Now that the shitstorm is far behind us and the game is dead, with no future updates, patches or DLC in the future...

Now that the shitstorm is far behind us and the game is dead, with no future updates, patches or DLC in the future, was it really that bad?
Were there any redeemable qualities?
And more importantly, as a fan of the trilogy, should I play it?

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It wasn't dog shit awful, but it was bad.
>Hidden qualities
Ehhhhh, exploring the planets for the first time is really fun.
>should a fan of the trilogy play it?
I mean maybe? If you like glorified cover shooters with open world and rpg elements then sure. Although, I recommend you borrow it from a friend first if you play on console, if not, wait for a sale. I got the deluxe edition for ps4 and finished the game in a couple of weeks in between work and classes.
>Tldr
It was fun enough to see my way to the end, it's a 50/50 shot, I definitely enjoyed the trilogy way more though.

I had fun with it

I thought it was ok but no campaign dlc and no chance for a follow-up is a sore spot for me.

I mean they set it up for a sequel but theres no way its gonna happen

it feels like it got killed because of ea's absurd sales expectations and memes

>Unable to roleplay because the player is forced to be a submissive sycophant in every interaction
>Characters that constantly undermine any tension with stupid quips
>Animations that are the stuff of memes
>The same fucking face repeated on every NPC
>Seriously, they didn't even care
>New galaxy means 2 (two) new races
>Enemy faction is as generic as they could possibly have made it
>Another "ancient evil awakens" story

It's not even worth pirating, OP. Play anything else.

>>Another "ancient evil awakens" story
Bioware doesn't know how to do anything else.

If I just want to fap, is this a good game to spend 20 dollars on?

Other than "visit 4 locations" that is present from neverwinter nights (Not in BG) thats just a load of shit. (Not untrue, just pointless, theres loads of tropes in everygame)

There weren't even any choices to make throughout the entire game. Jesus tapdancing christ, I get more roleplaying options when I Get up in the morning and decide which cereal to eat.

Fallout 4 has more roleplaying elements than this fucking game

holy shit those faces, incredible

I'm 36 years old and have been playing video games since 1987, and never in my life have I played a game that so thoroughly insulted my intelligence as ME:A.

I've played plenty of stupid games before, but I've never played a game that was written so fucking poorly, while spending so much effort trying to convince me it was well-written. The writing was so bad I actually rage quit.

The WRITING made me rage quit. Never happened before.

Every time I think about finishing the game, the quest that made me quit pops into my mind, and I literally want to track down the writer and spit in his or her face.

I'm mad that I can't bang my asari port wife up whenever I get to the nexus

The environments are nice, BUT the maps could just as well be from any open-world Ubisoft game. You drive around the map to visit all map markers and then you're done (there are only a handful of unmarked quests on all maps combined and I remember only one even having a dialogue option in it). Also there are tracks on the ground showing you how to visit all plot relevant places in one go.
The combat is faster than in previous titles and the the vertical mobility is a nice feature, BUT it's even easier than in all other titles (with the AI being beyond retarded and you being able to play as all classes and to max out all skills) and they took a step back regarding the cover system. Especially natural surfaces like rocks are often wonky as hell.
The Nomad handles far better than the Mako, BUT you need to change into a slower off-road mode as soon as you want to drive a slope steeper than 20° and it's neither capable of taking many hits nor of dealing moderate damage by ramming enemies.
Crafting gives you a huge variety of armor sets, weapons and weapon modifications, BUT only your inventory is customizable (no way to change your party's equipment) and the most useful mods (augmentations for e.g. changing a gun's behavior) can only be crafted once and have to be found by looting from there on.
You have some decent romance options (like Vetra), BUT most of them get the "fade to black" treatment and some don't even get a kiss scene. Also don't be surprised if their idle dialogue doesn't change (e.i. they use their usual greetings, etc).

>And more importantly, as a fan of the trilogy, should I play it?
Its story fucks logic and lore, most species we know from the Milky Way were reserved for DLC, which is never coming, it's still full of glitches and bugs and you'll see mistakes due to Bioware's laziness / MEA's troubled development constantly. I wouldn't recommend it.

>was it really that bad?
It needed more skill challenges. They had this one side mission where you had to perform these trials. Those were fun, but that was it as far as I can remember.

dude the game is fine. finish it.

>Another "ancient evil awakens" story
What ancient evil are you talking about?

I found it fun, at least for one playthrough.

I firmly believe that most of its problems are because it was rushed out the door. People point to the "B team" as the cause, but I think this is a case of sufficiently talented devs who made one critical mistake during development.

