ME:A Review: NO SPOILERS, followed by spoiler entries
Apr 21, 2017 20:56:04 GMT
kfreon and kinkojiro like this
Post by deager on Apr 21, 2017 20:56:04 GMT
Since comments can very quickly contain spoilers, I'll start off with absolutely no spoilers on this entry. The next entry is spoilers and just expect the comments to be spoiler filled as well.
First off, let's not pretend I'm not biased or someone who actually reviews games for a living. Now that the standards are nice and low, I'll give you my take on Mass Effect Andromeda.
Review: No Story Spoilers
I've read plenty of reviews from other places and I do understand a common thread which I see. That of people vascilating between enjoying the game and not enjoying the game. To avoid spoilers I cannot get into it right now, but if you've played Dragon Age: Inquisition and hung out in Hinterlands for "too long," you'll know what I mean. Before you think I'm here to bash ME:A, I can assure you that staying up waaaay past when I should go to bed, knowing that the next day was busy, just so that I could finish the game, should tell you something about the enjoyment that the game can bring. I'm under no deadlines to review the game; I just wanted to finish it so badly because I wanted to see how exactly Bioware was going to finish it.
Along the way combat was quite fun. Tactics took a bit of a backseat and I would probably have been emphatically yelling at my squad if I had been playing on insanity. Normal mode pretty much is a cake-walk which tended to result in dying only because I simply fell off of a ledge or would lose track of which group of enemies poured into the area. But it was serious fun with the ability to go down any and all combat, tech, and biotic trees. Given the 93% completion I got and level 61, I had a lot of choices for how to setup my character by the end. However, I didn't switch the profiles much, as the old comment from the Silversun Strip about nothing that fire and electricity can't take down is still true in Andromeda.
The game is beautiful. The Frostbite engine can make incredible visuals and it has again in ME:A. Yes, the lipsync stuff and character animations, eyes, and hair are problematic, but already patch 1.05 got the eyes looking good, the most egregious lipsyncs have been polished, and the hair and more animations will be handled in future patches. Comparing vanilla ME:A to vanilla ME1 makes it very obvious how far graphics and game engines have come in 10 years.
The worlds and hubs are enjoyable enough. However, I personally would not recommend trying to be a completionist playing this game. You can, if that's your thing, but everything can get seriously bogged down. Even with Ubisoft glasses on, ME:A can still drag on for too long.
The story is pretty difficult to talk about at all if I'm truly going to avoid spoilers. It's Bioware. Think about most of the stories of their titles. Particularly after the first game of a new IP. You can pretty much expect that in ME:A, which is to say, it's not exactly engaging.
Characters on the other hand have some promise. Some I even liked right up front during my time in the game. The voice acting talent did not disappoint me and was, overall, quite good. Playing through the game again, and with the inevitible story DLC, should make the characters even more enjoyable. People will have favorites, ones they hate, and the worst of all, be completely indifferent to others. At this time, most of them can't hold a candle to those from the original trilogy by either being too similar or just not engaging enough. But again, it's about the amount of time spent with them versus the amount of time spent with the characters from the original trilogy. Time will tell how well these new characters resonate with players. Thinking back on it now I already am having some fond memories of the new cast.
The overall feel of ME:A is still not exactly Mass Effect. While the original trilogy did have some serious problems with story, overall the game was critically acclaimed. In the case of ME:A, the metacritic scores do not seem unfair to me. They are pretty accurate I'm afraid. I wanted this game to be a 90 at least, but it just isn't. The way that in many conversations the camera just slides off to the right shoulder of the main protaganist, to how music isn't used as much as in the original trilogy, to the uneven writing for both characters and missions, and with a lot of the same rythms to the plot that are seen in other Bioware games, never mind the Frostbite woes with the much maligned character lipsyncs, this game isn't in the same league as the original trilogy.
ME:A is not the type of game which has me wanting to dive back in right away. If you haven't purchased it yet and are still debating, I would recommend waiting until all patches have been released, which is theoretically going to be sometime in late spring to early summer. You might even consider waiting for a GOTY edition as I suspect this game might not have the same marketability as ME3, which, as far as I know, continues to have everything separate and fairly expensive.
