LogFAQs > #886220268

It wasn't just the animation that got rightly criticized. Everything about the game is subpar. And I literally mean everything. Except the gameplay which people like a lot. Personally I'm not gonna say it was bad, but if I want gameplay that makes me feel like a superhero wielding guns made of paper, I'd play Viewtiful Joe, not Mass Effect.


The game is the most buggy release I've played since Spyro Enter the Dragonfly. It was unacceptable. Not just poor. Unacceptable that it was released in the state it was. Sure, with enough reboots you could make it through the whole thing, but I have no qualms calling it a broken game none the less. The quality is increased but still not what is to be expected of an AAA game on release date, much less half a year down the line.

The story is not just bad, it's unfathomably lazy. They moved the story 600 years and billion of lightyears away from what we know in the series, and what do we get? Re-treads of major and minor plots and elements from the original trilogy. Not a single new thing. Ancient and mysterious progenitor species: check. Generic bad guy aliens who turns their enemies into their own soldiers: check. Bipedal sentient species who follow the same familiar social structures we know with at most minor variations: check. Everyone vs Krogans plotline: check. No interesting new take on weapon technology from a civilization in another galaxy: check. Generic ice, desert and jungle planets: check.

Literally the one thing that made the Andromeda concept interesting is that they could do whatever they wanted. And obviously they should feel limited to some extent on what the series has built itself up as, they could basically re-invent everything and give a fresh perspective to the series.

The most innovative thing they gave us was a jetpack during combat. There's nothing in the game that is original to Andromeda. All the concepts and story elements and characters and even humour is ripped from the original trilogy. Nobody in the entire production had an original thought that they put into the game. And again, aside from the combat, does Andromeda do it better? Does the remnant even compare to the mystery of the protheans? Does female Garrus compare to OG Garrus? Does the krogan plot compare to the krogan plot? Does the Kadara button joke compare to the Sur'kesh button joke? Does Conrad Verner's sister compare to Conrad Verner?

You might say that there's a bigger focus on exploration than in the OT and if that's your thing, sure, but is it good exploration? I don't remember finding much of interest. There's the giant remnant ship on Elaaden and that was cool, I guess. Wasn't actually anything inside it other than turrets stuck in the wall. Couldn't even do much exploration when the game was initially released cause you had like 50 inventory slots. They increased that in a patch, but really. Plus the game pressures you to not explore via gameplay mechanics that tell you to go check your ship computer for rewards every 45 min to an hour via cryo pod and strike team systems. And at best your reward for exploration is randomly generated loot, generic garbage fetch quest (that glitched the fuck out all the time), or the 20th remnant vault that aesthetically looks identical to the last 19 you visited.

Everything about Andromeda's execution was half-baked (again, minus the combat if you feel so inclined).

Quite frankly, I feel the root of the problem lies in the premise itself. Andromeda was born of laziness. Too lazy to write around ME3's ending, let's go to a new galaxy! Too lazy to write original story or characters, let's reuse the old ones! Too lazy to contemplate the horrifying reality of humanity (and co) coming to Andromeda as a colonizing force, let's turn it into an upbeat space romp instead!

Nobody cared.