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The big sin of Andromeda, considering it’s a BioWare RPG, is that it has no replay value. None of the quests have any consequences and the choices are fairly minor so playing for the other outcome is largely pointless. You can change your build and class on the fly during the game so there is no point playing again to experience a different class as you would in the other Mass Effects. The romances are bland, so there isn’t really much of a hook there either to get you to replay. I finished the game as the woman character and started a second play through with the guy but abandoned it when I realised it was just going to play out the same way.
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Sep 9, 2019 01:38
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chaosapiant posted:DA I is my favorite Dragon Age game and Andromeda was a good/fun game. It didn’t have the “magic” of the trilogy but had some great combat, decent characters and fun places to explore. It didn’t deserve all the poo poo it was given. p. much every quest in Andromeda outside of the legitimately good loyalty missions felt like work my favorite were the "track down macguffin X" ones which only had a *chance* of spawning the macguffin at one of four or five different spots on each planet, so each time you went down there you had to check each spot to see if it had spawned, and if it hadn't you hd to do something else for a while
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Sep 9, 2019 01:51
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If Andromeda was given enough time before release to iron out the major technical issues I think it would be remembered more fondly than ME3. Which is damning with faint praise, but it was a decent game with some okay characters underneath all the jank.
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Sep 9, 2019 02:01
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Andromeda's combat was worse than ME3 and it isn't something that polish would have fixed. ME3 had better shooter and melee feedback, real weapon variety, more varied boss fights. It was a fun game to play and I would have enjoyed it even if you took away the plot and characters (and also why the multiplayer worked). As much as an RPG needs some plot, the 90% of the time you spend in combat needs to be engaging. By comparison once you've done 20% of Andromeda you've already seen all the enemy types and it's just a matter of bigger numbers vs. bigger damage sponges. I also have 300 hours in DA2 despite its faults because I genuinely like the boss fights and it's one of the only RTWP tactics games.
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Sep 9, 2019 03:22
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Savy Saracen salad posted:I hated the happy go lucky companions of DA:I they clashed with a setting that was supposed to be experiencing some sort of apocalypse. Marvel quips and Josh Whedon style jokes every 5 mins, really bad writing. DA 2 companions where better made. Dude, what are you even talking about? Dragon Age 2 had honestly the highest quantity of infuriating faux-Whedon dialogue I've heard in loving anything. Inquisition had a lighter tone and suitably lighter characters (until Trespasser). 2 was gritty and grim (not in a good way) and had characters making witty comebacks every two seconds. It was so awful.
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Sep 9, 2019 03:58
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Promethium posted:Andromeda's combat was worse than ME3 and it isn't something that polish would have fixed. ME3 had better shooter and melee feedback, real weapon variety, more varied boss fights. It was a fun game to play and I would have enjoyed it even if you took away the plot and characters (and also why the multiplayer worked). As much as an RPG needs some plot, the 90% of the time you spend in combat needs to be engaging. By comparison once you've done 20% of Andromeda you've already seen all the enemy types and it's just a matter of bigger numbers vs. bigger damage sponges. The combat was way better than ME3. The shooting, movement, and skill usage in Andromeda is leagues ahead of the rest of the series.
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Sep 9, 2019 04:59
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Indeed. Andromeda had more tactics than "sit behind cover, cast magic arrow and shoot enemy who goes out of cover".
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Sep 9, 2019 06:51
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I found Andromeda's combat quite fun but involving no real tactics at all. The cool down on switching profiles meant it was never worth it, so I ended up using the same three skills all the time. Your companions are out of your control so you can't use their skills. And the bosses all had a magic shield thing you couldn't target with your skills anyway, so all you could do was shoot.
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Sep 9, 2019 08:47
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The biggest sin of Andromeda was "Here's a new galaxy that nobody has been to before" and then going "Actually they have, everything is already done." and you fight a billion criminal asari/humans/turians. All the new stuff, the stuff that should be exciting - is done. And the strength of Mass Effect, the crazy new aliens - all hosed off. No Elcor, no Volus and none of the new Andromeda races were exciting in the same way. Just a loving huge disappointment. They could have done so much with it and it was all crap. Andromeda is the Star Trek: Voyager of Mass Effect. There's some bits that are quite enjoyable but you're constantly lamenting the wasted potential.
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Sep 9, 2019 09:13
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Andromeda is a game that chickened out of a premise that wasn't even that risky.
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Sep 9, 2019 09:22
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And doesn’t it end on a cliffhanger too so it’s not even a satisfying standalone. From what i’ve seen the one thing they got right were the companions.
