Mass Effect: Andromeda

 PC
User Score
5.1

Mixed or average reviews- based on 4468 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,749 out of 4468
  2. Mixed: 712 out of 4468
  3. Negative: 2,007 out of 4468
Buy Now
Buy on

Review this game

  1. Your Score
    0 out of 10
    Rate this:
    • 10
    • 9
    • 8
    • 7
    • 6
    • 5
    • 4
    • 3
    • 2
    • 1
    • 0
    • 0
  1. Submit
  2. Check Spelling
view
per page
  1. Voltron89
    Mar 21, 2017
    6
    Big game, but sadly empty and without good quality content. Quantity over quality... The game is one huge waste potential. There are some extremely good features but also some extremely bad. Let's get to it.

    GOOD: - Vast, new Galaxy to explore with aswesome new planets and places to see. - Some interesting side-characters and team mates (sadly, not level of trilogy crew). -    Big game, but sadly empty and without good quality content. Quantity over quality... The game is one huge waste potential. There are some extremely good features but also some extremely bad. Let's get to it.

    GOOD:
    - Vast, new Galaxy to explore with aswesome new planets and places to see.
    - Some interesting side-characters and team mates (sadly, not level of trilogy crew).
    - Absolutely great combat system, dynamic, fluid, smooth. Good balance between risk and cover combat at higher difficulties.
    - 3 new interesting spieces.
    - Exploration is done much better than in DA:I
    - A lot of dialogues and side quest
    - Quite long game
    - Very good overall visuals of everything but character faces.

    BAD:
    - Generic, boring story. Same scheme for everything. There is nothing deep or ambitious here. Bioware played it 100% safe, no controversy, no emotions, nothing memorable.
    - Many sides quests, but quality is low. Many quests are simple "track, kill, pick up, deliver" or "scan the hell out of this area". More story side-quests are also mostly generic and boring, not even one memorable quest with some sort of plot twist. BioWare should learn from Witcher 3 story quests.
    - Your team mates are shallow, cliche and many times irritating (PeeBee...god...). I din't want to romance anyone in the end, since your right hand seems more interesting and sexy than any of NPCs.
    - Animations are tragedy. This could be forgiven 5 years ago. But we have 2017 and animations are immersion-breaking. Dialogues which suppose to sound tough, emotional, serious are being destroyed by stupid eye rolls, creepy facial espressions and smiles that arre totally oposite to the voice and scene tone. Absolutely garbage. This is RPG game and belive me- you will spend A HELL LOT OF TIME speaking with many different NPCs. Animations will make you skip and speed trough them just to not see this crap.
    - Character Creation is easy the worst in any AAA RPG I have ever played. Why did BioWare just not include DA:I CC? I have no idea. It's like they want to force you to play their "child faces" twins...
    - Faces are awufull. Textures are low res even on 2K on Ultra, lightning is tragedy, as characters many times look like plastic dolls, not living beings.
    - Exploration, while better than in DA:I is till just a time waste and it just try to force you into beliving that game is longer and has more content than it really has. Jumping puzzles, scanning everything is boring, boring, boring. And why our new car does not have Cannon like Mako had? I have no idea....
    - Combat- ther variety of skills is great but you can only equip 3...that is a joke, especially on PC, where you could easy have 5-6 of them. 3 makes combat not as complex as it could be with more active skills.
    - Crafting is useless feature, again it is just to force you to play longer (grind for materials).
    - Music is just average. Not as good as in ME1 or ME2 by a long shot.
    - Game just feels rushed, unpolished, unfinished. If you focus while you play you can see that many thing were not finished.
    - Last but not least- main protagonists are absolutely joke and in many situations they seem like sort of "space teens power rangers" that try hard to be serious and mature. You can't even compare them to Shepard.

    Overall, let me sum this up:
    Game is big, but this is illusion, like DA:I was. Empty maps with useless activities, improved exploration which sadly gets boring after first 10-15 hours. Everything feels unfinished, rushed, beta stage. Story is cliche, boring and without any good plot-twists. Honestly - I can hardly remember it after beating it. Nothing memorable really happened. Combat is great but why so limited with active skills? Animations are great in combat and absolutely garbage B-grade outside of it- expresions, walking, lipsync- just bleh.

    Very average game, but touching a little "good game" territory. As a great ME fan (over 1000h in trilogy and 450h in ME3 MP) I am very dissapointed what has become of my favourite RPG universe.

    6/10, for combat mostly and planets/areas.

    BioWare- you should be ashamed. But you won't since it's all about money. There is not good people left there and no passion for gaming.

