboy77]

70 hours in, just got to Kadala after 100%ing Voeld. Still enjoying the heck out of it. It's still flawed in many, many ways but the core is very good.

I think part of the reason I can stomach (and actually enjoy) the planet grind is that I play it on pretty short gaming sessions (not more than 2 hours at the time) because of a new baby in the house. If I would play it for longer, it might get very samey fast.

Idk.

 

[Bittercup]

My Sara Ryder is romancing peebee and wondered if there is a 'love' scene between them as it hasn't occurred yet? Done her loyalty mission and are officially a couple.

Spoiler

Yes. If you continue the main story missions she'll eventually write an email to meet up

 

[Caboose]

Does anyone's game lock-up when boosting around in the Nomad, like the game hasn't fully loaded the rest of the level yet? Super annoying, sometimes it freezes like 3+ seconds.

 

[Springy]

Does anyone's game lock-up when boosting around in the Nomad, like the game hasn't fully loaded the rest of the level yet? Super annoying, sometimes it freezes like 3+ seconds.

Happened to me frequently on foot, especially on Kadara.

 

[Agent_4Seven]

Finished the game at last this weekend with 128 hrs on record.

Very flawed game in more ways that one, but I like the story mostly beacuse it's a lot different that stories from their previous games. The story in ME is more about exploration and discovery (Star Trek style) than about saving the world or the whole galaxy + it has a lot of references to real life stuff and events, space exploration, discoveries and all that and I like it a lot because of all this. I liked most of the characters as well, their interaction with you, each other and their relationships, really cool stuff. I also liked stuff related to Angara, Remnants and Scourge, which is not obvious at all and later on you discover some totaly unexpected stuff about this whole cluster and its races which is really well written and done. They did a really good job here and it's almost at the level of some of the best SGU stuff.

But honestly, freedom of choice when it comes to character development, gameplay, new and absolutely amazing battle system, weapon and armor upgrade systems and R&D is the star of the show here. I've never seen a game with so many systems that working so perfectly together and support each other a lot throughout the whole game. All of this is absolutely perfect in this game. There's so much freedom, so much stuff for experimentation that even the entire first trilogy of ME games combined can't provide anything even remotely close to all this. Every system in this game complement each other in more ways that one when it comes to gameplay - crafting, R&D, upgrades, profiles, classes, abilities, skills etc. There's zero useless systems in this game.

The AI of squadmates is also really good during battles + there's really high sense of comradery and support when it comes to combos, skills and all that - squadmates using all of their powers in battles really well and help you a lot with activating combos alsmos instantly after preperation from you side, which is simply amazing to experience especialy in comparions to other games where squademates just dumb and stupid as hell and won't do anything till you say them to. Just... damn, what an accomplishment when compared to DAI for example. It's just freakin night and day. Simply amazing stuff. If anything, there's unfortunately no completely working stealth system which I'd really like to see in future games as an option and I'm sure BioWare Montreal's guys can pull it of no problemo.

Also, MEA is simply amazing looking game when it comes to space stuff, amazing looking vistas and locations, sense of scale and even though there's not so much interested stuff to discover or experience in there when it comes to side content (at least 80-85% of which is absolutely terrible, now I can safely say this), exploring planets and discovering stuff is still a lot of fun the first time you explore planets, new areas etc. It's worth investing time into all this.

In conclusion, If some of you guys interested in this game, just focus on story, loyalty missions and the stuff related to activating Remnant structures on planets to stabilize the atmosphere and eventually buid an outpost there. Eveything else is not worth your time at all.

 

[CSJ]

The AI of squadmates is also really good during battles + there's really high sense of comradery and support when it comes to combos, skills and all that - squadmates using all of their powers in battles really well and help you a lot with activating combos alsmos instantly after preperation from you side, which is simply amazing to experience especialy in comparions to other games where squademates just dumb and stupid as hell and won't do anything till you say them to.

