Mass Effect™: Andromeda Deluxe Edition

Mass Effect™: Andromeda Deluxe Edition
72
Metacritic
76
Steam
79.993
xDR
Our rating is calculated based on the reviews and popularity of the game.
Price
$29.99
Release date
11 June 2020
Developers
Publishers
Steam reviews score
Total
76 (12 094 votes)
Recent
69 (169 votes)

Return to the Mass Effect universe & lead the first humans in Andromeda on a desperate search for our new home.

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Mass Effect™: Andromeda Deluxe Edition system requirements

Minimum:

  • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
  • OS: 64-bit Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10
  • Processor: Intel Core i5 3570 or AMD FX-6350
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 660 2GB, AMD Radeon 7850 2GB
  • DirectX: Version 11
  • Storage: 55 GB available space
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OUTRIDERS
OUTRIDERS

Action, Adventure, RPG

$59.99 xDr: 67.69
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mitazinski
mitazinski

not as good as previous ones, but still got some charm in it. mass effect is mass effect, really solid ip. recommend

urknighterrant
urknighterrant

While this game isn't nearly as bad as many people claim it is, it's still not a good game. I wanted to like it, but in the end... I just lost interest. It got... and it pains me to say this about a Mass Effect title... boring.

The company that made this game just isn't Bioware anymore. It's EA and, like everything EA, it's just relentlessly mediocre.

Bombilliam
Bombilliam

5 years after release...give this game a shot

ME:A is a worthwhile experience for both veterans and newcomers. It comes with its downsides sure:

-Bugs: Two instances where I reached a bug. First one was a failed save slot, had to go back about 30 minutes of game play. Second one was in the finale where killing one of the enemies didn't register the next event and had to redo the section (not really a hassle)
-Animations: Once in a while you'll encounter a t-pose.

But that's about the only downright negatives I can think of. I loved the characters in this game. Without having 3 full games to build their stories, each companion is lovable. The music isnt the OT OST, but it holds its own very well. I added the credits song to my personal playlist! Side missions are good time killers, with character quests being the best quests in the game IMO. The main story is captivating enough to keep you playing. Though sharing similar beats to the OT, it leaves you wanting more at the end, much like the first ME did. Combat is engaging, though at a certain point, like the previous games, you find the perfect combination of powers and the game becomes much easier.

The romantic options are all pretty good, though I pour one out to the m/m romancers. Allow me a quick rant. Gil as the only real gay option (Reyes and Jaal are bi, they get the same dialogue as female Ryder, nothing really different) is great, his character and motives are charming. Downright attractive at times. But there is a lot of issues present with Gil as a gay interest, *spoilers to Gil route* the fact that his best friend is forcing him to have a baby otherwise he is "not a real man" , putting you in a situation where you're kinda forced to both be fathers, or that some scenes were cut from the final product that involves Gil's romance scene, really rubs me the wrong way. You as Ryder don't really get a say about Jill. You can reject her proposal, but then you're left baby-less and the route with Gil feels weaker. The women really don't compare to the OT women, with Vetra being a good contender. But again, the OT had 3 games to build up characters you could truly love. ME:A does a good job to get you invested in them all. If you play Female Ryder, you also get to romance Suvi. She's so lovable and honestly I wish they gave her more in the romance route.

Overall, I loved all 80+ hours I put into this game. Much like finishing the OT, this also left a hole in my heart after completion. It's not as big a gap as OT left, but ME will always be treasured to me, this game included.

cimerians
cimerians

I've played the original Mass Effect trilogy a number of times and heard all the bad news about this game. Some of that bad news is warranted some of it is not. This game is the Dragon Age 2 of Mass Effect imo. What I mean by this is that it's an offshoot compared to the original trilogy, it's different, the storyline in my opinion isn't as good by far and a few of the characters are somewhat lackluster. Having said that it's not a bad game at all if you simply consider it a spinoff off of Mass Effect, the combat is fun although it's got a little bit too much jumping for my tastes and they introduced a detective mode like in the Batman games where you scan stuff for clues and whatnot. if you're a diehard Mass Effect fan who will accept nothing but the best, you will be severely disappointed in this game in fact it might be a complete disaster for you, on the other hand if you're a diehard Mass Effect fan and have a completely open mind then this is worth a playthrough for sure, just to see something different. There's no way I can give this a thumbs down because it's not a bad game it's just different along with some issues as I mentioned above. If it's super cheap and you don't mind playing a 'spin off' give it a try.

Edit: Just wanted to add that they went semi open world with this game which is good and bad. The good is that you'll have a LOT of things to do most of which is side quests called tasks which you can skip the majority of but there's tons of material to mine\gather and lots of crafting if that’s your thing. The bad thing is this detracts from the story line(s) which Bioware games are known for. Keeping track of them all is a pain as you repeatedly need to pick a quest to track it on your map and dont get me started on the map and the awful controls for your vehicle. Still recommend this though.

magicalchalicotherium
magicalchalico…

I expected to enjoy Andromeda despite other people's complaints, because I don't mind open worlds, and I find animation problems funny, and I'm not bothered by social justice themes or whatever. It turns out that there's a lot wrong with this game that seldom gets mentioned, and you encounter a lot of these problems in the tutorial when you're forming your first impressions. So let me just list some things off:

1) No manual saving during main quests. For large portions of the game, including the first couple hours, you're dependent on autosaves. Those autosaves happen immediately after combat, so if you die you have to redo any exploring or looting you did since the previous combat bit. You're most likely to be prevented from saving in intense areas where you're most likely to want to save a lot. I've heard this excused as an engine limitation, but Dragon Age: Inquisition uses the same engine and doesn't seem to have this problem.

2) The game never tells you how to heal, and it's not immediately intuitive. Health regen is limited. There are no healing abilities or consumables. To heal, you have to walk up to certain boxes marked with a particular symbol that doesn't intuitively communicate "health." They look similar to the ammo refill boxes, which are explained, so players can figure out the health boxes eventually, but likely not during the tutorial. So you can get stuck at 1/3 health in the tutorial with no knowledge of how to heal yourself and no ability to make a save closer to the battle that keeps killing you. Confusingly, there are some boxes lying around that look like the medigel boxes of the original trilogy, but these are just decorative.

3) The open worlds are empty. There's an unnecessarily huge amount of space between points of interest and it's not even pretty. Driving across all that space becomes a huge time drain. There are two different desert worlds, an arctic wasteland world, and an asteroid. The only pretty and interesting ones are the jungle world and the volcanic world, but you don't get to see the volcanic world until many hours in.

4) Lastly, the writing and overall structure of the story have all kinds of problems. On the surface level, there's a lot that's phrased badly or just not thought through. On a deeper level, a lot of stuff doesn't fit together right. Characters talk about how important it is to build a home in Andromeda, and yet getting planets to 100% viability has no impact on anything because really this is a game about shooting Kett. You can repair the whole environment of the Angaran homeworld, but they still don't like that you're trying to live in the same GALAXY as them. I could ramble on forever about the writing issues, but I've spent enough time on this review.

Anyway, I finished the main story and most of the side quests just so I could say I finished it, but I regret how much time that ate up. So much filler. So much that feels like it was made by amateurs.

LeelooLeFox
LeelooLeFox

I wasn't into this game back when it was first released, or any ME titles honestly.

I recently finished playing through the ME trilogy and absolutely loved it. The world building and choices-matter aspect was some of the best in game writing I've seen in a long time.

I know from outside research this game had a lot of backlash on it's release, but honestly, this game is great.
I think people should walk into this game expecting a new story entirely. We're still in space, yes. We still have political connections and Alliance-type standards, but we're in an entirely new place, with brand new people. This game in it's own separate entity is fantastic and I highly recommend it to people who demand for fantastic story-telling!

Eonox Octala
Eonox Octala

Love the Mass Effect series, and would love to like this one. But the only redeeming quality is the combat, which is cool but sub-par at best. It isn't a good game.

pzycho_zen
pzycho_zen

This game is better and worse at the same time.
Does not feel like mass effect, character voices are much less unique.

The game is cool and good if u dont get bothered by lore details and the worst save point system I have ever experienced.

With such great game and story its painfull to see lore being destroyed.
Not being able to save when you want to is very frusterating and almost kills this game.

mndavis08
mndavis08

Not as robust as Mass Effect Trilogy, but actually has a pretty decent playability. Enjoy it for what it is, get some texture mods, and it's totally enjoyable.

Del Mingus
Del Mingus

I'm a big fan of the Mass Effect Trilogy so was a bit wary of trying this game given how badly it was received on release. However after playing the Mass Effect Legendary Edition I thought I'd give it a try. It certainly doesn't live up the original trilogy but I went in with lowered expectations and on that basis I thought it was an ok game. Flawed but it does have some enjoyable aspects.

I did actually quite like the concept of the game where you're playing as the first colonists from the Milky Way to arrive in Andromeda. It gives the story of this game a bit of independence from the trilogys story and some scope to build a new overarching story and setting. Plus the whole exploring a new frontier establishing outposts thing is quite a good idea, as while it was cool exploring the Milky Way it lacked that true feeling of the unknown. The only letdown is that as the game is only set in a small corner of Andromeda and you only really encounter two new races, with one of those being the games bad guys.

The crew you have in this game as also a bit of a mixed bag. I liked Drack the old Krogan and Jaal who is from one of the new races you meet. But then the Asari fangirl Cora or Liam who is just annoyingly positive are irritating. So the crew you get arent quite as memorable or iconic as say Garrus, Tali or Wrex from the original trilogy.

Combat has seen a big improvement and allows for more freedom in movement with an added jump pack and dodge move which makes combat feel more fluid, unlike the stiff restrictive combat from the previous games. I also liked the way you have more freedom to build your combat abilities and change classes on the fly instead of being restricted to one class.

Where the game really struggles is the many uninteresting fetch quests and large mostly uninteresting maps. It seems like Bioware learned nothing from Dragon Age Inquisition, where they did something similar that ended in the game being bloated with loads of uninteresting side missions. In the old Mass Effect games I really enjoyed doing every side quest and optional content as they didn't go over the top with repetitive quests. In Andromeda I just reached a point where I couldnt be bothered and even then there was still loads to do. I'd recommend just trying to complete the main story and Ally quests without going overboard on the rest.

In many ways it feels like those things that people didnt like in Mass Effect 1 have sort of crept back in with Andromeda. At least with ME1 you could sort of forgive those flaws as it was a case of the series finding its feet. Andromeda doesnt have that excuse.

That said I hope they dont completely abandon the Andromeda side of the series as I think there is potential for the setting. Unfortunately given the slating the game got on release its probably unlikely.

Overall I think if you're a Mass Effect fan who can still tolerate playing Mass Effect 1 then maybe this might be worth a try if you can get it on sale. As long as you temper your expectations you might get some enjoyment from Andromeda. If you've never played a Mass Effect game I'd just go with the Legendary Edition of the original trilogy instead of this..

Zed
Zed

A decent step down from the rest of the games. Only notable part is more/slightly-improved planet exploration. Combat is clunky and disappointing. Top it off with certain textures/objects being not as solid as they seem, so be ready to get shot from behind "cover". And being forced to play Sudoku repeatedly is also disappointing. And even with all this time character creation improved only a little and they FINALLY added armor color customization, otherwise not much more in that area besides mods having better character textures.

Welcome back to Mass Effect, your biggest enemy is moving around and your vehicle no longer has a gun.

Darth_Roxx
Darth_Roxx

Played this game on ps4 a while back multiple times. Loved it. Still have it on ps4 but since I have a pretty high end pc gaming rig, I wanted to try different games. I bought andromeda on sale, and it looks great. Never realized how the fine details look up close.

If you have never played it, it has great combat, a decent story, and good side characters. I know there was a lot of backlash with its initial release due to bug animations, etc. I don't recall having that many issues on ps4, and now playing it on pc, it plays pretty smoothly. The only pet peeve is that it does feel like the controls take some time getting used to them. I felt it was a lot faster to get used to playing with a ps4 controller. Maybe I'll play with a gamepad later, but I do want to get accustomed to the keyboard controls as it is more comfortable from a pc/long hours gaming standpoint. Also, some of the character designs do look a bit different than Mass Effect (1,2,3), but it didn't deter me from loving this game. I'd say you're better off just giving it a fair try without so much bias on what issues it had on release date, etc. Also, I wouldn't compare it 100% to the other mass effect series as it was made by a separate team. Having said that, I do think the combat on this one is pretty good with flexibility on changing style on the go (I won't spoil it). Plus...MODS!!! can't believe how many quality of life mods I've been using, and they make the game even more fun after all these years.

F.F.
F.F.

Pretty charming mechanics. I liked most companions.
Gun play is incredible, best in the series by far.
The story is umm... not that great, though.

MisterKim_
MisterKim_

my very first mistake is doubting this game because of the reviews. gladly i found that my doubt about this game were wrong .

-first the graphic were awesome (still looks good for me even though this game released in 2017).

-i dont know which part of the story that make this game looks bad, but so far i still enjoyed the storyline.
(i'm not finished this game yet , but tbh for the first 40% progress of the game , i found nothing wrong with it)

-i played the original trilogy before and when i found some conversation and some character (even tho just being referred to) that related with the original trilogy arc , its make me relieve because this game even tho not a direct sequel to the trilogy , but still part of the trilogy itself.

if you ever feel doubt to play this game , you were wrong , but if you stil dounting it , you should buy this game while on sale and try it yourself.

it just my opinion guys , but overall Andromeda its not bad as people says , but not perfect as we expected compared to the trilogy , but its a good game to play and its more like bonus EPISODE / Spin-off before the new mass effect trilogy (i hope so) continuation for me.

LeeTensei
LeeTensei

I got this game for $4 on sale, I've been loving every minute of it. more so then games I've recently spent $60 on lol
I just like space travel & aliens. The lore is really good too. Looks amazing on my samsung g9 with the cut scene ultrawide fix

bluegrassbrother
bluegrassbrother

this game sucks woke AF. was their one male character of importance? how many times was their an opportunity to have the main character solve a problem only to watch strong female npc do it for you. FAILURE OF A GAME!

Emmeridian
Emmeridian

All the bugs at launch have been fixed and this is a great game. Lots of different content and side quests are not just repeating the same kinds of tasks.

kezealaji
kezealaji

Very fun game and great for overall lore. Overall facial animations are still a little dated, but with mods it's so much better than it was at launch

Brotherhood Paladin
Brotherhood Paladin

Pros: Achievements carry over from Origin
Cons: Origin
What was the point of buying it twice... stuck with Origin... again.

Wevee
Wevee

The only reason this is getting a thumbs up, is for the amount of content within the game. The quality of some of that content ranges from okay, to a major story plot hole, to what the hell were they thinking. I had hoped after 5 years, some of the issues of the game would have been fixed. I was wrong, I forgot EA doesn't fix their games, its not profitable. The story is fine, its not great. You can tell they wanted to spawn a whole new trilogy which is a mistake made all the time in Movies and TV as well. The first ME was a great story, but it stood on its own, even if you never played the others. This has some huge holes that feel like planning for 2 was already in some development stage.

