The merits of Sequels
Another random topic from me today, was listening to a video from a youtuber called HiddenXperia and he put out a good point about changes made across sequels in his video about Elden Ring being a wa...
Forum Discussion
As loved as Mass Effect 3 is, a clone of it for Mass Effect 5 would not be welcomed.
Andromeda had the best gameplay of the series. The plot was solid if not ground-breaking.
The best sequels are a blend of old and new and I trust that will also apply to ME5.
@SofaJockeyUK wrote:
Andromeda had the best gameplay of the series. The plot was solid if not ground-breaking.
I personally think that gameplay-wise it didn't improve as much as it got wrong. Jump jets are a point of discussion, and while I personally wasn't a fan, I see why others loved them. I think gunplay is an improvement. I do think there are a lot of minor issues that add up to make it a less enjoyable experience, such as "hold to interact" for everything, the ability limit, lack of squadmate commands, having the scan button on controllers be A/X when you're already using that thumb to move the camera, and so on. Just a lot of minor things, but ME3 had none of those problems. It felt much more polished.
To me the combat of ME3 was janky compared to Andromeda, but the one thing ME3 got much better was skill number and classes. To me the fluid combat of Andromeda, the fast pace, the skill combos just really made a better combat system over any of the earlier games. What hurt Andromeda was the restriction of only 3 usable skills at a time and the lack of a class system. Having only three skill slots is fine for MP, where you play a round or 5 and then can change your class to another character, but to hocus pocus poof, you can be any class just hit a button kinda takes away from the character building element and also restricts story choices by class a bit. Having the ability to have 6+ usable skills but limit them to your class would in my opinion make a better game, it would also let you balance the skills a bit better and make combat more fun. I generally play Andromeda characters as their base classes from the original trilogy, ie Soldier, Adept, Infiltrator, and so on, as that feels more like Mass Effect to me.
To me the biggest issue of Andromeda is they forgot scale and progression. What I mean by this is the devs looked at the ME trilogy and said we have to go bigger to meet expectations and have more and more and more, totally forgetting that they were starting something NEW, in the ME worldset, but still NEW. Thus they really needed to compare the story and world building more to ME1 and not the trilogy. They needed less love interests, fewer teammates, a more concise story, and made something more on the scale of ME1 instead of trying to compete with characters developed over 3 games. Andromeda SHOULD have been set as the Nexus arrival in Andromeda and the subsequent actions including the failed colonization and uprising revolts, allowing you to influence those events and to be introduced to the new galaxy in a more restrained manor. The second game then could have been the current Andromeda with characters you already knew from the first rolled into the game and allowing less world building to have to happen since it was already done. Instead the devs tried to compete with the entire 1-3 trilogy, with all the various teammates and love interests developed over those games in a single game and it showed in the lack of development and too much stuff.
Mind you I have almost 900 hours in Andromeda and less than 200 in ME3....so take that for what it is worth.
