I'm 3 hours in and enjoying it so far, its Mass effect whats not to like. Mass Effect 2 is probably on of my favorite games(not including 8-bit old skool retro)
So, played it for about 10 hours so far, which has included a restart (wanted to be an infiltrator instead of a vanguard) and am enjoying it - even if I've only just made it to the second on foot mission! Graphics are a mixture of astounding (scenery is incredible) and 'oh dear' (female hair in particular looks like a really badly dyed wig in most cases). I have to say that the new method of traversing the system and galaxy maps is awesome and a hell of a lot better than it was in the original trilogy. I like the fact that you can even leave the map and observe the object you are currently orbiting from the bridge, upper area or cabin. Combat is very different - no more pausing the action to issue orders to squad mates and asses the situation. I'm currently using the infiltrator's cloak a lot to get the damage bonus and to not get killed, which my squad mates do all the time. My fault for playing it on insanity though. Story wise, too early to tell, but okay so far. An associate liked the way I put it: Andromeda is to the original games what the new reboot Star Trek films are to the originals.
23hr opinions. It's basically Me1. There are some things I like more, like the galaxy navigation, and some things I like less Spoiler like the fact that it feels very much the same as Me1, and some of the side missions are infuriatingly blank, hell even the story mission settling Kadara had me running in circles.. Contagion jumps to mind too . I've seen some dodgy gun holding (Pretty sure Krogan don't shoot their own fingers out of their guns), dodgy leaning positions (In that they're not visibly touching what they're leaning on), and some dodgy handshakes, but none of the internet's ragefest animations. I'm also starting to wonder if my taste in dialogue is just bad, compared to the Ragemachine, or whether it's a lot of fuss over nothing.
Dammit. I keep pressing spacebar to bring up the tactical pause and instead end up jumping. REALLY wish they'd kept the tactical pause in.
Very similar after roughly the same amount of time, those endless fetch quests make me want to go on a Krogan Rampage... The bugs, being so blatant would not have been possible for Bioware to miss with even a modicum of testing. I have had conversations I trigger on the tempest, start on one bit of the ship and then randomly teleport to another bit of it. I have also had a clone of Drax Appear and in the conversation, I talked to the clone who was half in the floor and half out, giving a terrible camera angle for the conversation and the second clone twitching in and out of view. It is seriously bad and immersion breaking. Also, who'm ever designed those menu's needs to be held up from a lamp post by their toe nails, beyond awful. The dialog is not as bad as the Rage Machine would have you believe but it is not very consistent and has all the emotional impact of a Turnip. This is a little jarring when compared to ME2 or 3. Tonally, the choices all air in a similar side of positive, giving the feeling that most answers are 4 shades of good. A downgrade from the previous system IMO. On the subject of that characters, they are growing on me, not as immediately likable or interesting as previous games, some overly forced fake diversity but there is some depth there as time goes on. Some of your actions do I have an impact on your relationships with them too, which is a nice touch given the generally overly positive narrative to the conversation choices. Despite all that, there is a fairly compelling game there, and the things that are better are more enjoyable than previous ME games. The open world nature for example is much better to support the feeling of exploration in a huge galaxy. Eos and the Snow planet are massive in terms of explorable area. It's also nice to see the impact of your actions on the environment. I do think the opportunity open world affords has been a little bit wasted though, as unless you do most of the side quests, you will miss a lot of it. Also, the Nomad, very cool and fun to drive!
I'm wondering whether the design decision to remove/retire Paragon/Renegade stems from the overall different tone of the core mission. In ME 1-3 you're basically fighting a war, but MEA is more about discovery, exploration, and settling than it is fighting a war. I mean, the overriding majority of the supporting cast that aren't squad mates are more in tune with civil works than they are military organisation. I'm also wondering if that's why, if it is it's terribly articulated, most of the options are a short distance from positive if they're not overtly positive.
So, here's the thing about MEA: The good I know graphics aren't supposed to be important to make a game what it is, but the environments encountered thus far are just absolutely incredible in scale and beauty. I will also state this (which will probably piss some people off): this game HAS to be played in 4K or better - the reason being the small details that really come out when playing at high resolutions. Several of the character models are exceptional - Peebee and the Krogan (can't remember his name offhand) are exceptionally well crafted. The galaxy map is a wonder to behold. Freedom of movement is nice to have - being able to leap around environments is welcome compared to the limited nature of the original trilogy. The bad 1) Not being allowed to manually save during missions is a BIG feck up and is made more frustrating by... 2) The combat/movement is ABSOLUTELY ATROCIOUS. I feel like I'm fighting the controls more than the enemy the whole FECKING time. Sometime I end up accidentally going into a hazard (because controlling the character is awful) and die because the controls are so bad they won't let me respond quick enough to escape. 3) Mouse aiming is damn laggy. Maybe something my end, but I played through DOOM fine... 4) Having said some characters are incredibly well detailed, others are goddamn awful. The default male character looks mediocre and all female hair looks positively terrible. 5) Not having tactical pause is THE BIGGEST MISTAKE EVER for this game. That alone may have mitigated the combat and mouse problems. 6) Related to the above, the lack of control over your squad is irritating. Not being able to customise them like ALL THE OTHER MASS EFFECT GAMES was a bloody stupid decision. So, I'm going to play and complete it, but I'm aware I'm in for equal joy and frustration ahead. Damn it EA, you should've given this game another year.