Get the game on sale, worth the time spent for the cost. Just enjoy what is there, try to not think about what it could have been.

The Good

- The combat is great, the addition of the jump jets/biotic leaps are excellent.
- The overall graphics are really nice, it gives the world some excellent details
- No limit to the character you can build, 3 types of combat can be built at the same time. Character build customization is excellent.

The Bad

- No meaningful choices, you get the occasional decision to make, but they have no effect at all.
- No squad customization whatsoever, gear or armor, even skins. Mass Effect has been doing squad weapons and armor since the beginning, ME2 started doing alternate skins, ME3 continued, but MEA said nope, not important. We have all those research options to make armor and weapons for our own use ONLY. What a wasted opportunity.
- Due to limited choices, there is hardly any replayability in this game. Since you can build all combat types at once, why roll a different type? Just completely respec and build anew.
- this has been beaten to death, animations are horrible on human faces, other races hide it better.

The Other

- Some things happening in the background that go on, right from the start of the game. They don't matter, but never change from the moment you unlock the nexus until the end of the game. The same groups of people standing around on the nexus complaining about stuff, on planets shaking hands.
- you can have 100% completed a planet, and you still get triggers from the first quests in the game, "Ryder, that body. What happened." That is just poor, if the quest is resolved, stop the cues for them. Ideally, remove the model of the body, or flag the voice over. Anything to keep from pointing stuff out from 50 hours ago.

Steve Bollocks
Steve Bollocks

For the past week, I have been replaying Mass Effect: Andromeda on insanity difficult and so far it has been an absolute blast. There are small but gripping moments when the game shines and I see the vision what the developers were trying to achieve. One of those moments is when you're on mission in Asari Ark. You start to see the horror what happened inside the ship through many logs and the cold, vacuum atmosphere sinks in when you enter a room with a huge hole on the side of the spaceship and this makes the whole room sound muffled. During the fight, you start seeing parts of the office chair etc floating around and for a split second, you come back to your senses and remember that you need to shoot the bad guys.

What I am trying to ramble here, I would even go so far and honestly say that this game is easily my second favorite in the series. I know, crazy talk. Okay, Mass Effect 2 is still my favorite and is prime example on how the team building side missions are as important as the main story and first game could easily be my second favorite - just for the plot, the wonderful ambient score and I still remember the first time when the end credits started to roll and first notes of Faunts' "M4 Part II" hit in my headphones. This is pure gaming nostalgia for me. But when you start thinking about the combat, empty planets in side missions - the paint starts to peel off and the design on old game doesn't feel that hot anymore after fifteen years later. The third game? F*ck that game with a rusty spoon. The ending with multiple choices whack-a-mole and therefore discarding the player choices in the trilogy really left a bad taste in my mouth. Didn't deliver what was promised.

Is Mass Effect: Andromeda perfect? No. And it doesn't need to be. Bugs, wonky running animation that looks like it was made by developers doing their first ever third person game or horrendous facial animations where some human characters almost have bell's palsy but to me the graphics doesn't dictate if the game is good or bad. It's the feeling of the game that is more important to me. And yeah, the main character doesn't have the charisma of Shepard and looks like average joe/jane at the best but that is the appeal of it. You're sibling of the pathfinder and right at the start you have big boots to fill when simultaneously you're pulled into these new worlds and you try to understand the big picture. Despite the flaws it carries, it's one those games where developers took risks to freshen up the franchise and the gameplay of Andromeda rise above of the trilogy because of that. Meaning the shooting and combat is more tight with included rocket jumping and you have a lot more toys to choose your play style and you can really mix it up if you really want to.

Mass Effect: Andromeda is still a great f*cking game. Yeah. I will defend that statement to the grave.

Hambone_FakeNamington
Hambone_FakeNa…

Having bought this game about 5 years after release, it looks like the bugs that made this game infamous have been ironed out. Genuinely enjoyable, it's got all the staples of a good open-world RPG: story, gameplay, developed characters, and graphics. Coming from Mass Effect 3, the improvements in fighting mechanics specifically make this my favorite of the series. Haven't bothered with multiplayer, and frankly it doesn't need it.

Rebellion346
Rebellion346

Eh I'll be dead honest, I played this back in the day until I got to Voeld and I remember calling this game there back then, this playthrough I was even quicker to throw in the towel with the dialog and story, I have literally skipped all dialog and cutscenes out of pure lack of interest in the cast, it's story, the andromeda system, it's enemies, It's all aload of crap. The complete highlight of this game is the respec system, the combat, the exploration all these things are just brilliant and it's where my hours of gameplay are at it's just brilliant, I love it. This Mass Effect is defo the best for combat without a doubt, so many things to experiment with just makes it awesome. However that is where the fun ends and it's where the original takes the Crown, Ryder just isn't interesting and neither are his party members, the best being at a push Drack but we've had so many Krogan with that personality it's just lost it's flair, Vetra is a failed Garrus, Peebee may aswell be PB and J she's such a boring sandwich. Liam and Cora - the only two humans...who? They're so boring and dense and lastly and probably best Jaal and that's only because he is a new race?

Eh I'd give this game a 5/6 - 10 at a push.

Martha_H_Stewart
Martha_H_Stewart

Combat and exploration are fun, story and dialogue are meh.
Good game. just not on par with the mass effect OT.
Get it on sale

gyrosummers
gyrosummers

People smash this game for not being amazing, but that's because it carries the heavy "Mass Effect" title to it. Left to itself, the game is still really good. Main complaints: mantling obstacles, the scanning of objects that may have odd hit boxes or have not populate, multiplayer will take a LOT of grinding, and Origin is trash.

Fortune
Fortune

A fun game with a decent story and the best combat and skill system the series had so far. The open world aspect of Andromeda makes it somewhat slow paced compared to the Trilogy, but overall I can still definitely recommend it!

TheBaaju
TheBaaju

Don't care what the reviews said, this is and remains an engaging, satisfying story driven experience.

Flanksteak
Flanksteak

Only a couple hours on steam, mainly cause i have like 500h on Origin. But believe me, i have a lot of experience in the game and been modding it to hell and back since launch (which is already 5 years ago, damn)

Lemme preface this by saying that this game is... good. Not amazing, not really good, not even necessarily very good. Just good. But I have grown attached to this game in a way I didn't expect.

Everything negative about this game has been said before, so this will mainly mention what I like about this game:

I've always loved mass effect and the OT will always be legendary for its story and characters, but this game especially nails down this FEELING of exploration. The beauty that the environmental designers created here is beyond anything the series has ever seen and you really feel the love and effort put into it by the devs. The seamless fluidity of combat, the satisfying driving (thanks need for speed team that helped bioware on this) and the exploratory quest design that actually rewards finding and completing small quests, occasionally even giving you entire new areas in the end. Exploration in this game is very obviously what Bioware had imagined the Mako sections in ME1 could become.

Furthermore, the modding community for this game is quite near and dear to me. I rarely play this game with less than 50 mods at a time, and it makes the game so much better. Pushes it from the "good" category into the "very good" in my opinion. The replayability is so much greater when you suddenly have new powers, new romances, new weapons and armor and so on.

So all in all:
- Good game
- get it on a sale (which happens pretty often)
- you'll have a ton of fun with combat and exploration
- maybe you'll even have enough fun for a second playthrough
- in that case i strongly encourage looking into modding

Ade-merci.

Siphonic
Siphonic

It pains me to not recommend this game, because I really, really wanted to like it. I desperately wanted to post a review along the lines of "the haters were wrong, this game is pretty good", but you can tell by the "Not Recommended" that I'm not doing that.

The only thing I can say this game gets right is the visuals, because environments look fantastic. In every other aspect, this game is subpar, both in ways that get talked about and in ways that don't. Yes, the facial animations can be kind of wonky (most of the time they're fine), the dialogue has some incredibly weird lines, and everyone is trying too hard to be funny.

But the dialogue and story is just so dull. The characters themselves are fine (at least in the time I dealt with them), but nobody says anything of interest, and the story constantly undercuts any moment of tension. Early game spoilers: your dad dying gets one conversation before everyone (including Ryder) stop caring about it, and the Remnant vault's death cloud eventually just gives up and fucks off when it looks like you're done for. If it was all bad, at least you could get some laughs out of it, but it isn't. It's the writing equivalent of plain white bread, it's just bland.

That, I mostly expected. The gameplay I did not. One thing I see people (both fans and non-fans alike) praising about this game is how good the gameplay is, and how it's supposed to be the best in the franchise, and I could not disagree more with that perspective. The game feels as if it doesn't know if it's supposed to be a cover shooter or a movement shooter: on the one hand, you have a jetpack and combat arenas are wide and open, on the other hand being out of cover is basically a death sentence and the game's a little too clunky for dodging from cover to cover to be viable. Playing it as a cover shooter feels like you're missing half the game, whilst playing it as a movement shooter feels like you're playing it wrong.

I don't know how people got enjoyment out of this game, and I don't say that because I think they're wrong, or they're idiots, or whatever. I say that because I envy them. I want to know how they managed to walk into this experience and find joy, because I wanted to be one of those people. I adore the Mass Effect franchise and the fact that this review is a thumbs down saddens me.

If you like this game, I'm glad you found something you like. But I can't in good faith recommend this to others, not even if you're a fan of this franchise or this genre of game.

Gamer
Gamer

The game is lackluster in all aspects. This is a definitive downgrade for the mass effect series and hope this design does not continue in any future game or mass effect game.

Bimbo
Bimbo

I know this game gets lots of hate from ME fans but I enjoyed playing ME: Andromeda. The graphics are beautiful but face animations could be improved. Character customization has quite improved in comparison to the original trilogy. I loved exploring open-world maps and the new Mako - Nomad - is definitely easier to navigate. Combat system is very dynamic and I like that now you can jump in combat (no way I'm a Widowmaker in Mass Effect universe).
There are so many things to do in ME: Andromeda: side quests, research and development, crafting armor and weapons, scanning planets for resources, etc. I really like the variety of extra stuff you can do in this game but it could be a bit too much. It took me a while to figure out how to add mods to the weapons and armor. Some side tasks/quests aren't marked on the map so it's hard to keep track of the progress. Perhaps my main disappointment with this game is the lack of well-written interesting characters, especially your squad mates. The story itself is ok. The original trilogy is way better in this regard.

Oh, and one last thing. The Remnant Vaults might seem fun at first but they become very frustrating later because of the vague puzzles and lack of direction. They're probably the only part of the game that I had to look up walkthroughs for.

Karma Kamelion
Karma Kamelion

If you look at it as a stand alone game instead of part of the original ME Trilogy it is decent. I hated that the romance choices for girls was limited and just seemed lacking and unfulfilling to me. It is glitchy and the battle system is difficult to navigate in my opinion. Over all I think it has a lot of potential and would like to see what happens next with it. I wish the choices actually mattered though. It is like you have choices but it seems like nothing you do actually matters. Also as with all ME games. FIX THE Vehicle! Handling of it sucks. It is worth playing though.

Exctmonk
Exctmonk

This is a hesitant recommendation, which I'll detail as the game has three main phases, or did in my playthrough.

Phase I is the intro, which is the first few hours. It isn't the best way to introduce everything, as the explanations for systems aren't well described, the combat isn't as fun as it could be, and a lot of the technical issues weren't completely ironed out.

If you survive that, you get Phase II, which is my favorite part. You go from world to world, knocking out quests and such that make the worlds more viable for habitation. You obtain resources that let you craft different weapons and armor for yourself to match your playstyle. If you've played Death Stranding, there's a similar feel to it, as you're building up the world to make it more livable while improving your own bag of tricks. There's a feeling of (ahem) pride and accomplishment as you see things become better because of your actions.

For example, you land on a world, and there's a bunch of missions to do. The combat is fun, so even the straightforward ones are enjoyable. You clear your list, and a few end up saying "Go to this planet next," and the best way to handle this is to just queue up everything offworld until you've done what you can on this one, because:

Phase III is the endgame, and where things lose a ton of momentum. If you're just blasting the main story, it feels like you can get through pretty quick, but I took my time and knocked out sidequests. The problem comes at the end of these quest chains, as some quests literally have you visiting three or more locations. But leaving and returning involves a few unskippable loading screens. That makes the end of the quest log a seriously annoying chore, unless you're using a guide of some kind that lets you know where to go next. I didn't use that, and was punished for it. There's a video conference thing on your ship and if it had been utilized better, 90% of the travel could have been cut out and the game would have been so much better for it.

There are a few other notes. The galactic exploration is ultimately pointless, because the things you see are boring. ME2 had things like missions that opened up when you find an enemy outpost on a world, or ME3 revealing War Assets that make it at least feel unique. This is entirely, "Oh, there's a river!" "A crater!" Like, no shit, there's lots of craters, thank you for the XP. Unless you're fishing for resources or obsessively clear things, I wouldn't bother.

Likewise, it gives you a number of "tasks" that boil down to "perform X action a bunch until you randomly clear the requirements." One example is "Little Mouse," a mission on the desert planet which felt like a Dune reference. "Cool, let me check this out," methinks. But there are no markers. The quest is literally, "Drive around until you get into a fight, and there's a slim chance the next of five datapads is here. Repeat as necessary."

I was nearly done with the planet when I stumbled onto the first of these, and every planet has one like it, and they are just not worth it!

Another issue are the number of bugs that persist, especially with quests. One broke the game and I had to reload from a prior save. Another didn't show where the quest giver was to turn it in.

It sounds like I'm leaning negative on this, and there are a lot of criticisms, but that middle part was incredibly entertaining. Underrated, flawed, but still worth a playthrough, especially if you're like me and get it for less than $10. I'm not sure if they're available, but if there's a "skip straight to objective" mod of some kind, I highly recommend seeking it out.

H0nk
H0nk

definitely not as good as the original 3 mass effects, you aren't as nearly immersed in the story or the world, but overall, the game is still enjoyable to play

Sarge
Sarge

Andromeda is not a particularly inspired RPG, but it gets the job done well enough to justify purchasing it on a discount. The quests are often pretty standard pick up X item or kill Y mob, and the combat is middle of the road. The set pieces and level design range from fairly interesting to bland. The talents and gear are middle of the road. All in all this game is average. I recommend picking this up when its on sale or you really need a mass effect fix.

spooky
spooky

Ryder is the most autistic protag ever, thank you for that representation cuz I too also make uncanny expressions while saying awkward cringy stuff to seem cool while at the same time trying to act like a human bean. Fuck you bioware.

Uri
Uri

Good game with mods, helps fix some of the issues I've had with the original release. There are still minor quality control issues but that is to be expected in such a massive production so I can easily overlook these..