    Try to be like CD Project Red Please. Try again to create game with love.    … Expand
  2. MartinParodi
    Mar 29, 2017
    3
    I tried to love this game i really did but after 25 hours played i now know i would never pre-order a game form Bioware again. I'm a huge fan of the mass effect series 1-2-3. own 1 and 2 on steam and 1-2-3 on origin and 1-2-3 on the ps3. So trust me when i say i was all in to let some minor errors out of the way and enjoy my time in Andromeda. But enough is enough, horrible looking PCI tried to love this game i really did but after 25 hours played i now know i would never pre-order a game form Bioware again. I'm a huge fan of the mass effect series 1-2-3. own 1 and 2 on steam and 1-2-3 on origin and 1-2-3 on the ps3. So trust me when i say i was all in to let some minor errors out of the way and enjoy my time in Andromeda. But enough is enough, horrible looking PC especially on the female side, absolutely horrifying looking NPC and animations, sub-par dialogue and game breaking bugs made me decide to put and end to this torture and stop playing this spawn of corporate greedy hell. It makes me feel like bioware just went out and fired the talented people that made the Mass Effect trilogy and replaced them with people that never designed a character in their lives along with the worst animators they could get, and on top of that they decided to rush the game so the already horrible content looks even worse. The Planets do look amazing, to absolutely stunning and immersive and they are one of the few reasons this game gets some points on my list, though on the other side the very few enemy types you get to fight is depressing. It doesn't take long to realize from one planet to another the enemies are pretty much the same with some color variations. The gameplay is actually fun and dynamic which gives some satisfaction, but then come the bugs to make you remember this game is no fun with enemies getting stuck on roof, ice, or anywhere were you can't kill them unless you reload a previous save...and that is just one of the many bugs the game has(enemies won't attack when you are clearly shooting them, getting stuck, falling in a hole and teleporting to a completely different part of the map, doors inside your ship not opening after entering that room...and a big etc). Your crew relationship feels kinda shallow, Liam is probably the best done but making him only decent, I couldn't relate to them like i did with Garrus or Tali for example and some of the writing in the game makes you think they hired a teenager to do it, and not a very talented one at that. The music improves and actually makes you feel you're playing Mass Effect, but when in each cutscene you see the horrible characters with the hideous creepy animations and the sub par writing... making that Mass Effect should shine in those regards it just ruins the experience, i could never immerse and enjoy the ride this game should be, do to this awfully done things. I just regret preordering and not asking for a refund upon the 72 hours after release, since i was hoping at some point it will improve... it doesn't...… Expand
  3. Esthete
    Dec 5, 2018
    0
    One of the main nominees for the title of the game with worst level design, the worst storyline, worst facial animation, worst character design, worst quests design, worst gameplay ever...Shorter, Mass Effect: Andromeda - a piece of sh*!
  4. dair
    Mar 21, 2017
    1
    Dragon Age Inquisition in space:

    -boring
    -repetitive
    -ugly characters
    -bad animations
    -fetch quests
    -MMO style world
    -awkward writing

    What the hell happened with BioWare...
  5. George0101
    Apr 6, 2017
    2
    Mass Effect Andromeda is a very disappointing addition to the Mass Effect series,

    I see a lot of folks dismissing the negative reviews as from "haters" or that its just people uptight about the freaky animations but this game's problems go way deeper. I for one am willing to overlook animation issues, I wish it was just that. I think if you like shooters and can stomach bad story,    Mass Effect Andromeda is a very disappointing addition to the Mass Effect series,

    I see a lot of folks dismissing the negative reviews as from "haters" or that its just people uptight about the freaky animations but this game's problems go way deeper. I for one am willing to overlook animation issues, I wish it was just that.

    I think if you like shooters and can stomach bad story, bad dialog and voice acting, and ugly characters, you will be ok with this game. If you get this game expecting to be taken back to the space fantasy world of Mass Effect for another thrilling adventure, you're in for a grave disappointment.

    I was and am ready to let go of the Milky Way, Shephard, and all that. I appreciate good combat and free exploration but to me those are smaller concerns in an RPG. I am not willing to let go of mature dialog, great voice acting, interesting characters to build relationships with, a compelling story I can't put down, fun side quests that contribute to the story, and, quite frankly, pretty people to look at in the game.

    Mass Effect Andromeda throws all that away. In it's place are childish and ugly characters, silly meaningless filler dialog, poor voice acting, tedious and repetitive quests, anti-climatic quest resolutions many of which end in idiotic alien Sudoku puzzles, and forced repeated animations (you'll get really tired of seeing your ship take-off and land from the Nexus, I was within the first day of playing!). Sorry but Sudoku puzzles are a symptom of laziness of the development effort, instead of creatively coming up with a suspenseful and interesting quest ending, maybe with a plot twist, you stick an el cheapo puzzle there.

    Nothing about this game is memorable. The quests just don't seem to matter, the squadmates are bland and lifeless - I wouldn't care if they all died, if fact I prefer it because maybe I could then get a squad of interesting people.

    Like many other aspects of this game, quests are tedious and unrewarding, boxes to check off. Most quests are everyone's busy work they can't be bothered to do, go here, scan this, fetch that. All very anti-climatic with little to no bearing on the central story.

    Like in DA I, BioWare makes it a top priority to shoe-horn political correctness issues into the game, PC lesson number one is some perverted Harrison Burgeron fantasy that everyone in the universe is exactly equally beautiful "in their own way" and to prove it they made all the characters except 1 or 2 ugly, especially the females. That intentional marring of the game visuals will apparently teach us all a valuable lesson in accepting others as desexualized androngenous beings.

    I very much applaud the fact they make these games appeal to both genders and LBGT, it's wonderful everyone can find something they like in these games. But what we don't need are 20th/21st century earth social issues shoe-horned into a futuristic space fantasy, that's called immersion breaking. We play these games because we're trying to temporarily escape this world, not be reminded of it.

    Character creation is easily the worst of any RPG ever. It's "choose one of these 8 hideously ugly heads" and then you can make only slight changes unless you want to add bizarre facial tatooing, geisha-white full face paint, and purple/pink/cyan/cherry red cotton candy clown hair (yes those are all choices!). You can choose you to be ugly or a clown or both. It boggles the mind what they were thinking with the CC.

    Some of the combat has been nicely streamlined and you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't love the new jump jets. There's more skills and more flexibility. however one key very unique thing, the ability to control squadmates and powers was removed from the game, a critical mistake and I can't imagine why they did this! I have literally played SP ME3 and ME3 a hundred times plus out of enjoyment of this combat system. You can't even equip your squadmates who are reduced to bots who follow you around and then do stupid things in combat you can't control.

    They needed to put more immediacy into this game, perhaps made the quest line a race against the clock to save the Nexus from being shutdown/destroyed before everyone woke up, etc... and then focused the planet explorations in a series of DLC or next project. I don't know, it just never seemed that important to get anything done.

