Mass Effect: Andromeda review - overall a nice game, but with some issues

After three great Mass Effect games, Andromeda has got a lot of expectations to live by. But honestly, I got mixed feelings about it. This is a game that is very hardware demanding, but also a little buggy (for PC at least). After three games with the same character as the protagonist, it was time for a change. Mass Effect: Andromeda is a whole new story of a group of pioneers that venture into a new galaxy and what they find is not what they were expecting. There are some issues that I'll be talking about along the review but it still is an enjoyable experience.

First, I'll address a serious technical issue that I had while playing that crashed the game is certain situations. Maybe this is/will be addressed in the future with a patch, but anyway, I'll talk about it and present a workaround. Not long ago I built a new computer. The graphic card came from my previous one and it's a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 with 2GB of GDDR5. Not a great card, but for 1080p gaming, paired with the Intel Core i7 8700k processor with all cores overclocked @ 5GHz, it still is more than enough. I started with High graphics settings and lowered some options to get a reasonable frame rate. Inside the ship I would get more than 30 fps and in open world, more than 40 fps. Not the ideal 60 fps+ mas still a very enjoyable experience. But in two very specific situations, while indoor, the game crashed. After a quick Goggle search I found that the issue was the graphics card memory and that there was many people complaining about the same I was. This card only has 2GB and the settings I was using had large textures. As you can tell, my frame rates were playable and the game should be able to handle the situation, as many other games do. I ended up lowering the graphics setting to Medium and tweaked them a little bit for more detail and 1080p resolution. Done! No more crashing and I even had a slight increase in frame rate and details are still nice enough.

But let's talk about the game itself. I can choose a male of female protagonist. Since the beginning that you get a sense of danger. The human colony ship that you are aboard finds a space anomaly that's so big that affects not only your ship but also the planet you are supposed to explore, only to find a hostile alien race on it. The quest for a peaceful and habitable planet for your colonist is immediately frustrated. This is actually in interesting plot and a new one that sets Mass Effect: Andromeda apart from the previous games. But on the other end, this game does take some plot ideas from previous games, like another dead civilization that has left advanced technology just lying around waiting to be found, preferably by some hostile race. What strange is that we are shipped 2.5 million light years away and only meet two new alien races and some robots in a game with a campaign (and side missions) as big as this one and only one local character joins your crew. If you think about the previous games, we have multiple alien races so we can get the sense that we live in a vast universe that is full of different people, so varied and distinct from each other, and when we get to the Andromeda galaxy, it seems so empty and pale in comparison.

Our new hero, Ryder (that as stated above, can be male or female), finds himself quickly responsible for the command of a ship called Tempest and as the leader explorer, called Pathfinder. In general, Ryder is nice well acted character that carries the story forward, and the idea of having the alternate gender of your chosen character as your twin is a fresh idea and well used. Sadly, other character's animations are not that great, initially your mission might be a little boring, the user interface is a little clunky, the dialogue is trivial, but as you progress you'll unlock new combat options, meet new characters more interesting than your initial crew and discover some new worlds that you can explore freely. But some of the early could still be felt throughout the game, and while you certainly feel some influences from the first three games, that impression would quickly go away because of the lifeless dialogues and boring missions. Eventually as you progress, you unlock more dialogue options, but that's your character evolving, not the other characters.

To be fair, Mass Effect: Andromeda abandons familiar concepts and that's a big risk and not easy to do, because people have certain expectations and if they are not met, people might not like it. Instead of the familiar Shepard, we get Ryder, the son (or daughter) of a man chosen to lead the way in finding a new habitable planet for some inter galactic cryo frozen explorers. Things go bad and Ryder inherits his/her fathers mission. While that moment might seem a little forced on you, what's really at stake really starts to sink in as soon as you reach the Nexus (this game's version of the Citadel from previous games). In the Nexus, everything that could go wrong has gone wrong and it's up to you to start rising it up from the ashes. Your crew is made up of generic characters taken almost entirely from already known Mass Effect humans and aliens, which despite having nice backstories, I can't help but feel a certain sensation of deja vu. With the exception of a character named Peebee, which has a sense of humor and is constantly messing around with her fellow asari, Lexi, your crew is too comfortable with each other to be considered interesting. I still remember Wrex threatening to tear the team apart in the first Mass Effect game, and that introduced a certain tension that would give some dynamics to the character's. Everyone getting along perfectly doesn't even sound realistic or possible and gets boring real fast, despite some people getting all flirty and naked. :p

The flirting and sex options are still present as in other games, but this time there are some is rated R in a way that the Mass Effect series has never seen before! This includes same sex and inter-species sex, and you have to choose the right options in the dialog and that's usually followed by some sort of errands that you have to complete successfully in order to get all juicy with your mate. Some might even say it's porn, but at least is tasteful porn :p

In parallel with the more broad narrative of the game, there's a central story that revolves around an hostile and evil alien race and its narcissistic and delusional leader that poses a very big threat, but the thing is, you see this guy only focused in one thing and think to yourself: Damn, what a one dimensional character! I assure you are wrong... But the plot is predictable much like a general audience Hollywood blockbuster. Despite all this, the two stories come together in the end and you find out that it was worth the wait. To be honest, Mass Effect: Andromeda's story problems are caused more from the way it is delivered to you than from the plot itself. The major portion of the characters is just dull, the conversations are basically small talk, no one expresses believable emotions, there are no real political struggles of any kind in the Nexus (they are only merely mentioned), and even romance options are introduced in an awkward non natural way. They might be R rated, but they are not as exciting as one might expect.

Voice acting in general is strong, which is good because it helps you not noticing as much that the human facial animations are not that great. But what's more distracting is the texture pop ins that happen during conversations, where a character's face looks like a messy blur and suddenly all the pores and details appear out of nowhere, right in the middle of a sentence. -.- On PlayStation 4 and XBOX One, the game has major frame rate drops and hiccups, no matter what's happening on screen and animation glitches are more common than in previous Mass Effect games. :o
But overall, inconsistent writing is what makes Mass Effect: Andromeda have these inconsistent ups and downs. Occasionally you have to make a decisions that stands in the line what's morally acceptable and those are totally worth it. They remind me some of the decisions I had to make in previous games and in my opinion, this game should have some more of those moments. But even if you think you made some wrong choices along the way, don't worry because only rarely those will come back to haunt you in the future.

Combat feels very nice, specially later in the game. The shooting mechanics feel amazing and the flexibility of the evolution system of the characters lets you pick individual powers instead of forcing you to choose only what's from a specific character class. You can craft your own weapons to the way you prefer also. Enemies are enjoyable, although a little predictable. Exploration is a big part of the game, and as such, with such a heavy presence, it might strike as a little boring for some people in some moments. All of this applies to you and your party! I tried to build a varied and balanced party, so I could tackle all the different situations that are presented along the game. You can also give orders to your party members so you can better cover your positions to have some tactical advantage or avoid being overrun by enemies from all sides.

Mass Effect: Andromeda is like a good idea but only half fulfilled. It has an enormous amount of content, but quality is sometimes good, sometimes bad. The worlds and combat are very good, but the writing and missions are somewhat weaker. As a Mass Effect game, Andromeda falls short of it's predecessors in politics, morality and storytelling. In my opinion, the series is all about convincing characters and difficult choices, which this game clearly lacks some. But despite all this shortcomings, the game is still a good game and an enjoyable experience. Maybe if previous games weren't that good, some of it's faults might have passed less noticed, but given it's heritage, it's a few steps lower than previous games. Yet, I still enjoyed it, and so might you!

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