Mass Effect Andromeda - I'm not Commander Shepard and this is my favorite sequel

I agree with this. For some reason people seem to think every decision is a battle to be fought. The correct answer is that Jennifer Hale and Mark Meet both did amazing jobs in the original trilogy and you won’t go wrong with either.

Now that doesn’t answer @robc04’s question - so far I’ve only played once, and I did Guyder first time out so I can’t say for sure how Sara turned out. Might be worth trying and letting us know what you think.

Agree. I played as male shep in my first play.

Of course most acting falls under the banner of ‘that’s pretty good’. Something has to be extraordinary in either direction for me to notice. And about the only game to achieve this is Supergiants, which is as much to do with he writing and how the voice acting is used as anything else.

I played Sara and even kept her default look since she came off as a young, spunky “go get 'em” type who was kind of adorable.

I’ve been meaning to replay Andromeda, give it my traditional insanity run. Maybe I’ll give Sara her time in the spotlight and I can memorialize the game that had to die so that Anthem could live.

Default look was/is fine, but not the default haircut.

There are mods if you want her to look sexier.

I weep for video gaming, where people insist only on playing a female character if they can jerk it whilst watching cut scenes.

Yeah, it was gross how many of the mods tart up FemShep and FemRyder.

Never saw the need to do that. I just wasn’t a fan of the default hair style. It was too juvenile looking for me. I think the one I went with was basically the default hair style but if the hair wasn’t in a pony tail.

I did play through twice, once with each Ryder. They were both fine.

In my book there is only one FemShep: the default from ME1, with a scar in her left eyebrow, short hair, plain looking, unlike that pretty boy/male model default ManShep. And not the dolled up version in ME3.

Default Sara Ryder isn’t pretty, which is fine. A woman doesn’t have to be pretty. But she doesn’t look old enough to drink. Default Scott Ryder again has a male model’s face.

I always thought she looked like Stephanie Lazarus, LAPD art detective turned convicted murderer.


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I haven’t played a ton yet, but I did settle my first outpost and take a few missions back on the ship. It’s been a while since I’ve played any prior Mass Effect games, so if I make any comparisons my memory is sure to be fuzzy.

First, I love the premise - going to a new system to explore, meet new beings, visit alien worlds. There is a lot of potential here.So I get unfrozen and start my life as a Pathfinder. This involves meeting some new characters. This feels both familiar and slightly off. I remember some of the characters from prior ME games - Mordin, Tali, Garrus, Ashley, Jack, Miranda, Thane, Joker. None of the new ones are grabbing me like the past ones. Is this because I am remembering the prior ones after establishing the relationships and I’ve just met these new ones from Andromeda? Could be. It just doesn’t feel that way. It feels like they just don’t have the same impact.

I go down to the potential new colony site and start exploring. The world is a little sparse, but over all I like the look of it. It feels alien. Visually the only negative is that the alien structure feels very blah. It kinda felt like I was in the Deep Roads in Dragon Age Origins. Discovering info fleshes out what happened. I think the overall story is interesting. By the time I finish the planet it does seem like story bits are dolled out a bit slowly - but I’m still liking it.

Of course there is combat during my expedition and it feels decent. Using powers and shooting things is fun. I always enjoy lifting someone up in the air so I can then shoot them. The negative is that enemies seem a bit floaty and movement kinda jerky - not natural though. Challenge on normal seems decent - if I get careless I will die. I like needing to care.

Too many missions rely on following icons. Andromeda isn’t the first game to do this. It’s a complaint I have about a lot of games. I need to collect clues on a murder. Well, it’s more just running to the next icon because I somehow know exactly where everything is. It’s busywork and I get bored with busywork. Then the conclusion gets me a bit angry because after I collect the clues I find out that while his shot missed he intended to shot the guy. Cool I thought, that’s a twist. But then my only choice is let him go because he technically didn’t commit the murder or exile him (but it’s implied that I’d be suppressing evidence). I want to convict him of attempted murder! I’d probably still exile him, or maybe imprison him.

So far I’d sum it up this way. Andromeda doesn’t seem like a bad game at all, but it is somewhat underwhelming. It is doing a decent job at a lot of things, but maybe not quite reaching the levels I’d hoped. Maybe some of these characters will grow on me, which is usually Biowares’ strong point.

I recommend moving on when you feel done with a planet and not trying to complete every sidequest. I liked MEA quite a lot, but it is way too drawn out.

A lot of the characters and plotlines would have benefited and grown from a sequel (just like ME1 did), but sadly we won’t get to see that.

I finished two planets and felt like I had seen enough and uninstalled. You could definitely feel the DA3 influence on exploration, which isn’t really a good thing. They tried to capture that Skyrim magic but only showed that they didn’t really understand it.

I thought SAM was pretty annoying after a while. He was all knowing and could solve any problem but only after you scoured the entire planet looking for three random data points.

I didn’t realize how far I actually got. I like looking at the table of contents for a walk though to get an idea of how much progress I made. Main quest-wise I’m just under halfway. There are probably a lot of companion quests and other stuff. I tend to enjoy companion quests, but will probably go light on other side quests.

My initial opinion still stands. There are some good story moments and at times I care about the characters. I’m enjoying this more than Red Dead Redemption 2 for sure - even though I liked the writing and world more in RDR2.

I just took a bit of a side trip and did the companion quest for Drack. He is clearly my favorite companion so far - by a wide margin. It was probably one of my top lines of quests so far too, because I really want to take down the dick human operations guy and am hoping it leads to the Krogan returning.

I’m hoping that the other companion quests lead me to like those characters more.It’s not that I don’t think they are well written, I just don’t like them that much. I do like Kallo and Suvi from my crew and tend to stop and chat with them. I also like some of the people back on the Tempest too.

Saving the Krogan Scouts vs the Salarian Pathfinder was a tough choice. Mostly because the Krogans have been shit upon, and I like Drack - but I felt I had to save the fellow pathfinder who just possibly saved my life.

I decided to push ahead with the main story and finished up the game tonight. I probably had about 70 hours of playtime. No major changes to my opinion. The story kept me playing. Too much busywork - scanning planets, driving the mako through the landscape that starts looking similar, too many side quests of just follow the icon. I enjoyed the game the most when I skipped as much of the fluff as I could and focused on the goodness.

I’m glad I saw the main story through. Most of the characters were pretty good even if none of them would make my top list for Mass Effect as a series.The action was decent if not a bit repetitive.

I wouldn’t say this is a must play, but it was enjoyable. Thank you again @divedivedive!

I’m glad you gave the game a chance and managed to have some fun with it. I’m certainly a bigger fan than most but my main Hope was just that people might take the time to evaluate the game on their own terms. Cool that you took the time to do so.