Mass Effect Andromeda first impressions?

[votemarvel]

Finished the opening planet and got a Game Integrity error. I can only assume that it doesn't like me running FRAPS (using it for the screenshot function), so I'm going to have to run Origin through Steam and use the screenshot functionality from that client. Why Origin doesn't have one yet is beyond me.

Special ammo going from a mod (ME1), to a power (ME2 & 3), to a consumable is a huge annoyance to me. Just seems as if they've worked on the multiplayer system and then added it into the single player.

 

[votemarvel]

SNIP

Here's a small gallery of images of my Ryder http://imgur.com/a/0sUFX

 

[CritialGaming]

So I caved and I picked up the game, because I just had to get into this game myself. I was a huge fan of the original trilogy so I couldn't wait to play this one, despite the hilarious animations floating around the internet.

I've reached the first real planet and there are a couple of things I would like to point out.

1. The animation is bad in spots, but nowhere near as widespread as the internet makes it seem. There are a few characters (which you've already seen) that just seem extremely unfinished. But for the most part animations are fine, not great, but not bad either. Kind of on par with Bioware really because frankly their facial animations have never been good.

2. The VO is very random. While most characters do a good job of reading the lines, there are some occasional things that come across in a completely wrong tone, and seemed cut and pasted into the conversation without sharing context. Not only that, but some character's voices just don't fucking work. Like Kesh, the first Krogan you meet in the game. She has this very light, smooth voice, that just doesn't fit a Krogan. Female or not, I feel like the voice at very least should have a rasp or gutteral type of feeling to it because the Krogan race are big, strong, fighting aliens. It just doesn't fit and I hate it.

Though in contrast, the female Turian that you meet on your ship is fucking amazing. I loved her the moment I met her so that's good and it leads me to point number 3.

3. I've seen people complain that they don't feel connected to these new characters. I don't understand why, I mean, I do...These aren't OG Mass Effect characters, and I think people still have too much attachment to Shepard and his crew which is making it hard for people to click with the new cast. Personally I like Ryder, and I love my Turian girlfriend. Cora is kinda of "meh" but to me she is like Ashley and didn't like Ashley either. So the characters seem fine. I even like the AI in my brain.

So far I am far more impressed with ME:A than I thought I would be. So that's a great thing, and I can't wait to get into the meat of the game and see where the journey leads.

 

[Fappy]

I am going to wait for several patches to come out before picking this up. I have done a lot of research and by all accounts it sounds like an imperfect ME game that I could still get some enjoyment out of. The main thing holding me back from a purchase is its unpolished state, so if they can straighten that out I think I can stomach the remaining gameplay/story flaws.

 

[Elijin]

The networking and hard crashes in mp are so bad. The game is fun, but fuck. Use servers you cheap jerks.

 

[votemarvel]

Holy hell, the game has no quick save option!

I was wondering why pressing F5 wasn't bringing up the save indicator and so I went into the keybindings. Lo and behold there is no quick save function. What an oversight.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Share Your Ryders [https://www.reddit.com/r/ShareYourRyders/]

Bioware have become Bethesda, relying on fans to fix their games.

Holy hell, the game has no quick save option!

I was wondering why pressing F5 wasn't bringing up the save indicator and so I went into the keybindings. Lo and behold there is no quick save function. What an oversight.

It's a console port. No F5 on a gamepad.

 

[votemarvel]

It's a console port. No F5 on a gamepad.

ME3 on the 360 had a quick save option (select button), they have no excuse for its exclusion in Andromeda.

 

[votemarvel]

It's like they've looked at Mass Effect 1's Galaxy Map and thought "how can we make this more tedious?"

 

[Redryhno]

It's like they've looked at Mass Effect 1's Galaxy Map and thought "how can we make this more tedious?"

I dunno, I sorta liked ME1's map outside of the loading fade-in/fade-out when you first accessed it. Unless that's what you're talking about, but it is pretty unforgivable that that it takes twice as much time to go between planets than it does to ride the Citadel's elevator, longer to probe than in ME2, and everything is not a skippable animation.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

ME3 on the 360 had a quick save option (select button), they have no excuse for its exclusion in Andromeda.

Perhaps it will be patched in later, along with the animation fixes.

 

[votemarvel]

I dunno, I sorta liked ME1's map outside of the loading fade-in/fade-out when you first accessed it. Unless that's what you're talking about, but it is pretty unforgivable that that it takes twice as much time to go between planets than it does to ride the Citadel's elevator, longer to probe than in ME2, and everything is not a skippable animation.

Mass Effect 1's Galaxy Map is the favourite of the series for me. Quick, clean, and tells me straight away what I need to know. The follow-ups annoyed me and if I had to pick one reason it would be "why am I flying the ship, isn't that what Joker is paid for?"

Initially the GM in Andromeda looks the same, and then you use it. Flying animations not only between systems but between planets just makes everything that bit longer than it needs to be.

Unlike ME1 info about the planet isn't shown until you start manually scanning. Now this is explainable in universe but becomes annoying when you discover there is nothing on the world for you to find. And when there is, it's the same stupid 'we'll direct you to it' mechanic from ME3! Why bother having a scanning mini-game at that point, just go back to ME1's giving it straight to you.

As I said before, it is like they looked at Mass Effect 1's Galaxy Map and went into Andromeda with the design idea to make it more tedious to use.

