Review — Mass Effect: Andromeda

Mass Effect: Andromeda

We sit down and play Mass Effect: Andromeda. We’ve had some time and now we delve into a full review of Mass Effect: Andromeda

Hello again Mass Effect fans. Welcome to my review for Mass Effect: Andromeda. I won’t take much time discussing bugs and things I covered in my first impressions article, but I will get the bad out of the way first.

If you’re going to pick this game up then get a can of Raid with it because the bugs are plentiful. One experience I had was on a mission you get from Vetra. Near the end I fell off a platform, which luckily doesn’t kill you; it just puts you back on the platform, but the problem arose when I was put back. I couldn’t move and was killed. When I respawned I was locked in a room that even reloading the auto-save didn’t fix. Needless to say, I didn’t reattempt that mission. During a cut scene, a few ships flew over and one of the three ships were a few frame rates behind the rest and kept jumping every few seconds. If I went through all my documented bugs and glitches for Mass Effect: Andromeda though I’d be here all day.

A big strength of Mass Effect: Andromeda is how pretty it is. At least if you ignore the characters as most of them are plain ugly. The worlds you visit are varied with their own unique wildlife, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The frame rates in certain areas drop a lot. I don’t know if this is present on PC, but on the PS4 version of Mass Effect, it was very noticeable. It doesn’t happen too often near the beginning of the game, but near the end it’s a little more frequent. All something that BioWare shouldn’t be known for.

My favorite thing about Andromeda is how much it hearkens back to the first Mass Effect game. I still get nostalgic going back and driving around alien planets looking up into beautiful skyboxes. Even though back then it was pretty rubbish, it’s actually pretty good in Andromeda. The jet pack really adds to exploration; jumping around all remnant architecture. It’s also very useful in combat too. If an enemy takes cover you can run, leap, and come crashing down with your Omni Blade right on top of their skull. I wanted to criticize the lack of diversity in the enemies you face, but considering the older titles never really had much diversity in each individual game, it’s not that bad.

On to the classic BioWare trademark. How is the story and writing? The writing is alright, and the story gets better as the game progresses. As I mentioned before, there isn’t anything in the first few hours of Mass Effect: Andromeda that hooks you. Lacking that central narrative for the first few hours of your game makes it feel slow. It wasn’t until nearly halfway through my play-through I understood who I was fighting and why. Something you think should be known from the offset. I won’t go into the finer detail as I feel all of that would spoil the story that does eventually come.

You may think as keen as I am to point out every little thing wrong with Mass Effect: Andromeda that this game is rubbish. It isn’t. I was actually able to have fun and get immersed into the game. It’s definite departure from the original Mass Effect titles, which may turn some hardcore fans off, and if you had a lot of fun with Andromeda I’m not trying to dissuade you from feeling that way. For how great the previous titles were, this one is just average. While I liked it, for the most part, it would be disingenuous for me not to mention its many, many flaws. I do recommend this game after it’s been out for a while and has had time to be patched; especially if it’s on sale. If you have a PC and just want a great Mass Effect experience, then the original games are still available for a fairly cheap price.

Mass Effect: Andromeda was developed by BioWare and published by EA for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC on March 21^st, 2017. A PS4 copy of the game was purchased by myself for reviewing purposes.