Mass Effect: Andromeda

While it's underwhelming in places, there's a lot to like as you venture into the weirder parts of Andromeda. Frequent technical issues hamper the experience somewhat, as does an uninspiring main story. [May 2017, p.82]

A divisive entry in a lauded series, which manages to succeed despite encumbering its open-world design and interesting upbeat narrative with lacklustre combat and poor UI.

There’s the elements of greatness in this latest installment, it just needs to step out of the shadows. Right now we have a strong set up, but with the slow start to the story, waiting for the payoff is going to feel like an even bigger drag.

Andromeda was an opportunity to give the franchise a new impulse, but BioWare did not fully take it. The story is badly written and the amount of bugs is high. Other than that, Andromeda is an amazing Mass Effect journey.

At the end of the day, Mass Effect: Andromeda isn't bad so much as it is disappointing. The core gameplay has been improved from Mass Effect 3, and the multiplayer is almost worth the price of admission on its own. Alas, it's dragged down by a weak presentation, poor plot, and a general lack of ambition. When Andromeda shines, it's a lot of fun, but in a month filled with top-notch games, it's disappointing that Bioware's years-in-the-making follow-up is so thoroughly mundane. There's plenty of fun to be had if you're willing to overlook the flaws, but Andromeda asks you to overlook flaws just a bit too often.

While I’ve enjoyed my time with Mass Effect: Andromeda, I’m not dying to go back. It’s not bad, not by any stretch, but it’s missing that special something. Franchise devotees will no doubt dive in and find lots to like, but its newcomers who will pop the disk in the tray and walk away wondering what all the fuss was ever about.

Unfortunately, Mass Effect: Andromeda picked up some unwelcome visitors on its long journey to your gaming machine. Though it has some stellar moments, “Andromeda” tries to cram too many ideas into one package, turning its obsession with the bigness of space into a crutch for uncharacteristically shoddy workmanship.

This reboot offers a lot in the way of pure content, but as the hours drag on, there is a sense of repetition and obtuse busywork rather than a sense of purpose. Everything feels slightly more generic, and slightly less interesting compared to its namesake trilogy, although some strong level design helps the overall impression to a certain degree.

Mass Effect Andromeda is a good Space Opera RPG, with a lot of content, but the story isn't complete at the end, which is frustrating, calling for a sequel that could never be released.

I had a lot of fun with Mass Effect: Andromeda. The galaxy I got to explore was full of life and the combat felt incredibly satisfying. But various issues with important mechanics like the scanner and hefty technical problems prevented my enjoyment from ever lasting too long...Although familiar in some regards, this is a positive in Andromeda’s case. Though, a truly successful revival needs to be innovative, not repetitive, and Andromeda often falls into a trap of tedium. It's a shame because it could have been so much more.

While combat is improved over its predecessors it pales compared to rivals in the genre thanks to braindead AI. Facial animations are laughable at times and have a negative impact on the good voice acting. Bugs and performance issues only hamper this further. Andromeda is a good game and I’ve enjoyed my time with it. However, for those who’ve been waiting five years for another Mass Effect adventure, I don’t think it will be good enough.

Andromeda has a spirit that I don’t want to see squashed by technical failures and a few questionable design decisions. Andromeda is ambitious and above all else it has heart - the deeper I got into the game, the more glued to it I became. Had it been anything less I would’ve sat my controller down and given up, but the journey most certainly made the struggle worth it.

Andromeda provides an interesting premise and story, but is let down by poor combat, excessive padding, and over-complication.

Mass Effect: Andromeda is an unbalanced experience. It’s an incredibly ambitious game with a colossal scope, but it doesn’t always hit the right notes.

You can almost hear BioWare repeatedly mashing the “Series Reset” button during a play-through of Mass Effect: Andromeda, but the game’s deviation from what we’ve come to expect from the franchise is largely characterized by a downgrade in quality almost across the entire board. Mass Effect: Andromeda attempts to redefine the potential for the franchise as it moves forward into the current generation, but the establishment of this new fiction makes for a disappointingly inconsistent experience.