    The game plays very similar to DA I where you encounter fiends all over the world who constantly respawn like in a shooter. This was fun at first but since all the enemies are largely the same, it grows to tedium quick. It also creates the feeling that it just doesn't matter.

    This game is a terrible disappointment, many of my 80+ hours into it were forced and like DA I, I don't see going back to this game unless some modders change it substantially.    … Expand
  6. Merostin
    Mar 21, 2017
    4
    This deserves no Mass Affection.

    I keep it short:

    ME1, ME2, ME3 are about story, characters, species and relations between the latter two.

    ME Andromeda tries to be the same, but it also includes new gameplay layers due to its focus on an outdated openworld concept. The result: It fails at both ME's core elements (see above) and at being a great openworld game.

    Sad, but true.
  7. xmissanthrope
    Mar 29, 2017
    1
    This game is so painful to play. Terrible story. Terrible characters. Lots of farming/grinding missions, back and forth, padding to make the game longer. I laughed, I cried and I yelled at some of the amazing parts of the ME trilogy, that game made me sit in awe with surprise at times when something I didn't expect to happen--happened, but this game, you wish that the entire crew wouldThis game is so painful to play. Terrible story. Terrible characters. Lots of farming/grinding missions, back and forth, padding to make the game longer. I laughed, I cried and I yelled at some of the amazing parts of the ME trilogy, that game made me sit in awe with surprise at times when something I didn't expect to happen--happened, but this game, you wish that the entire crew would just be swallowed by that black hole so you feel something...other than utter contempt at how awful this game is and that BioWare pretty much can never go back to it's ME 2 & 3 and Dragon Age Origins days. I actually enjoyed Dragon Age 2 because it could be funny and I had a lot of fun playing it, sure the game wasn't aesthetic or pleasing but I liked the story...I even liked DAI after I really sunk time into it (but making the enemy in the game come from a DLC from their most hated DA game was a joke, they pulled it together somehow...), but ME:A is just so painful to play, the story, the voice acting, the humor, the dialog choices mean nothing. I find myself skipping through the dialog. I have never done that in any of the previous games! I find that horrible! It's an RPG, I purchased based upon a story-a story I want to be in control of...only I'm really not. That's more frustrating than Garrus always calibrating. Combat is fun but wonky...I keep dying in the strangest places due to glitches. I get lost constantly, can't figure out where I'm going.. Planet scanning is pretty but so time consuming. I don't like any character or NPC I have come across. None. I can't even stand my own character. The menus are confusing, character creation is horrible. I think the best way to make a character is make it look absolutely ridiculous so you might laugh at something in the game! It's just horrible. I could overlook the dead faces and eyes, but the story and voice acting is an atrocity.… Expand
  8. EventualHorizon
    Apr 1, 2017
    0
    Total trash. Nevermind any of the other complaints. The god-awful characters/dialogue/storyline make this a worthless game. There is zero plot tension to pull you through the game because every plot device is simply present to give you a bunch of uninteresting objectives (picking 'military or scientific' outposts to drop on planets) etc... Completely lacking any time of literary devicesTotal trash. Nevermind any of the other complaints. The god-awful characters/dialogue/storyline make this a worthless game. There is zero plot tension to pull you through the game because every plot device is simply present to give you a bunch of uninteresting objectives (picking 'military or scientific' outposts to drop on planets) etc... Completely lacking any time of literary devices that could be used to actually make the characters feel like they are individuals. Off-key voice acting delivering already cringeworthy lines makes things even worse. I mean, after you get confronted by a hostile alien commander of some sort who tries to capture your ship, all your character can muster is "I wonder who THAT guy was?". Awful awful awful, DO NOT BUY THIS. Just another **** contrived open-world game.… Expand
  9. les01
    Apr 19, 2017
    2
    Goodbye BioWare. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice ...

    I will never again pre-order, nor even buy a BW game until its been well reviewed (by users, not bogus "professional critics"). Do not be fooled by the 8-10 ratings, EA/BW employees are on here creating fake reviews to try to put lipstick on this boring boring pig. There's no way anyone who played and loved prior ME titles    Goodbye BioWare. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice ...

    I will never again pre-order, nor even buy a BW game until its been well reviewed (by users, not bogus "professional critics"). Do not be fooled by the 8-10 ratings, EA/BW employees are on here creating fake reviews to try to put lipstick on this boring boring pig. There's no way anyone who played and loved prior ME titles could accept this horrible addition.

    I have been a BioWare fan for the longest time, from KOTOR, to Dragon Age and especially the Mass Effect series which I've literally logged thousands of hours on. I would count down the days to their next release. I'm one of the few that loved ME3, I didn't have a problem with an ending with the death of the player or even crew, everything has to end sometime and I was ready for a new setting.

    DA I was the first long anticipated release for me of a game I never did a second playthrough despite many play throughs in prior titles of the series. I hoped the ME series would be spared this, but apparently not.

    There is so much that is wrong with this game!

    I've come to expect great story telling from a BioWare title and this fails at that with an awful and boring story that only starts to get mildly interesting towards the end.

    BioWare chose high volume, low value corporate form fitted checklist content over substance and art. The game is replete with boring, excessive, pointless dialog, delivered emotionless and without the gravitas of the prior titles. You can easily see this YouTubing some dialog from ME1-3 and compare to some dialog in ME A. The dialog drones on in monotone from emotionless faces (even with the latest patch), making you want to skip it all.

    The checklist style seems to have bled into the quests, which like DAI are MMO style low value boring fetch quests that have little to no impact on the core story. In ME1-3, the side quests for the most part had everything to do with the core story!