Perhaps it will be patched in later, along with the animation fixes.

They patched back in auto-attack for the console versions of Dragon Age II, so anything is possible I suppose.

 

[votemarvel]

Two bugs that keep cropping up on Eos are that fast Travel stops working, doesn't even show up on the map, and Ryder's Wrist scanner fails to open.

Both of these can be solved by saving and then exiting to the main menu. Problem is that they are occurring frequently enough to make that act annoying, as you don't exit to the main menu but instead to the title screen where you need to press SPACE to get to the main menu.

What is good in Andromeda is really good, but it never fails to drag you out of your enjoyment with its bugs.

 

[distortedreality]

I'm about 12 or so hours in, and enjoying it so far.

The animation isn't stellar, and there are some odd VA moments, but on the whole it's been fun. Haven't had any real bugs, and am so far finding the writing serviceable without being brilliant. Haven't started any of the loyalty quests yet, and I'm not too far into the main story, so I have hopes that the writing gets better the further you get into the game.

Really enjoying the updated combat - the jump jets add more than I thought they would, and running around planetside is also more fun that I expected.

My only real criticism is the character creator - despite what seems like a decent amount of options available, it's harder than it should be to get a decent looking person. The saving grace to this is the custom character repository that EA have setup, which allows you to load up other players customisation. I didn't try this out, decided to persevere with my character, but hopefully that functionality will help others.

 

[djl3485]

You can't customize the Default Ryder's AT ALL. You don't even have access to the skin tone that the default's have, or anywhere close. And according to all the stuff I've read, there's no way to change your appearance once you've started the save file.

Sucks about being locked in, but yeah, I should've remembered you couldn't tweak the default Shepard or DAII's Hawke.

I've heard they're apparently looking to improve the character gen as well, so that's another good reason to wait.

The creator needs to be redone entirely. Your options are so limited. The only thing you can actually change is the hair styles for the custom ones. You can't change the shape of your nose, only it's position, you cant change your lips, only it's size, you are basically picking what face you want on your character, instead of actually making the character. And all so that the father character looks related to you for the 5 minutes he's alive.

Except for the default Ryder, you can change everything...lips, nose, eyes and so on. So not sure why you're saying you can't do it.

I went through the presets and found the face shape I like and made some minor adjustments to the eyes, cheeks, and ears.

 

[DeadProxy]

You can't customize the Default Ryder's AT ALL. You don't even have access to the skin tone that the default's have, or anywhere close. And according to all the stuff I've read, there's no way to change your appearance once you've started the save file.

Sucks about being locked in, but yeah, I should've remembered you couldn't tweak the default Shepard or DAII's Hawke.

I've heard they're apparently looking to improve the character gen as well, so that's another good reason to wait.

The creator needs to be redone entirely. Your options are so limited. The only thing you can actually change is the hair styles for the custom ones. You can't change the shape of your nose, only it's position, you cant change your lips, only it's size, you are basically picking what face you want on your character, instead of actually making the character. And all so that the father character looks related to you for the 5 minutes he's alive.

Except for the default Ryder, you can change everything...lips, nose, eyes and so on. So not sure why you're saying you can't do it.

I went through the presets and found the face shape I like and made some minor adjustments to the eyes, cheeks, and ears.

I just reinstalled the game to back up my point, because you're wrong. You can ONLY make adjustments, you don't get a selection of individual features to choose from, only faces. By that I mean, you can't take the features from preset 6 and put them in preset 1. It's possible you can't even make some presets have the features of others. I just went through each preset, and all of their "adjustment" sliders are in the middle for each feature, meaning each feature is crafted for each preset, instead of all being molded out of a basic model.

 

[Frezzato]

I am going to wait for several patches to come out before picking this up. I have done a lot of research and by all accounts it sounds like an imperfect ME game that I could still get some enjoyment out of. The main thing holding me back from a purchase is its unpolished state, so if they can straighten that out I think I can stomach the remaining gameplay/story flaws.

This is the main problem with the game. As generic as it sounds, it's very accurate.

One gripe for me is how the sniper rifles have no range. There's a range indicator when you're looking through the scope. I was aiming at some baddies and it was showing a range of 133 meters--in red--as if it's beyond all hope. I took a few shots and sure enough, no dice. Now, I understand that it's just a game and all, but 133 meters isn't beyond the reach of ANY modern rifle, sniper scope or not. That's less than half the effective range of the real-like M4 without a scope.

Of course, once I switched to my assault rifle, I started scoring hits.

On that same world I attacked a base from a short distance and ran out of ammo. I resupplied less than 100 meters away and returned to see that everyone I had killed instantly repopulated. Hmm. Anyway, I got inside the base and thoroughly killed everything inside and had exited through a set of doors (to where I started) when I decided to check one more time for containers. I go back through the doors, check one last container, then exit again.

Of course, all enemies initially outside the base had repopulated, heavy turrets and all.

So, yeah, "polish" is what it needs :/

 

[votemarvel]

You know what. Screw the Nomad, give me the Mako back, at least that beast had guns.

I hate the Viability mechanic of the game because it tries to make the player feel obliged to do all the meaningless tat available on that planet.

 

[pookie101]

well ive done the first mission and arrived on the nexus and not bad so far. guns seem weirdly lacking range. its odd shooting things with a weapon where you would hit them in me 2 or 3