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.