    There's even checklists for political correctness issues which are awkwardly forced into the game seemingly for no other purpose than for people to see that BioWare is a very progressive organization. They don't contribute to the story, only distract from it.

    The squadmates are bland and completely forgettable. The new alien species and planets are cliche - desert world, ice world, oversized mushroom world, ....

    Instead of quests ending with plot twists, like Cerberus spoiling your plans and setting up for a Reaper takeover of Thessia, we get anti-climatic alien Sudoku puzzles! How do these even fit into an RPG? That is nothing but laziness!

    Oh, and because BioWare apparently views women as some sort of inferior gender that will suffer psychologically by seeing attractive models in a game, they made all character models butt ugly. I mean really ugly, especially compared to prior releases (they did the same in DA I). Not only that, clearly they wanted to prevent us from making an attractive player in the character creation by allowing a choice of 8 hideous heads and minimal ability to modify them. The CC has been gimped, you can make a clown but you can't make a character that looks like you or is attractive.

    While I like the enhanced mobility of the jump jets and the flexibility on the skills, taking out the pause (situational awareness), ability to load out teammates, and the ridiculous 3 power limit dumbs down the action to a basic shooter. I think that is the point. BioWare wants to move this to multiplayer and microtransactions so they wanted SP to be exactly like MP play.

    This game is a boring waste of time. Do not buy unless you like a space shooter and don't care about terrible story, voice acting, dialog, etc... BioWare is just a shell company now, banking on nostalgia to carry them through the next few limp-wristed deliveries.    … Expand
  10. BPoole
    Mar 22, 2017
    1
    Dragon Age: Inquisition 2.0, now with space travel!

    Such bad animations

    Really poor dialog

    Lots of fetch quests, without meaningful choices & consequences.

    AI gets in the way. How did AI get this bad?

    Only good thing from the game is the feel of the combat.
  11. Skylortrexler
    Mar 25, 2017
    3
    Imagine all the worst things about Mass Effect 1. Now add in the maps from Dragon Age Inquisition and the crafting system as well. Now you've pretty much got the ME:Andromeda experience. Sprinkle in some bad animations and poor voice acting and you've got it.
  12. Lasius-Niger
    May 17, 2018
    0
    This is what happens when you trust and give responsibilities to SJC's (Social Justice Cowards)... Gamers wanted Ivanka, BioWare is giving them Chelsea...
  13. rile
    Mar 21, 2017
    3
    A trainwreck that never ends, the quality of Bioware games continue to plummet just as it has since 2011, where the first big controversial game was released, Dragon Age II. The last title worth its salt released by the company was in 2010, with the release of Dragon Age: Awakening, the expansion to the modern classic Dragon Age: Origins.

    Of course I've still played every game they've    A trainwreck that never ends, the quality of Bioware games continue to plummet just as it has since 2011, where the first big controversial game was released, Dragon Age II. The last title worth its salt released by the company was in 2010, with the release of Dragon Age: Awakening, the expansion to the modern classic Dragon Age: Origins.

    Of course I've still played every game they've released to date, including the infamous money-squandered MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic, hoping that one day they may return to form. But that is a distant dream, an impossible reality as they've proven themselves incapable of it. And it's worth noting that Inquisition is the only game to date that I've not finished - as it adhered to an archaic quest design that was mostly found in korean MMORPGS over a decade ago.

    Mass Effect: Andromeda promises a return to the roots, a back to the basics to the much beloved original Mass Effect of 2007 release. It's no wonder why it quickly became a classic, and in many ways it set a new standard for RPGs back then. It does this by giving the series a soft-reboot, away from the repear conflict as well as allowing a much greater customization of Ryder, as well as the return of exploring the surfaces of alien planets. Even introducing new races where as the old had grown too familiar to remain 'alien'.

    It does live up to its promises on a superficial level, only delivering the exposition and mechanical on a barely serviceable level. The mechanical customization of Ryder is the only progress this game makes over any of its predecessors. The level of possible roleplay and directing the character to suit you has been distinctly reduced, even well below Mass Effect 3's standards, that were already treading on a thin ice and barely classified as an RPG.

    The issue that has sparked the controversy that has reached into all crooks and corners of the internet starts with the animations, Models do not interact without severe clipping, lip synchronization is aft to miss the beat and the facial expressions do not match the tone of the voice actors. It's reminiscent of a controversy surrounding Star Wars the Old Republic where it was mocked for months upon months for its jank animations.

    And it's all justified.

    Would it be the only issues, the game would be grand and great, but the exposition and narratives you walk Ryder through are uninspired and you'll find yourself simply going through the motions, without any of the enthusiasm. The companion characters are shells, left without the necessary development and motivations that one would find in other RPGs of today. And there's no friction, the companions dont butt heads with displays or representations of an ideal of theirown to challenge or bolster the players thinking.

    It was a great boast of the developers to claim the game holds the most dialogue they've ever had in a game, but in spite of that the game was remarkably short on exposition. Most of the time you'll be going through objecitves that have been found in open world games in the past six or seven years, exploring derelict ruins and climbing towers to scan with the infamous 'find stuff easier' vision. It's a wonder this has not been rid off with modern gaming, given that even as early as Fable 2 with its glitters that merged the aft-used tab-vision into its aesthetic design, and while it could be argued that the scanner does the same, it's more of an obstruction than anything to have to use it to look at everything in hopes of finding anything.

    The voice acting is bad, and this is in spite of a talented cast of actors. And the only conclusion that can be drawn from this that Bioware themselves did not know the tone or the beats of the game, so you'll find that the emotional performances delivered by the big name VA's is all over a place, as is often the case with games that have a poor director in the booth.

