Mass Effect: Andromeda

Enough of the classic Mass Effect, with enough new mechanics to keep the game fresh. [Hollingworth; Issue#261, p.55]

An earnest attempt has been made to create a new identity for a series here, but the question of how to best frame Mass Effect's narrative strengths is, once again, left open. [June 2017, p.90]

A rough restart to a beloved franchise plagued by bugs and glitches. An inexperienced team of fans working on new saga led to poor storytelling and writing. On the other hand, flawless gameplay and shooting mechanics advance the franchise further and we are confident that the sequels will only get better.

Repetitive tasks, uninteresting world and surprisingly unsettled quality of the story mean that neither an enhanced fight nor driving model won't make a new Mass Effect above the average game. [Issue#273]

BioWare has often shown more willingness than most triple-A developers to respond to community criticisms and they’re already pushing patches to rectify Andromeda’s many issues, so I’m not pronouncing the Mass Effect series dead just yet. But speaking as someone who owns multiple pieces of N7 apparel and has read the Mass Effect books – the freaking books – I hate Andromeda. Maybe this is karmic balance for all of the recent big-name releases that have actually lived up to my expectations, but it’s been a long time since a game left me feeling as deflated as this one.

As a kind of Star Trek-esque adventure, Andromeda is fine. Combat feels better than it has in previous games in the series, with the transition between exploration and fighting being seamless and tight. There is a rudimentary stealth mechanic (isn't there always?) which once again resembles KOTOR as much as it does anything else, and bouncing around with the jump pack blasting aliens is a pretty good laugh. Levels are quite pretty, and somehow manage to be imaginative without being desperately original.

Seven out of ten, barely. In the genre of narrative sandbox are now many better fresh games and I have no choice but to ask – has BioWare lost good writers, or does it hope that the players will simply be satisfied with a silly story and uninteresting characters, accompanied by a good combat system? For me, both options are quite sad.

Mass Effect Andromeda could have been one of the best RPGs ever, but sadly the game never realizes its full potential. While the gameplay experience and RPG mechanics are mostly well done, with the best combat system of the entire series, the predictable story, uninteresting characters, and generally mediocre writing make the Pathfinder's quest to find a new home for humanity not as memorable as it could have been.

Some slight technical issues occasionally hamper what is a solid Mass Effect entry. Fun, dynamic combat, some great missions and an interesting new setting provide an enjoyable place to get lost and spend some time in. It does sometimes feel like a “Mass Effect Greatest Hits” but there are worse things to be.

BioWare is known for its storytelling but Andromeda fails on this element. It is not original, nor logical nor deep. Thankfully the tuned fighting system is brilliant, as is traveling to the beautiful planets.

The scale of the new Mass Effect game, combined with the intense gameplay and exploration, makes this a must have. Don't be fooled by some of the issues justly reported by the community and give it a try. The trial version of the game is still available through Origin, and I'm sure that people won't need more than a couple of hours to decide if they like it.

If you can come to terms with Mass Effect: Andromeda's rough edges and embrace its focus on exploring interesting planets and sub-plots above a single epic storyline, there is a substantial and captivating interstellar adventure to be found within.

It’s mediocre, not awful. This review slants negative because I find the writing mostly bad, but my experience with Andromeda is almost worse in some ways: For much of my 55 hours with it, I felt nothing at all. It just exists, content to let you run from fetch quest to fetch quest, chasing the appearance of importance while saying nothing at all. It’d be easier to just condemn the whole endeavor and write it off, but that’s not entirely fair. I’m mostly ambivalent, or “I’m not mad, just disappointed,” as my parents might’ve said—and ouch, that always stung much worse.

A frustrating mess of bad design decisions, bugs, glitches, and narrative missteps. It could have been so much more, but it ends up falling flat on its face. While there are things to enjoy about it, they're few and far between -- your time is much better served replaying the original trilogy or exploring the widely available mods out there. You'll end up being much more fulfilled and feeling as though you've used your time in a productive manner.

If Mass Effect: Andromeda had been released a few years ago, it might have been appreciated for what it really is: a fun (if unoriginal) little space opera that offers lots of hours of gameplay. In the post-Witcher 3 era, however, all "Open-World RPG" games have to reach certain standards in order to fully earn our appreciation. In this regard, looking at Andromeda reveals shallow and juvenile writing, unreached potential and funky animations... and all this took 5 years and 40 million dollars to create.

I think my largest criticism of Mass Effect: Andromeda is how safe Bioware played it. They wrote a new, sprawling plotline with a vast number of side quests and in doing so discarded Shepard as the main character, and added an open world sandbox element, but left so many of the core game mechanics, even some of the truly awful ones, unchanged that Andromeda feels more like a gigantic DLC than anything else. Note that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it’s been five years since the last Mass Effect, and I do for the most part like the gameplay, and I’m not particularly adverse to more of the same (a quote so good, it should definitely be on the game box somewhere), but a part of me was hoping for something less familiar, something less Mass Effect 4. I can’t help but feel that I didn’t get it.

Despite all its faults, new Mass Effect manages to show Andromeda's beauties and entertains the player. Nevertheless, this has to be a harsh lesson for BioWare. If they get this lesson right, the series might really survive in the future.

