onemadvagabond wrote:If you can bump up the graphics, the facial features do get better. I had it on medium at first and then bumped it up to high. My gpu is a 960 so I haven't tried anything higher than that, and I think that if I did, the game would begin to lag too much.
I liked it more as I got past the first few hours and then began to like it a lot, but now am on Kedara(or whatever) and it is all feeling very repetitive and just feels hollow. The story is very lacking in depth as well as the characters. I find I have not been drawn in to the story at all and feel nothing for the squad mates. I just really don't see it having the replay value I was hoping for. I may not play it a second time. I guess it will depend how well they fix it and if they come out with some amazing DLC. I just don't see buying any more of these games either unless they make some real strides in improvement. It's OK. I give it a solid 7, but nothing more, because of the before mentioned lack of depth and character, and the majority of the game just feeling like filler in order to make it seem like there is so much to it. Another one fails to live up to the hype.
I went through the same thing, early frustration with the learning curve in places, then really really liking the game as I got into it. Then at Kadara things started turning a bit into drudgery and the love started fading. Particularly when after hours and hours spent on Kadara I thought I was done, only to have to come back a boatload of times for new quests from other outpost worlds/stations, that sent me back to Kadara.
I would agree on the hollow characters. Part of it I think, is on the other ME's after each mission you could go around and talk to your squad mates and they would usually have something new to say, adding to your relationship with them and a sense of comaraderie with them. On Andromeda, it's rare that they have anything new to talk about, so you try to interact, get nothing new, and exit. It leaves you not getting to know the characters at all. It seems the periodic banter you hear between them is your only connection to them most of the time. (Some of that banter is damned funny though!).
There is definitely far too much emphasis on the kajillion fetch quests and not enough on story telling and squad mate interaction, and I think that is what is leaving it feeling more hollow than the prior titles. I'm still loving the game for the most part, but I am getting annoyed with the machine gun barrage of repetitive quests. Every time I think I'm done with a world and ready to finally move on to the next one, some jacka$$ at the Nexus sends me on 3 more quests back on the world I just spent an absurd amount of time clearing out. I go one day loving the game, to the next being annoyed with it. (Contagion has to be the most irritating quest in the history of gaming. Starts out fine then just keeps going and going and going... ) Then there is every base that you cleared out, being full of baddies again every time you drive through for the umpteenth time for the umpteenth quest sending you back to that area. I've gotten to the point I just drive through and ignore them, trying to just finish the damned world. The repetitive questing definitely gets to the point of drudgery, not fun. I'm a bit of a completionist, but I've started ignoring some of the optional quests, because there is just way too damned many repetitive, no story, go scan this whatever at that remote place you've been to 3 times already quests.
There are a host of glitches as well. Enemies floating in the air, sometimes even after you kill them. Squad mates flitting around like a leaf, people walking off in the middle of a conversation, but you're stuck in place and can't follow so you can't hear what they are saying and only getting your half of the conversation, the game momentarily freezing at times (the only title I have that is doing that), and of course there are the enemies or critters stuck inside rocks.
As for the players character, I was able with a LOT of tinkering to make my female Ryder look pretty dang good, aside from the weird surprised doll eyes, but the defaults are all pretty lousy. The NPC's, especially the Asari, look like caca compared to the prior games. In the prior ME's, there were a handful of different Asari facial structures for the NPC's, but in Andromeda, all of them look like the Doc (They did a good job in ME2/ME3 making Miranda look like Yavonne Strahovski, but not so much with making Lexi look like Natalie Dormer) but with a different color slapped on them, and none of them look near as attractive as the Asari in the prior titles. All characters voices are sometimes out of sync with the mouth movement too. And what's with the holographic stuff in this game? Omni tools and holos all look like digitized muck compared to the prior games too.
66 hours in, I'm still enjoying the game and appreciate the effort put into the good bits of it, but I go from loving it one day to annoyed with it the next. I still hold with my 2 hour in assessment, that the game definitely needed more polish before release. It seems like the emphasis was put on making too many fetch quests, and on making the environments looking pretty, and not enough time was spent on making the characters's look pretty and developing a relationship with the main NPCs. Character development conversations needed more fleshing out and bug squishing definitely needed more time.
P.S. For the purpose of aiding with bug squishing if anybody at Bioware is reading this;
PC Origin game version
P8Z68 Pro MB
Core i7 3770K
256GB SSD (OS Drive)
1TB HDD (game installation drive)
8GB 1866mhz DDR3
GTX 980 Strix- 378.92 driver
Mostly Ultra settings with a couple of high settings @1080p
(FPS holding at monitor refresh rate of 60hz for most part, with periodic dips into the 45-55 range during heavy effect periods)
Okay, I've finished the game (105 hour play through) and have mixed emotions about it. In many ways it is the best ME game of the franchise and an epic scifi RPG, and in other ways it just so isn't. Most of it's flaws come down to lack of polish, but there are some major detractors in the content as well.