Please do understand that it is a good game to me, it's just not great. Your mileage will certainly vary from mine. I did enjoy it and not having a helpless Mass Effect addiction to it has some serious upside. And I'll be going back to ME:A at some point. But my next stop in the Mass Effect universe will most likely be starting up trilogy run number 22.
First off, let's not pretend I'm not biased or someone who actually reviews games for a living. Now that the standards are nice and low, I'll give you my take on Mass Effect Andromeda.
Review: No Story Spoilers
I've read plenty of reviews from other places and I do understand a common thread which I see. That of people vascilating between enjoying the game and not enjoying the game. To avoid spoilers I cannot get into it right now, but if you've played Dragon Age: Inquisition and hung out in Hinterlands for "too long," you'll know what I mean. Before you think I'm here to bash ME:A, I can assure you that staying up waaaay past when I should go to bed, knowing that the next day was busy, just so that I could finish the game, should tell you something about the enjoyment that the game can bring. I'm under no deadlines to review the game; I just wanted to finish it so badly because I wanted to see how exactly Bioware was going to finish it.
Along the way combat was quite fun. Tactics took a bit of a backseat and I would probably have been emphatically yelling at my squad if I had been playing on insanity. Normal mode pretty much is a cake-walk which tended to result in dying only because I simply fell off of a ledge or would lose track of which group of enemies poured into the area. But it was serious fun with the ability to go down any and all combat, tech, and biotic trees. Given the 93% completion I got and level 61, I had a lot of choices for how to setup my character by the end. However, I didn't switch the profiles much, as the old comment from the Silversun Strip about nothing that fire and electricity can't take down is still true in Andromeda.
The game is beautiful. The Frostbite engine can make incredible visuals and it has again in ME:A. Yes, the lipsync stuff and character animations, eyes, and hair are problematic, but already patch 1.05 got the eyes looking good, the most egregious lipsyncs have been polished, and the hair and more animations will be handled in future patches. Comparing vanilla ME:A to vanilla ME1 makes it very obvious how far graphics and game engines have come in 10 years.
The worlds and hubs are enjoyable enough. However, I personally would not recommend trying to be a completionist playing this game. You can, if that's your thing, but everything can get seriously bogged down. Even with Ubisoft glasses on, ME:A can still drag on for too long.
The story is pretty difficult to talk about at all if I'm truly going to avoid spoilers. It's Bioware. Think about most of the stories of their titles. Particularly after the first game of a new IP. You can pretty much expect that in ME:A, which is to say, it's not exactly engaging.
Characters on the other hand have some promise. Some I even liked right up front during my time in the game. The voice acting talent did not disappoint me and was, overall, quite good. Playing through the game again, and with the inevitible story DLC, should make the characters even more enjoyable. People will have favorites, ones they hate, and the worst of all, be completely indifferent to others. At this time, most of them can't hold a candle to those from the original trilogy by either being too similar or just not engaging enough. But again, it's about the amount of time spent with them versus the amount of time spent with the characters from the original trilogy. Time will tell how well these new characters resonate with players. Thinking back on it now I already am having some fond memories of the new cast.
The overall feel of ME:A is still not exactly Mass Effect. While the original trilogy did have some serious problems with story, overall the game was critically acclaimed. In the case of ME:A, the metacritic scores do not seem unfair to me. They are pretty accurate I'm afraid. I wanted this game to be a 90 at least, but it just isn't. The way that in many conversations the camera just slides off to the right shoulder of the main protaganist, to how music isn't used as much as in the original trilogy, to the uneven writing for both characters and missions, and with a lot of the same rythms to the plot that are seen in other Bioware games, never mind the Frostbite woes with the much maligned character lipsyncs, this game isn't in the same league as the original trilogy.
ME:A is not the type of game which has me wanting to dive back in right away. If you haven't purchased it yet and are still debating, I would recommend waiting until all patches have been released, which is theoretically going to be sometime in late spring to early summer. You might even consider waiting for a GOTY edition as I suspect this game might not have the same marketability as ME3, which, as far as I know, continues to have everything separate and fairly expensive.
Please do understand that it is a good game to me, it's just not great. Your mileage will certainly vary from mine. I did enjoy it and not having a helpless Mass Effect addiction to it has some serious upside. And I'll be going back to ME:A at some point. But my next stop in the Mass Effect universe will most likely be starting up trilogy run number 22.