    If not for the added customization of Ryder, the combat would be just on par with the rest. But the procedural cover system leaves much to be wanted, where-as the older games had tight controls in regards to the cover, this one takes the control away from you and tries to detect whether you're in a position to take cover, and if it senses it, it does it. Of course, this leads to many, many situations where you'll shout at the game to take cover in a place where it obviously should be possible, but isn't. And there are other situations where you'll want to remain in cover, but can't, depending on your aim.

    I've been lenient about the games flaws thus far, tried to write my thoughts down without the emotional disappointment and frustration that I felt often while I played it. And I'm running out of available characters. Simply put, Andromeda is nothing short of the worst game Bioware has ever made. Everything that did go wrong, has gone wrong.    … Expand
  14. Allmass
    Mar 22, 2017
    1
    Bioware is dead, time to admit it. All last members of senior creative staff left early 2016, and this abortion of a game was made by interns and students.

    - zero creativity and reused story concepts: remnants/protheans studied by Liara/PB, badass krogan Wrex/Drack, evil antagonist Saren/Archon, generic evil cannon fodder geth/kett and so on - writing looks like it was done by 15 year    Bioware is dead, time to admit it. All last members of senior creative staff left early 2016, and this abortion of a game was made by interns and students.

    - zero creativity and reused story concepts: remnants/protheans studied by Liara/PB, badass krogan Wrex/Drack, evil antagonist Saren/Archon, generic evil cannon fodder geth/kett and so on
    - writing looks like it was done by 15 year old fangirl, and is downright retarded in some places
    - mindnumblingly boring and repetitive open world activities look like they were ripped from generic ubisoft game
    - do I even need to beat a dead horse of horrible facial animations and Sara's atrocious face? Holy **** I honestly feel bad for Jayde Rossi

    EA just decided to cash in on diehard fans of a dead franchise before the end of 2016 fiscal year and call it a day.
    Bioware will be dissolved shortly after they push couple of crappy DLCs for this monstrosity.
    Fifth fleet out.    … Expand
  15. Violett
    Mar 21, 2017
    4
    After I saw the news when Bioware are going to be sold to EA - I was like "RIP Mass Effect". This was well expected - everything EA touch starts to rot and stink. This is not the first game they corrupted. It is strange they didnt pervert ME2 and ME3. Companies like EA or Ubisoft must stay in their FIFA NHL field and not to go in area they have no idea what to do. They are able to makeAfter I saw the news when Bioware are going to be sold to EA - I was like "RIP Mass Effect". This was well expected - everything EA touch starts to rot and stink. This is not the first game they corrupted. It is strange they didnt pervert ME2 and ME3. Companies like EA or Ubisoft must stay in their FIFA NHL field and not to go in area they have no idea what to do. They are able to make niche products, this is true, and many people like it - in the nearest future it will be Mass Effect 5, Mass Effect 6, 7 ... bright and colorful games, but totally without soul.

    But lets support what I said above with some analysis. After recent news I released I'm not going to preorder this, not even buying this at all. But my m8 bought it anyway, despite my warnings, so I can write this review.

    - Graphics: Its quite nice. Really, graphics is fine, when you playing ME it is like you are watching blockbuster movie. This is the only reason I put 4 score here.

    - Plot: this is the main reason why we play ME, right? Right? Well, there are none. Where is Miranda? Where is Liara? Where are Reapers? Seriously, plot is dumbed down to some Android game. Please, go repair this module, because I'm technician and have no idea what to do, and dont even have tools o0

    - Gameplay: MMO quest system in single player game is the most absurd thing one can ever done. EA got warned after DA:I - do not do this **** again, but no, why we should listen to players? We are EA, we know better how to feed you.

    - Combat system: Well, it is okay. Honestly I dont remember how complex it was in ME 1-3, but here it is look like some japaneese slash and hack colorfest. Teleportations, explosions. Nothing special actually.

    - Animation: This should be the part of the graphics, probably, but I just had to separate this out. This is TERRIBLE. Face animaion is just abysmal. WHY SHE IS ALWAYS SMILING, like WTF. Like "my father is dead, and this is so funny." Is this some sort or black comedy, no? I even dont mention various graphical bugs and glitches, And have you seen this new azari-Shrek?

    Verdict: If you like WoW-style games - like bring 10 flowers, or kill 20 pigs - you might find this game intresting, if you like games where you need to shoot without thinking - you might find this game intresting, otherwise, especially if you are fan of ME universe - keep out of this, imagine ME3 was the last game, like HL2 and the next part will never come out.

    ...omg EA what have you done...    … Expand
  16. BRubble
    Mar 23, 2017
    1
    5 YEARS? It took 5YEARS to throw this POS together?! Really? ....really? 5 years.
    This is what happens when you farm out to sweat shop teams. This is what happens when Bioware hires based on ethnicity (so they can pat themselves on the back for their diversity) instead of actual talent. This is what happens when your focus is more on the trans/lgbt/alien sex than the important aspects of    5 YEARS? It took 5YEARS to throw this POS together?! Really? ....really? 5 years.
    This is what happens when you farm out to sweat shop teams. This is what happens when Bioware hires based on ethnicity (so they can pat themselves on the back for their diversity) instead of actual talent. This is what happens when your focus is more on the trans/lgbt/alien sex than the important aspects of the game. This is what happens when you give the writing to some college undergrads. This is what happens when EA gets their little rat claws too deeply involved. I could go on and on but you get the point, Its garbage. THIS is what happens.    … Expand
  17. Astralify
    Mar 21, 2017
    0
    The gamebreaking:
    -
    The dialogue wheel and dialogue "choices". Since this topic hurts my very soul, I will go further punishing myself, with a question that pretty much summarizes what I think about it: "- Why did you even bother?" - The Combat/gameplay. Well, what can I say, other than it's no longer a Mass Effect game, thanks to the combat. Pretty much what happened with DAI. Gone is    The gamebreaking:
    -
    The dialogue wheel and dialogue "choices". Since this topic hurts my very soul, I will go further punishing myself, with a question that pretty much summarizes what I think about it: "- Why did you even bother?"
    -
    The Combat/gameplay. Well, what can I say, other than it's no longer a Mass Effect game, thanks to the combat. Pretty much what happened with DAI. Gone is the tactical/RPG/SQUAD based combat. There is no pause any more. There is no tactically using the abilities of your squadmates. THE VERY THING THAT MADE MASS EFFECT DIFFERENT FROM ANY OTHER GENERIC 3rd Person shooter. Yeah, we've lost that. It's gone.

