So I finally finished the game last night after 120 Hours.. I did everything.

Anyways, I liked it. It had it's problems but the overall story was decent. It definitely was not anywhere near as good as mass effect 2 & 3 but it was still good.

Vall Forran wrote on Apr 2, 2017, 21:30:
I absolutely hated this game at first. I expected the controls to be the same as the previous ME games. They throw so many mechanics at you from the beginning, I promptly forgot them all. I'm a level 46 now and just figured out how profiles work.

Combat is amazing. The "mission quests" (loyalty and major) are absolutely fantastic. But then there are soooo many crazy side quests. The facial animations are a bit weird...they stick out their upper lips on certain syllables but there's so much voice acting I can forgive it. Again, the main missions don't have any of those issues.

I'm more offput by the disparate shaders. The terrain is almost photo realistic, but the Tempest is practically toon-shaded. And all the people wear gear that's either NASA underwear or Destiny/Titanfall crazy sci-fi detailed armor. And then the hair is mostly always terrible.

I've come to the same review as yourself. I think some of the dialogue and choices were terribly put together but overall I quite like the game play.

I absolutely hated this game at first. I expected the controls to be the same as the previous ME games. They throw so many mechanics at you from the beginning, I promptly forgot them all. I'm a level 46 now and just figured out how profiles work.

Combat is amazing. The "mission quests" (loyalty and major) are absolutely fantastic. But then there are soooo many crazy side quests. The facial animations are a bit weird...they stick out their upper lips on certain syllables but there's so much voice acting I can forgive it. Again, the main missions don't have any of those issues.

I'm more offput by the disparate shaders. The terrain is almost photo realistic, but the Tempest is practically toon-shaded. And all the people wear gear that's either NASA underwear or Destiny/Titanfall crazy sci-fi detailed armor. And then the hair is mostly always terrible.

Still, I can't stop playing this game. Now that I've cracked the egg so to speak, I'm really enjoying all the facets.

The planet scanning is annoying, but understandable, each planet was hand crafted and you'll most likely scan once. However...I've fucking flown to all the outpost planets so many times. Seriously, once you see that cinematic once, you should unlock a skip button.

Apart from some really bad plotholes (desperately patched in Codex articles btw), this game is absolutely fantastic. I'm having ridiculously much fun. The combat is absolutely amazing and I find it hard to imagine any other gameplay style can beat the Vanguard. My skills: Charge, Nova and Barricade. If the fuckers in my reach are destroyed, I can drop down a barricade and pick the rest off from a distance.
So versatile. Such absolute fun!

Other than that it's DA:I in space. Good thing I fucking adore DA:I, but it's good to realize that the miscellaneous quests marked as "Tasks" are exactly useless and mere MMO kinda fillers. You can easily skip them if your Viability on that planet is maxed.

This game is being destroyed for bad reasons. It's the best shit you can get these days and it's only fair to judge it by today's standards.

So I purchased the game and I'm playing through the single player.

It has such horrible logic faults and problems. Such as: the entire first contact with the Kett in the prologue is retarded.. everyone acts like an idiot. The "Nexus" going through horrible disarray because people didn't show up on time.. Who planned this horrible expedition of idiocy?

The writing is bad..

All that being said.. I'm having a lot of fun fighting/playing the actual game.

Can someone PLEASE explain something for me?!?!

SAM has trouble translating the kett, but INSTANTLY manages to translate Angaran?! WTF is up with that? I find it almost impossible to deal with. It almost breaks the game for me entirely. I swear, this is the fucking cheapest "first contact" anyone could ever come up with. And I was so damn enthousiastic with what was gonna happen after Eos!

Also, nobody seems to give a rat's fuck that there's a big fucking black hole consuming the Helios cluster? :\

Creston wrote on Mar 22, 2017, 23:36:
Bioware must be going a little nuts over how this keeps happening to them.

- They make a great game with ME3, but all everyone talked about was the shitty "Mac Walters Masturbates About How Great A Writer He Is" Ending that lasted 25 minutes of a 40-50 hour game.

- They make a pretty good game with DA:I, with some excellent main quests, and most people only ever commented on the shitty MMO sidequests.

- And now they've made a really good Mass Effect game, and all everyone talks about is the (admittedly terrible) facial animations, and the 10 lines of dialogue out of 4000 that I've heard so far that are bad.

The problems with this game go well beyond facial animations. 74 metacritic, 4.3 user score, I think 'really good game' is a bit fluffy for a description. You like this game but you liked it before it even came out and you would like it no matter what because 'its a mass effect game' which is a meaningless excuse for its many issues. They are getting exactly what they deserve here. They had years to figure this shit out and put out a lackluster game in a franchise that demands excellence.

I'm happy some people can eke some enjoyment out of it but that doesn't mean something unfair is happening to Bioware, if they want to get mad at anyone they can get mad at themselves for taking years to fuck this up.

NKD wrote on Mar 23, 2017, 00:27:
They are all passive upgrades or toggleable features. Once you make them they are automatically installed the next time you're in it. From what I can tell you can get them all, You dont have to choose.

