Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Chiefwaffles]

The use of first names is just for the default names - Scott and Sara.

And I've changed my opinion on the sidequests. While they could use more player agency, I still like them over typical RPG sidequests.
First thing is that they're nothing like Inquisition's "MY COW IS LOST PLEASE FIND IT FOR +1 INQUISITION POWER WHICH WILL BE USED TO UNLOCK NEW STORY MISSIONS". While most sidequests aren't necessarily unique masterpieces, they're not just the standard fetch quests that you would find a ton of in Inquisition.
The reward - viability points - is actually useful. While I would still like some more occasional cool rewards like guns or armor or even paintjobs, I much prefer Andromeda's viability system over Inquisition's power system. The viability system doesn't just lock story content behind the sidequests like Power did. The rewards you can unlock from viability are actually really useful and feel in a way like they're impacting your environment.
Another huge benefit is the fact that Andromeda can rely on the gameplay much more than Inquisition. Inquisition's combat was an almost MMORPG-like chore while Andromeda's combat is fun, so even when you get a sidequest that doesn't go much more beyond "conversation -> combat -> conversation" it's still entertaining.
The writing of the sidequests is probably the least improved, though. But it's still better. Most of the sidequests feel more involved and less like a checklist of chores.

And decisions - I'm actually really liking the decisions you're making throughout the game. The removal of Paragon and Renegade has really helped here (regardless of its impact in other areas). You get a fair amount of decisions to make in the sidequests and main quest and they don't feel like they have a good vs evil option and don't feel too forced or contrived.

Spoiler: Example & Eos Spoiler (click to show/hide)

When you establish an outpost on Eos, you have the option to make it a military or research outpost. This actually feels like a decision. Andromeda doesn't present it as "EVIL SOLDIERS VS GOOD SCIENTISTS", but rather as security vs. discovery. Both seem like important options and have good cases already shown to the user with their playthrough up until this point.

[Folly]

I'm not very far into the game, but my impression so far is thoroughly negative. In almost 3 hours, I've had maybe 15 minutes of tutorial-level gunplay, 5 minutes of compelling story development, and the rest of the time was just dredging through a seemingly endless deluge of dull dialogue or running through the halls of a boring space station.

I'm optimistic that it will get better now that I've gotten to the proper missions. It couldn't possibly get worse.

[Shadowlord]

It couldn't possibly get worse.

Never Say Never Again

_{(Which should be read as 'Never say "Never" again')}

[Chiefwaffles]

Oh my god.

Liam's loyalty mission may be one of the best Mass Effect missions of all time, on par with the Citadel DLC. It's just so entertaining. I would describe it, but honestly people should just see for themselves. I love it.


That along with some pretty cool sidequests and planets (Just finished up in Havarl) are really making the game get better as I go on. At first I thought it was just an enjoyable game, but now I may consider it the best game in the series. Kind of. Comparing Andromeda to the OT is sort of like apples to oranges. One thing for sure is that Andromeda is definitely better than Inquisition, which I still like.

The overarching plot is still intriguing with compelling questions and is making progress. The decisions are still coming and haven't dried up, and I'm absolutely loving how it's not just "evil or good" and there are cost + benefits to each decision.
It seems like the dedicated story missions (as in, the ones not taking place on the planets' maps but in their own instances) are a bit more sparse than Inquisition, but the gameplay in between more than makes up the difference. In Inquisition, it was just random fetch quests until you reached an arbitrary number of points to unlock the next story mission. I probably already said this, but Andromeda has both much more compelling content between story stuff and the content still feels like its advancing the story.

[WCG]

Combat is amazing

Harder? Easier? Combat is the key for me, because I didn't grow up with video games, and I'm terrible at it. I play on the easiest difficulty, and that's plenty for me!

I've played the previous Mass Effect games to completion - twice - but I never once used any of the special stuff in combat. Pointing and shooting is my limit. I left everything else to my companions. Heck, I basically let them kill everything for me.

So if the combat has changed, that worries me. I enjoyed the story in the earlier games. I enjoyed the exploration. I especially enjoyed driving around on other planets in the first game (and I'm really glad to hear that's back - or something like it, at least). But the combat is just something I need to get through as easily as possible.

So, when you say that it's "amazing," could you elaborate on that? Thanks.

[Teneb]

Re: combat

Cover now works differently. Instead of walking/running up to it and pressing a key, you just touch it. You use alt to switch the camera from your right to left shoulder and back. You can have up to 3 active powers equipped, and switch between them with the F# keys. You can't have companions use their powers on command anymore, which makes me sad. You have a jump jet that lets you either go up (space on pc by default) and stay there if you aim while airborne, or use it to dash horizontally (middle mouse button) to get into cover or dodge attacks.