I had the opposite experience, they were the dumbest AI I've come across in a long while, often not going where I ask, not attacking at all, etc, or just running all over the place.

 

[Caboose]

I don't think I ever once used the Favorites system for the Profiles. That was a flop.

 

[Van Bur3n]

I don't think I ever once used the Favorites system for the Profiles. That was a flop.

Yep. Have only stuck to one loadout of powers and have never bothered with switching profiles. I've heard similar with a lot of other people as well. Honestly would have been better to just bring back the power wheel along with full control of squad powers as well.

And damn, do I spend too much time crafting weapons and deciding between these stupid stat augmentations that probably make very little difference anyway.

 

[Agent_4Seven]

I had the opposite experience, they were the dumbest AI I've come across in a long while, often not going where I ask, not attacking at all, etc, or just running all over the place.

I haven't seen any of this during my entire 128 hour playthrough. I also not used squad orders at all except maybe the regroup order every once in a while. I mean, tactical elements is extremely basic in this game in comparison to the very first trilogy anyway, so... why even use them?

 

[Razgriz-Specter]

I had the opposite experience, they were the dumbest AI I've come across in a long while, often not going where I ask, not attacking at all, etc, or just running all over the place.

My ai partners only really bothered me when going around buildings and such,
always boosting up to the roof then jumping down and eventually doing it again.

 

[MAX PAYMENT]

Can someone tell me how close I am to finishing the main story?

Spoiler

I just got the transponder that gil and Ryder accidently turn on that seems to connect directly to the archon's ship.

 

[Camp Freddie]

Finally finished the game.

Undeused vidcom. I'm sorry but the amount of BS go here/come here quests that could have easily been managed via the vidcom was insane. Sure in TW3 or DAI, you need to have a face to face because you're in a medieval fantasy world, but a lot of that in MEA could of been done via the vidcom and without needing to land the ship and waste time.

I think game designers need to respect the time of their players and understand that creating needless time sinks doesn't serve any good purpose.

I totally agree with this. They should've made the Tempest the hub for a lot of the quest hand-ins.
Loyalty quests requiring you to meet for a 30-second conversation at some random planet (before sending you to do the actual mission on another planet) are utter bullshit. Cora's has been sat in my Journal forever because I have no reason to revisit Eos.
No, I should not have to visit Aya to speak with Liam about him fucking up some bullshit. Just tell me now! I'm his CO, not his fucking frat-bro that needs me to come hang at a bar so he can tell me about how he completely jeopardised the Human-Angaran alliance with some hazing prank while he creeps on some hot Angaran babes.

I'm enjoying the game, but the flaws are many. Dialogue feels like Fallout 4, but with even less emotional variation. Everything is just "Okay", "Let's do this! Okay!", "Meh, okay" , "I'm sorry for your loss, okay", and "We'll bang later, okay?"
Gil wins the award for speaking like a robot who is trying to fit in with the humans and learn about this emotion we call love. "How do you do fellow kids, I'm the kind of guy who acts first and thinks later. I like to use practical skills because I'm a mechanic and we like that kind of thing. Want to get your hands dirty with me?" Fuck off mate.

Switching profiles sounds cool, but I first need to unlock enough skills to make it competitive with my main build. I'm playing as a shield-powered/shield-recharge on kill Vanguard and I could use an alt-profile for ranged boss-fights.
Squad AI seems okay, but I completely ignore them 99% of the time. The only time I get annoyed is when they kill-steal me (my build needs to get the killing blows to recharge my shields). I should probably use orders to keep them away from my targets.
The squad-AI seems quite aggressive, which works on normal difficulty, but gets them killed quickly on hardcore.
I miss the power wheel for setting up squad combos.

 

[Madness]

Can someone tell me how close I am to finishing the main story?

Spoiler

I just got the transponder that gil and Ryder accidently turn on that seems to connect directly to the archon's ship.

