Grifman
1785
This I agree with. In ME1 you had a number of missions related to Cereberus that included mini-bases, hijacked freighters, space stations, stuff like that. There were also some of these in ME2. This seems to be entirely absent from MEA. I would have loved to have boarded some of those statellites you find, or have to board a ship to seize some of those orbital supply caches you find. Why not an orbital Kett spy facility around a non- colonizable world. The worlds they have are great, IMO, but I would have more living active stuff scattered around the cluster.
Timex
1786
Seems unlikely that Turians would kiss, given their weird bone skull faces.
Agreed, I think this kind of thing is what made me lose interest in the game.
At first, it’s cool, because the is this sense of exploration. But eventually you realize that you are never going to find anything interesting, ever. And that just kills the fun for me.
Similar to what’s actually on the planets… The first few times you stumble upon kett camps or remnant stuff in the wilderness, it’s neat… Then after the tenth one, it becomes obvious that there is never going to be anything interesting at them… maybe some what to find 5 parts of some code or crap.
It just gets really repetitive and tedious with no sense of reward.
This, so this.
The massive reuse of content in Adromeda really makes the game feel repetitive after you’ve put some time in to it and for me at least, completely killed any sense of exploration. After a few planets in I knew i wasn’t going to find anything majorly new and excited that i hadn’t already seen before.
Words cannot express how disappointing it was when i realized there is a kett base on pretty much every planet that is basically exactly the same. You would think they would have learned their lesson after dragon age 2, but nope, obviously not.
Grifman
1788
There are a few exceptions to this. Once I found some “stuff” at a random base (the only way to get this particular small quest) that required me to scan some other “stuff”. When I got the end of the scans, I figured ok, this was over, took out some bad guys. But then a dropship came down with two very big surprises (I went “Whoa, didn’t expect that!” at the time) that turned what seemed a simple run of the mill scan chain of missions into something more. That happened at least once per planet, where a simple mission, either assigned or found in the field, turned into a bit more that was interesting. But there weren’t enough of these.
The big thing about insanity is that enemies have WAY more health and do WAY more damage.
Companions are a lot more tanky than the player, but this is countered by ME:A having the worst companion AI of any bioware game. They will just run to their death, abandoning cover in the face of heavy incoming fire or standing on top of grenades/telegraphed attacks.
Their offense/utility is also minimal because most are too dumb to do anything right. The one exception is dreck. The AI knows how to spam self buffs and his range is short enough that the AI uses him well.
Longer range companions, especially vetra, will frequently shoot in to obstacles which block all of their shots. Cora will use Nova WELL out of range of enemies or use shield boost when everyone is at or nearly at max shields.
If ever there was a bioware game where the companion AI was stupid enough to force the player to micromanage every ability use, it is mass effect andromeda.
Grifman
1790
Well, duh, yeah, of course :) My point is when people say their companions are dying all the time, they need to specify what difficulty level they are playing at :)
Started a new game and I’m no longer getting crash 'o rama CTDs like I was. Not fun replaying that intro section, but I’m enjoying the exploration and character building (going full vanguard: charge > nova > shotgun blast to the face > oh, you’re still alive > charge again). People weren’t kidding about the writing though. Did Bioware fire all their good writers, they working on a different project, or what?
rei
1792
I came across use of “motherfucker” and “clusterfuck” in Ryder’s lines. Lovely.
I came across a flying creature on Voeld. I’m not sure I can kill it. Is it beyond my capabilities, I wonder? I guess I’m too close to it. It seems to be bathing the whole area in some kind of area of affect damage.
If it’s what I’m thinking of a) it should come down to fight and if it isn’t you either need the associated quest or something’s wrong and b) yeah, don’t stand anywhere near it you will die. switch to ranged companions, also.
This game has some tremendous highs to counterbalance the sloppiness of the character models and some of the writing. The first time I landed on the asteroid planet I was blown away. The gas giant in the sky, the shadows of the other asteroids lumbering across the surface, the muted sounds and low gravity, excellent stuff there. That zone is artistry, it felt like real sci fi.