    Speaking of that, I am not going into the multiplayer, because It's not something I'm interested in, nor I care about.

    Also, the watering down of the "class" system, turning it into this "jack of all trades" skyrim type **** I will not go into details about my personal "hate" of these kinds of systems. The reason for this is the same as the reason we saw it in Skyrim - laziness. Because it takes all kinds of effort to balance different classes, and we know that with companies, "effort" means "costing more money".
    -
    The infamous animations. I won't say much about them, because they've already turned the game into the biggest meme-generator of 2017.
    -
    The writing. It's simply abysmal. It's very hard to get immersed in this supposedly story/character driven game, when the words that come out of everybody's "tired" faces are nonsensical and sometimes worse than fanfiction. What HAPPENED with the writing? Also, the whole setting/story is boring and uninspiring.
    -
    The characters. Well, I'm not going to go into them much, because I know that this could also be considered a subjective thing. For me though, they are terrible. "Bethesda-facepalm" level terrible.
    -
    The sound design, in particular some of the alien voices. It's like they didn't even try.
    Also, the "music" some times was atrocious. Like in the Vortex. So generic and annoying.
    -
    Bugs (some gamebreaking), glitches and overall lack of polish of nearly any aspect, which leads to the conclusion of a rushed product. A rushed 5-year-in-development product, if that is possible.
    -
    And then we get to the character creator. A very huge thing in these kinds of games. So what's going on with it? Well, basically it has been completely butcherred, to the point that for the most part it's non-existent. It's more like character "selector".

    We are talking Ubisoft's The Division level of laziness here. You have 9 scanned heads for each gender, of wich you can pretty much change only the hair, make up (and the choices are ridiculous btw), and a very limited skin tone slider (more on that later). There is virtually NO customization of the faces. You know, one of THE BIGGEST things these games, creating your own avatar. People like me spend many hours in character creators, tweaking.

    We all know that the CC in the previous games were never that great. But at least you could create unique and different faces. Changing different fetaures like eye shape, nose shape, mouth shape, brow shape and so on. In andromeda, you can't do that. Since the heads are scanned (although as a character artist myself, I can think of several ways to create the system in a way, that this would be non-issue). Which is simply sad. They didn't put any effort into this very essential aspect of the game.

    To be honest, I did not expected this to happen. The last remaing RPG feature of this game, to simply be crapped on to such extend. It's honestly the deal breaker for me. Not to mention the fact that Bioware lied, when they said that they will not change the CC much from DAI. But I guess the only thing that they didn't change (or dumbed down), was the color wheel for some things like eye color and makeup.
    -
    Now I'm not going much into the obvious "Political Correctness" and SJW agendas, splashed all over this game, one of which is the uglification of the females. I can get geeky and nit picky with this one till we all get "asari" in the face, but I won't. There is more about it around the web.

    But the thing that goes too far, is the lack of white character presets for the females. Aside from most likely catering to regressive feminists like Sarkeesian, the fact there are purposefully no white presets is simply a disgrace.

    Not because I'm offended personally or whatever **** the apologists will throw at me, but because when you do something like that, you are intentionally igniting/creating racial tension amongst the community. This to me is so wrong, so sick and twisted, that I have no words for it. This thing alone is enough of a reason to boycott the studio and the publisher. And when you see things like this happening, some people like Manveer Heir start to make a whole lot more sense.
    -
    CONCLUSION
    -
    As a game that carries the "Mass Effect" name (to sell itself), and all the expectations that comes with that, it's a 1.
    -    … Expand
  18. echoss
    Mar 28, 2017
    2
    I've been waiting for new Mass Effect game anxiously and I really wanted to like it, but...
    Instead of the great characters, conversations and voice acting of previous Mass Effect games, we get characters that are hollow and generally not likeable. Conversations range from tolerable to downright embarrasing. Voice acting is high school drama club level.
    I guess everything that needs to    I've been waiting for new Mass Effect game anxiously and I really wanted to like it, but...
    Instead of the great characters, conversations and voice acting of previous Mass Effect games, we get characters that are hollow and generally not likeable. Conversations range from tolerable to downright embarrasing. Voice acting is high school drama club level.

    I guess everything that needs to be said about animations has already been said. It's just sad.
    Faces are just plain ugly and human characters look like puppets from the Thunderbirds with their oversized heads.

    Side quests are repetative and get boring quite fast.

    On the positive side, planets look reasonably good and some even great. Exploring is fun.

    Pros:
    - graphics in planets
    - mako + exploring
    - combat
    - multiplayer

    Cons:
    - characters visually
    - animation
    - dialogue & voice acting
    - side quests

    I don't know what has happened to BioWare, but this game feels like the death of Mass Effect franchise.    … Expand
  19. ui876will
    Mar 24, 2017
    1
    Reasons to buy

    - It's called Mass Effect

    Reasons NOT to

    - It is boring
    - The story is cheesy
    - The animations are a joke
    - The graphics were downgraded
    - The characters,specially the women,are horrible
    - It was made by SJWs

    Now,if you still want to buy it,it will be your problem. I did my part to advertise you.
  20. gobhoblin
    Mar 21, 2017
    5
    I don't understand how people are giving this a 10 on here and posting that it has lag and animation problems in the same review. What does 10 mean to you?