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Sep 9, 2019 09:40
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No, the companions were terrible, having one dull topic of conversation each. Peebee was probably the most interesting, but that mostly because she refused to talk at all. Particularly annoying was they way they made the science officer constantly talk about God.
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Sep 9, 2019 09:49
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Lord Cyrahzax posted:Or being able to do anything that’d a actually improve the world, like topple Orlais or give the elves a kingdom I always resolve the Chateau quest by allowing the empress to die with the new emperor as a puppet of the Elven spymaster. It'll probably be negated in the sequel but it's still nice to read that Alienage walls are being torn down. 
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Sep 9, 2019 10:21
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Funny how when you are not enchanted with a game you start to notice problems that were there the whole series. With Andromeda almost every critique can be applied to previous games. Like ME2/3 had dramatically cut enemy types you encounter so that there are only collectors, mercenaries and geth, and there are only couple of fights in ME2 (Krogan clones rushing you. Ok, the second one is Grunt's challenge) and ME3 (atrium in Space Hogwartz) where you have to stop and think what type of enemies are you fighting. And both ME1 and 2 have ended on a huge cliffhanger, and ME2 hadn't even advanced the story, I think you can play ME3 right after ME1 and you won't know there's ME2 till you meet Mordin. The fact that a whole new galaxy is not that different is a valid critique, but it's more like "they should have made a different game" rather than "they made a bad game".
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Sep 9, 2019 10:47
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Besides some bugs you shoot on Noveria ME1 had exactly two enemy types: Geth and I WILL DESTROY YOU. ME2 was a huge step forward both in enemy variety and actually having to apply different strategies besides having Liara singularity everything or loading up your sniper rifle with cannon mods.
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Sep 9, 2019 10:59
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ME1 combat was awful, of course, but it did try to impress you with a variety of enemies. This made the world more interesting at least thematically. Of course Husks and Thorian Creepers are functionally the same, but you still had a separate monster. There were some monsters not seen in later games, like those jumping ninja Geth or flying bots. Some generic enemies were only seen later as one time bosses like Thresher Maw or Geth Colossus. You fought Krogans (you meet a few in ME2), Salarians, crazed zombie Salarians, turrets. Most importantly in ME3 when you saw an NPC you knew you won't fight him even if he talks about attacking you. Cause sad NPC was neither Cerberus nor Reaper and thus not an option. ME1 could surprise you with a sudden new enemy or NPC attacking you, ME2 showed every enemy it had rather quickly but ME3 went very formulaic with its encounters. Andromeda is more like ME1 - yeah, there's not much difference between 10 types of human fighters, but it's 9 more types of humans than in ME3 where the only human you fought was anime villain.
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Sep 9, 2019 11:41
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ilitarist posted:Funny how when you are not enchanted with a game you start to notice problems that were there the whole series. I disagree with you here because I look at games in a totally different way. It's not about the actual variety of enemies - I don't care about that overmuch. What I care about is the in-game reason for those enemies. With mass effect 1 we're learning about a brand new setting. We've got aliens we've never seen, really different ones too. We're getting immersed into an interesting setting and then being given a hook to continue with the story because of the Reapers. It had exactly what we needed to get hooked into the game. The mechanics themselves were a bit weird and visiting the same areas over and over for sidequests did suck. But it painted a great picture and it made you excited for what the game had in store next and what the setting itself had in store next. Andromeda is pretending that it's something different, taking us to an area where we might recapture the magic of a new setting. Then it shits all over it by making it the same but worse. The exciting aliens aren't present and we're fighting shitloads of people who in theory are rare in this area, instead of something that fits the new setting. That's why it bothers me, that's why it's bad. It's worse than ME1 because while it's more technically proficient it's hosed up the world building and that's what I care about.
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Sep 9, 2019 13:59
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Skippy McPants posted:If Andromeda was given enough time before release to iron out the major technical issues I think it would be remembered more fondly than ME3. Which is damning with faint praise, but it was a decent game with some okay characters underneath all the jank. Lol
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Sep 9, 2019 15:08
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Taear posted:I disagree with you here because I look at games in a totally different way. It's not about the actual variety of enemies - I don't care about that overmuch. What I care about is the in-game reason for those enemies. I tend to straddle the fence and think both views are valuable. Andromeda was disappointing most of all not because of a few face animations that the media beat into the ground, but because the premise of "resetting" the entire Mass Effect universe is promising. Here's your opportunity to throw out what didn't work, keep what did, and make it fresh and exciting again. New protagonist, new entire galaxy, new species, etc. And yet as a previous poster pointed out, all the interesting bipedal and non-bipedal races were dumped, and the only thing we got in return were the Angaran, which are basically fluffy/polite versions of Javik. The remnant stuff was super interesting but went no-where. The antagonist was super duper one dimensional. Lots of room and intent for variety and spice, and yet they played it as safe as possible. The game is "good and fun" on a technical level. You can turn it on, play it, and have a good time. And I stand by the fact that it is not nor never was a bad game or reserved the amount of hate it got. It's a decent 7/10. But for a Mass Effect title, it's disappointing in a lot of ways. Also, for the record, I think ME3 is a really good game and I had zero issues with the ending. I was pretty pleased with it overall and was surprised how much hate it got on the forums. I viewed the entire game as an ending, however, not just the last 10 minutes. And in that way I think it delivered and tied up all the little sub plots we'd opened since ME1.