First the good-
1. Stunning environments to explore, both in space and planet side, with plenty of variety. The design of the Tempest and it's external views, really lends to appreciating the beauty of the galaxy Bioware built.
2. The Mako, aka Nomad exploration is back (Yay!!), and is much improved over ME1. The Nomad is a superior vehicle to the Mako, except for the lack of a cannon, and is a lot of fun to drive.
3. So much to explore in so many beautiful and varied environments, and having the Nomad to get around to explore it all is a lot of fun.
4. Good main quest story, despite what some people have said to the contrary. Nothing ground breaking, but entertaining and fun.
5. Planet scanning (now that you can skip the fly in once you've experienced it a few times and have tired of it) is vastly improved over the tedium of ME2, and is a hell of a lot prettier.
6. Combat is fun and challenging, and the jump pack adds a lot to the combat experience.
7. The scanning/SAM interface ads a lot to the game, especially since you are learning about a totally new galaxy, species and tech, and although tedious at some points, for the most part ads a lot to the experience and the fun factor.
8. A TON of stuff to do and keep you busy, and you get a good sense of progression and rising hope as you build up planet viability.
Now the bad-
1. A TON of stuff to do and keep you busy. I enjoy the quests where you are actually doing something that adds to the story or relationships, or even side stories, but all of the ridiculous; "drive to the remotest part of the map to scan a rock quests", are just tedious and aggravating. Give me something real to do when I get to the north 40!
2. Friends and squad mates aren't near as fleshed out as in previous ME titles. Most visits to talk with them, even after IPDM missions when you'd expect them to have something to say, are met with not a single new thing to say to you. The result is not feeling an emotional attachment to them, unlike the prior ME titles.
3. The abilities system seems a step backward, and is just clunky and complicated. Being limited to just 3 skills, unless you do separate ability builds, then wait for a cool down if you swap builds in combat, is just messy. The game doesn't do a good job at all of helping you determine what abilities/builds are good and which will suck, or how to even access/build different builds that you can switch to in combat.
5. Why do every single one of the Asari look like identical twins with different paint? Seriously, all of the other ME games had at least a handful of different looking Asari builds, but in Andromeda, they all look the same. You'd think at least they could have made Lexi and the Doc look different, since you interact with them a lot.
6. While combat is good, the cover system is not. It's reminiscent of ME1's cover system, and about as reliable when trying to get your Ryder to cover up.
7. Whoever built the planet information for the scanning mini game, needs to do some astronomy homework. Having planets 2-3 times the mass of the Earth (with higher gravity) and with Earth like temps, but with 0 atmospheric pressure (due to higher mass/gravity it should have a denser atmosphere than Earth), or planets 100's of AU from their star with .5 atmospheric pressure having 800c surface temperatures, while planets in the same system that are only 16 AU from their star and 64 atmospheres, having -235c temps, is absurd.
8. The bugs, the bugs, the bugs. This game is chock full of them, as well as many continuity errors, and the lack of finishing polish really hurts the game. I think most of the cons could be over looked if it weren't for the serious lack of polish smacking you in the face all over the place, and yanking you out of the immersion.
Mass Effect Andromeda is one big dichotomy. One minute you love it and it's awesome, and the next you're annoyed as hell with it and going WTH? In some ways it's one of the best scifi games and or RPG's ever made, and in other ways it's so not. Obviously different people have different tastes, and some will like aspects that annoy others. Ultimately, it feels like Bioware tried to accommodate too many tastes, and in doing so, didn't make it match anyone's. It's a good game, and in many ways exceeded what I hoped for, but in other's failed substantially. I think the biggest let down for me aside from the significant lack of polish, is the lack of character development with squad mates. It feels like they put too much emphasis on combat and fetch quests, and not enough on what makes a Bioware RPG great, that being story telling and getting to know the people you are traipsing around the galaxy with.
I think part of ME:A's problem is what also hampered ME3. That being the inclusion of multiplayer. It's taking resources away from development of the meat of the project. People who want to play an online multiplayer shooter, are going to play Battlefield or Call of Duty games. People who play RPGs want a good story, not multiplayer. Seriously Bioware/EA, enough with the multiplayer on RPGs! Put that money/time to good use on the actual story and polish.
Ultimately is Andromeda worth your time and money? Yeah, just be prepared to be disappointed with bits of it. Hopefully with the listed upcoming patches, some of my issues with the game will be resolved. Bioware has listened to the feedback, and they have already released 2 patches to resolve some of the issues (like the dead doll eyes), and have listed out more improvements to come. I'm looking forward to another play through after the patches, and hoping for a much improved experience.
At present I rate the game a solid 7. Good, but a bit disappointing since the potential was definitely there for a 10.