    Bad animations
    Bad character models
    Bad scaling
    Weak dialog
    Terrible voice acting
    Decent combat
    Boring scan ability that pads game time
  21. Derrik4999
    Mar 24, 2017
    1
    It's too boring yet it can be fun

    It's VERY repetitive,what you do from the start of the game you do 10 hours later,the same **** New area: Kill a bunch of people,talk with people,kill a bunch of more people,do some retarded stuff and go to the new place. the fighting is fun but that's all there really is,the animations and voice acting is **** for such a high budget game. really dissapointing.
  22. Shermos
    Mar 21, 2017
    2
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Quick recommendation: Don't buy. Not worthwhile for new players, and an insult to the original Mass Effect trilogy, even with its flaws.

    Firstly, I want to disclose that I am a long time fan of the Mass Effect universe. I was not happy with the idea of moving the setting to the Andromeda galaxy, throwing away a rich setting and wonderful characters which had been built up over years. A good justification was needed to win me over. I couldn't see it.

    Mass Effect Andromeda had five years of development time. The resulting game is something I would be embarrassed to sell with my name attached to it. Most people by now will be aware with the problems with facial and general animation. The game also appears to have a lot of other bugs at the time of release. It is not clear how many will be fixed by patches. This is only the beginning of the game's problems.

    The premise for Andromeda does not make sense. We are told the trip from the Milky Way took over 600 years. This is too long even when using cryo sleep. People who stayed at home would continue to advance technologically and develop faster, more efficient faster than light travel. They could make the trip in a fraction of the time, and have already set up a new civilisation by the time the original expedition arrives. This isn't a good start for a game in the sci-fi genre, and the failures of logic and reason get worse.

    Bioware is known for telling good stories and creating excellent characters. It failed considerably on both counts. The main storyline is extremely generic. It adds to a feeling that the game is based on badly thought up and written fan fiction. Worse, we are not given enough reason to care about the characters at our sides. The worst examples being the protagonist's father and main antagonist. We meet the father at the start of the game knowing nothing about him. He dies in the very first mission without the game giving us any reason to care about his loss. He had the protagonists job of "pathfinder" already occupied, and he had to be removed. Why not make his death occur later in the game, or else make the protagonist be in charge in the first place? You don't make someone so important die until the character has had enough time to develop. That brings me to the antagonist. He is the big bad, with no depth whatsoever. He only seems to exist to be in the player's way, and we can't reason with him. Not even an alien from another galaxy should be evil for the sake of being evil and incapable of reaching an accommodation with the protagonist. The first time we meet his people, shooting begins immediately, and the player is not even given the choice to try to negotiate.

    The dialogue is awful to the point of being unintentionally funny. Voice acting is not much better, although I don't fault the voice actors for this. They had to work with terrible writing, and it seems as though they aren't able to get a feel for the setting and context their dialogue was being delivered in.

    Combat is the game's only redeeming feature. People who enjoy shoot 'em up games will probably enjoy this component and the multiplayer section. That said, it is not ground breaking, and the AI enemy is average at best. Squad mate AI in the single player section is terrible. The developers somehow managed to make it worse than it was in the original trilogy. I wanted to shoot one of my "Companions" to save the enemy the trouble, but the game wouldn't let me do so.

    The following point will matter to long time fans of the Mass Effect series. Andromeda gives the big FU to the established lore from the original trilogy. The trip to a new galaxy should not be possible with the technology available at the time the sleeper ships are supposed to have been built. Only a hand wavy explanation is provided. The expedition members seem have access to technology which didn't exist in the original games. This wouldn't be an issue if the expedition left after the events of Mass Effect 3, where we could expect technical advancements to have taken place, even in the aftermath of the Reaper war.

    Bioware wanted to move the setting to Andromeda, and have the expedition leave before ME3 to avoid dealing with the consequences of the ending choice of the trilogy. We were told they especially didn't want to choose a canon decision. The new game renders this change of setting pointless. One of the choices was synthesis between organic beings and artificial intelligence, a choice which was very unpopular with the vast majority of the fan base. We learn that everyone in the Andromeda expedition has been physically linked to an AI called SAM. Nevermind that AI research was considered highly illegal in the original trilogy. This is a huge slap in the face to the fan base. A canon choice appears to have been chosen anyway, so why bother with the setting change? Why throw away so many characters and places we love?    … Expand
  23. alex_baranowski
    Apr 25, 2017
    2
    Well - I used to love Mass Effect series. Even after horrible ending of Mass Effect 3. For me Mass Effect was about story. Story was deep, with hard moral choices, amazing dialogues (especially as Renegade :)), and creating future of universe. Now Mass Effect is about fighting - yes Andromeda has amazing fight system, better than average locations but nothing more. It's quite depressingWell - I used to love Mass Effect series. Even after horrible ending of Mass Effect 3. For me Mass Effect was about story. Story was deep, with hard moral choices, amazing dialogues (especially as Renegade :)), and creating future of universe. Now Mass Effect is about fighting - yes Andromeda has amazing fight system, better than average locations but nothing more. It's quite depressing because you won't find any memorable character. There are also terrible cringe worthy dialogues. Story is average. Voice acting is lacking emotions. There are bugs - like not moving enemies, fu**** up facial animations, loading textures etc. Great universe with wasted potential.… Expand
  24. Effectsorz
    Mar 21, 2017
    0
    Possibly the worst game Bioware has ever released.

