[Video] Mass Effect: Andromeda... 1 Year Later (Raycevick) - General

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D12n35evy0Y

Honestly a video I didn't expect, but I'm really interested on what Raycevick has to say, as all I really know of this game is that it's flaws that showed on release, and that eeven my die hard masseffect fan friends hated it

In fairness, the more of a fan you are of the series, the more likely you'd hate Andromeda

No wonder I am still really pissed after seeing the game for what it is. But I have to say, Lucas did a great job reviewing Andromeda as level-headed as I never could. I would never consider breaking down the gameplay to such detail and I'm glad it's at least something the game is more or less competent at. But things we ME fans love ME for - the story, the characters, the exploration - it's all just... not there, so to speak. Unfortunately we'll probably never going to get a proper new Mass Effect ever, since the franchise is now on hold and the future of BioWare as a whole depends on Anthem. If it fails, well... another mark on EA's list.

One thing about the combat he didn't bring up, because he never used the favourites system, is that the favourites system is completely useless in combat. Normally in Andromeda you have three powers with independent cooldowns, these can be fairly long depending on how powerful the power is. The favourites system is presented as a way of quickly switching between styles or classes mid-combat, however when you switch favourite ALL your powers go on cooldown. Which means switching favourites mid combat can completely fuck you if you forget that it means you can't use your powers for at least 3 seconds, or up to like 10. Also, they fucked the weight system from Mass Effect 3. Now having less than the weight limit doesn't give you a bonus to cooldowns but going over still increases cooldown times. There are a lot of stupid design choices he doesn't mention in this. Like how there are 'special' augments for weapons that completely change how they work, from turning any weapon into a grenade launcher to adding a cooldown system similar to (but inferior to) Mass Effect 1. What the game never tells you is that every 'special' augment has a hidden -90% damage mod, making them all fucking useless.

The fuck, that's fucking terrible.

Pretty much hit the nail on the head. I remember getting Andromeda on release and actually really enjoying the first few hours - claiming that it seemed to be progressing as ME's equivalent of DA:I, a game that I really liked. And then at around the 10-15 hour mark I put it down and never picked it up again. As Raycevick points out, DA:I hides its shortcomings a lot better by providing an interesting world with an engaging story hook and fun, memorable characters. I can look past wonky animation and glitches because the stories the game is telling are enough to keep me hooked. As much as I was enjoying the game feel of ME:A, the world felt absolutely barren with only the Kett, Angara, and a smattering of council races scattered haphazardly like jacks across the cluster. The story never hooked me, falling back on familiar tropes like "mysterious precursor race with fantastic technology" and "evil alien empire with mysterious motivations". And while I liked some of my party members, they often felt like dollar-store variations of characters I had liked from the preceding three games. The concept of starting anew wasn't a bad one at its core, but there needs to be something worth discovering if it's going to deliver. Andromeda on its own would have been perfectly passable, but with the weight of a trilogy behind it it sinks like a rock.

I hit the Krogan when I gave up. Bioware's in my shit bin since then.

Andromeda just pisses me off at the wasted potential it had, I can't believe that they basically just stole ME1's plots and made two super-generic humanoid races, one enemy and one friendly, to fill out a game set in a another fucking galaxy!!

The longer I sit on Andromeda the more it pisses me off. Like to the point where it's so easy to boil down to 'they didn't fucking care' from one thing. And I have to mention this every single time this game is mentioned; There are two Asari face models in the game. That's how little of a shit they gave in the five years of development. Asari have human faces and they only put two in. One of which is a party member, the other? Poorly modeled and looks like a cabbage patch kid doll. They didn't even give your doctor a unique model. A character who you speak to hundreds of times. There are rooms full of Asari with the same face. Fuck Andromeda seriously. This is a game that can't even get menus to work properly, enemies can spawn on top of you in bases, and somehow, in the 30+ years we've been doing games with dialogue choices, is the only one in which you can unlock new dialogue in older dialogue trees, and the game doesn't bother to let you know that you should ask a question again. Even worse, you'll still get the same responses, even if there is unique, unlocked dialogue further into the original tree.

Andromeda had its enjoyable moments, especially with some of the more well written companions. But it was an overall let down, as I felt it was a wasted opportunity as they had a litteral galaxy full of potential and they squandered it. They could have at least made it up to the fans by providing story DLC such as the Quarian Ark, but they decided to scrap and future DLC plans and just release the DLC into a book instead. As much of a let down Andromeda was, I hope that Bioware does not abandon the Andromeda galaxy for future Mass Effect titles as there is still some potential. As the game only explored the Heleus Cluster, which is a small region of the whole Andromeda galaxy. There are other clusters and regions that could be explored in future titles. Andromeda was a let down for sure, but it can provide as an good starting position for future titles within the Andromeda galaxy.

I still can't believe I once heralded Mass Effect as the "Star Wars of Video Game" and now it is just... this. My only memories of Andromeda was that I had modicum fun shooting stuff, buttload of off-road driving, a female Garrus, beautiful environments, and a lot of reminiscing of the original trilogy. Everything else is so.. subpar, my mind can't even recollect them.