This is slightly different than the other games in the series and greatly expand on Mass Effect 1's exploration game-loop. In terms of pacing the game has a fairly long exposition but its worth sticking with it.

The story is interesting: Explores the idea of intergalactic travel and the reasoning behind it.(from a fictional sci-fi point of view) and seems to take inspiration from various science fiction novels. That said , So far story-wise its a bit of garden of roses compared to how it would have really been in that situation and I think the writers try to spare the Player's feelings instead of giving us the brutal Game of Thrones version. So from what I've seen the harsh realities of pioneer life are downplayed in this game even though romance means its not suitable for children anyways. Most of the harsh reality stuff happens to aliens but not to humans as to not upset the more conservative trekkie players I guess.

Mike Hoochie Stinx
Mike Hoochie Stinx

I have yet to actually beat the game because of glitches and technical issues, but so far the game as its OWN thing is really good! I really wish they spent a little more time fixing bugs and glitches because goddamn lmao.

twitch.tv/Reck1e5s
twitch.tv/Reck1e5s

Mass Effect: Andromeda is different from the first 3 games in the series and that's ok. The story is good the characters are good the combat is great. I think it leaves a good not a great impression after completing this game 100%. I always worry about things being unreversable after main story missions so I did all of the side missions before moving forward with the main mission. I don't think that its completly nessesary. If you enjoyed the series the lore of ME you will enjoy this game.

Now for the critical views. There are some missions which are RNG random which were extreamly annoying. I spent over an hour or more going from camp to camp to find something that randomly spawns. It was obnoxious. More quest varitey would of been welcomed I think this is the crux of open world type games, What activites to fill the world with. Most just copy paste the same quests in different location. I think that its a real shame for this type of story because of the massively different locations. I also felt like the last boss was really phoned in and unclimatic to the story. Which really took away from the game imho. Last bosses need to be epic and it just wasn't.

yento
yento

The game is great.

Good action. Good story. Good characters.
Maybe it's not as great as Mass Effect 1-3 combined, but not every game can be the greatest trilogy of the decade.

I can't believe the rest of the reviews. These idiots almost made me skip this game!

FyreDeity
FyreDeity

I've come to this game years after all the memes. I came to this game fresh from playing the original ME trilogy (remastered versions) for the first time and knowing this was a spin-off, vastly disconnected from the original games (though there are some references to the old galaxy).

I can say this: It's not as bad as the memes and hate suggested, but it also doesn't necessarily ~feel~ like a Mass Effect game (because it's a spin off, remember?). This is much more open-world(s) than the trilogy, so there's lots and lots of exploration to be done if you're into that or a completionist like me. Think Assassins Creed Odyssey but like 1000 years in the future in a galaxy far far away. The old enemies aren't here, there are some new ones with different motivations that you slowly uncover through the course of the game. Otherwise, the gameplay itself feels good, in terms of the gunplay familiar to those who played the original trilogy.

Its a good game. But don't come into this spinoff thinking you're going to get Mass Effect 4 because it's certainly not meant to be that. The story is good, not amazing, but still worthwhile. The gameplay is good and will feel familiar. Be prepared for more exploration if you're into it, or just ignore the side quests if you want to play a linear campaign (not that the original trilogy didn't have its fair share of side quests).

If you like the Mass Effect WORLD and background lore, and not just whatever you saw in the original campaigns, you'll like Andromeda if you accept it as part of the expanded universe (literally) rather than a direct sequel.

Yes get it.

[EVO] SupposedlyGreg
[EVO] SupposedlyGreg

Better than i expected :)

I install more than 50 mods which make the game having better more content, better graphic and many more fun stuff, was worst buying at 75% discount with the Mass Effect 1 and 2 and 3 those 4 game kept me busy for at least 250 hours

Simbolic
Simbolic

Originally played this mostly on Origins, so my actual game time combined with Origins is around 400 hrs.
So I played this a bit, along with some mutiplayer. I love the game as it's own mixed in the ME universe. Not much I can honestly complain about. It's a good long game, if I had any complaint at all. Would be some of the quest tracking. Some players who played this alot would know what i'm talking about. Just few instances when it throws you off. Since can be teleporters, and so many upper and lower levels surrounded by walls. While just having a dot marked on your map doesn't help much. I know can expand portions of the map area's. Still just felt like such a waste of time. Trying to figure out how to get into this area to reach this area.

daseinharmony
daseinharmony

Mass Effect is a great series, I enjoyed playing several of the games. This one was very much like the previous games. I have a bad review of it because:

1) Fatal bug - game is unplayable if the bug occurs - not being able to return to your ship.

2) The publisher, EA, has a terrible tech support system where you need to repeatedly state the problem and resolving issues doesnt seem to be a priority.

Praising our Lord Jesus Christ
Praising our L…

This is geared towards children (characters are actively refraining from day to day strong language and romance and the depiction of violence by villains is undercut).

Also, the producers are exploiting "feminism" to sell their game. The original ME trilogy was overly male dominated, which was also not realistic, but you could at least see a ~2/1 split pretty much. Here, almost all characters you see are female, which is unrealistic once you see it and tells me they are exploiting the idea. Plus the dialogues are overly feminine and not fitting for the genre of the game.

Ambient
Ambient

I don't like any of the characters other than maybe Vetra and she looks weird (Turian). It's as if Josh Whedon wrote Carebears sci-fi. I think the main story is really boring and I heard it doesn't end very well (unfinished). The combat gameplay itself is good. The graphics quite good and there are not too many bugs. I'm sure you can have a couple of hours fun with it, but I can't recommend this game as in my opinion the narrative is just completely unappealing.

The game is not awful by any means, it's just something that I can't see many people going past a couple of hours because the main part of Mass Effect is missing: a fun and immersive sci-fi adventure with characters I care about. It just smells too much like a MMO or a phone game and there's no emotional hook anywhere. Too many systems and not enough solid storytelling.

ShankMyth
ShankMyth

While not the best Mass Effect in the terms of the story telling, there's a lot of good in this game that enhances the Mass Effect core game play. All combat game play is taken to the next level with a fun leveling system that allows you to specialize in combinations of powers allowing for ultimate freedom no matter which background you choose for your Ryder. The combat feels faster and more rewarding than ever. Now for the matter of the story. I like what they're doing and cant wait to see more of it. If you expect it to be better than the original story, that's not gonna happen. The original saga was so classic in its story nothing will ever be like it. However if you can open your mind to new ideas this is a great addition to Mass Effect and just the beginning of whats to come. I cant wait to see what other adventures are to come in the Andromeda galaxy and enjoyed my time so far. 8/10 would recommend.

TheoreticalTheorist
TheoreticalTheorist

As a first time Mass Effect player and sci-fi fan, this game's story and world building is interesting at the least. I recommend getting this at a massive discount though. 6.5/10

PROS:
1. Fights are interesting and challenging sometimes (if you don't min-max).
2. World building is great. Plenty of readable data logs, side-character interactions and random npc conversations.
3. The graphics are fine (facial movements are weird sometimes) but considering this is a 2017 game, my RTX3060 can max out graphics settings at 1080p easily.

CONS:
1. Real-time timers to APEX Missions & AVP rewards (obviously designed to sell microtransactions)
2. I'm still seeing quite a bit of bugs 5 years after release
3. Crafting relies on research points to develop (some are quite hard to obtain, probably a microtransaction decision design AGAIN)
4. You can't pause events/cut scenes. I needed to poop at one important cut scene and just missed the whole damn thing like wtf is this single player or what?

It's an okay time-killer if you don't have anything else to play.

Sylent
Sylent

I'm having a lot of fun with this game. It reminds me of the first series, but the open world gives it a different feel.

adam.muise
adam.muise

While not as good as a story as the previous Mass Effect series, the gameplay, mechanics, and action is worthy of a triple AAA game. Works very well on the stream deck as a take anywhere RPG.

AhadiTiger
AhadiTiger

It is no Reaper Trilogy but if you go in with an open mind, not expecting the 100% perfection the first three games were then there is a lot of enjoyment to be had here. Andromeda is a different take on the Mass Effect universe with an entirely new cast of characters and a different end goal.

annebonny
annebonny

I think people are being too harsh with this game.

If you love the original Mass Effect trilogy, you will enjoy this. Definitely not on the same scale with the original ME trilogy, but ME: Andromeda certainly has its own entertaining value. The gameplay is fun and easy to maneuver, albeit rather slow on the plot. It takes almost pass 50% in the game for the story to reach its climax, and there are some plot holes left (but I think that's fine knowing the game doesn't have its sequel and the one who written it probably thought it would be explained on the sequels). The characters are decent, especially the Ryders, but obviously not on the same level as Shepard.

The villains are underdeveloped, but maybe because it's just one game. Honestly, they are really similar with the Reapers from original ME (in terms of villains goals), the difference is it takes 3 games for the Reapers to get their full extent of villainess.

If you never play original ME, you definitely won't like this game.
And go play original ME.

Irelevus Murloc
Irelevus Murloc

I was originally going to give this a light recommend with a 6/10 as the game is fine, it's not memorable, the characters aren't great, there are still bugs, my save files got corrupted multiple times and getting achievements would minimize my game because the Origins app gave me achievements as well that it overlayed over the steam ones. Despite all that I felt like the game was fine.

Then I got to the end. Not only is the end an absolute chore, it's not hard or challenging it's just kill x amount of enemies now wait for what feels like 5 solid minutes for something to happen while constantly being attacked. You do that 3 times, it's just waves of the same 4 enemies you've been fighting since the beginning. But it's not just that, I can excuse a lame combat section. No what pisses me off is the utter garbage of the story. The mental gymnastics and stupid plot contrivances that have to come together to make the ending play out the way it does are fascinating in their stupidity.

Without trying to spoiler anything, it relies on established facts to no longer be facts, things that work a certain way have to stop working that way for the ending to happen. Worse is they couldn't just have it be a straightforward ending, most of it would have worked without the plot contrivance, all the main points of the ending could stay the same, the issue is the lead up. That coupled with the incredibly boring final battle that drags on forever and the big bad evil guy who has been a pain in your neck throughout the whole game literally dying in a cutscene. Not even a QTE, nor do you attack or anything, he just dies. In a cutscene. I swear I had a blank look on my face throughout, there was no feeling of "Yay I did it" I felt numb.

Then in the post credits you talk to all of your crew members which made me remember that Mass Effect had such great characters in 1-3 because they weren't immortal. You could lose crew members. There were stakes involved. In Andromeda they're just background dressing, pick your 2 favourites and do their quests, there's no reward or reason to do any of the others. The only smile I had at the end of the game was seeing the banter between the Turian sisters Sid and Vetra, I romanced Vetra and it was a nice little moment.

For all this bull Andromeda loses 2 points. 4/10 would not recommend

chgowiz
chgowiz

I like Mass Effect: Andromeda (MEA) because, to me, it was fun, it satisfied my desire for a game I could get into and enjoy the story, and it rewarded the kind of play I like to engage in (exploring, quests, dialog).

I did with MEA what I do with other sequels - I put away my expectations based on the originals. I played original Mass Effect trilogy (MEOT) a lot. I love the lore and universe.

IMO, MEA gave me more lore, more universe, more questions to chew on and more things to think about. It gave me choices and outcomes of those choices.

I didn't expect, or want, MEA to be like MEOT. And that's exactly what I got.

With the patches and updates, I think this version of MEA is a fine game, and one that I am going to be doing replays through, to catch things I missed, or take paths I didn't take the first time.

Straight Cappin
Straight Cappin

This game pales in comparison to the original trilogy. Most characters are stale and absent of life. The gameplay is super fun and the visuals are great but the story just goes nowhere and seems to avoid any fun points of interest. It offers some good points but they are overshadowed by the bland world created in Andromeda.

Toto473
Toto473

Played this game on console when it came out and loved it! It never deserved all of the hate it received, have had a phenomenal time playing it!

zeksmarque
zeksmarque

MEA should be played with a ME1 mindset


If you are a ME fan, I would recommend you play this game with an ME1 mindset. The main campaign is basically a world-building exercise. The main villain comes off as a watered-down Saren Arterius and his motivations take a while to be revealed, making the story feel weak compared to the ME1+2+3 story. This is really part 1 of a series.

The best missions in the game are actually the companion missions, which reward skill unlocks, and the outpost missions. Without spoiling anything, I would recommend you play the main campaign missions until the companion and outpost missions become available, complete them, then progress through the campaign missions and loop. Do not skip the "Ryder Family Secrets" mission, as this is the main connective tissue back to the original ME and has some juicy story bits.

The combat is better than ME3. There are more skills and gear (at least 5 armor sets and a lot of weapons that can either be crafted or purchased) that can be mixed and matched to fit your build and playstyle. I played a "paladin" using a Biotic shield skill to reflect attacks, a Krogan hammer for my melee weapon, and a shotgun. It was a lot of fun.

I saw some complaints about backtracking. There are fast travel points in the open world and hub areas, which makes this a non-issue. I would highly recommend you purchase the upgrades for your Nomad, as they make your driving around a lot of fun.

Jesus Christus
Jesus Christus

Andromeda is still parasitic stillbirth !

Tomtores
Tomtores

Positives:
- More adventures in Mass Effect universe
- There is appearance/skills respec station available just after prologue, so you can fix your haircut or add a fancy scar after you had your helmet bashed in, for memory.
- No class system. You have to pick a starter class, but it doesn't do anything later on, you are free to pick and mix all of the weapon/biotic/tech powers.