    The animations are awful, the game is full of political correctness and in general a god awful story that ignores everything that happened in the previous games. If you are like me and thought Dragon Age: Inquisition and Fallout 4 was bad, then do NOT buy this game. This game is 100x worse than any of those titles. It is simply the    Possibly the worst game Bioware has ever released.

    The animations are awful, the game is full of political correctness and in general a god awful story that ignores everything that happened in the previous games.

    If you are like me and thought Dragon Age: Inquisition and Fallout 4 was bad, then do NOT buy this game. This game is 100x worse than any of those titles. It is simply the worst AAA game released this year, if the user score did not convince you already.    … Expand
  25. XmasonX
    Mar 21, 2017
    1
    Game is buggy

    AI sometimes goes in a T pose in combat.

    Bad animations

    Bad dialog

    Bad writing

    Bad dialog wheel

    MP uses p2p instead of dedicated servers.
  26. MaxOverload
    Mar 21, 2017
    1
    It's really just Mass Effect: Badly. Badly written, badly animated, badly rendered. There is no patching their way out of this. There's no talent left at Bioware capable of doing better than this. Time to let the franchise and the studio die while they can still be remembered fondly.
  27. tirith2708
    Mar 21, 2017
    1
    Complete Mess.
    This "game" is rushed cash-grab made by completely different people than ME trilogy. Aside from obvious technical flaws and bugs it also panders to SJW community which already ruined enough things in this world.
  28. taufirec
    Mar 22, 2017
    4
    If this were a sci fi title put out by a small indie studio as a new IP I would consider it good, but as a AAA title made by a studio known for quality writing, the game is bad. The 3d models and animations make it abundantly obvious that the people working on them are not qualified to be doing that kind of work, the writing is amateurish and often times laughable, the characters areIf this were a sci fi title put out by a small indie studio as a new IP I would consider it good, but as a AAA title made by a studio known for quality writing, the game is bad. The 3d models and animations make it abundantly obvious that the people working on them are not qualified to be doing that kind of work, the writing is amateurish and often times laughable, the characters are shallow and often quite uninteresting, but luckily the core gameplay is good. Content is...lackluster to say the least and the game ends up having a lot of bugs as well as the same issues that ME 1-3 had with conversations that should have been fixed considering they worked on this for 5 years. Honestly, if this is what Bioware puts out, then I can safely say I won't be purchasing another game made by them. As for this game, It's already been approved for a return so I won't be bothering with it again either.… Expand
  29. Navinor
    Mar 21, 2017
    1
    What enrages me most is the fact the game is trying to teach me about political correctness.

    The characters are slapping me their feminist and SJW ideology right in my face. Dear Bioware (well we all know you are not Bioware anymore...) please, PLEASE stop trying to teach me stupid political agendas through your games. The only thing you are achieving is fueling my fury. And you    What enrages me most is the fact the game is trying to teach me about political correctness.

    The characters are slapping me their feminist and SJW ideology right in my face.

    Dear Bioware (well we all know you are not Bioware anymore...) please, PLEASE stop trying to teach me stupid political agendas through your games.

    The only thing you are achieving is fueling my fury. And you do not wand that. Because nothing enrages me more, when my beloved universe is occupied by SJWs and feminists.

    My only reaction to this is making shure your game will turn to ash. And i will gladly work on it.

    +

    Bad animations

    Bad dialog

    Bad writing

    Bad dialog wheel

    MP uses p2p instead of dedicated servers.    … Expand
  30. XanGambit
    Mar 21, 2017
    1
    MASS EFFECT: ANDROMEDA is a massive disappointment. Yet another game that was rushed to the market long before it was ready. The game is plagued with bugs, the dialogue is terrible and the story is bland and recycled. It's another money grab from EA.

    Additionally, another thing that's a big turnoff is that there is no character creation option for Caucasian skin. I thought this may have    MASS EFFECT: ANDROMEDA is a massive disappointment. Yet another game that was rushed to the market long before it was ready. The game is plagued with bugs, the dialogue is terrible and the story is bland and recycled. It's another money grab from EA.

    Additionally, another thing that's a big turnoff is that there is no character creation option for Caucasian skin. I thought this may have been by mistake, but apparently the game's devs actually left this out intentionally because of political beliefs. That's right. This game allowed its creators to inject racism and politics into probably one of the most-used means of escape from the dregs of every day life by people: video games.

    Back to the game, though. It's rushed, incomplete and buggy. There are a lot of side quests, but their quality is low. The content overall is just poor. Crafting is pointless, combat is over-simplified and limited, and the quality of animation is some of the worst I've seen of games in the past couple of years.

    Basically, stay away from this title. It's probably just a good idea to stay away from EA in general. This isn't a "one off" for them. It's become the norm. And lastly, don't support games that knowingly and intentionally build in their real world hatred and bias into them. Seeing video games politicized is something I never expected to see.    … Expand
prev
Page:

Awards & Rankings

1
#1 Most Discussed PC Game of 2017
1
#1 Most Shared PC Game of 2017

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
72

Mixed or average reviews - based on 37 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 18 out of 37
  2. Mixed: 18 out of 37
  3. Negative: 1 out of 37
  1. Riot Pixels
    Jun 5, 2017
    55
    Postcard-pretty landscapes is pretty much all that there is good about Andromeda. They serve as backdrops for a boring, cliche-ridden, somewhat demented story with forgettable characters and even more forgettable missions.
    Read full review
  2. PC PowerPlay
    May 11, 2017
    80
    Enough of the classic Mass Effect, with enough new mechanics to keep the game fresh. [Hollingworth; Issue#261, p.55]
    Read full review
  3. Edge Magazine
    Apr 27, 2017
    70
    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]
See all critic reviews »