Armor and weapon designs were very aesthetic and visually interesting. Environments were also beautifully designed. Combat was leaps and bounds better than anything in the original trilogy. This is not the work of incompetent developers, they're clearly capable of producing good work. But then you have the obvious flaws: Several scenes being beautifully animated while the rest are rigid and soulless, as if incomplete. Characters not having their appearances finalized. A woefully lacking character creation. Stilted & awkward dialog that probably should've been run through the peer review process a few times and re-recorded.
Probably the biggest evidence of rushed development is the couple of post-launches patches to address some of the animation issues. They happened really fast, which suggests that devs were continuing to work on animations after the game had gone gold.

Their big mistake during development was wasting a lot of time trying to make Andromeda a game about colonizing procedurally generated planets. They worked toward this technology for something like a year or two before scrapping it completely and starting work on the Andromeda we got. If they had never bothered with that first iteration and just worked on the game we got, it probably would've been way better.

>I'm 36 years old and I get triggered by video games

For anyone wondering, here's the article about the troubled development.
pastebin.com/H6j955GD

That's really depressing to read.

ME:A is one of the biggest cases of wasted potential in recent memory, if not THE biggest.

Races in Mass Effect 2
>Human
>Asari
>Turian
>Salarian
>Krogan
>Quarian
>Geth
>Batarian
>Vorcha
>Volus
>Elcor
>Drell
>Hanar
>Yaag

Races in Mass Effect Andromeda
>Human
>Asari
>Turian
>Salarian
>Krogan
>Angara
>Kett (technically also Angara)

Oh, it gets better. Not including special individual designs (like the Archon and Peebee), we have a total of 13 models for intelligent alien races used in ME:A:
>4 Kett models
>3 Krogan models (since Drack's design also gets used for NPCs)
>2 Turian models
>2 Angaran models
>1 Asari model
>1 Salarian model

It pissed me off that not even Lexi - who was a part of the main crew - had a unique model. She looked like every single other Asari who wasn't Peebee.

And if everyone thought Liara was a forced waifu in the OT, don't even get me started on PeeBee...

I remember seeing some nerd crunch the numbers and PeeBee had a massive amount more screen time and interactions compared to every other romance.

I still think it's funny how they tried to re-create Jack's romance with Peebee. It has the same themes and you even get the choice to have casual sex with her.

Except with Jack you can never get her loyalty if you casually fuck her

Whereas you can just bang PeeBee literally whenever, and she'll later say she loves you, and if you're like 'nah' she's cool, it's no big deal

I know, but with a game like ME:A it's always difficult to tell, whether that was their plan or just another bug. It wouldn't be the first regarding Peebee's romance. I remember how they had to patch it, so that you couldn't romance Vetra/Cora and her at the same time.

Actually you know what was the worst offender? No bosses

Literally every 'climax' would boil down to "defeat the waves" or "survive until the timer runs out"

There was ONE actual boss that was completely optional and repeated on every single planet

Then they had the fucking balls to make the final boss a defeat the waves/timer thing while you fought a rehashed version of that one boss from all the planets

I don't know. It's a bad design choice, but I wouldn't call it the worst offender. That would be either the story itself or the characters in it.

I think Liara was much worse with the Plot armour, Peebee was just there. Regarding that bit about more scenes, wasn't the same thing true with Liara and Lelianna? It's one character that anyone can get with regardless of what you are. What was that cunts name in KotOR, wasn't she the same way? I don't know, just seems logical they would have more.

I think they're called Architect's in Andromeda. But, remind me if I'm remembering this wrong, how many bosses followed the same route in ME 1, 2, and 3? I can think of Saren in ME1, yet aside from him...?

>Were there any redeemable qualities?

Yeah, the studio which made it got shut the fuck down and a lot of the employees were either laid off or re-purposed.

Feels fucking good, man.

Vetra is also available for both genders and didn't even get a sex scene, unlike all the other squadmember romance options. They even added Jaal later on through a patch as bi option.
Also non of the ME:A squadmembers can be avoided nor can you get rid of them through death or any other means, so I don't see how any of those are better.

It honestly isnt even worth a pirate, its not worth anyones time, especially if you played and enjoyed the original trilogy.

If i were brought in as some super special play tester even a year before launch i would tell them to scrap EVERYTHING and totally re evaluate where to take the series considering that they couldnt be fucked to make more than 2 races.
Mass Effect Andromeda was completely devoid of interesting choices or politics in general, because of the setting.
MEA should have been a prequal or Biowhere should have chosen a canon ending for the orginal trilogy and set the new game 600 years in the future in the Milky way, maybe about how the races of the milky way have had little to no contact since the destruction of the mass relays, and when they build replacements they have to deal with each other? idk, thats sure as hell better than the minority quoda driven shitshow that EA pushed out the door

>a year before launch i would tell them to scrap EVERYTHING
That's exactly what they did and it's why so much of the product is half-assed:

I can only think of the praetorian in ME2, but it's more like a miniboss the second time you fight it