Well I don't think ME4 is better than the original trilogy. Sorry, but even if there are improvements in some areas, it has a few huge steps back in other areas and it doesn't have stuff previous games had. For example - Garrus. I just don't see any person in ME4 that can reach his status. Okay, Addison could. 😛
Anyhow, I've played through the game twice so I'll take a pause from it (Expeditions 2 will be released in a few days). When I finished the game for the first time, I shared my opinion on RPGwatch, and second playthrough didn't change it (faces got fixed but I never cared about that), so I'll quote myself as a feedback:
https://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1061444010&postcount=2248
superb:
- combat
- crafting possibilities
- ending made easier or harder depending on your choices through the game
- e-mails protagonist receives, sidestories on terminals and logs
- visuals of galaxy and explorable areas
- not possible to fastrun the game in one afternoon (normal dif.)
- sound effects
- references to original trilogy (button pushing on Kadara, Cerberus in a few side missions, Liara's audio logs, etc)
thumb up:
- hidden stuff and puzzles (although easy, and I'm not talking about 20 sudoku)
- space pr0n exploration although rewards should have been better
- flirting
- Apex HQ works on emulators
- The Art Of ME:A does not disappoint
- was afraid jack of all trades system will stink, but no you can't be Skyrim master of everything
stuff improved compared to ME2, ME3 and DA3:
- no cutout story/setting critical content sold as DLC
- DLC (deluxe version) relevant only to MMO audience
- MMO rewards symbolic in campaign and don't guarantee the best outcome
- Mako returned and thank god no N4S carracing idiocy
- no reason to spam sonar constantly
- no instarespawning bears
- no Bioware Points scam!
not bad, but should have been much better:
- inconsistent writing, not as bad as generally suggested though, it's "good, bad and ugly"
- tons of quests and sidequests, not all are a quality over quantity though
- cryo pods system has level cap and some of pods' bonus are crappy
- sidekicks are hardly memorable
- sidekicks banter tainted with breaks on trashmob respawns or Sam's POI-s alert
- too many unfixed annoyances that proper QA would notice (example: tendency of corrupt autosaves)
thumb down:
- facial animations, while there is a logical reason, EA should have funded it with more $
- loadscreens, loadscreens everywhere instead of fasttravel between roamable planets:
----- Kadara loadscreens at big doors, inability to freeroam without landing on it's port
----- just like Kadara, Nexus port area used as a loadscreen to other Nexus areas
- unskippable cutscenes
- no F5 on PC, saving anywhere outside of combat disabled in main story missions
- grinding is toned down, but it still exists
- longterm romances again feel pathetic ("friends with benefits" option is okay)
- sidekicks AI in general, sometimes "frozen" hostiles/friendlies AI
- disproportional (mutated?) human bodies
- music, what music, where is music spectacle?
- default film grain on and subtitles off, no option to disable motion blur, console command needed to make a screenshot
unforgivable catastrophes:
- mining minerals with Mako
- roguelike randomly generated task objectives
- UI (weaponswitching circle stinks, menus are a mess, 3D map rotation not possible, etc)
- hair!
I said that once I started playing this game I just couldn't stop.
8/10
Sorry if I sound too harsh there and if moderator feels some words should be changed on EA answers, please do edit them, I won't object.
@JoxerTM22 wrote:
Well I don't think ME4 is better than the original trilogy. Sorry, but even if there are improvements in some areas, it has a few huge steps back in other areas and it doesn't have stuff previous games had. For example - Garrus. I just don't see any person in ME4 that can reach his status. Okay, Addison could. 😛
I said that once I started playing this game I just couldn't stop.
8/10
Sorry if I sound too harsh there and if moderator feels some words should be changed on EA answers, please do edit them, I won't object.
Harsh? LOL you gave the game 8/10 that's more than what a lot of people would have given it lol... Nah you were being very kind. Objectively it's not a bad game, I played it 4 times and spent 521 hrs(according to origin's counter) but still I call it MEA rather than ME4, perhaps in my mind, it really doesnt belong in the same league as the trilogy.
I loved the Shepard series and I was fine with the ME3 ending and all that.
So for me to say that this game is better than the previous ones is a tough one. The original series was rather epic and really engaged you.
ME:A is a game I enjoy very much. I play it a lot and it has a lot of stuff to do in it. Exploration and all that is great. The conversations have humour but the conversations can be awkward and a bit too dry as well. So I'm mixed on that. The vehicle is definitely better. I have the model sitting here on my desk...it even looks cool.
But the original series did engage me more into the story and the main character. Also the companions in ME:A are cool but between Cora and Ashley, I still have to go with Ashley. Drack's hilarious though. Liam? I have no idea what's up with that guy but he's an oddball of sorts. But I digress.
ME:A is a great game for me. I enjoy it. It needs some fixes. The first patch already helped. What I am looking for though is a bit more of that epic feeling that seems a bit lacking as the main story is a little flat in comparison and the companion stories are lengthy and a bit messy. I think a lot of that can be cleared up by doing something about the UI (track more than 1 quest at the same time) and doing something about this annoying "on hold" stuff that really breaks my flow when I want to play through a story arc. They really need to think about how they do the quests.
But I can't say I hate it after playing for over 130 hours...I do enjoy it, but I also hope that the next installment of ME will really take that step up again in story, feels and engagement. I'm just not as attached to Ryder as I was to Shepard. Sadly, it appears that the next ME will not continue the Ryder story. I do hope we'll get some dlc for the Ryder story though.
It's something Dragon Age also suffers from in my view. Switching main characters with each installment just didn't help. I'm not sure if that's just me, but the Original DA is still my favourite and DA:I I only played through once and didn't care to try it again. It was pretty good, but not worth replaying somehow.
In ME:A I do feel there is a disadvantage to what they did with classes. Because you can be everything they had to balance them against each other and that takes a bit of the excitement away for me especially from biotics somehow. As part of the balancing you get only 3 active skills. That's just kinda boring to me and I don't really feel that switching around from one layout to another. So I end up playing a sniper with extra guns each playthrough.
So I have some concerns but they haven't stopped me from playing this game...a lot. 🙂
I love the extra banter that is in this game compaired to the others. All of it.
The in combat dialogue (especially on hab 7 when they did random call in checks - to see everyone was still standing etc, felt real).
I like that Ryder joins the nomad banter, instead of in other games where the protag says nothing at all as if they aren't there or something.
I liked the fact that there was some amount of dialogue for all quests - even the side quests. I never felt as if everyone was too quite when they could / should say something when out exploring. It made me feel more engaged in these quests.
So many times Ryder said exactly what I was thinking - which was awesome, really. Stuff like how many of these guys is there? Or Seriously we can't catch a break. Thats just a small example, there was a lot of moments like that both in and out of combat that made Ryder more relatable.
Some of the romances were the best they have ever done in a single game, others were worse, this needs more balancing.
I am a dialogue junky and this game made my dialogue addicted self very happy overall but for the love of all that is mass effect please fix the lacking romances, that part of my dialogue addiction was very disappointed in Liam's romance and I know from others it wasn't the only lacking one.