One part I feel like the game drastically underexplored was the inherent imperialistic nature of the whole Andromeda mission. Imagine the reaction we'd have as a species if suddenly a bunch of alien ships showed up on our doorstep and tens of thousands of aliens suddenly moved in next door. Instead, conveniently the Helius Cluster is inhabited by a singular, relatively small species too weak to contest our presence and an evil alien empire bent on the destruction of everybody who isn't an evil alien, giving us a perfect pretense to make nice with the good aliens. I do realize that you have to complete a couple of missions to win the Angaran trust, but the implication of the Andromeda mission isn't a particularly pretty one. We've moved in en-masse onto Angaran territory, saved them with our superior technology and are now poised to dominate the region politically and militarily. What I would have done is expanded the Angaran resistance into a multi-ethnic force comprised of a variety of species native to the Andromeda galaxy who are either still combating or suffering under the yoke of the Kett Empire across a larger part of the Andromeda galaxy. Raise the Resistance (and the species they fight for) up to a more level field with the Andromeda colonists and make the relationship between the Initiative and Resistance more quid-pro-quo. Maybe by helping the Resistance turn the tide in Helius we inspire greater insurgency around the Kett's dominions and, as a result, the Resistance allows the Initiative to settle its peoples within the Helius Cluster. Boom, just like that you establish a variety of new races to interact with, you introduce a degree of political intrigue through relations between the native races and the Initiative, and you hint at a greater galaxy at large with more to discover and explore in the future. Essentially providing THE TYPE OF SHIT YOU GAVE US IN MASS EFFECT 1 THAT WE ALL LOVED SO FUCKING MUCH!

This may be an odd complaint to have but my biggest issue with Andromeda lies in it's replayability. Which is an issue because the original trilogy was VERY replayable and enticed you to do so. And sure, the overall quality of the game is probably reason enough to not even finish 1 playthrough but let's just ignore that aspect for a moment. Firstly, Andromeda is too long for it's own good. If you've done a lot of the sidequests it's not uncommon to finish the story with over 100 hours of gametime. The thought of immediately replaying the whole game was such a turn off just because of the time it would require to do so. Whereas the original Mass Effect is a nice 20ish hours so it's not that big of a deal to spend another 20. That being said the bigger issue is that the mechanics of the original trilogy entice multiple playthroughs better than Andromeda does. If you've played a paragon male Shepard soldier with a spacer background, you can quickly and easily decide from the get go to replay, as 1 example, a renegade female adept with the colonist background. And in so doing, countless conversations, events, romance, and even missions will be completely different from your original experience. Combat will be different as well since you are locked into the 1 class. By contrast, Andromeda doesn't offer even a small fraction of different experiences across multiple playthroughs. In the video he touches on how for the majority of conversations in Andromeda what tone you pick doesn't really matter as everything leads to the same outcome. And not having a hard Paragon or Renegade system means it's more difficult to remember your chat choices in the majority of situations. Having the freedom to change your profile on the fly means you probably experimented with multiple skills and combat styles and found what you enjoyed. Leaving less of a reason to replay the game from a differing combat experience standpoint. Lastly, you cannot select a background for the Ryder twins. This leaves the gender of your character as the only decision that really affects things. And that's not enough on it's own. I've played every game in the original trilogy multiple times and it seems like every time I do I find new things that I didn't know existed. It's always enjoyable to replay them, and I'll probably replay them again in the future. I've attempted a 2nd playthrough of Andromeda a couple times now and every time I've given up because it feels exactly like the first time I played it. For all I know there are things late in the game that can be different but I don't imagine that's the case. I think all the development issues led them to streamline everything and remove the freedom and choices the original trilogy is loved for. Removing Paragon/Renegade and not locking you into a single class does give you more freedom in 1 playthrough, but in doing so they killed replayabilty. And that's really disappointing. tl;dr Andromeda isn't replayable like the original trilogy was and that sucks

They could have at least made it up to the fans by providing story DLC such as the Quarian Ark, but they decided to scrap and future DLC plans and just release the DLC into a book instead. This is actually because the game did so poorly that they shuttered the studio that made it within a couple months. While I think it's good that the buyers stood up and said no, the unintended consequence of that move meant nothing else would be done for it.

Why wasn't the other Ryder sibling a squadmate? DA2 let you have your sibling as a companion and it was great.

DA2 also didn't let you romance your sibling, and coincidentally like ME:A it was also the worst reviewed among all the games in its series 🤔🤔🤔 But for real Bethany is best girl.

i played a wizard and my non wizard sibling joined the anti wizard nazis they can eat a dick

That'sobviously a joke, but let's be realistic: Bethany Hawke is the only functional being in a cast composed entirely of people with truckloads of issues, most of which they brought upon themselves by virtue of their sheer stupidity just for drama's sake. It also does help that the character in question is the only, genuine good-natured main character in the whole game, bar maybe your protagonist if roplayed in a certain way. Regarding the topic, Mass Effect: Andromeda is one of the few games in my career I actually gave up on, around the middle of the main story I think. Basically, I realized that I was keeping playing not out of interest or enjoyment, but 'cause I purchased something and it would had been a damn shame if I waste money, like a self-imposed chore I guess. Take of that what you will