I have stopped comparing this game to the old Mass Effect games, because the original ones where so brilliant and raised the bar so much that is hard to compare.
On his own merits MEA is a nice game. If anything, I would say that the addition of a real open world is a bad addition to the KOTOR formula and distract from what make a KOTOR style game cool.
MEA made me hate DA:Inquisition a bit. Where I would say DAI was not a bad game, either… it owned his own style better than MEA own this style. Sometimes MEA (using SAM voice) ask me to do things that I really can’t care less about. “Check this ruins” say SAM, where the ruins have absolutelly no mystery, from a vantage position I could see that theres 4 trash mobs and a relic chest that will probably hold some vendor trash and vendor mats. I am not going to make a stop for that, SAM.
So you didn’t like the Mako bits in Mass Effect 1?
I personally felt the Mako bits had potential, but they just didn’t have enough for you to actually explore on those planets. I feel like Andromeda addresses that quite nicely. Now you can explore and there’s lots of exploration for the sake of resources and mini-subquests. And it’s completely ignorable if you just want to go to the next objective, which is nice too.
I would look at a awesome skybox of some jungle planet, and I would want to explore what I see in the skybox. The skybox worked.
If I look at a map of a jungle planet, and is kind of … ugly? a ugly mess?.. and I get to explore it and … is kind of bland?. The jungle did not worked for me.
I vote yes to the idea of seeing something awesome and getting to explore it, but with the first part where the explorable area is interesting and has interesting places and stuff to do.
If I remember correctly (was a million years ago) the mako planets where similar, driving was kind of fun.
The Nomad is pretty cool. It’s a helluva lot more useful than the horse in DAI. You can get pretty much everywhere with it, and part of the challenge is uncovering new parts of the map.
Plus, it’s crazy on the low-grav lunar environment.
Wasted way too much time trying to climb the procedurally generated landscape to chase the 3 bits of interesting on the grid. At least MEA has some degree of human design it its explorable planet-spaces, despite its fondness for the occasional unclimbable hill.
But I still think if they had called this The Andromeda Initiative and allowed it to be its own thing, perceptions would be different. Not that it excuses the baffling arbitrary oddities like the “memory triggers” strewn about the landscape. Are we playing an RPG or collecting all the CDs in Saints Row? I know gating is going to happen, but how about not making it as obvious as Wile E. Coyote’s “Free Birdseed” display.
Wish you could come over and play on my PC - I know the difference between a tap and a hold. Doesn’t work. Same issue with putting weapons away - holding down the whatever they call the button w/ two overlapping squares in it sometimes puts a weapon away, sometimes brings up the weapon/power menu.
Mass Effect 1 felt like a complete package to me, a coherent whole, with a beginning, middle, and an end. I knew that they had set things up for a sequel, but it was all very satisfying and slightly messy in feel (lots of loot, lots of guns, etc.), which made it seem fairly organic. I also have the impression, looking back, that it was a lot more open than the sequels as far as ability to move around was concerned – more open spaces, if you like.
Andromeda feels to me like it iterates on this first instalment, breaking open the world even more: there are still plenty of corridors to move through, but the planet exploration stuff is gloriously open and free. I also feel, in the way that the antagonists are set up and the relationships between different factions are sketched, that it’s a lot closer to Mass Effect 1 in tone (if nothing else, we have a very specific enemy again instead of a more existential threat to all organic life). And like I said before, there’s this certain can-do attitude on the part of Ryder that reminded me a lot about the generally more optimistic tone Shephard had in Mass Effect 1.
Mass Effect 2 felt very much like a place holder title to me. It was polished, but the emphasis on the loyalty missions meant that it felt a lot more episodic, less focused. I also felt that the collectors weren’t very interesting to fight against, and by the end of the game I didn’t feel like I had really accomplished anything except get a few characters killed that I’d grown attached to. It just didn’t feel as satisfying as the first game.
Mass Effect 3 was a lot better than its immediate predecessor, since the plot was clearly moving towards some kind of resolution to the overall “trilogy”, and BioWare certainly tried their best to make it all feel very epic and important. But the heavy portentousness of the whole thing meant that some of the joy of the original game had been lost. There were plenty of moments that stand out to me – the reapers tearing up entire planets was great, for example – but it perhaps was a bit too epic, with smaller character moments mostly limited to side missions and DLC. I felt that the original Mass Effect struck a better balance between the character stuff on the one hand, and the big epic story stuff on the other, if you get what I mean.
And again, I have the impression – 11 hours in, on my second planet – that Andromeda is just a lot closer to overall structure and “feel” to the original Mass Effect than it is to Mass Effect 2 or 3. More optimistic, more focused in its story-telling, more room for exploration and experimentation. Mass Effect 2 and 3 kept rushing you towards the end, I feel, whereas the original Mass Effect and Andromeda allow you to move along at your own pace, and invites you to stick around and explore more. That’s my impression, at least, best as I can articulate it.
The overlapping squares thing is the select button. It sounds like your controller might be wonky. Perhaps recalibrate it? Otherwise, I don’t know; tapping/holding the button works as expected for me.
@Murbella how are you liking the Insanity? Is it worth it? I’ve played all previous ME games on Insanity and actually found them a bit annoying in the beginning but since this one is so long that I probably won’t replay it (at least not any time soon) so I’m thinking about just powering through on the hardest mode available.
Apologies if I missed this elsewhere, but is there New Game + in Andromeda? Could you take a leveled up Ryder back through an insanity run?
Edit to add: in digging your posts, @JoshoB, I’m on your wavelength. I’d only add that Andromeda is open in a way that only the first ME tried to be. The second and third games were great, but very critical path.
GreenMan has it with 27% discount now, you can also get an additional 5% if you vote on their ‘celebrity game appearance’ thing - comes out at around 41$
I was weak and bought it, and installed it. My face was so tired that I couldn’t resist. I haven’t played it yet because I’m balls deep in Horizon Zero Dawn.
I’ve made it to the first planet in single player. So far, so good. I like the story reason for the profile system. It seems okay, but does have some icon hunt-yness. The extreme internet outrage seems to be the normal type of internet outrage.
Multiplayer is still good, surely an improvement on the excellent ME3 MP.