Negatives
- Crashing. All. The. Time. - By the time you finish the campagin, you will swear at DirectX error. Save often.
- Performance drops in cutscene dialogues. You play easily with stable 60+ fps, then you get a cutscene where literally nothing is happening, and it tanks to under 1 fps. Its literally a talking head and the guy doesn't even have hair. What are you rendering, his atoms? Also crashes at this moments. Save often.
- Online is broken. Broken, as it works, if, you call the hindu tech support, get transferred four times, spend a week and maybe it will start working then. Remember to mention that "no, you don't have origin access, ea play, xbox game pass, or playstation plus, youre playing on steam". Otherwise the tech will run like a headless chicken. There are some players in multi still, but often no one joins your matches.
- Online cnt: Oh, and the stupid 'waiting on you' claxon starts blaring when you're in character customization screen, even if you are the only person in lobby, but you can't see it, because it doesn't show it, and you accidentally start a gold challenge solo. Splendid design.
- Online cnt.cnt: The Single Player APEX system will not work until you fix your online. So yeah, to get those achievements you have to get the online fixed, even if you never play with other people ever.
- No infinite ammo mechanics - remember how ME1 lore explained that with the fancy mass fields you no longer need ammo, because you shoot a sandgrains and rifle has a whole pound of them inside? That was a Good Thing. But of course they had to break that and add ammo system, so now you have to run around the map to find ammo box in middle of fight. There are weapons with overheat mechanics, but you have to research alien weapons or special augment to get them. There is absolutely no reason why everyone runs with said alien weapons in MP, we have plenty time to get out of cover and restock our ammo, yes?
- Powers with use limit. - Remember grenades from ME1? So now you get powers (as in multiple) with 1-4 charges. They have no discernible damage bonus (if any at all) compared to other powers, but will make you run around the battlefield to find ammo boxes, because you have nothing else to do. So my suggestion: avoid them.
- UNSKIPPABLE TRAVEL. What a deranged idiot designed a system where quests send you on a trip to seven planets in a row, but you have no way to skip the travel sequence? Going to another system? Half minute ftl animation. Landing on a planet? Another half minute landing animation. Want to get off the planet? Please sit waiting like an idiot while we play the takeoff animation, because its inconcievable anyone would not want to watch it for hundreth time, and people in 2018 or whenever this game is from have not heard of SSD drives yet. Oh, and there is fancy "flying to another planet within same system" animation, but this one you can thankfully skip after first 5-10 seconds.
- Alt+F4 closes the game. What use does this serve? Hide the game from your boss? Its not like you are going to play this at work. There is no 'save before close' prompt, just bam, game exits. Its not very nice in a game that uses both ALT and F4 as default keybinding for stuff.
- Surprise nudity. Spoiler: There is a surprise scene where you visit your coworkers to talk, only to find them fully nude, with the sensitive bits obscured by well placed desk, and strike a conversation. It was a true WTF moment. Come on, I know its marked pg16, but thats a bit over the top for some sensitive folks out there. There should be a 'nudity' filter in the game options. There are also scenes where mammary glands are shown, but those happen when you're romancing, so at least you do expect to see something then.

So yeah, if you want more mass effect adventures/lore, feel free to get this. If you get irritated by technical issues, crashes, and dumb waiting, go get some game where devs actually cares about player experience? KOTOR 1/2 or any new SW titles are fun, and you still get to throw things around.

Verlock
Verlock

Still a decent game, just not on par with the past Mass Effect games. Still, the Ryders can still bang in 2022.

DanNy
DanNy

I didn't like the ending, so many questions left unanswered. The bad things about this game outweighs the good ones. I like the new races they introduced, the planets look nice and the characters are nice but the story and ending, animations, so many boring quest, strike teams missions etc.. are SOO BAD.

BUY THIS GAME ONLY ON SALE.

john.cage
john.cage

Another great Mass Effect game. ... SPOILERS ...
Different galaxy, different crew, old and new races, new allies, new enemies.
If you haven't played the Mass Effect Trilogy (Legendary Edition), do that first. Although storywise not an absolute prerequisite, you wil understand a lot of things better.
A lot of the following is a comparison with the Mass Effect Trilogy (Legendary Edition):
You will spend more time on planets in wide landscapes as well as in smaller living areas (when you progressed you will have fast travel points on the planet surface, to keep travels short). The landscapes are very pretty, very different and have unique properties, like heat, cold, radiation, aggressive wild life, all of which has an impact on you. You're given a new rover "Nomad" (much better than the rover you had im ME1 and 2) which you can upgrade over time. Combat is a bit different than in ME3. After a short time of getting used to it, it's even better. The Tempest (your ship) is a bit larger than the Normandy, more stretched out horizontally than vertically, with really nice design. One of the best things: You have big windows at the bridge, in your quarters and another important room, that actually show what you would see in the location you're currently at. The characters are great again (including the voice actors), though they are IMHO not as deep as in the trilogy. The interaction with them is very similar to the trilogy, with one improvement: What you say is marked with an icon, suggesting in what direction that answer goes, like logical, casual, friendship, ...
Main story line: Pretty good, less deep and philosophical compared with the trilogy (which is totally fine), with a less controversial ending. Your choices through the game matter. If you don't completely ef it up you should have a pretty nice ending.

What could be better:
- Although there are no unnerving mini games for opening doors, there's still some mining ore stuff, players could have lived without, i.e. mining ore by exploring with your rover a bit similar to the graph analysis stuff when ming ore on a planet in the trilogy. They should have better left out. It's no fun and just annoying.
- Two of the Nexus leaders can be pretty annoying, almost like a politician, and you can't punch them in the face, no matter how much they deserve it. ;)
- Character look generation: Concerning when the game came out it could have been better already. A little detail: It's very imortant that a characters "neutral expression" is actually neutralIy or all animations on top might look off, which is the case for some choices. I hope the upcoming ME4/5 eleveate that part a bit more.
- Facial animations: ... lip synching (at least in English, can't talk about other languages) is very good, but what"s lacking is a nice representation of the characters feeling when they talk according to a) what the say, b) the mood they are in, c) the relationship they have with the person they are talking to. That's my biggest negative point with this game.
- research (reasearch point based + player level dependent), development, crafting with very many options ... they made it way to complicated there
- changing your weapon and armor: possible only in very few places and the menu structure is quite uncomfortable (and it's not explained, so you have to experiment to get it). As this changed in every game, I hope they spend some research time on this before/during the development of ME 4/5 instead of "getting it wrong" once again.
- multiplayer: the usual multiplayer game issues, i.e. if you want to play a mission there are not necessarily the necessary amount of people there. Skills vary, people may leave mid game, difficulty is not easily assessed before a game, how you can change your equipment is quite difficult to access, especially when you are directly before starting a mission. Really bad menu structure. ... Good news: You can enjoy the game in single player mode without touching multiplayer a single time, without missing anything. You get more than enough weapons, armor, research points, and experience without playing a single multiplayer game.

Although there are a few downsides: A great game, that's totally worth playing. Roughly about 140 hours of fun for a single player playthrough (including side quests).
Can't wait to see ME4/5. I should go.

fallingfortruth
fallingfortruth

Despite it not being nearly as beloved as ME, especially ME2 and ME3, I have really enjoyed my time playing it again in 2022. The graphics hold up even better than the remaster, imo.

Sanguin3
Sanguin3

As a huge fan of the Mass Effect trilogy, I really want to like this game. I’ve tried to force myself to play, quit and return many times but after 25 hours, I finally gave up and rushed through the rest of the main story to complete. Here’s my thoughts:

Pros:
+ The weapons and abilities actually feel quite good to handle.
+ They also improved the journal, but why use sub-menu instead of tab?
+ Some of the side mission, such as the Ryder Family Secrets, Peebee, Cora, Liam’s personal quests or Finding the missing Arks, are really well-done, until someone decided to hide them behind tons of unskippable cutscenes and loads of busy work.

Cons:
- The combat is fine. But in an attempt to merge traditional cover-based TPS with fast-paced FPS, Bioware ultimately lost the soul of the series. You can no longer use tactical pause to freely command your squad or customize their loadout. Moreover, the combat pacing is so frantic that most enemy will charge you right away instead of taking cover, therefore renders cover worthless and encourages a more agile playstyle.
This one isn’t what I’m looking for from a studio like Bioware, who has a long history with tactical real-time RPGs.

- I’m tired of seeing the same generic, procedurally-generated open world, which is then filled with plethora of repetitive activities that contribute nothing to the story. Mass Effect 3 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution were both made in 2011, and the two “coincidentally” have some of the best open hubs in gaming history.
If you don’t know how to make a great open-world, please stick to what you do best.

- Bugs and glitches can be fixed, but terrible wrtiting is irremediable. Let’s make a small comparison to another RPG, which is also made in 18 months, Fallout New Vegas. The game came out a buggy mess, but with the combined effort of the passionate modding community, it eventually became a polished masterpiece. Where is Bioware’s equivalence, you ask? The answer is no one has enough strength or resource to fix a game where everthing that makes the series special in the first place, is broken to its core.

The casts, with the exception of Drack and Vetra, are the exclusive members of the juvenile club, who constantly throw unfunny jokes in your face and always try to make the dumbest decisions known by humankind. And don’t make me talk about the main plot because I remember nothing outside of "evil alien race who didn't forget to remind you how evil they are by kidnapping people and stealing their genetic material or something" (basically a boring Reaper rip-off).

The script was written, the story was told, the scene was acted, this is truly the game of all time.

WHERE ARE MY FUCKING QUARIANS, YOU BIOWARE BOSH’TET?
- Drunk Tali, probably

VERDICT: 6/10 for the (miserable) effort to innovate the combat and +1 as an encouragement for the poor programmers, artists, animators and audio engineers who worked their ass off to complete this pathetic piece of crap in a short time frame.

x3V1L4L1F3x
x3V1L4L1F3x

A good game when bored. Too much redundancy. SAM is the worst part of the game. I hit mute every time it speaks or scream shut up! Unrealistic that a deep space exploration ship lacks defensive capabilities, or that a space suit will protect against all forms of hazard, except fire...which leaves Ryder screaming like a little girl if he gets too close to a flame. "Trust me" is thrown around like candy at a birthday party and I can go on and on about the negatives, there are many. Even so, the game is addictive and fun to play in spite of the developers shortsightedness and lack of creativity in writing plots and dialogue.

Looficer
Looficer

Don't look at it as Mass Effect and you got yourself a FANTASTIC Sci-Fi game...

Rimon
Rimon

What a great adventure! I never played Mass Effect before so I was a little lost on the history, ok by a lot, but the game has a codex where you can read about certain topics to give you some context :)

So what kind of game is this? It’s an open world game where you do missions to help make planets a habitable place by making the environment less harsh and taking out the bad guys. The game takes place across several different galaxies where you can visit (only) a handful of planets. The planets are very different and varying in sizes. If you have an itch after watching the movie Interstellar and want to travel in space and visit cool looking planets, then this game can offer just that :)

There are a lot of things to do in this game, side missions can keep you busy for +50 hours for sure. I found myself doing a lot of them because most of them were fun and felt meaningful. But mostly because they were so fleshed out that it never felt like a useless “fetch” quest.

You can scavenge minerals and materials to research & develop space suits and weapons, and you always have 2 crew members fighting along side with you on all missions. In some way, I will miss the characters in the game, after almost 100 h playing, they left an impression :)

Regarding the negative stuff, I did not experience anything that frustrated me. I had a few crashes in the beginning, but once I reduced the overclock on my ram & cpu, the game never crashed again. The random info about temperature and atmosphere was cool (check my uploaded screenshots), but it was disappointing that they did not at least provide a small picture which showed the surface of the planet. Would be cool to see lava flowing or just storms as it is mentioned in the info :,)

Oh one important thing, I highly recommend not to touch the eyes during customization of your characters. The game seems to have difficulty dealing with facial expressions. In fact, probably best not to mess around too much with the face customization, or your character will ruin many cut scenes with unnatural face/eye expressions.

Odins Child
Odins Child

First time Mass Effect player and I'm really enjoying it so far!!! Definitely recommend, great game!!!

[edit] After 118 hours I still love this game, I can't wait to buy and play the next one!!! Felt like I was part of the Tempest family.

ziseiv
ziseiv

was ass to start with, then took out the good parts.

nikolas
nikolas

Not much to be said about Andromeda that hasn't already been said; it is lacking in all departments, except the combat, which feels great to play. The world, the story, the characters etc. fall flat, and had it not been for the Milky Way species being in Andromeda, you'd struggle to find any resemblance to Mass Effect in this game -- hopefully, we will get a worthy successor next cycle

lontongnya
lontongnya

no manual save during priority mission,
lost 1 hours progress,

cannibal vomit
cannibal vomit

I've been trying to like this one for about 20 hours now... Is there going to be some combat to break up this talking simulator at some point?? Also, this sucker is running my (pretty decent) gear way too hot for the return I'm getting visually and gameplay wise. Can barley keep it under 100C. That's it, I'm mad. Gonna take my pants off now.

Uncle Sock
Uncle Sock

God what a dull game. To keep it brief and wipe my hands of this experience as soon as possible, this is essentially the most soulless, generic sci-fi game imaginable, lathered in a thin layer of Mass Effect iconography. The story is bland and forgettable, and the same can be said of essentially all of the characters, which once upon a time were the cornerstone of Mass Effect games. There's no incentive to care about anything that happens or form attachments to anybody when it all feels rolled off a production line, which certainly isn't helped by flat dialogue and a lack of atmosphere throughout. Gameplay is relatively solid, and the one redeeming quality the game has is the level of customisation it offers in terms of playstyle, but otherwise it's just padded out with a load of useless secondary mechanics and systems I never had need of using. Design is no better than the rest of it, levels are repetitive and uninspired, and even with two or three exceptions, the various locations aren't particularly exciting either. Side content is just as uninteresting, and past a certain point I gave up on it entirely; just so I could power through the main story and be done with it. Thankfully at the very least it was a largely bug-free experience, but there are of course lingering issues with the technical side of the game such as its half-baked animation and unresponsive controls. Can't say I'll be rushing to play this again... ever...

3/10

Oh No...Our Table...It's Broken
Oh No...Our Ta…

I Really Loved The Mass Effect Series, I know This Game Gets Some Hate To It In Terms Of Bugs and all That, I Was So Immersed To it when I first Launched it, In my Time Of Playing, I haven't Really Encountered Any Game Breaking Bugs, Only Some Minor Bugs Here And There, They're Probably Not Bugs But Hey, If you don't Mind these Minor "Bugs" and You Loved The Mass Effect Trilogy Then You'll Like This, I'm Not One To Leave a Review on Games, And If I Do, It's going to be Like this one.

- Recommended

P.S You Don't Have To Play The Previous M.E Games To Play This One, They Don't Connect Because You're Playing a Completely Different Character, In A Completely Different Story Line.

Bankoleva
Bankoleva

I replayed the opening sequence and tutorial part of this game almost 20 times because the save function is bugged and broken to all holy hell. seriously I don't have a single save.... ANYWHERE! Not steam cloud, not origin cloud, not my own damn computer. It literally DOES NOT EXIST. I spent at least 6 hours googling and trying several "solutions" or ideas to solve the problem that apparently has been around since launch. I don't know how you can mess up something as basic as a saving function but EA has done it again and impressed me with their incompetance. I'm done. I wanted to play this.... I really did. And the little I saw had my interest... but i'm throwing in the towel and raging quiting. I shouldn't have to spend hours of my life trying to do a coders job just to enjoy a game.

BUYER BEWARE. I REGRET THE LAST 24 HOURS.

lonelyxraven
lonelyxraven

I feel this game gets a bad rep but as someone who has played (re-played) and enjoyed the first three mass effect games, i found this game to be very fun and re-playable. i have found that most of the criticisms about this game stem from nostalgia for the original three and the fact that the main character is not Shepard as fans of mass effect are used to. if you are a fan of the mass effect games i say give this game a try, but keep an open mind as Shepard is no longer a part of the series. i do hope for future games Bioware will allow us to play as alien races, this feature feels long over due.

johnny
johnny

Very beautiful the scenerys of the planets,nice gameplay and graffics and strong storyline. The only thing that i disliked it was some side missions particularly Tasks.