Drack, is the Krogan. I like the character, but I've always tended to side with Krogan in the previous games. I also now want a Krogan voiced by Ron Perlman. I think that'd be such a good fit. 44 hours & 79%, I've just been given another eight systems to scan. It's definitely as populated as I've come to expect, and I really don't understand what the complaints about the writing are. It's a pretty solid story so far. Iffy dialogue at times, but eh, that's kinda to be expected. I did see my first wacky animation today, in the background of a loyalty mission Ryder was walking around the corner with like some sort of two legged crab-creature. But it was less than a few seconds. I'm not having issues with the combat, or the mouse control - I tried a controller and -that- was total dogshit. I do have to drop the DPI from ~6k to ~3k to maintain some control when bouncing around punching stuff. Also, tactical pause, I don't recall ever using that in 1-3, is tab in MEA not the same? It seems to pause the action to let you select weapons/consumables. The most frustrating thing I've encountered so far is returning to places. There's a scavenger hideout with an ark escape pod, and I hear the same 'how did they get that?' conversation every time. Just doing a fairly late game main story mission I got the dialogue for needing to activate the towers, when I'd already activated both, crossing back down to the central path ways.
Finished the game with pretty nearly all side missions (i have around 5 missions and some 5-10 tasks remaining), clock is at 68 hours. My biggest complaint ? NPC's holding datapads in dialog. The damn hand with the datapad slowly moving downwards was triggering me. Plus the moments when somehow you are in dialog and there are enemies behind you fighting. I had a dinosaur-like creature slowly creep towards us on Havarl, while in dialogue. It was kinda funny when the camera switched to Ryder and the dino was photobombing us .
See, I like that. I usually feel like the universe has paused for the sake of dialogue (Like it does in Assassins Creed when you kill plot targets) and that bugs me. The idea that fighting and stuff is still happening makes it feel more.. Real? Although it is frustrating when you come out of a conversation and have to launch straight into murdering stuff.
so i have the first 2 planets at 100% viability and moved onto the jungle planet..... getting pretty board of the same thing over and over again, does it change up at all?
thats why most games are boring. Only the best keep you pinned and keep surprising you. I found the past mass effect's had more verity to the game. This is the same thing over and over again just in a different setting.
Well they said it wasn't coming for years, but we've entered the 16GB RAM era for sure. In fact it uses all of that too, so I've mixed my old ram with my new one for 24GB. Yes. After doing the first vault I was thinking "ugh it's gonna make me do that all over again a bunch of times, isn't it?" but that wasn't the case. Though the game is hindered by a major lack of imagination. It's cliché rehash city, from the planets (desert, jungle, ice, one with magical floaty rocks) to the species (spiritual blue/purple guys with head tentacles, Geth mark II, Collectors mark II), so in a sense it's boring because of that. Don't bother with things like scanning plants, obsessively mining or finding the loot boxes. Just stick to the main story and the side missions which actually have thought into them. Don't go out of your way for clearly tacked on 'scan this for XP' crap.
Only just started on ME3 a few days ago - one of those games I just never got around to - hoping to get back into the ME universe before buying Andromeda. I'm starting to think I'll leave it once I've finished ME3.
93% and 51 hours later, I really enjoyed the entire experience. Apart from scanning all the planets. But that's because of the forced loading filler cutscreens. I'm tempted to go looking for the files and see what happens removing them. I think I'll try and get up to 100%, and then wait for the DLC to appear before doing a new game on Insanity. Already itching to see what happens next, though, and hoping the negative press doesn't mean it gets cast aside in favour of something else. I'd recommend the game tbh, I saw a few glitches, I had a few crashes, and there were a couple of cringy dialogue sessions, but show me a game that doesn't.
Now that I've levelled up a bit and combat is easier, I'm starting to get into the swing of things and am quite enjoying it - 'quite' being the operative word.
New patch has changed relatively major parts of the game with things that should've been in from the start. The galaxy map travelling scenes are now skippable, the characters have new eyes (Addison the most notorious example), and there've been unexplained changes to the romance paths (in my case it's just meant a couple of emails so far) and the dialogue of the transgender character to make them more realistic and less forced (though the romance has been more natural in this game anyway). Don't know if it's me but after the patch and the new strongly suggested graphics driver update released yesterday, the graphics seem shinier.
I'm tempted to fire MEA up again and see what the new patch has done for the game. But I'm equally tempted to wait for all DLC to arrive before I do another run through.
