I’ve always wanted to get back into Andromeda. It wasn’t the right thing at the time for me. Someday. I’m getting close to pulling the trigger on ME LE so maybe that will be the impetus.
I really enjoyed ME:A. I think the biggest issue I had with it was on some of side missions, the areas where you found whatever you needed to find were in random locations. And it was damn tough to find them - especially when where you needed to go moved from playthrough to playthrough. Most of the side missions weren’t like that, but if memory serves, there was like 1 side mission a planet that was set up that way, and it was annoying.
I’ll definitely be playing it again after I get through the LE.
Only thing i remember (atm) not liking about Andromeda was the respawning of enemies on every single outpost you found on every planet, even if you’d been there 5 minutes earlier
I’m having Far Cry 2 flashbacks now.
Fozzle
2891
Very true. It is even more frustrating when you kill some big piece of wildlife, and turn around and he’s back a minute later. I’ve run into this a couple of times. But this is how I justify in my head using fast travel more often to avoid this kind of shenanigans. Usually I avoid fast travel and enjoy the scenery. This game has a LOT of content however, so… that coupled with very fast respawns equals… I give myself a pass on fast travel.
Fozzle
2892
So, I finished it. That’s about 140 hours of Mass effect in the last few weeks. I think I’m all set for a little while. Andromeda is actually such a good game during the game bits. The combat, the RPG aspects, and the settings are all pretty great. After 45 hours my biggest complaint isn’t the respawns, it’s the hours lost 30 seconds at a time to needless cutscenes and planetary zoom ins/outs. They just take away from the entire experience. The game would be better with much shorter transitions or… no transitions? Not sure but I definitely don’t need to see myself to the dramatic take off from the main hub every… damn… time…
Huh, forgot about that. You can skip them in ME2 at least, but I kind of enjoy them =)
Bateau
2894
Wow, this game looks much better than I remember. I also installed a few mods to spice things up a bit, but had to sadly revert to the grounded version of the hypermobility mod because the jetpack boost was too strong. My current mod list:
Bateau
2895
I am really surprised how much I’m enjoying this again! I think one of the biggest contributing factors was that I turned off convo subtitles (I really should start doing this in all the RPGs, otherwise I always read ahead). And I realized they are actually really well written, flow wise. And the various character personalities are pretty intriguing and even realistic, way different than I remember them to be. For example back in the day I though PB came across as immature but I’m seeing her in a completely different light now. Gameplay is solid as ever, and popping heads with a Widow never gets old. Even Nomad is fun with some tweaks.
Starting to think that Andromeda was a me problem, not a game problem.
Fozzle
2896
I agree. Or maybe it is a prime example of herd mentality warping reality a bit. I admit I may have been swayed by the flood of animation memes and the anti-Ryder hate. I enjoyed the storyline, and found myself swapping characters into group a lot more often then the original trilogy. There was a lot to like in the story. I actually kind of wish they would go back to it and explain the missing Ark, the origin of the scourge, what happened to the original teraformers, etc. There was a lot of place the story could have turned to.
One interesting facet of this galaxy, and one I wonder if they were going to explain is: In the Milky Way there are a ton of sentient races. But, here there are the Angarans, The terraformers, their opposition and the Khet, and 2 of those at least are manufactured. Where’s all the life? I always wonder every about that time I play through it. Was this an intentional plotline to be explored, or just ran out of time/money and chopped a bunch of crap?
There are a number of lore reasons that could explain why there aren’t more races in the Andromeda galaxy, which I probably couldn’t go into for spoiler purposes. But the real reason is probably the fact that they basically rebooted the game fairly late in the process and didn’t dedicate a ton of resources to its development. Same reason why all the asari have the same face.
Finally wrapped up my play through Andromeda, about 72 hours or so all told. That was a solidly enjoyable game. Sure, it had some oddities but the story and companions seemed well thought-out and the gameplay (on the very easy mode I was playing) didn’t hamper progression. I was in it for the story, and it didn’t disappoint.
My only main complaint is that, later on as I was finishing up all the little missions before doing what I thought was the final main story mission (turned out I was a step or two away there), it felt like I was zipping about the cluster map madly, doing one thing on this planet in this system, something in another, then another, etc, etc. Got a bit tiring being spread out so much and having to watch the system-to-system movie each time.
Other than that, it really is a worthwhile game to play for anyone that likes the series. I think I paid $5 for it a couple years back, but it can be had for free with subscriptions now.
I find it amusing that people are still writing articles twisting themselves in knots explaining that maybe Andromeda was kinda not quite as bad as everyone said it was, maybe I dunno lol.
Playing Starlink right now. It’s not a million miles from Andromeda. For anyone yearning :)
I actually bought that recently myself, going to fire it up soon I hope.
I’m still playing this, I worked out the Nomad problems mentioned above.
I must admit though, I’ve started auto leveling up the sidekicks. Too much micromanagement for more than Ryder.
The only thing I can’t figure out is if I would be getting different responses if I brought along different sidekicks.
For example, I’m using Jaal on Voeld because it seems to make sense. But is that required?
Pretty sure it’s not required. If I recall correctly, the only time you have to take along a specific team member is on their respective loyalty missions. But there are times that I agree it makes sense to take certain team members along, like taking Jaal to the angara outposts, and not taking Liam anywhere.
Scuzz
2904
Like Dragon Age games or even previous Mass Effect games half the fun is learning about the different sidekicks. They each have stories to tell. Granted some are not very interesting but you will never know that if you don’t give them the chance.
I must’ve jinx myself by discussing this game again.
All of a sudden I can’t connect. Therefore, I can’t see my mission results.
Anyone else seen this for the Origin site?
The Origin client fires up for me. Don’t know about actually playing anything.