Baeruu
Baeruu

It's a barely thumbs-up game for me. I did have some fun and it wasn't entirely unbearable but tbh, nothing stood out for me to say "yeah that was so cool!" I came in expecting ME-quality writing but it was just dull. I can't count the times when the dialogue just made me cringe and roll my eyes like it was written by some Wattpad fanfic writer. Imagine everyone talks like Joker (from the ME trilogy) but make him snarkier, edgier and has a gigantic stick up their asses. Almost everyone's an asshole or a criminal.

And Ryder? He's a doormat. Either he tries to be funny or dismissive. Squad mate makes a stupid decision by himself that would endanger the entire Initiative? Ryder says "oh that's bad but I won't even scold you even if I'm the leader and you're an asshole and you just yelled at me. Anyway, I'll help." If Ryder's the protag for the next ME game, I seriously hope the writers give him a spine. Oh and jettison Liam into dark space please.

MaxZeta
MaxZeta

Game seems ok, but I can't pass beyond the first cutscene of the first mission. Why? Because of game breaking bug that crashes the game. I looked around and I'm not the only one, it's a "feature" that happened to many people before. I tried the suggested fixes, and there was not avail.

DO NOT BUY THE GAME.

lioneaglegriffin
lioneaglegriffin

Two planets in and it's a pretty good game. However I had to install 5 mods in order to make the game more enjoyable.
Favorite's Overhaul
Shorter Takeoff & Landing
Smooth Planet Approach
Better Seeking Plasma
Camera Conversation

So given that I can give it high marks if the modding community had to pick up the slack. The story is good as expected from a Bioware game but the mechanics and gameplay fell short in a few areas.

SanchoPanzor
SanchoPanzor

Very nice visuals, ok combat, meh story and dialog written by lobotomized monkeys. Wait for sale.

SickHawKz
SickHawKz

Game crashes way too often (every hour or so) and completely ruined the experience for me. Game has been out for years, I was hoping they'd be fixed by now.

Pyrodraco
Pyrodraco

I initially thought this game was going to be much worse than it was due to the flak it was given through various sources online. I'll start by saying the graphics were actually very good for 2017. The facial expressions were indeed horrible and looked like nightmare fuel at times but if you can get past that the game itself truly looks beautiful. The skyboxes and combat effects were very well done, the combo detonations looked awesome and sounded just as good. Some abilities were a bit lackluster but you can't have everything be epic as that's just unreasonable. I did have about 10-15 hard freezes over my 100 hours of gameplay where I had to use the task manager to close the game which was frustrating. The autosave function was good until it wasn’t; There were a few fights where you reached a point where you should have checkpoints and if you died you would have to go back about 10 full minutes of combat which was just tedious.

The combat was very much improved from the original trilogy and you can essentially morph abilities to create a build you specifically like. You can only have 3 active abilities at once which I disliked, I personally preferred when you could have 8 abilities on your quick bar but I understand why it was done this way. It would be a little bit broken if you could cast 8 abilities at once nuking everything in sight. You can make up to 4 *favorite* profiles which you can swap in combat but again each profile only has 3 abilities at once. The enemy AI was good and the bosses felt like real bosses (on insanity difficulty). The friendly AI was among the worst I've ever seen. I saw my companions stand still and do nothing numerous times throughout the game and on occasion get me killed as I would dash into them while they were standing still.

The storyline was decent enough. I enjoyed it and thought it was executed well but there was a bit more to be desired in the primary antagonist. He was a cliché villain who explained his plan a few times which made me not care for him. The enemy faction isn't a complete disappointment although, as there was a mission in particular that showed their atrocities which made me despise them (which is a good sign for the story).

My biggest gripe with this game is the simple fact that your choices do not matter in the slightest. There are so many moments (probably about 100 unironically) where you come across a choice you think might be significant only for NOTHING to happen after you make the choice. I understand this could have been Bioware setting up forward choices in a sequel but there were less than 10 choices that actually had any impact. This is totally unacceptable in my opinion as Mass Effect was always a series where your choices matter and you have positive or negative consequences.

Multiplayer was alright, I didn’t care much for it but it seemed pointlessly grindy and there were *some* microtransactions which don’t really affect you too much, they just unlock other spec/characters.

Overall I give the game an 8/10 and that is generous. It's closer to a 7 but anything that I can enjoy for 100 hours deserves that extra love.

Rakant
Rakant

Just finished the game, just shy of 60 hours. If you can get the game on sale for a significant amount, it's may be worth your time, but even on sale, I had an unpleasant time. It's a little ranty, but the points are still there.

Pros-
*The combat can be fun, there is some healthy diversity in weapons and abilities but not leap and bounds more than the previous games.
*The dialogue can be good at times, but I found it to be 60/40 for the most part.
*Visually the game is alright, but it's nothing outstanding given the year and version of the game.
*The story is alright, if not overly drawn out. I'm not sure if it's because of my experience with games in general, or if the story is a bit weak; but I was able to predict almost every plot point, twist, and even the ending (along with the 'memory' side quest).

Cons-
*Although the combat can be fun, the severe lack of enemy diversity makes it repetitive. Different worlds having the same animals was probably one of the worst smacks in the face I got early on, it felt cheap and lazy. Outside the animals, you can expect to fight 3 factions total; Outlaws, Remnant, and Kett. The Remnant are the only interesting enemies, but the fun factor runs out quickly.
*The dialogue as mentioned before, is a 60/40 for me with the 40 being utterly cringe worthy dialogue that's either nonsense upon hearing it, or terribly voice acted.
*Bugs are still insanely common, map markers don't appear for quests, objectives for some quests legitimately bugged out for me that made it impossible to complete them. (Despite the bug being well known).
*This game released during the open world phase of video games and it shows, lots of busy work with little impact on a larger scale. If at all.
*Choices are often unpleasant for the wrong reasons, I know that taking the 'grey' route is too easy for a lot of people and so the developers like to stay away from those kind of things to make people consider the choices more. However, the game will throw a choice at you sometimes that's just outright dumb to do EITHER of the presented choices. Minor spoiler warning for a side-quest that ultimately does nothing- A perfect example of this is on Kadara (btw, fuck this planet and the requirement to load into the port, then down to the Slums, then needing to run out of the Slums in order to fast travel) where you're forced to choose between two doctors on who gets a addictive medicine; who you have 0 idea is actually good because the other claims they're crooked and shit. So instead of just removing the medicine entirely from play, you HAVE to give it to one of them.
*Animations.. oh god the animations, the run cycle is absolutely one of the worst things I've seen in a 'big' game, and if it just visually looked bad, that's one thing... but you actually control like a street bike trying to take a sharp turn, leaning over at an almost 45 degree angle. The facial animations got barely improved from launch.

Ultimately this game felt as though it was made in a year using unfamiliar tools and a confused development team that was thrown into a fire then told to 'Do the Bioware magic'..... oh wait, that's exactly what happened. Only the magic was more akin to a clown balloon trick.

Yarkotutu
Yarkotutu

Mass Effect: Andromeda could have been a great game. It has fun combat, looks gorgeous, and it thrives on the major missions (such as those in the main story and loyalty missions for your squadmates) where most of the writing keeps you hooked. But with some of the design choices and the plague of bugs, I just can't recommend this game.

First off, this game absolutely did not have to be open world. The 100-ish hour playtime you see? The majority is from the mindless padding introduced in these open world environments, which are pretty monotone and boring to begin with. The side quests get very repetitive very quick and it feels like they're designed to waste your time. Having only a few explorable planets also means having to constantly backtrack between environments you've already visited. Like I said, the game thrives on the linear set-piece main story stuff, just like the Mass Effect trilogy did, but the open world stuff definitely put a sour taste in my mouth.

And second, the bugs and dialogue issues. These frustrated me to no end. Infinite load screens, quest markers that don't disappear, and a ton of other minor things. But the main culprit is how ambient dialogue is handled; there were too many times where some really interesting dialogue just cuts off because I drove or walked two feet, never to be heard again unless I reload a save. Another dialogue issue is one of chronology and pacing; imagine spending time dismantling an enemy base and then hours later hearing "hey, there's a new enemy base" when it's the same one you took down hours ago, or NPCs referencing an event that hasn't happened yet. The game doesn't seem to know how to pace itself, and it really suffers for it.

This game did some cool things, like taking us to a new galaxy and coming up with a pretty interesting story, making combat pretty fun, and doing away with the paragon/renegade system to instead introduce casual/professional/logical/emotional dialogue responses to shape the personality of your character. But at the end of the day, I felt frustrated with how much of my time was wasted with the boring open world design and the frustrating bugs and dialogue issues.

Furious Jo
Furious Jo

Not as good as ME2 or by any means perfect, it is still a good game. I understand the criticism it gets but it doesn't deserve the hate. I hope there will be an Andromeda 2 that builds on the good elements and smooths out the areas that are lacking.
Andromeda is a near miss but I enjoyed most of the time I've invested in it. I would recommend it to all Sci-fi RPG fans.

Appleyard
Appleyard

I recommend this begrudgingly for just three reasons:

-This is a continuation of the Mass Effect universe which you probably shouldn't miss given what's likely to be in the next game.
-The combat system is a clear step-up, i.e. it's mechanically quite a bit more robust.
-For the most part, I *did* have fun playing this.

As for the negatives:

-The story feels like a MAJOR drag at many points. Some parts feel worthwhile but the pacing is completely lost at multiple points in the story.
-The dialogue is bad, like REALLY bad, for 90% of the game. For some reason they seem to be trying super-hard to make it funny, but it falls flat on its face and casts the story as a lame shadow of the trilogy that came before it.
-I don't know how to fully explain this, but there's something about the story that just feels unfinished. The point of no return in previous entries were super-consequential and felt like an awesome climax to the story, but in Andromeda it was kind of a snore fest except for a few good moments where the stakes felt high.
-Faces and facial animations are hilariously janky.
-The protagonist, Ryder, is a total dweeb who can barely be looked at as a main character. People would never have disrespected Shephard the way they disrespect Ryder in dialogue.

Overall, the game is alright, and would probably stand up much better if it weren't in the shadow of a vastly superior trilogy. It was fun but felt totally out of place as a Mass Effect title.

sknecheljr
sknecheljr

It was entertaining but that was about it. I played Mass Effect 1-2-3 in the legendary edition and absolutely loved it. Based on that I was looking forward to playing this one. I was really disappointed. I do not know why but I did finish it.

downbutneverout
downbutneverout

Really liked this Mass Effect over all the others mainly for the open environments after beating the main story line haven't played it much mainly waiting to see how it will play on steam deck

DonRon
DonRon

I have to say, to start, that as a rule, any game that EA touches, I generally will have a low opinion of. I hate what they've done to so many different companies and franchises, that there is no redemption for them as a company.
That being said, this is actually a fairly decent game. There are aspects I'd change, sure, but this is probably a better game than Mass Effect 3, and we all know what that game felt like.
I'm really hopeful for a 5th edition to this series, and if the developers keep on the path they started here, I could see it being a stellar time, just as this and the previous 3 entries have been.
We miss you Bioware, but at least you're not completely dead.

Sam Shepard
Sam Shepard

Mass Effect™: Andromeda Deluxe Edition

Mass Effect ™: Andromeda Deluxe Edition is the next installment in the world of Mass Effect. This time we move to the neighboring galaxy - Andromeda. And before I start, I need to clarify something. I don't normally write RPG reviews after 20 hours, but this is an exception. I hate this game with a burning passion. Every time (at least once a month) I play this game to give it a second chance, and after at least 30 minutes I am just fed up with everything, tired and pissed. I'm not going to torture myself with this thing anymore. Maybe someday, but that time will not come soon.

The Plot

Well, we start the game in Andromeda on the Ark 600 years after the events of the trilogy. The Arks were supposed to be sent to Andromeda somewhere around Mass Effect 2, which is weird because, apart from the fact that no one has mentioned this in other games, generally at that time there would be no good reason to evacuate to another galaxy. But about our main character, he has the role of Pathfinder, that is, someone who explores planets looking for suitable habitats (an interesting concept in itself). The Ark has some problems, we discover a race of evil aliens, etc. What do I think about it? Well, it's awful because it's the laziest plot ever written. It is practically a copy of what we had in the trilogy (we turn on a certain machine that gives us a goal, we fight evil aliens, and we are helped by the artifacts of extinct civilization). Only worse is that nobody here has any motivation. The chief bad guy and his gang of clowns have no bigger plan, they're bad guys because why not. Even the way they operate is nothing new, they just want to mutate everyone into their puppets. Same as in the trilogy, only here, nobody knows why they do it. The main character and his crew are another joke. The main character himself has no motivation, he is confused and unsure of himself all the time, which makes every character he interacts with simply ridicule and question him. The rest of our crew is even worse. They don't bring anything interesting to the story, they do not take anything seriously and they do not respect us. I have no idea if the voice actors didn't give a shit in the same way as the animators, but if they did, it's no wonder because you can see and hear it. As for the plot itself, apart from the fact that it is a copy of better games, we have here plot twists similar to Scooby Doo's. There is even a situation where we come to a certain location where we spend a lot of time in, only to find out at the end that this is a wrong location and we have to go somewhere else and do exactly the same thing. There is no world or character development. I felt no satisfaction whatsoever, only anger, becouse I knew that I wasting my time here. The worst and most boring plot.

Gameplay

Let's start with the character creator. The standard character looks okay. And I know BioWare is not very good at creating character customization, however here we go to a new level where every character I tried to create myself ended up looking like an early stone age caveman. The game also tells us that there is no such thing as specific character classes. The Soldier can use any skills that were locked / available for other classes in the trilogy. It sounds good, but in practice it makes our character a strange hybrid and we just don't known what we are exactly and where our specialization lies. Thank goodness this game has nothing to do with the previous installments so the choice of whether Shepard was male or female is completely irrelevant. But wait, this game was promoted as Better No Man's Sky, where we'll be able to discover planets and their secrets in the world and style of Mass Effect, across the Andromeda galaxy. And how it turned out? Well, it didn't work out, because from the whole galaxy we only have a few planets to see on foot, and these planets are ordinary fields of snow or sand, with a few ruins sticking out of the ground and that's it. Only two planets are interesting. One of these planets is impossible to explore, and the other is just too small to mean anything (and looks exactly like Ilos from Mass Effect 1 except with a purple filter). Side quests are another tragedy. 90% of them are typical "go there, find something for me, then come back for a reward". And I know that sometimes it was like that in the trilogy, but there it happened naturally by scanning and exploring the locations, and here the game tells us that these shitty tasks are amazing, when in fact I was dying of boredom. And what else does Andromeda give us? Well, it gives us ONLY two new races (the main baddies and some over-colored Twi'leks from Star Wars). We have nothing else. As for the races, what happened here, we only see them, Humans, Turians, Salarians, Asari and Krogan. There is no trace of other races from the Milky Way. Damn it knows what happened to the Volus, Drell, Quorians, Elcor and the rest. But no, when I think about it, in one sentence they mention that they were lost in other part of Andromeda or something. Genius writing. Going back to the mechanics taken from No Man's Sky, here we have the scanning mechanic. Of course, there is nothing amazing to be seen here, because 80% of things cannot be scanned. Following this way of thinking, we get to know SAM, the artificial intelligence associated with the main character. This is a huge problem because SAM does pretty much everything on its own throughout the storyline. If we gave him a body like EDI, SAM would kill the main bad guy and save the galaxy in the first few minutes without the help of the crew and even the main character. Which again makes everyone but SAM look like idiots, and we're also talking about the developers here who apparently grew up in the jungle half their lives before joining the dev-team of this abomination. I don't know what they were smoking during the development process. But maybe we'll try to be more positive. Everyone praised the new combat system, how well guns work etc. And yes, I admit that this is the best aspect of the game. Which doesn't mean even that aspect isn't shitty if you think about it. Shooting is very bouncy now, like in Fortnite, we can't control what skills our companies are using, and in general I feel like in some cartoon when shooting, jumping like an orangutan with ADHD, every now and then using abilities.