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Sep 9, 2019 15:11
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chaosapiant posted:I tend to straddle the fence and think both views are valuable. Andromeda was disappointing most of all not because of a few face animations that the media beat into the ground, but because the premise of "resetting" the entire Mass Effect universe is promising. Here's your opportunity to throw out what didn't work, keep what did, and make it fresh and exciting again. New protagonist, new entire galaxy, new species, etc. And yet as a previous poster pointed out That previous poster was also me! I didn't have much of a problem with ME3's ending either even though it was bit....limp. I saw it as an end to the story too.
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Sep 9, 2019 15:16
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chaosapiant posted:Also, for the record, I think ME3 is a really good game and I had zero issues with the ending. I was pretty pleased with it overall and was surprised how much hate it got on the forums. I viewed the entire game as an ending, however, not just the last 10 minutes. And in that way I think it delivered and tied up all the little sub plots we'd opened since ME1. Entitled to your opinion and all that, just curious did you see the ending before or after the “extended cut”.
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Sep 9, 2019 15:23
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I stopped believing in any fandom view of their objects of worship when cringe-inducing badly written Citadel DLC (the one where alien invasion is put on hold so that everyone who knows Shepard can visit and have lots of party banter during a party. Also evil Cerberus Shepard clone.) was praised as the best content in the series redeeming the ending.
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Sep 9, 2019 15:24
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ilitarist posted:I stopped believing in any fandom view of their objects of worship when cringe-inducing badly written Citadel DLC (the one where alien invasion is put on hold so that everyone who knows Shepard can visit and have lots of party banter during a party. Also evil Cerberus Shepard clone.) was praised as the best content in the series redeeming the ending. Lol exactly this Citadel was dummmbbbbbbb
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Sep 9, 2019 15:25
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ilitarist posted:I stopped believing in any fandom view of their objects of worship when cringe-inducing badly written Citadel DLC (the one where alien invasion is put on hold so that everyone who knows Shepard can visit and have lots of party banter during a party. Also evil Cerberus Shepard clone.) was praised as the best content in the series redeeming the ending. Bioware games are about the characters. It's not that surprising that people liked the Citadel.
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Sep 9, 2019 15:30
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ilitarist posted:I stopped believing in any fandom view of their objects of worship when cringe-inducing badly written Citadel DLC (the one where alien invasion is put on hold so that everyone who knows Shepard can visit and have lots of party banter during a party. Also evil Cerberus Shepard clone.) was praised as the best content in the series redeeming the ending.  I liked Citadel. It only works well when played after the main game's ending though. After the depressing "everything is terrible and doomed" stuff from ME3's lategame you can use some lighthearted jokey stuff to balance things out. And the whole thing is basically the devs saying goodbye the series & fanbase anyway.
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Sep 9, 2019 15:33
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Avalerion posted:Entitled to your opinion and all that, just curious did you see the ending before or after the “extended cut”. Before. I'd played the game as soon as it was released. The ending worked just fine for me. Edit: Also, yea, Citadel was probably my favorite DLC of the series. Along with Leviathan and the Shadow Broker one.
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Sep 9, 2019 15:33
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Thirting, citadel was awesome and peak bioware (in a good way).
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Sep 9, 2019 15:37
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chaosapiant posted:Also, for the record, I think ME3 is a really good game and I had zero issues with the ending. I thought ME3 was excellent despite a gobsmackingly appalling ending, and Citadel was fun while the evil clone was alive, so I've replayed those a few times. The party gets more wearing, but I was glad I replayed the second time, to hear Mordin's tapes.
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Sep 9, 2019 15:49
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ilitarist posted:I stopped believing in any fandom view of their objects of worship when cringe-inducing badly written Citadel DLC (the one where alien invasion is put on hold so that everyone who knows Shepard can visit and have lots of party banter during a party. Also evil Cerberus Shepard clone.) was praised as the best content in the series redeeming the ending. Hint: it's because the alien invasion sucked.
