I played & finished Andromeda last September, clocking around 60 hours in the game. What can I say? As someone who really (I mean
really) loved the original trilogy (insofar as I did numerous playthroughs) & also equally had severely lowered expectations (after the bad fan feedback & reviews), I was still bitterly disappointed & in some cases absolutely
gutted by the gameplay, its design, its story & its characters.
Gameplay: weak AI, bad encounter design against bland enemies who only knew how to flank, flank & flank again without any other strategy, no time slowdown for infiltrators, awful glitches (the broken state of the Kett outpost on Eos is offensive), no more incendiary or cryo ammo as part of the class/or upgrade path, boring massive selection of samey weapons with mediocre stats & last but not least, the most annoying eye-gougingly horrible
cover system - devoid of the necessary precision. Perhaps playing as a Biotic or Vanguard on a lower difficulty made this problem unnoticeable, yet as an infiltrator/sniper on insanity? It was like
drinking a cup of acid after chewing on a razor blade.
Design: a bland Nexus (which looked more like a futuristic
dentist reception office than a space station), bland Angara homeworld (i.e. so much colored concrete it looked like a vacation resort for retired people - yet Ryder said "it's beautiful! without the player having any choice in the matter... as if the developers were so certain their ugly world was Avatar-esque Pandora mk2
), bland planets (welcome to Eos aka
Arizona) & a Tempest ship which was effectively a mere re skin of the Normandy, i.e. itself a prototype "one of its kind" ship in the original trilogy which had cost the human Alliance billions! (as a joint project with the Turians). Which brings me to the story.
Story: it's an offense to the lore of Mass Effect, its rules, its physics & its history, i.e. first & foremost such an initiative as Andromeda would have been
economically impossible during the events of the first trilogy in which the Council races bickered over the smallest policy proposals (hence the rise of Cerberus as a private investor seeking power outside the law). It was an absolutely stupid premise, i.e. akin to a sequel to Oliver Twist in which one of his friends from the workhouse decides to travel to another country in a
luxury yacht. I'm not exaggerating. The Nexus (beyond its boring design) would have bankrupted everyone, i.e. it was literally a new Citadel. As I'm avoiding spoilers in this mini review, I won't go into detail, yet suffice to say the overall plot is equally as stupid as the premise. Oh &
where are the choices? i.e. "military base or scientific research base" (with the same skin irrespective of the choice!) doesn't cut the mustard.
Characters: Ryder - male or female, i.e. a wisecracking frat boy anointed new 'space Jesus'. The crew is no better, with a stereotypical 'tough guy' Krogan, an ice queen biotic (Cora) who is (surprise, surprise!) actually really
sensitive, vulnerable & romantic under her cold exterior (we've seen this before.. oh yes,
Miranda Lawson circa Mass Effect 2) & a bunch of others who were too annoying to even take note of their personality. Special mention in their category goes to the abjectly irritating Pibi, i.e. a character whom the writers probably assumed "sarcasm & contrarianism = interesting personality traits".
Bottom line,
I hated it with a vengeance, even as a shooter. Mass Effect isn't dead of course (it's a great universe), but the Andromeda spin-off series can crash & burn as far as I'm concerned. It should also be jettisoned from the canon.
ruvikx