Technical Matters

The river of shit is starting to flow harder and harder. Graphically it looks nice, but only from a distance. Up close, everything is somehow blurry, without details. The character models look like monkeys, their eyes are dead, without the soul or any emotions, and the animations are so stiff that even Knights of the Old Republic from the early 2000s look so much better. Add to that the awful job of the voice actors and we already have a complete disaster. But the tornado of stupidity does not end here, unfortunately. The game works terrible, some textures do not load, the game works for me at max 40 FPS, it often crashes to the desktop and you just need to open one browser in the background while playing and suddenly the game breaks, so you have to restart. The interface is non-intuitive, made in the form of some strange circles, which makes it difficult to navigate. The save system is also terribly made, since normal game saves are not available during missions, and autosaves either don't work or work so infrequently that they might not be there at all. Hours of gameplay can be lost for no reason.

Summary

Andromeda is a game that had some potential but has failed on every front. If they want to continue this, then please go ahead, maybe the next part will be better. But don't let them mix this game by force with Mass Effect 4, as that would mean a jump 600 years into the future, which would kill 90% of the characters in the trilogy. And I would never forgive them for that.

Dragonklaw
Dragonklaw

can't keep a connection to Origin,

alcremie
alcremie

As a huge fan of the original Mass Effect series I tried sooo hard to give this game a chance, but its incredibly boring :( Maybe It gets better after the first 4 hours, but so far the story is boring, the characters are largely uninteresting, and the second planet I've been to is barren and ugly. Maybe I'll come back to it one day and try again, but for now, I give up.

Risbeak
Risbeak

A little rough around the edges, but it's a fun game. Smooth combat with beautiful environments to explore. Face animations are poor. Lots of fetch side quests, stick to main story + crew loyalty missions if you want to trim the fat. There's lots of areas where there should be background music but there isn't.

Drack is the best Krogan grandpa

Draconerus
Draconerus

This game deserves better than the reputation it has. It is actually a great standalone Mass Effect game. Also has a decent amount of mods. Wish this game did better so we had DLC.

Agent of Avarice
Agent of Avarice

This game is.... Solid, I avoided it because of the release controversy and because I felt that EA and Bioware had made the sort of mistakes that you can't come back from. And I still largely believe that, but, Mass Effect Andromeda is a good game despite it all.
The characters are interesting, if not entirely novel, the setting is new and fresh, and the gameplay is genuinely enjoyable, probably the best in the series. As for the overarching plot? Well, considering the quality of writing that Bionware has put out recently, it's fine. Not great, not bad, not groundbreaking, just okay. Better than ME3 or DAI, worse than DAO or ME1/2.
Bottom line is, if you're a Bioware fan looking for a solid game, or a CRPG fan looking for a decent distraction, MEA can be that, and more. It's definitely worth 7.50 at least.

HunDread
HunDread

Beat the campaign a couple of times. It is its own journey, and I doubt the developers will pick it up in the future, considering the difficulties it had at the start, and the relative letdown towards the end of its story. Looking forward to coming back to the Milky Way in the sequel of the series, not of Andromeda itself.

The story elements that changed made the game its own version of Mass Effect. The Krogan aren't as uniformly violent, but the complete 180 to less rough, guttural voiced characters, and the incredibly disappointing melee cutscene (not fixed to date) completely break the tone of these icons of dino brutality. It makes sense to have inventive Krogan, but scientists, geologists and even gene-altering botanists, outside of pro-shaman reformed Tuchanka? This is madness.
* There weren't any major changes to the Salarians or Turians however. The Angara are cool, just wish their planets could be accessed with your Nomad, and that there would have been more; more of the Angara, more of other alien lifeforms. Not a single leftover of even Primitive life left a gaping hole in the sense of exploration, Kett be damned and all that. The only other independent outpost of Andromeda colonists you meet are on Eos, and only vaguely appear during an optional story quest; they supposedly exist off-map, and you can either threaten or amicably sign a trade deal, with further diplomacy on the horizon. No Turian colony, no Salarian colony. You're supposed to accept them mingling amicably on the Citadel-clone, which is itself relatively small. At least the Citadel had its own intrigues.

Crafting is a bit of a "meh", your Farmville mechanics are too weak and require you to keep your game running in order to benefit from them in any way; and by the time you could use resources, you could invest into at least one piece of fun/useful equipment (and most of it comes from adventuring - like around 80%). Research points are scarce in this sense, considering how far you can level (and each level of equipment needs more).
* The replayability factor from this leaves a sour burnout. Despite all of this, the equipment you find in the world can be enough to beat the game. I don't remember having a difficulty setting, haven't played recently before leaving this review, don't intend to do so in the future either.

Party controls are irrelevant. You're the team in this one, much like you could be in ME 3 (at least in ME 3 you could coordinate throwing nades, shockwaves or mass effect fields). Only relevant to get your party bants and reactions to your apparent speeding in the massive world sections of the game. Rather self-explanatory, as you can't change party character equipment, and only really get to influence their skill output somewhat. Most driving sections are quite enjoyable, in particular towards the end; my first time getting there felt thrilling.

No upgrades for your crew's stealth-escort craft. No weapons either. It should've followed a different design to the Normandy, but the same stolen stealth technology. Or a completely different approach entirely; downsizing is not different if the damn shape is the heckin same. Understandable from a story pov, considering the limitations of resources. What is not understandable is the lack of any firepower or its presentation.

Multiplayer felt like another "meh" to me. I joined in a couple of times, and only met a high level player and some other lost soul like me. The High level player triggered more difficult NPCs, turning the event into a chore. Do not recommend unless you intend to grind with friends, while exploring possible shenanigans.

Recommend for the bants and artwork experience, not so much for anything the likes of predecessors.

Criticool
Criticool

Rubbish and not mass effect. Sure, the story might be good but who knows because the player is too busy pressing Tab to stop combat and use their skills in the least intuitive and most intrusive manner possible. There might be a mass effect story in there and it sure is real pretty but "the game" is not mass effect. It's battlefield and whoever designed the UI probably played mass effect and couldn't figure out the cover system. How can you tell? Because there is no cover system anymore. Sure you're crouching... Just like battlefield.

Maybe I made the mistake of trying to play this after a complete 1-2-3 legendary playthrough but I honestly don't see myself ever playing this past literally the first mission and if I ever do it will be out of spite and done entirely in anger.

EDIT: I only paid 7 dollars for this game.

Imagine
Imagine

I'm glad I played it. Not sure I'll play it again.

Thief_3_Wannabe
Thief_3_Wannabe

Only about 1/3rd through the game but I'm very surprised just how good the game is based off past reviews. Sure, it's no traditional Mass Effect yet it has a lot to offer in form of just how much you can do or choose not to do. I'm someone who likes to finish every side quest/conversation tree before proceeding to the next main quest/chapter. Which can be a bit overwhelming at times as while your doing one quest you can stumble upon a couple others that you can choose to take or not to.

RemChem
RemChem

One of the funnest games I've played since The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.
Lots of mission/quest to do.
4.5 out of 5 and 8.5 out of 10.

chaleur
chaleur

Inability to save the game while on missions is a deal-breaker for me. After playing through the same sequence three times and getting placed back at a point 20 minutes of exploration back from where I was with each failure, it was enough. Can't recommend.

kmpt
kmpt

I didn't play Mass Effect series before, so I don't have any sentiment for it ;) Mass Effect Andromeda is pretty simple and enjoyable action packed aRPG. You will play as human Pathfinder Ryder, his/hers goal is to find new home for humans (and other allied races) in Andromeda Galaxy. You can visit over 100 planets, solve mysteries of ancient Remnant race, befriend new Angaran allies and fight against Kett threat. Story is good but it lacks plot twists and choices could have bigger impact. Main quests are interesting, companion quests are nice but tasks are pretty boring. Gameplay is enjoyable. Shooting is fun, there are enough weapons & armors to keep you entertained. Exploring is satisfying, I like solving remnant puzzles & detective minigames (scanning for leads) especially. Character developement is too simple for my liking. You don't allocate atribute points, you only pick active & passive abilities. I don't like that there are over 100 planets but you can explore ONLY SEVEN worlds... why make so many when >95% is unavailable? The game is pretty repetitive, shooting & exploring is fun but how many enemies can you kill before you get tired of it? I wish you could support colonists (more meaningful side quests & activities), build some structures (you collect so many resources along the way but you only craft weapons, armors and augments), do some espionage activities (and weaken Kett activity in the sector) etc. Another issue is difficulty level... ME Andromeda is too easy! I didn't have any trouble in random encounters and boss fights were pretty easy too but took longer to beat. Even though I've installed few fixes I still encountered bugs and glitches.
Graphics looks very good! Some planets are lovely (Kadara, Havarl!), others are just ok but none of them is ugly ;) Most characters looks nice and sounds good. Unfortunately most weapons sounds lame.
Overall, Mass Effect Andromeda is pretty good and enjoyable aRPG. You should give it a try if you like casual aRPG and you're not afraid of shooting hundreds of enemies ;)

PS. I've played with lots of mods for better experience and I advice you to do the same!

Rating:
Story: 7+/10
Gameplay: 7+/10
Innovation: 6/10
Graphics: 8+/10
Sound: 6+/10
Overall: 7+/10
Hallen
Hallen

I loved the story behind Andromeda, it gave us an insight on a new character that was saving a galaxy like Shepard. The only thing I didn't like was that some questions went unanswered throughout the game, but I guess we will see the answers in the future mass effect game.

ScotwithoneT
ScotwithoneT

Replaying years later having grown up? This is the best ME game. Imperfect, but it's great. The stories and relationships hit hard and feel real.

Chadvader
Chadvader

I like how they tried something new with mass effect Andromeda but i think they didn't execute it very well a lot more open world and freedom then the other games and the combat was very fluid where in the previous games it was quite clunky the story in this mass effect isn't very well written but i think like most mass effect characters they are quite interesting.

if you have played the other games in the series you might like this game or you might not for me the game is a bit buggy but i still played and play it like i said i think they were trying something new but a lot of my choices didnt really matter in this game i think thats what bugged me the most i dont want to spoil it for you but it doesnt really matter who you let out of cryo there isnt a lot of plot points that really matter so it kind of feels like im not achieving anything when i play the game im afraid to say by comparison of the other games like even the tiniest detail could mean that you get more or less war score depending on how you played and the choices you make in this one its like i dont really care if im nice to so and so because it has no long lasting impact on the story there isnt really any hard choices to make is my main beef with it like the other games it really did matter.

however its not fair to compare this game to the others i did still have fun and getting my head around the new systems was a struggle at first but i got there i think they should bring back team mate powers that you control and go back to having 6 powers instead of 3 i felt very limited in what i could do and i just had to hope that my AI companions did the right thing during combat (they didn't by the way) all in all i like a lot of the new stuff in the game as well as some of the expansion of the lore if you want to find out about that stuff on your own instead of watching youtubers then id say buy it or if you just want to support the creators then do so.

For the Developers
I think you guys did a good job with this game as a whole but please take the time to properly iron out the bugs i know deadlines and time constraints and shareholders may not like to help you out with testing the game much maybe even allow beta testing from loyal players and such.
Crafting
i think your crafting system was actually quite cool once i got my head around how to use it and where to go to get certain resources.
Combat
i think your combat has had a massive improvement very fluid much more free to zip around and attack the enemy i like the combat and the ease of taking cover was also a nice touch like i said up top just add more powers to my wheel to use not just the three or let me control my team mates maybe i could control my team mates but i didnt notice where i could control and use their powers.

Space travel and scanning system
these systems are always evolving and they have been getting made to look better and better and easier to do i thank you for the much less time consuming version of the scanning system instead of guessing when you got all the minerals or not this is the year whatever it is and we have advanced alien tech now like sesh.

Choices
i have to say this was probably the most disappointing aspect of it for me the lack of choices and the amount those choices mattered i know it was probably all planned to matter but you guys just ran out of time to make the game or maybe some of your creators got pulled off the job considering the voice acting was like you must choose carefully who you let out of cryo first and then it was just for like on going bonuses like i could let all the super useful merchants out first and then basically have zero like actual defences on those colonies it was like if i was the Kett id just annihilate a mostly trading and science mission which didn't wake up any of its military.

Story
the storyline was a lot better then what i thought it was going to be but again it just kind of changed into well i dont really care about the outcome of my choices because the game is a lot more linear regardless always a pretty good turn out whether you choose to be liked by the people or the people in charge of the project it has very little consequences and makes no difference other then dialogue.

all in all it kind of just feels rushed but your other games a massive master pieces thanks

Jon The Russian
Jon The Russian

I don't care what people say about this game and how is it criticized and compared with original ME Trilogy...
I played Andromeda before ME1-3 and I just finished NG+ insanity playthrough and I haven't played anything that good and involving. I have to specify here, because I just wanted something to be like ME3, but better, with more action, better gunplay and fun. Yeah. It has huge problems if you are comparing whole game with origin and there is a reasons why story feels weak even in general without coming back to...ya know. The way how story progress is also bad, because concept is just repeatable and filled up with a bunch of kinda different side quests that don't really give us options and hard decisions to make.
All best part and greatness of Mass Effect Andromeda is hidden behind its OG+"something fresh" RPG system, crafting and utilization of old concept of how weapons and mods were working. Disposal of abilities, weapons, mods, armors and ways to handle every combat in game got to such high level that makes Mass Effect 3 remastered feels like it's actually old game and, unfortunately, never were good at gun-play.
Another good part especially for low price of the game is that how it looks and it looks so good even for 2022. I swear. Well, don't look on how characters look like, thx to modern "communities".
P.S. Andromeda is unreasonable underrated because original Mass Effect is just brighter star there but we got what we got. The game is still solid sci-fi ARPG that worth of your time despite of cut budgets, deadlines and developers concessions.