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Sep 9, 2019 15:50
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ilitarist posted:Funny how when you are not enchanted with a game you start to notice problems that were there the whole series. I think Mass Effect 3 leads in terms of enemy variety easily - there might "only" be Cerberus/Reapers/Geth, but each roster is an entire array of enemies with interactions unique in the game and sometimes even across the entire series. What other enemy functions like the Guardian, with its letterbox slot for sniping and penetrable shield cover? Husks, Brutes, Banshees, Phantoms and Pyros are all "run up to you and hit you" enemies, but they each function in extremely different ways. ME2 isn't quite on that level but there's more to it than what animation skeleton the enemies use. You do need to vary your loadout and tactics to tackle different defences depending on which group you are facing, and each group usually has around three or so different enemy types with different tactics, if very basic ones. It's quite straightforward but it's also only part of the gameplay - these are still fundamentally cover shooters at heart. I can't even remember the different enemy types in DAI. Venatori, Red Templars and Demons? I think there was more emphasis on stacking numbers through loot and crafting too.
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Sep 9, 2019 16:28
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One thing I always loved about the original ME trilogy is the way each game does something a bit better than the others. Arguably, of course. The first game wins in atmosphere and overall story telling. ME2 has the largest and best roster of party members. ME3 has the best gameplay, best DLC, and some of the best set pieces. Some of those things matter more than others, but since I always play this series as a single game straight from ME1 through ME3, it's neat having a 100+ hour game with amazing characters, high stakes combat, cool places to explore, cool story and set pieces and memorable fire fights. ME: Andromeda has a lot going for it in terms of some neato sidequests, fantastic combat, good graphics...and other poo poo I can't remember. Because ultimately while Andromeda is a "good game" it's also aggressively mediocre. It does not do a single thing better than the trilogy when taken as a whole, with the possibility of combat. I think the combat of ME3 and Andromeda is on par with one another. Andromeda has better and more vertical character control, but losing control of your party members takes a lot of strategy out of the equation.
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Sep 9, 2019 16:44
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I’m still bummed that dai’s multiplayer turned out to suck. It was such a cool idea, I wanted it to succeed but it just...sucked
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Sep 9, 2019 17:26
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To loop back to Greedfall it's a bit worrying that there's a review embargo until the release date because to me that really means "the game is poo poo".
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Sep 9, 2019 17:29
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If anyone's curious there's half a dozen folks streaming GreedFall on Twitch, including Focus. They just said the game should be about 20 hours if you just hammer down the main quest, but implied you'd be underleveled if you did that. I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm hyped for it to come out, but I'm certainly interested in seeing how it is and wishing the developers the best on it.
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Sep 9, 2019 17:31
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Taear posted:To loop back to Greedfall it's a bit worrying that there's a review embargo until the release date because to me that really means "the game is poo poo". Not necessarily, most small studio games don’t have reviews come out until the day before or morning of. It could still suck but that’s pretty much the industry standard for anything that isn’t a AAA first-party release.
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Sep 9, 2019 17:34
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I'm watching Focus Home Interactive stream it right now and honestly the combat/outside of the city part looks like 18th century DAI. The weapon & armor crafting/customization almost looks like it has more variety than DAI from what I've seen. Not a super high bar, but neat nonetheless. e: to clarify, when I say it looks like 18th century DAI I mean that as a compliment. I sincerely enjoyed the moment to moment combat gameplay in Inquisition.
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Sep 9, 2019 17:45
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I'm curious about how robust the character system is, but mainly interested in the story and companions/writing, cause yea when it comes down to it that's what bioware was all about - I hope Spider can recapture that.
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Sep 9, 2019 17:51
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Avalerion posted:I'm curious about how robust the character system is, but mainly interested in the story and companions/writing, cause yea when it comes down to it that's what bioware was all about - I hope Spider can recapture that. If you like that and you have a Switch I'd really recommend getting Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Amazing characterisation there.
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Sep 9, 2019 18:13
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Avalerion posted:I'm curious about how robust the character system is, but mainly interested in the story and companions/writing, cause yea when it comes down to it that's what bioware was all about - I hope Spider can recapture that. They've spent a lot of time talking about that in pre-release trailers, which is maybe a good sign. That's one of the easiest places for games like this to break down - without a good voice director and capable voice actors even the best script will fall flat. As usual with streams the game audio was low enough that I couldn't make out how the voice delivery was. Review embargo is supposed to be lifted at launch, which is midnight CEST - about 4 hours. Hopefully there's good news to be found in reviews!
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Sep 9, 2019 18:28
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The game looks to be taking place in a time period I find the least interesting, so if it's decent enough I'll probably wait until it's half off or something.
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Sep 9, 2019 19:05
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