Time for a compliment, EA

It's not a bad game, I spent over 600hrs on it so far and just completed my 5th playthrough, there are part of the game that I enjoyed but there are parts that disappointed me as well.  Do I regret my purchase?  Nope.  It was money well spent.  

The issue with this game is the existing benchmark/bar set is pretty high.  In another thread I gave the analogy of the ME trilogy being a 3 star Michellin restaurant, it's the experience that will not be forgotten for a long time.  Now imagine this 3 star restaurant now opens a joint near your home/work place the owners advertise it and hyped it out. When you visit it with high hopes, you find that it is not the experience that you had previously, but it's a rather nice cozy family restaurant that I spent my weekends with friends.  Food is fine, ambiance is ok, price is the same.  In comparison with other family restaurants in the vicinity it's ok, but it's not the 3 star experience that you had previously.  Anyway that's my opinion, some may agree some may disagree, that's fine, however when it comes to game ratings, guess the numbers says a lot.

For your reading pleasure. 

https://www.vg247.com/2017/03/21/mass-effect-andromeda-reviews-all-the-scores/

Not a bad game at all - but to say it puts other games to shame is a very vast and unfounded statement. 

Even as somebody who likes the game - I can't ignore glaring design problems like;

1. The broken research economy, 4 runthroughs and exploited for 2 months and I STILL Don't have more than half of everything researched.  The game demands like 10 playthroughs to get all gear to rank X.  All this focus on opening power diversity - but now gun diversity has been obliterated. 

2. Broken enemy scaling, play after level 80 and you're punishing yourself. (Weapons cap at 80, you can reach Rank 6 in a profile by 80 - it is our effective cap, but enemies continue to scale to 132, getting stronger while we no longer do.)

3. The fact that choices mean not a thing outside of narrow and unimportant  details - there is no real long term consequences to what you do.   I think the biggest impact in the choices is who shows up in the final run - and even then - I gave Velez Kadara - and yet Sloane still shows up to fight for me... like lol....

4. The fact that dialogue is short sighted - and often when you pick and option, what Ryder says after isn't even relevant to the choice you made.

The game's combat and environments are stellar - but as a whole this game lacks too much or does things in stupid ways that make no sense.  It is the worst game in the series thus far - and it could put other games to shame, but those games would have to be awful to begin with.

I've played this game 4 times, obviously I enjoyed it enough to do so - but having seen all it has to offer, and how it offers it all - I could never rate this game above 5/10, and it disappoints me to say that, as somebody who's bedroom is littered with ME products.  I love this series - but this game has alot more fixing before I will give EA any credit.

Variable based text in codex is something even I can do in RPG Maker with 2 minutes of work, I'm not even talking out of my butt here - the feature you're praising is something that takes little to no development effort - it's not really an impressive feat to me personally, but if you enjoy it then I'm in no position to take that away from you. 

Why do you need to research everything? Whats the point in researching stuff you dont need. I had way more points than I ever needed for my gear in a single pt

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@Nykara360 wrote:

Why do you need to research everything? Whats the point in researching stuff you dont need. I had way more points than I ever needed for my gear in a single pt

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So did I on my first playthrough, however in my recent ones, think they decreased the heleus points...  I still scanned as much as I did during my first playthroughs, but I didnt have enough points for a set of heleus equiptment.  Initially I wanted a isharay, dahn and helus icon armor, but in the end, I dont have enough points and was stuck in a situation where I had to diversify.  So went with the remnant armor, black widow and kept the dahn shotgun.  Having said that I have tons of milky way and remnant points, it's just the heleus ones that I was lacking.

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@Smokem32 wrote:

Don't worry, no spoilers.  

I will never refuse to give credit where credit is due.  Hope others give their impressions to compare to this.

I just finished the game a second time, despite the bugs it's a hell of a game that puts others to shame. .

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Thanks for readin', figured I'd throw something positive at EA for once lol

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Similar experience here. On my third playthrough now, and despite the occasional glitch I'm still enjoying the game. And there are very very few games ever that I've played through back-to-back even twice, and that's saying something. (note: personally I have not had any game breaking bugs, crashing, audio issues etc. mentioned in bugs/technical issues. Your experience may vary).

Not saying it's the best game. It is not even close actually, but somehow the look&feel still keeps pulling me back...