NickMcfeast
NickMcfeast

worst mass effect game, but still good nonetheless 7/10

TeeJoe Joestar
TeeJoe Joestar

5 years and the game still has game breaking bugs. It was a bit enjoyable but a game breaking bug that results to soft-locking hours of progress is annoying.

Imperius
Imperius

I did run into a lot of bugs and can see why people were initially unhappy with it but the gameplay is superfun and it didn't deserve the hate it

Drywall Gourmet
Drywall Gourmet

30 hours in i think mass effect andromeda is fine

It is worse than the trilogy in basically every way
It plays worse than the trilogy due to concessions to multiplayer
It looks worse than the trilogy because they replaced the beautiful skyboxes with models
The world is a lot less interesting since they essentially had to throw away 3 games worth of lore
And its a lot more buggy

Im still enjoying my time with it and I intend to finish it, but it doesnt measure up to the trilogy.
One thing i want to point out as a positive is the driving sections they obviously put a lot of work into. I liked those in ME1 and i like them here. It makes the planets feel more like real places. This sadly comes at the cost of a lot fewer linear segments.
Overall it feels like a modern AAA game which means, there is a lot of stuff to like here but it feel somewhat soulless.

definitly play ME1 first if youre considering it. Not because its releveant for the story but because its a much better game

Raz
Raz

As much hate I've heard on this game I expected so much worse. It is actually a really fun and interesting game. Sure there are some improvements that could be made and the original Trilogy is still better but it actually could be a good game and series if continued.

booya
booya

To get most things on 100% you need to perform a lot of Work, lots of stuff is repeating and becomes annoying but the Main Mission Core and Gameplay was very enjoyfully. A bit overwhelming with all the Stuff you can do, Pods, Reasearch and Develop, creating Presets etc. was a bit too much because a lot of this Stuff is not needed. Still prefer the first and second Mass Effect but playing Andromeda was a good Mass Effect Experience and its definitly big.

VikingDeathBattle
VikingDeathBattle

I cant play this game with any suspension of disbelief thanks to the jarring out of place sounding voice overs for many of the characters, which many of them where just designed to be ugly it seems. alot of the alien characters just don't sound right to me, the writing is terrible and not interesting to listen through any conversation. The Mass Effect™ Legendary Edition is miles better and money well spent, buy that instead I suggest. Better voice acting, better characters / casting calls, better stories more interesting conversations.

Crippled Flamingo
Crippled Flamingo

The graphics of the game are good and the story is pretty good but where this game shines is the amazing combat and game play. I absolutely love the open world feel the planets have and being able to travel around all these alien planets is so much fun. The combat of the game is one of the best I've ever played. Everything feels so fluid and makes for a great experience.

Ajax
Ajax

Recently played the mass effect series for the first time and grew to love them! I wasn't around when this game released and was a buggy mess so this is a fresh perspective haha. And I have to be honest, this one is pretty fun too. Does it have the same great story as the main 3 games? No, not even close. It's a pretty big downgrade to be honest. But what it lacks in story, in makes up with in raw gameplay. Combat feels great, the visuals when exploring the world look amazing (Facial animation could use some work) and skill trees are really in-depth and allow for lots of customization. While it does have some misses, it does swing big in other places. And when this game is on sale for $7 like I found it, it's hard not to grab

calsurferpunk
calsurferpunk

A great game that isn't quite as good in some ways as the original series.

Pros
-------
+Nice graphics
+Highly customizable abilities
+Long campaign

Cons
------
-Lots of walking/traveling
-Many quests are repetitive/basic (go here, fetch, return)

Overall the game is a good sequel to the original series, but not as developed with individual characters (harder to get to know each as well). Still great for getting to explore many worlds and flexible weapon/ability selections. It does feel like the game is meant to be continued, so maybe in the future we'll get to see if all of those choices for outcomes really come to mean anything. Can be played without knowledge of the original series, but adds to the experience if you play the other first.

calipaint
calipaint

Cool game. Graphics are amazing. Fun. Different than the other games in the series. This one takes patience... and WeMod.

Gayben Jule
Gayben Jule

worst mass effect title ever released

HIMARS тобі в ASS
HIMARS тобі в ASS

Awful balance & ugly animations.
BUT
Cool story & pretty good open world.
6 from 10 non Shepard capitans

Geforce25
Geforce25

Bad press and years since it's release lead to lowered expectations. I went into the game not expecting an epic. The result was that Andromeda exceeded my expectations rather than disappointed.

The problem with having a game like Mass Effect 2, is how do you follow up? In fact Bioware did remarkably well with Mass Effect 3. Andromeda is neither 2 nor 3 - but those set an incredibly high bar. You're in a new galaxy - but you really can't tell. There are dozens of planets, but all of them are cookie cutter versions of ice, desert, jungle, or moonscape. Most of the missions are tedious, go to planet A, get a clue, go back the Nexus, speak to someone, go back to planet A for the next clue - rinse, repeat.

But then there is the crew, and this is where Andromeda hits a home run. The monotony of the point A to point be nonsense is broken up by some of the best dialogue I've heard. PeeBee, the promiscuous Asari sexually tormenting Jaal, the repressed Angaran is hilarious. This isn't the Normandy and most of the crew really don't like each other. The car rides bring it all out with some stellar acting and clever, very adult writing,

Speaking of adult, much was made of the nudity. It's all hype. There is very little in the game. The combat is good and the AI is better than previous games. The powers mean much less than the prior games, but that's not a bad thing. But as with all things Andromeda, there isn't much variety. Three enemies are all there are in the Andromeda galaxy. The story is good, but borrows heavily from previous themes.

I played as a male, but it makes no difference. As per usual, women are just men with boobs with no different abilities. It's sad that there was no attempt to explore the feminine perspective. but our society is determined to erase women and womanhood.

mizar96
mizar96

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☑ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☑ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☑ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☑ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☑ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☑ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☑ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☑ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☑ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☑ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10

Deeoreeo
Deeoreeo

Gave it a serious chance, but it still let me down.

It doesn't feel like "Mass Effect." Powers, weapons, and classes feel weak. Enemies, even trash mobs, have larger health pools than they should.

It's as if there is a "meta" or "tier list" to the game, where you MUST use certain powers and/or weapons for it to work.

Benji2524
Benji2524

Too many Menus. Its just menus on menus on menus. We got menus for ur menus on your menus. MENUSSS!!!!!!!!!!

Moving Target
Moving Target

The story is kinda flat. But hey--it's still good fun to run, jump, and gun!

Also, Jaal: best angara.

THE-mercenaire
THE-mercenaire

Few minors bugs here and there but overall it's a great Bioware game for cheap. Grreat storyline too :)

Gimpky
Gimpky

The Pros:
1. The pathfinder
2. The battle with jump-jets
3. singularity + push
4. The Pyjak
5. The Drack
6. The Drack with Phobee or Cora

The bad:
1. Why does it have to crash all the time?
2. anti climemtic moments like getting an output, defeating the arch bad guy, etc. Cut scenes should have been more emotional
3. Armored units
4. Jhaal - don't know why but he pisses me off.
5. Liam - Annoying bro-dude- type that I wanted to punch in the face, Also in his loyalty mission.

PS. Kett and Geth? too close. Come on...

Grievous
Grievous

If your looking for a good story following up from the original trilogy then this is not the game for you. Most parts of this game is a direct downgrade from the last games. If you played Mass Effect 1-3 and enjoy your time playing them then id recomend not playing this game and continuing to remember Mass Effect though the past games.

M00NST0NE
M00NST0NE

One of the best games i've played in a long time, never played any of the other Mass Effects but this one came with a lot of content, good story arcs, and really good combat mechanics and progression trees for your skills.

Nathlaaar
Nathlaaar

Worth playing just to visit Havarl - bonus points if you have a HDR display.

StevieThundr
StevieThundr

I enjoyed this game during launch even with all the drama and 5 years later replaying is a breath of fresh air. Even though it's not a true successor to the previous mass effect games it's the same universe and still a fun time. I enjoy the mechanics and story line. I highly recommend even at full price, which is hard for me to say since i have grown a great dislike for EA studios boycotting many due to their poor business ethics....Finger's crossed their board of idiots realize making a good game is worth the time and investment and stop pushing out minimal profit bugged out garbage.

Logan16
Logan16

Love the game. OG game is still better to me. But still love this game.

Steppin' Razor
Steppin' Razor

It's not bad, it's just disappointing. There was a lot I liked and there was so much they could have worked with. But it just has some pretty bad writing. I wanted to finish it just for the novel experience.

LadyLou008
LadyLou008

If you can tolerate the questionable animation, the story is fun and there is a lot of freedom.

Fire Lord Ozai
Fire Lord Ozai

The worst Mass Effect game in the series, but still a good game overall now that it has had a few years to be polished. If it is on sale, give it a try.

Snek
Snek

Good game. Enjoyed it. Shame there is no continuation from this as the ending suggested that the Kett were still very much a threat and out there.

Paulo2Gamer
Paulo2Gamer

It's not amazing, but I still enjoyed playing it

Lord_Timothy
Lord_Timothy

I finally get to play this, and it is not too bad after all of these years....so far.

Bedlessgod
Bedlessgod

Love them game, probably one of the actually good games EA Made

Jstyl_8
Jstyl_8

some small bugs but nothing like when the first reviews came out, action even better than ME3, huge worlds to explore and mako is back! story is not as good as reapers but still it is interesting. worth it if you like ME saga,
p.s. try vanguard style, it is really fun

super2moss
super2moss

35 minutes of talking before I finally landed on a planet with a weapon and could play in any real sense. Then it gave me an achievement 'First Contact' should have been 'Super Patience'. Only 81.1% of players get the 1st achievement, can't say I blame them...

Graphics are fine, I'm using a 12th gen 16 core i9 with a RTX blah blah and things look ok/good(set to ultra). Sound is fine. Controls are responsive. The women are not hot, I'd date zombie chicks over what I have seen so far, but then again zombie chicks just rock.

No first person camera I can find. I might just need to hit random buttons though. That's how I win Mortal Kombat playing with my feet while eating a slice of pizza and drinking a beer.

My teammate seems to be invincible, I've tried twice now to let him die due to him just annoying me. Always stating the obvious, lamesauce. Tried shooting him too, he just stood there like I'm the stupid one.

Peenarse
Peenarse

Pros and Cons:
Pros:
- It's a good idea for a game.
- ....that's it for pros.

Cons:
Going to do this in prose rather than a list, as there's just too much to say.

I made it to 5 hours before I couldn't bear the characters or writing any more. You play as a damp floppy celery stick of a character who's daddy is apparently some big shot - though from what little we see of him he just seems like a reckless mid-life-crisis sort of guy to me.

You and your squad are apparently all greener than that celery stick I mentioned (and with about as much flavour) and approach their first arrival in a distant alien galaxy more like a school trip than a dangerous exploratory expedition. Reference is made to some military background or training, though there's absolutely zero evidence of that in the way anybody conducts themselves or interacts with each other.

You're told you're the first people from the Milky Way to arrive in this galaxy... apart from all the other people who arrived before you (so not actually the first in any sense of the word). Apparently nobody thought it was a good idea to send the "pathfinders" (the people responsible for all primary reconnaissance) out with the first arrivals, but instead to send them in later AFTER the main space station has been built out there. 'Cos, you know, if you're gonna go to a new galaxy its better to send your most essential space station in blind, alone, and first.

They did have the bright idea to do some long range scans though, so they weren't totally blind. And naturally nobody thought to come up with a plan B if those scans turned out to be inaccurate... Or if the Ark ships didn't make the rendezvous... I mean who could have predicted that attempting to reach a new galaxy for the first time ever wouldn't go exactly according to plan?!

I basically gave up after dozens of cringe-worthy, uncomfortable and implausible conversation moments culminated, for me, when a Krogan told me that a Salarian had offended her clan and so her clan left. The Krogan, famous for 2 things:
- 1. Their readiness for violence at the slightest provocation.
- 2. Their hatred for Salarians.
They got upset and left because a Salarian offended them...? Fuck off. Nobody is buying that bollocks.

Shit writing, shit game.

BlazinButtMonkey
BlazinButtMonkey

It's OK... if on Sale

Starts off really good apart from the odd crash. Unfortunately by the half way point the game becomes much slower and more like a generic multiplayer shooter like far cry. Was a real shame but it made me lose interest really fast.

Fresco
Fresco

I really tried to play it, but i just can t, i give up

Komi
Komi

Mass effect: Andromeda is so far one of the best games I have played. Though not the best Mass Effect game, it has some things that made itself unique from the first 3 games aside from its story.

The game's combat system is absolutely a HUGE improvement from the trilogy, with you being able to move freely (like jump around and dash/dodge around), and experiment with different abilities that can most likely match with your play style and give you an edge in different situations especially in harder difficulties.

Some say the story is bad or boring but I believe otherwise. If you take your time talking with characters in the game, get to know your crew, and play the game without hurry, you get to appreciate the relationships you build, and your very character.

I am thankful that the developers of the game have fixed a lot of bugs unlike from the release (from what I have seen on YouTube reviews), there are still some things that need polishing like conversations getting cut out, and again some bugs that still remain.

For multiplayer, eh hahhaha bad servers? IDK i wasn't interested at MP. I tried it once but keep getting disconnected.

So yeah, overall, Mass Effect: Andromeda is great! I love the game, I love the Ryders, I love the crew, I love the scenery, and I love the gameplay. It's a good game!

GayBeard
GayBeard

It doesn't reach the same level of sheer emotion and character complexity the OT reaches but its still a fun game on the ME universe. It also makes a lot of imporvements upon the original, the combat is better, the crew interactions are more fluid and there are finally multiple romance options for Queer gamers. If this game ever gets a sequel or two it could reach the very high bar the OT has set up.

Nekalakininahappenenawiwanatin
Nekalakininaha…

Haha Ryder, You Are Banging Aliens

Atebash
Atebash

Being a big fan of Mass Effect series, I was really looking forward to this game. And once it came out all I could hear was how bad it was and how it is a shame for the Mass Effect universe. It took me FIVE years to finally try it out. To put it simple - all those people were so so wrong. This game is amazing!

This is just like True Detective (HBO's TV series, in case you are not familiar). The first season was viewed as a masterpiece that no other season could not live up to, even though they were all amazing themselves. Mass Effect: Andromeda could have been one of the best games ever... if only it wasn't related to Mass Effect universe. It's a huge game, it's a game with so so many things to do, with great and detailed characters and a good enough story.

I don't want to write too much, I just wanted to tell you that this game is amazing and you should definitely play it!

Llama Thrust
Llama Thrust

Outragouesly, hatefully boring :( It's a shame, because clearly so many people worked so hard to make it, but it's just a checklist. There's nothing here but a finished product.

Also, someone told me their only family member died and the sympathetic response went "Awww~" at them and didn't elaborate. The names and faces of NPCs with three trees of dialogue could have been randomly generated every single game, with a new name and a new face and a different voice, because they all blended together immediately. So many cool concepts and hard work, wasted by being soullessly bland.