I figured it out now. It’s an interesting way to do a boss fight in an open world, basically. If I get too close to the thing, I die, basically. But if I stop at the first set of buildings, I fight the boss in phase 1, then the second set of buildings for boss phase 2, and so far I’ve never gotten past that. I love that the boss fight gets more and more complex. It reminds me a little bit of the final boss fight in Final Fantasy X, where each phase of the fight lasts a long time. But obviously that was a turn-based strategy fight, this is an action game equivalent of that. A final boss, epic fight that lasts half an hour if everything goes well.
Vesper
1797
I’m not nearly as far as most (100% on Eos, working on Voeld) but I’m finding myself rolling my eyes every time I run into a group of Kett. It’s just so samey. It’s actually making me want to finally play Witcher 3 which has been on my pile of shame.
I still enjoy the exploration and character interactions and all that in ME, but combat is making me yawn. Maybe I’ll just move the difficulty down to Narrative so I can power through it.
Funny you say that, combat was one of my favorite parts of the game. Felt much more mobile than your average third person shooter. And the powers are fun.
Yeah, I’m loving the combat. I’d go so far as to say that this boss fight that I’ve been engaged in this weekend is probably my favorite boss fight in any shooter. It certainly is better than all the boss fights in the Halo series.
I am playing on Hardcore though. Maybe it’s different on Normal and Insane, but on Hardcore, it really is tough enough that every reload, every dodge is a matter of life and death. It’s all very tactical, almost, and yet, it’s an action game through and through because where you dodge, what direction you go is super important.
I can’t imagine playing this on Insane though. I imagine it would play similar to this, but I’d have to find out how to buy weapons, upgrade weapon, research weapons, etc.
Vesper
1800
It’s not the combat mechanics, it’s the apparent lack of variety in combat scenarios. Also, the kett are a boring enemy.
I really really dislike both of the boss types I’ve encountered in Andromeda so far but to each their own!
You actually enjoyed a boss in this game?
The combat itself is enjoyable (although there are severe skill balance problems which focus people in to a couple build types) but the enemies, and the bosses in particular are terrible. There is just zero enemy variety and the bosses are reused to the extreme. Even if they weren’t reused, they have all just been extremely repetitive, overly long bullet sponges with no real interesting mechanics.
On the note of the skill system in Mass Effect Andromeda, i came to a realization recently.
Every good build has one of the two skill combos:
-Shield powered Lance with abilities to regenerate shields (mostly charge and a recharge shotgun)
=>Actives: Lance, Charge
-A high powered weapon (generally a shotgun) using the health loss to reload augment, turbo charge and a tech power that triggers a heal.
=> Actives: Turbo charge, incinerate (or other low cooldown tech power)
So basically there is very little build variety.
Am i missing something? Are there good builds that don’t have one of those core skill sets? Yes, I realize that you can complete insanity with no skills if you’re masochistic enough, but that does not make a build good.
My final read of the skill system is that it is a huge step backward from previous games. I do not feel there are enough good choices in character customization. Many skills just plain suck and the game railroads you down a few very specific paths.
Wow, I was just in Bestbuy and this was on sale for 33% off for XBOX and PS4. Fastest sale I have ever seen.
I beat the boss finally. And yes, I really enjoyed that boss fight.
One attack had to be dodged because it penetrated through cover. One forces you to change positions because it’s grenades. One forces you to be in cover so that you don’t die. Additionally you had to kill other enemy reinforcements, and the boss nicely stayed out of the way in phase 1. But in Phase 2 and 3, the boss did its normal attacks while you took care of reinforcements. Additionally you had to worry about your life support systems because if you stayed out in the cold too long you’d die. Additionally you had to worry about rearming yourself constantly because you needed more ammo. Again, this was easier in phase 1, because the little platform had heat and ammo and health in the same little area. But there was another area where all those three elements, and cover were all in different places.
Eventually I did discover that I could make it easier for myself by going to a different building and fighting the boss from there instead. But I found it very cool that I could try to beat it from that harder area too, if I wanted to be more masochistic and really challenge myself.
That was really cool.