Andromeda is robust and delivers effectively on the key elements it advertises, and then goes above and beyond regarding play style tailoring and experienceable customization. That said, the characters look more at home in the Sims 3 era, and the dialog fails to be more than lackluster - cringe-worthy at times. Nevertheless, while Mass Effect: Andromeda proves a quality example of its genres, diehard fans of the Mass Effect universe and its original story should wait until BioWare patches the technical bugs, and the price point lowers.

Andromeda’s plot is quite inconsistent, bouncing back and forth between some fantastically impactful moments and others that fall extremely flat. Like I said above, I do like the general set-up. Separating things into a new galaxy (and by virtue or travel time, about 600 years) from the events of the previous Mass Effect games is smart, and it works. Beyond that, I’m glad they didn’t just jump right into another galaxy-ending threat right away. This slower burn of trying to get Milky Way civilization started is different, and a welcomed change of pace. I will note that there is a bit of a beginning lull that may turn some players away during the first few hours of the game.

Original Mass Effect trilogy rests on three pillars: great protagonist, believable universe and dramatic story. For Andromeda, Bioware felled all three of them, raising two new ones in their stead: exploration and combat system. The resulting game is quite engaging – but not enough to overcome the nostalgia for Shepard. [Issue#218, p.40]

While Andromeda is lacking some of the overall urgency of previous Mass Effect games, it makes up for that somewhat with the increase in scope and detail to the world. It’s certainly lacking polish, and several areas of the game feel like steps backwards for the series, but there is stuff to love.

Mass Effect: Andromeda is a game that takes few risks and pushes few boundaries. It's a Mass Effect game designed to make fans of the series feel at home, but technical issues and lackluster writing leave it feeling like a missed opportunity to regain the prestige the franchise once enjoyed.

BioWare Montreal’s latest sci-fi RPG is massive, but the quality of its writing and sidequests varies too much for the combat alone to make up for it. Its size and scope delivers on the limitless possibility that a new galaxy should represent, but that complexity has paved the way for bugs that remove you from the experience. Mass Effect: Andromeda occasionally makes good on the legacy of its predecessors, but it never eclipses them.

Mass Effect: Andromeda manages to feel both overloaded with content and spread too thin. There are great battles to be won, puzzles to solve, and satisfying social interactions, but they're hidden behind layers of presentation problems and tedious travel times.

Judged purely on its own merits, Mass Effect: Andromeda is a good game. But this is BioWare, and Mass Effect being merely good feels like a failure. It's a little clumsy in places, and daft in others, but I found it mostly endearing despite these quirks.

Mass Effect: Andromeda is a game that forgot how to be a Mass Effect game. While it fails to deliver a compelling narrative and has little to offer, it’s the combat and planetary exploration elements that hold together this contrasting experience. The result is a game drifting away in the open and cold space.

Mass Effect: Andromeda is a gigantic science fiction epic and a brave new start for the series, but it doesn't completely capture the magic of its predecessors.

Mass Effect: Andromeda is a very solid game. BioWare had obviously taken their lessons both from original Mass Effect trilogy as well as Dragon Age series and mixed it with fair dose of experience of other AAA titles of late. It is not Inquisition in space, although the influence of it is clearly seen...The learning curve of the game is quite steep and first few hours (I would give it around 4 to 5) can be quite overwhelming as controls, interface and much smoother reaction of the character settle in, but it gets better. The pluses of the game far outweigh its minuses, including somewhat stiff animations and sometimes “grainy” shadows.

The first Mass Effect trilogy is probably not a masterpiece, but, like basically everybody else, we become very fond of it, and we loved the unique experience it offered. The main problem with Mass Effect Andromeda is that the main flaws of the first trilogy are still here, and that's not merely the animations and the graphic quirks. Despite an open world that is sometimes visually majestic, the game lacks the boldness you need in order to go where no man has gone before.

It is a really bumpy start for a new era in the Mass Effect series. Almost as if the developers wanted to create something reminiscent of the tough challenges the milky way species face in their new home. But in the end there is just the perception, that bigger is not always better.

Mass Effect: Andromeda is a great project by BioWare, and it is a stunning experience. Amazing narrative and plot, a true feeling of exploration and a very dynamic combat system. Even though its animations may not be the best, this game offers hours and hours of action and entertainment.

Mass Effect: Andromeda is an enormous game that will keep the player engaged for tons of hours of gameplay. The combat system is probably the best thing about the entire project: it's fast and rewarding. Sadly it has a bunch of flaws starting from the animation department to the big landscapes full of secondary, boring quests. And above all it lacks the epic tone of the previous installments.

If you look at it as a reboot, a starting point for the series, there’s lots of promise in that future. The first Mass Effect had countless problems, far more than here, but that will always be remembered as a classic, despite leaving similar threads hanging. Ultimately, this is a story about laying the foundations of a civilization, and it feels like BioWare were doing the same for the future of the franchise. In that way, these RPG developers have become Pathfinders themselves.

Marred by inconsistency and in need of a polish pass, this vast new sci-fi frontier nonetheless rewards dedicated exploration.

Mass Effect: Andromeda fails to deliver a compelling plot and the journey to a whole new galaxy offers little that's new or exciting. Still, it does give you the same quality gameplay the series is known for and you'll enjoy your time with your new crew, even if they're no replacement for the originals.