[Shadowlord]

You can have up to 3 active powers equipped, and switch between them with the F# keys.

This sounds like a serious step backwards. I mapped my power bar in ME1-3 to QWER1234.

[Teneb]

You can have up to 3 active powers equipped, and switch between them with the F# keys.

This sounds like a serious step backwards. I mapped my power bar in ME1-3 to QWER1234.

Oh shit, I worded it poorly. You have several sets of three powers, and you can swap between them at will.

[WCG]

Instead of walking/running up to it and pressing a key, you just touch it.

OK, I can probably do that. Not much more, though. 

And as long as companions will still use their powers automatically, that should work for me.

Thanks!

[Chiefwaffles]

There's also a "Narrative" mode that does something about combat, I believe. I forget what exactly, but I'm pretty sure the entire purpose of Narrative mode is to make combat a non-problem for those who don't want to bother with it.

And to expand on Teneb and powers:
You can have up to 4 (or more?) favorite slots at a time, each with its own set of active abilities - any unlocked passive abilities are always in effect, I think?
Even though there are a lot of different abilities and each ability can have a lot of points invested into it, the speed of leveling up combined with the lack of a level cap mean that being able to branch out into different abilities is very possible.

Each slot can have an assigned "Profile", which is similar to a class from the OT. These profiles - Sentinel, Vanguard, Soldier, Adept, Engineer, etc. - each have a hefty set of bonuses corresponding to their role and usually some cool things too. For example, the "Explorer" profile (a jack of all trades for Combat, Bionics, and Tech) gets a special dash which is essentially a "Blink" that lets them go through objects. The Vanguard profile allows you to get shield back from melee.
Profiles are easily unlocked by investing points into their corresponding sets of abilities.

The powers themselves are all great in Andromeda, in my opinion. Even stuff like the Charge ability are better thanks to the jump pack, allowing you to do cool stuff like jumping up then charging at an enemy in cover. My current favorite set of abilities is Charge, Flamethrower, and Backlash. So I can charge up to a group of enemies, flamethrower all of them, then repeat. In case of emergency situations, I can use backlash which is basically like a "held" directional shield that reflects projectiles at your crosshair.

[Teneb]

-snip-

Yup. To give an example of my own: I use the engineer profile, which gives me a drone that hovers over my shoulder (whichever the camera is not on). When an enemy gets close, it explodes and stuns all nearby enemies. I pair that with incinerate, drain shield, and a turret. Incinerate + drain shield, in this order, triggers a combo. I've seen three thus far: fire, tech, and biotic. They cause explosions of, as you may expect, fire, electricity and biotic force.

[Twinwolf]

Third example: Sentinel Profile, with skills of Singularity, Charge, and Tactical Cloak. Singularity to set the enemy up, Charge them for the Biotic Combo and damage, finish them off then Cloak to back off back to cover.

[Sirus]

Holy crap, this all sounds pretty awesome.

[Chiefwaffles]

Fucking goddamnit I hate this stuff.

JUST LOOK AT THIS! (This does look like it has some spoilers in the actual video, but my point is the views and title primarily and that's completely spoiler-free.)
It's a complete misrepresentation of the game.

I have never seen the stuff shown in that video despite going through the majority of the scenes depicted. Yet this just-uploaded video has 1.3 million views. In the comments _{(I know about the quality of youtube comments)}[/sub] it has people saying that it's not even "worth pirating".

I've even seen people across the internet complain that you "can't make a white character" when that's blatantly false. The default characters are white! It's so obvious that people see stuff online and perpetrate this by joining in on the bandwagon and being extremely vocal about a game that they've only ever seen other bandwagoning media or extreme cherrypicking for.

What the fuck?
How is Andromeda being misrepresented this badly because of sub-par animations and extreme cherrypicking? I shouldn't even care much about this, but it's just enraging to me.

[Retropunch]

I think most of the problem is that this Mass effect has unfortunately become a sort of focal point for people unhappy with AAA games in general.

This is compounded by the fact that unfortunately animations and lazy writing is the one thing that's easy to pick on and demonstrate in video form (Whilst it's obviously been overblown, I've watched some direct lets play style videos and they've had some pretty atrocious dialogue and writing.)  which helps fuel the hate. Combine that with Bioware's perceived SJW agenda (which I haven't really seen much, but that anti-white guy should have been kicked immediately and wasn't) and generally less than stellar recent record, and it's a perfect storm.

I don't think it's right, but I also think that Bioware should have done a serious quality pass - there's no excuse for not doing, and it's basically just them going 'people will just buy anything these days if it has a good brand name' which people picked up on. They dropped the ball, and are being punished for it - rightly so really.