Nearer to the end... but still a few main story missions. Don't want to spoil for you.

Not just vendors. There is no equipment for those levels. Don't open any APEX item boxes: they'll be empty. Save them for when you reach 71.

Not just APEX loot either. Even enemies and containers will stop giving you any weapons or mods for Tier VIII stuff until you hit level 71 and get Tier IX stuff again. Just again shoddy QA control. Most diligent players will easily hit 60 in their first playthrough, and most who start NG+ will be beyond that. How did they not catch something like this for levels 60-71. That takes quite a while too.

As for squadmates, I didn't mind about changing their armor. Only because it was somewhat irrelevant. I think also that the squadmates are so highly detailed, just made sense to keep their armor the same. Drack has a unique armor etc. The biggest negative is the weapon wheel. Very clunky to bring up, unintuitive and favorites and profile switching on the fly was a flop. I would rather have had greater choice of what weapon they are using or when to use their power. Cora would sometime go and start shottying a Destroyer and get downed quick early on or waste her Charge on a group of chosen rather than an Anointed or Destined I had primed. My waifu does redeem herself with her wicked Cryo Ammo perk though once you do the loyalty mission. Having greater control of teammate abilities and a smoother GTA V style weapon wheel would have made combat fluid, and I wouldn't have to waste points for abilities I didn't want but needed. I think all my Squadmates once you get high enough had like 1100 health and 1100 shields while my Ryder unless I equipped him with high level Hyperguardian VIII or IX armor, was around 600 health and maybe 500 armor. Which is why I think they didn't care about upgrading/customizing your teammates armor.

 

[MAX PAYMENT]

Nearer to the end... but still a few main story missions. Don't want to spoil for you.



Not just APEX loot either. Even enemies and containers will stop giving you any weapons or mods for Tier VIII stuff until you hit level 71 and get Tier IX stuff again. Just again shoddy QA control. Most diligent players will easily hit 60 in their first playthrough, and most who start NG+ will be beyond that. How did they not catch something like this for levels 60-71. That takes quite a while too.

Thanks.

 

[mbpm1]

Drack's loyalty mission has some dumb bugs, among the first occasions where a mission got stuck for me.

Spoiler

If I go below a transport while it's spawning troops the troops don't spawn and the mission doesn't continue.

If I kill the 2 hydra bots last the mission doesn't progress.

 

[Edwardo]

I don't think I ever once used the Favorites system for the Profiles. That was a flop.

Yep. Have only stuck to one loadout of powers and have never bothered with switching profiles. I've heard similar with a lot of other people as well. Honestly would have been better to just bring back the power wheel along with full control of squad powers as well.

And damn, do I spend too much time crafting weapons and deciding between these stupid stat augmentations that probably make very little difference anyway.

Same here. Haven't switched profiles at all. Never really found a reason to.

 

[mbpm1]

I've respecced like every 5 levels.

The combat just gets too static otherwise and it's not like I'm going to play the campaign again.

 

[Bisnic]

I think the Profiles was a "nice" idea in practice, but in theory, it just doesn't work that good. I really don't know why they felt the need to change what was already in place in the trilogy. Having access to 8 skills on the fly in the past trilogy was really nice, even though I always used half of them for my squadmates.

 

[royox]

I don't think I ever once used the Favorites system for the Profiles. That was a flop.

I had vanguard for Kett and humanoids and 2 engineers for diferent Remnant situations (1 with the 2 bots and one with fire-lightning-shield drain to handle hard Remnant situations).

 

[MCD250]

I played as a pure soldier so I never swapped profiles/powers. Well, occasionally I swapped Concussive Shot for that power that increases your weapon damage/rate of fire (Turbocharge or something, I think it's called?) but other than that, nah. The power wheel really was a better mechanic, though I imagine they must have done away with it because the combat was primarily designed and developed with the MP in mind, and a mechanic that lets you pause the game to select among a large variety of powers would therefore not be in the cards. That's just speculation on my part though.