With the vast love of the Mass Effect series, Andromeda was never going to make people 100% happy, the same way the ME3 ending didn’t make people happy. The BioWare team put so many great things in place, but the main story, the characters, and most of the writing keep the game from being great. Sadly, the technical mess keeps it from being good.

Mass Effect Andromeda is not as bad as it is disappointing. Fans of Sci-Fi RPGs will find a lot to like here, but its many shortcomings will haunt BioWare for many years to come. Great potential wasted.

For all Andromeda does right, the game constantly feels like it’s going to fall apart, suffering from countless bugs and performance issues. We’re playing on a standard PS4, and the game constantly struggles to load in assets. Simply driving across the environment often results in the Nomad stopping in place for a moment before moving on. Large sections of landscape will just disappear under the right circumstances. Even in small areas, like our ship, we’ll see entire rooms missing at times. We’ve encountered doubled character models. We’ve had XP notifications cycle endlessly and minor quests that won’t complete. We’ve been forced to reset when we couldn’t choose any dialogue options, and we’ve regularly encountered enemies that get stuck in the walls or just stand there unresponsively...It’s hard to wrap your head around how much of a mess it is when other areas of Mass Effect: Andromeda are such a step forward.

The fact remains that there is still within Mass Effect: Andromeda an ambitious core and a vast amount of content, some of it very entertaining, if not the major leap forward or surprising change of direction that fans were hoping for. The first trilogy had its issues to be sure, but the games were beloved for their stories and characters. It's doubtful that players will keep returning to Andromeda. Aside from the tepid characters and rote story, its biggest failure is a lack of imagination. It somehow takes us to a whole new galaxy but makes us feel like we never left home.

If the combat is Andromeda’s most pleasant surprise, it is the alarming drop-off in the game’s writing that is of most concern. The dialogue, in particular, is unusually flat and laboured for a Bioware game, while Andromeda often fumbles what should be its biggest moments.

The scale of Mass Effect: Andromeda means there’s a lot of stuff, and thus a lot of bad or mediocre stuff.

Mass Effect deserves better than Andromeda. The series has stumbled into a new generation, weighed down by tedious open world tropes and a catalogue of performance issues on the PS4. That said, it's not quite the disaster that some would have you believe. There really is a good Mass Effect game here, complete with endearing characters and great combat, but it's buried beneath a mountain of unnecessary clutter. In time, patches may sort many of its problems out, but until then, we can only recommend Andromeda to the BioWare faithful.

There’s a decent game in here somewhere, but Mass Effect: Andromeda feels like a collaboration from Mass Effect fans rather than a group of known and established developers. It’s like that cool thing everyone loves, a decade-plus removed from its creators and pushed down an assembly line. Mass Effect: Andromeda didn’t need to reinvent the wheel, but the wheel needed to have that special sheen that’s evidence of five years of polish and care. Instead it feels well meaning, but sloppy.

Andromeda leaves behind the series' problems in another galaxy only to acquire a whole new and interesting set in this one. What BioWare has produced is our least favourite game to bear its name. Had it not been for this review, we would have given up during the game's hugely monotonous mid-segments, whose sense of physical scale isn't matched by equally towering, or even semi-interesting, design. BioWare is a pillar of the gaming landscape, but somewhere along the line the Andromeda project veered off course. Who knows where this leaves the franchise, but any sequel is going to have to rediscover its focus, or just like the Initiative, fans may also choose to emigrate to pastures new.

Mass Effect Andromeda falls short of its predecessors, but it's still a competently executed open-world action RPG with an interesting world and tons of quests to complete. Its biggest shame is that it doesn't make better use of its setting, opting instead to go with more of the same. Hopefully BioWare will be more ambitious when it comes time for the inevitable sequel.

What could have been an all-time classic action role-player is let down by a surprisingly poor script and unengaging characters.

The game can't escape its shortcomings, but patient explorers can still find a few stars shining in the darkness.

Andromeda is an undeniable mess, one that is now being hurriedly fixed after it already “enjoyed” its most effective sales period. The state it released in – considering the money and publisher behind it – is hard to conceive, let alone forgive, but a game can be a buggy mess and remain fun. Andromeda is fun… sometimes. Other times it’s a dreary slog through recycled cutscenes, infantile character interactions, and a lot of badly masked loading screens.