WarPigs
WarPigs

I wish the release was as clean as today's version. I believe they stopped making ME games due to Andromeda's backlash. That is their own fault, and hopefully they will learn from this mistake. The game so far is hella fun, and there are alot of things to do. I appreciate that you aren't just walking everywhere, and the jetpacks, and lack of invisible boundaries makes this game unique.

sir
sir

good game, deserves of a thumbs up imo.

Xen
Xen

Damm great game. The story and atmosphere is amezing.

Oh, you want to bamba!
Oh, you want t…

Too much open world emptiness, I.e. pointless open world. Really long, confusing and pointless story. No attachment to characters whatsoever. Not enough combat.

TLDR 3/10

ajgarrison3
ajgarrison3

I'm 45+ hours into the game after playing all the previous Mass Effect releases. Andromeda is visually amazing and very playable. I cant wait to see whats next in the Mass Effect universe.

Great game.

Minor nits: some stability issues. The game has frozen a half dozen times, but loading a previous save always solved the problem. There are some video cutscenes you cant skip during transportation, but that's really part of the game immersion.

Elder Knight
Elder Knight

THE BAD:
1. Not as good as the original trilogy in terms of story but still enjoyable. Still prefer the Geth over the Kett anytime. The Angaran also didn't feel as unique as the other races (Krogan / Male Turian was just so cool).
2. Scanning planets is fun at first but gets tedious, same with mining.
3. Companions were useless (they deal silly damage) unless modded.
4. Equipment UI is not so friendly at comparing weapons, Had to research weapons that actually perform worse than a weapon I found, thus wasting precious and limited Research Points.
5. There's still bug where you can get stuck and had to reload earlier saves (DON'T GO TO THE RAMP NEAR THE NOMAD INSIDE THE TEMPEST).

THE GOOD:
1. CORA
2. Ghost Assault Rifle + Turbocharge = Space Rambo
3. Liam has the best companion quest LOL.
4. NPCs not as broken during release.
5. Moddable.
6. Friendly hardware spec but graphic and gameplay didn't feel outdated (played on high setting with gen 4 i5 and RX 470).

Score: 7.5/10
Great games to get during sale. a good RPG experience.

Gravesmeister
Gravesmeister

This is not Mass Effect 1,2 or 3. If you go in expecting that you'll probably be disappointed. That being said if you go in expecting something different then it's actually a really enjoyable game. I personally think it's a well made game and am really enjoying it.

丂Ҝㄩ尺卩乇
丂Ҝㄩ尺卩乇

I left this game in the middle probably. I recently tried to play it again but it's way too boring to finish. Some people say that it overstayed its welcome and I fully agree.

Wupfmaul
Wupfmaul

I wasn't expecting much of this game to be honest but I have to say that I never was more surprised in a good way by a game. I actually really like this one. It definitely has some flaws: the facial animations aren't good, espacially Sarah's often don't look great which is kind of a shame because they were so much better in ME3. There are some minor bugs, SAM can be a pain in the ass while exploring planets (yeah I know that the temperature is falling, I can see that on screen, you don't have to tell me that every ten seconds) but I have never played a perfect game without flaws.
ME Andromeda has a lot to offer. The story is solid, the dialogues are well written, it has a ton of content (in the beginning it was even a bit too much and kind of overwhelming for me) and the combat mechanics are great. The new Jetpack brings literally a whole new dimension to the game. But there are two things that stand out to me. You really have the feeling to explore a new galaxy, they did a great job on that. You really are a pathfinder who discovers new worlds and tries to find a new home for thousands of people. And I absolutely love the quest design. You have to make tough descisions all the time and the game doesn't take you by the hand with that. There is now paragon or renegade playstyle because it's barely ever clear what is the good or bad thing to do, just like in real life. I absofreakinglutly love that.

The ME trilogy are some of my favourite games of all time and I didn't thing Andromeda would nearly be at that level. I bought it on sale for less than seven Euro and thought, if it's trash it's just a few bucks. But this game has heart and so far (I haven't finished it yet) I have had a lot of fun with it.

the easter bussy
the easter bussy

i? don't? get? the hate for this game? i played OG ME1-3 and i am a big fan but i didn't have a good PC to play Andromeda until now. sure there are bugs time to time especially when exiting APEX missions suddenly you can't click that's hella annoying (hopefully devs can fix that eventually???) but i kinda just rested on them cause almost every game is buggy now. as far as combat gameplay goes and the story-- it's quite gripping and the combat can be challenging except when you can find that one good weapon combo (which i did..) that actually made combat so much easier.

but i am romantic towards space so mostly it's the story that still brings me back to Mass Effect series, and i'll still play whatever franchise they will release eventually

tomh1012
tomh1012

Quite buggy, but very good nonetheless

WandusPrime
WandusPrime

Seems alright so far. Most things are enjoyable. The research and itemization is pretty good. The combat is fun, I love shoving shit around with biotics in mass effect games, and this one is definitely no exception. The ambient dialogue is kind of a mess though. It's constantly cutting itself off when I'm going around the environment. like I trigger a bit of dialogue by picking up a datapad or something, then take 2 steps and it gets cut off when the characters comment on the terrain or situation. It's like you need to completely stop moving if some dialogue starts, just to make sure it wont be cut off. This Ryder guy can never compare to Commander Shepard though...

BlueMonkey
BlueMonkey

Can't save the game, nor does it autosave... when I do I have to restart from the beginning of the opening credits. Not sure what the deal is.

Burping Dog
Burping Dog

Although not as good as the original trilogy, this Mass Effect is definitely worth playing for fans of the original trilogy. The game play, decision making and characters you interact with all brought back the fond memories of the original trilogy. The main playable character is one of the weak points as he seems to be a cross between an immature young adult and a bumbling fool. If you play the game in the hopes of recapturing some of the awesomeness from the original trilogy though, you will not be disappointed. As a final thumbs up for this game ... I have to admit that playing it has made me want to purchase and play the original trilogy again.

androouk
androouk

*Bought on Steam sale. About £8.*

Beta quality, yet 1.10 version number.

Full of noticeable and irritating bugs. Honestly, this game shouldn't have been released even as it stands now, never mind years ago.

Save game limit without warning they've stopped actually saving (save icon still pops up), and no instructions on error or how to fix -- you can only save so many times, before you need to delete old saves (or open the folder and move them to a local backup folder on your computer).

Okay story, just passable (still filled with plot holes). Poor character writing. Poor character development.

SJW cringe. Lots of swearing. Lots of whining.

I don't mind swearing, but excessive and unnatural/inappropriate/unnecessary use makes it obvious that the writing is so bad, they have to plump it up with 'edgy' swearing amongst supposedly professional people leading a desperate group of colonists looking for guidance and leadership, with their lives in the balance.

SJW whining and writing, reminding you of broody teenagers and insufferable PC university students on a gender studies course. 'Rainbow' topics thrown in, in a garish and frankly disgusting way. I'm a gay man, and I found it almost nauseating.

Crappy animations. Ugly characters.

Nice scenery. Weird ship designs. Annoying transitions. Annoying space navigation.

Combat is okay. Driving is okay.

Imperial measurements aplenty -- seems weird, with some metric even being used, too. There's no way imperial measurements would be used so far in the future. I don't recall seeing imperial measurements in the ME Trilogy.

Side quests repetitive. Main quests repetitive. Lots of boring time. Open world attempt not a bonus... more linearity is needed.

I eventually changed the difficulty to easiest, just to get the game over with. I only powered through the game for as long as I did because I didn't have to work.

CONCLUSION: Mildly diverting game, only worth £5-10 due to serious bugs and lack of quality assurance. I can't recommend this game unless you have time to waste on a mediocre story with mindless shooting, annoying sudoku, and a vaguely Mass Effect feel... along with putting up with bugs and crappy animation, and SJW cringe writing along with characters that have no soul and plenty of foul language.

The game definitely deserved a lot of the criticism it got, but I suppose it's not completely *terrible* like some people claimed... but it's not good or great, it's poor bordering on passable.

axl13
axl13

Great game! nice RPG elements, good story, much better than Mass Effect 2.

MAN
MAN

The Game is a good game,but to bad is LGBT... :(

fatherwolf.rakan730
fatherwolf.rakan730

I really love the Mass Effect series and I really enjoy how this one took you to a whole new place with new races and people while everything was going on with the Reapers and Commander Shephard. The multiplayer is decent and the controls are smooth for pc.

Fachen
Fachen

Great game, but cannot stand up to original Mass Effect Trilogy. Exploration is nice, but original ME Trilogy has unique story-driven gameplay, character, dialogues, atmosphere and even humour. I hope ME5 will be much more like it...

Sataniael
Sataniael

Honestly as someone who isn't deeply invested in the Mass Effect franchise but likes space games, the game is solid. Gameplay is fine, characters are hit or miss depending on the players, enemies are ok. Would recommend it.

One slight issue i have with the game, and its an obvious one: It requires Origin to even play it. While that may be my first complaint, its not the only one, as the origin client itself is fine for its use, which is basically launcher for the game, it miffs me to no avail about how it will just refuse to launch the game at random times. I have had situations where i'll wake up, play the game for 2 hours before i have to go to other stuff, close the game, come back an hour later, it will refuse to start up normally and will only work after a reboot of my PC. Then it will work, i'll play a bit, close it, come back, it will work normally that time. Then i'll play a bit more, close it down, come back later, and it wont launch anymore until i reboot the system. Kinda annoying, having to restart your PC just to get a game to start up.

Second gripe: Online functionality doesnt work. Like, at all. Just tells me i dont have access to online functions and i should check a help link that does absolutely nothing to help with the problem. You contact EA support to explain the situation, you tell them you followed the instructions on the link the game gave you with the error, they will say "I understand the situation, try this:" and they send you the same link you told them you followed before. Not being able to access the online mode cuts out a small part of the game, which really shouldnt be happening if you ask me.

I mean, all in all, its a good game, if you dont mind the launch problems, online functionality being broken yet required to play a certain part of the game, and the fact that you have to use the origin launcher at all despite the game being sold on steam. Aside from those problems, its a solid game, but the problems really shouldnt be there, let alone when the problems have been present from day the game was released.

LeftoverPizza
LeftoverPizza

As a die hard Mass Effect fan, this game is a mixed bag, I will be up front about this. If you put Mass Effect in front of me, I will play it. There are things I liked, and things I didn't, and understanding this up front will strongly influence if you finish this game.

What I liked:
- Some of the crew, specifically Drack, PeeBee, SAM, Cora and Kallo
- The Tempest
- The setting; the concept of why they were there in Andromeda was really cool.
- Gameplay, the series has never been better in terms of combat. Flows well, fun, lots of strategy.
- The vehicle and your ability to customize it
- Game is absolutely gorgeous, beautiful graphics
- Game is genuinely funny at times
- Lots of worlds to explore
- Crafting and armor system
- Galaxy map

What I didn't like:
- Liam, good god this character was awful.
- The Kett: Extremely uninspired, boring, uninteresting. I have ZERO interest in this enemy returning. NONE.
- Bioware, where did the narration of codecs go? Bring it back.
- While the setting was great, the overall story was almost nonexistent. I liked some of the sidequests, specifically family secrets.
- Those loyalty missions were largely poor and uninteresting
- The checkpoint system was poor, particularly if you are playing on Insanity.
- I like long games, but this overstayed its welcome by 40 hours at least.
- They fixed a lot of the bugs, but still ran into a ton of issues
- The dialogue camera is poor and pulls away from the discussions. Make it fixed like the original. The dynamic camera did not work well
- The turians and asari look really bad.
- The voice acting at times was absolutely horrible. Not up to bioware quality.
- They did not do enough with the Nexus, so many cool paths they couldve gone down. In the old games you had so many people and quests to do to build the lore, all you got at the nexus was cheap dialogue and poor sidequests. They really missed a big opportunity here.
- The music score did not meet the quality of its predecessors

Overall:
- If you are a Mass Effect fan, play it. Enjoy the combat, but dont get invested in the main story. Its not great. Play through the larger sidequests, skip all the tasks. This game has peaks and valleys in terms of quality, you will notice extremely good sections and cobbled sections. This game was rushed. If you skip this game, you wont miss anything. If you play this game, you just get more lore in the universe which is my justification for playing it. I would confidently give this a 6/10. Less bugs , more stuff to do on the nexus and better loyalty missions couldve made this an 8. Its really unfortunately this came out the way it did. really missed a huge opportunity. I actually originally gave this a 7 but lowered when I saw all my issues listed out. Get it together Bioware!

MoonMan
MoonMan

Cool story, pretty good graphics, and the guns/game-play is not terrible. Story is good enough to come back and finish it. The different character designs are a real highlight. The different worlds you can go to are really well done, some are beautiful others are hellish looking. There is a shit ton of things to do besides the main story. Overall a really good space RPG game. Listening to music in the background greatly enhanced my experience with the game, I listened to Starboy by The Weeknd, Modus Vivendi by 070 Shake, and my favorite album Man on the Moon by Kid Cudi. There is this playlist I found on Spotify called MOON MUSIC, by lunarboy that playlist I feel like fits well with the aesthetic of the game.

MoMo
MoMo

As someone who thoroughly enjoyed the Mass Effect Trilogy (on many different consoles), I was nervous to try out something new for the Mass Effect Series. Something that was similar in some aspects but different in many others. If you think of this game as a the 4th installment of the Mass Effect series then you have already set yourself up for disappointment. I look at this game as a game that's set in the Mass Effect Universe but is an entirely different game.

In Mass Effect Andromeda, you play as Ryder (Scott who's male or Sarah who's female but you can change the name on your Ryder if you decide to so), and you join the Pathfinder team to search for a new home in a new galaxy. Without spoiling too much, you will help Humanity (+other races) to thrive and survive in the Andromeda system.

I LOVE this Mass Effect Trilogy. With Andromeda, there is a different kind of love (and i'm not just talking about the many different options in romance, though I wish you could romance Cora as a female but whatever Bioware, just ----block me like you did in Dragon Age Inquisition with Cassandra and the Female Inquisitor, but I digress). I loved learning, and relearning the different things from Mass Effect Andromeda. Again without spoiling, there are puzzles to solve, places to learn and love, people to help, crew to grow close to, and so much more.

The interrupt system isn't the same as paragon or renegade like in the trilogy. Its a singular interrupt system. For example, when you travel to your (technically) second golden world, you meet an asari. You have an interrupt to push her off you after she tackles you. If you don't do it, it doesn't change much but some interrupts later in game are more game changing. That's all I'm gonna say about that

Minor Spoiler Also in this game you don't drive a M35 Mako. The vehicle of choice is called the Nomad. It handles, in my opinion, worse than the Mako. I liked the Mako and how it was driven in Mass Effect 1.

Mass Effect Andromeda is a whole different game though they sprinkle in things from the previous games and of course include some of the other races from previous games.