 

[mbpm1]

I think the Profiles was a "nice" idea in practice, but in theory, it just doesn't work that good. I really don't know why they felt the need to change what was already in place in the trilogy. Having access to 8 skills on the fly in the past trilogy was really nice, even though I always used half of them for my squadmates.

So we did have more than 3 skills in the past.

I really feel like in this game I want at least one more skill in the mix. 3 feels really restricting.

 

[TC McQueen]

Same here. Haven't switched profiles at all. Never really found a reason to.

Yeah, I haven't really used the profiles as much as I should. Basically, I've been sticking to an Infiltrator profile with Concussive Shot, Invasion/Remnant VI, and Overload, which works great on 90% of the enemies. The other profile I use is an Explorer with Overload, Shockwave, and Backlash, which is pretty new and I'm still getting the hang of it.

I've got a useless Soldier profile with Concussive Shot, Trip Mines, and Flack Cannon that I used once or twice, including the

Spoiler

end of the Rescue to Moshae mission

.

 

[obeast]

Same here. Haven't switched profiles at all. Never really found a reason to.

Yeah, in my playthrough I decided that I was better off maxing 3 active skills and then every passive ability in combat/tech/biotics than building multiple profiles; I ran out of passives for points somewhere near the end of the game.

I think the profile system was an interesting concept, but if you have a halfway versatile build (i.e., actives that work at range) I suspect that it's significantly more powerful to invest in additional passives rather than a suite of situational profiles. I think they probably should have gated the passives behind actives in each tree, or something, to encourage the player to diversify. Or maybe just shorten the ability cooldown from switching profiles.

On the other hand, I suspect the system will work pretty well in a NG+, as I think I was totally out of passive abilities to dump points into as of the end of my game.

 

[MCD250]

So we did have more than 3 skills in the past.

I really feel like in this game I want at least one more skill in the mix. 3 feels really restricting.

In the old games (on console) you had access to three quick powers (set to L2, R2 and triangle button on PS3), and by holding down one of the shoulder buttons (I think it was L2) you could pause the game and bring up a wheel menu that let you move the stick to select among all of your powers, as well as your squadmates' powers, and use whichever one you wanted provided there was no cooldown happening.

For ME3 MP, they deliberately made characters that only had three powers so that a power wheel wouldn't be necessary and all three powers could be accessed via the quick buttons. I haven't tried Andromeda's MP, but I assume it works similarly. That's why I think combat in this game must have been designed with the MP in mind, and then implemented into the SP portion of the game rather than the other way around.

 

[shawnoftheshred]

Yeah, I haven't really used the profiles as much as I should. Basically, I've been sticking to an Infiltrator profile with Concussive Shot, Invasion/Remnant VI, and Overload, which works great on 90% of the enemies. The other profile I use is an Explorer with Overload, Shockwave, and Backlash, which is pretty new and I'm still getting the hang of it.

I've got a useless Soldier profile with Concussive Shot, Trip Mines, and Flack Cannon that I used once or twice, including the

Spoiler

end of the Rescue to Moshae mission

.

That's definitely the problem I found...that at no point did it feel like an advantage to level up a new skill tree instead of maxing the powers I had started in. Which is too bad, since I liked the idea of switching fighting styles with each encounter, but in practice, it felt like the game would be punishing me for doing so (having 2-3 weaker profiles rather than one just maxed out). I did almost every mission and by the very end of the game, I was able to start switching without feeling weaker.

 

[Rodhull]

I switched up a fair bit but after a while i kinda realised i only needed two profiles. A mix of Engineer/Infiltrator build for the Remnant and a Vanguard build for everything else.

 

[uberTerminus]

In ME3 it was possible to fire off squadmate powers manually to set up combinations, which is strangely missing in this game.

 

[mbpm1]

I barely feel like my squadmates are really there most of the time in combat.