Ahhh, that makes more sense then. Thanks

Creston wrote on Mar 23, 2017, 00:22:

NKD wrote on Mar 22, 2017, 23:43:

Creston wrote on Mar 22, 2017, 23:36:
powersliding your Nomad on ice like you're Tanner Fucking Foust while running over dipshit Kett,

I recommend installing the mod on the Nomad that lets you toggle traction control off It's amazing for doing stupid shit.

Where do I install mods for the Nomad? I can't find it anywhere. :\

They are all passive upgrades or toggleable features. Once you make them they are automatically installed the next time you're in it. From what I can tell you can get them all, You dont have to choose.

NKD wrote on Mar 22, 2017, 23:43:

Creston wrote on Mar 22, 2017, 23:36:
powersliding your Nomad on ice like you're Tanner Fucking Foust while running over dipshit Kett,

I recommend installing the mod on the Nomad that lets you toggle traction control off It's amazing for doing stupid shit.

Where do I install mods for the Nomad? I can't find it anywhere. :\

Creston wrote on Mar 22, 2017, 23:36:
powersliding your Nomad on ice like you're Tanner Fucking Foust while running over dipshit Kett,

I recommend installing the mod on the Nomad that lets you toggle traction control off It's amazing for doing stupid shit.

Bioware must be going a little nuts over how this keeps happening to them.

- They make a great game with ME3, but all everyone talked about was the shitty "Mac Walters Masturbates About How Great A Writer He Is" Ending that lasted 25 minutes of a 40-50 hour game.

- They make a pretty good game with DA:I, with some excellent main quests, and most people only ever commented on the shitty MMO sidequests.

- And now they've made a really good Mass Effect game, and all everyone talks about is the (admittedly terrible) facial animations, and the 10 lines of dialogue out of 4000 that I've heard so far that are bad.


Then again, on the flipside, they also do it themselves. Vould, the ice planet, is SO MUCH more fun than Eos, and yet they make you slog through the dreary shit that is Eos first. (Eos gets better, btw, but the first few hours on that planet are just SO.DULL.)

And then you get to Vould, and it's just non-stop attacks on Kett outposts, awesome scenery, powersliding your Nomad on ice like you're Tanner Fucking Foust while running over dipshit Kett, cool side missions, an incredible base assault mission... And all I can think is, why didn't you do THIS planet first?? Why was THIS not in your early preview?? Why do you keep putting the boring shit first, game after game after game?? Had Vould been the planet in the ten hour trial, the conversation this past weekend might have been substantially different.

Stupid...


(On a side note, I guess several of the side quests in Vould can be classified as "MMO fetch quests". You'll kill Kett in an outpost, and find something that you either scan or blow up, and then SAM basically goes "drone drone waffle waffle you need to find five more of these, and then I will give you a waypoint to something cool."

Personally, I never bothered looking for any of these things, I just came across them as I kept taking out outposts, and imo a fetch quest is just a "go here, click X, return", whereas these have some pretty hefty combat in them. But if you consider that an MMO fetch quest, then yes, there are quite a few of them.)

Up to level 19 now, have the Vanguard 2 Profile unlocked, and I'm just a whirling dervish of death. Occasionally I'll get caught out, but most of the time it's just Charge, Bang Bang, KROGAN HAMMER, dual throw, and there's six dead Kett. 1 from the charge, 1 from the hammer, 2 from the shotgun and 2 from the Throw who don't yet realize they're now falling down a 10000 foot cliffside.

Verno wrote on Mar 22, 2017, 08:44:

Rigs wrote on Mar 21, 2017, 19:26:
So if I play the male Ryder sibling, can I bang my sister?

Oh, come now, Verno, you can't tell me it didn't at least cross your mind at some point, ja? Obviously I'm not the only one that was curious... and still very, very alone...

=-Rigs-=

Drayth wrote on Mar 22, 2017, 18:56:
As has been stated before, the Andromeda Initiative left Earth during the early ME2 timeline.

To everyone actually playing the game, I smirked when reading the ship computer entries on a datapad concerning the voyage that one year out it logged some "Anomalous readings" on it's sensors... heh.

Haha, didn't see that one. But yeah. "Ooops."

NKD wrote on Mar 22, 2017, 19:11:
Oh I did run into one super cringe moment last night. I go up to some chick and she basically just blurts out "I'm trans and my name used to be Stefan." I was just like... uh.. oh okay... I don't remember asking...

Yeah, that was a major eyeroll. Typical Bioware "LOOK WE HAVE A TRANSGENDER CHARACTER! AREN'T WE COOL?! AND HE/SHE TELLS EVERY SINGLE LIVING ORGANISM THAT HE/SHE IS TRANSGENDER BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT TRANSGENDERED PEOPLE DO!"

That said, I agree, I'm having fucktons of fun with Andromeda. I'm on the ice planet, and the Kett have this monster mountain of a base there. The mission to take out that base took me roughly two hours, and it was balls to the walls action in this awesome, humongously large set piece. It's probably my favorite Mass Effect mission after the ME2 Suicide mission. It was fucking EPIC.

I played a few MP games today, it's roughly the same as the ME3 MP, only it seems a little slower and the maps are quite a bit smaller, which I really don't get. Why not take advantage of Frostbite and make MP maps huge, like the mountain I just assaulted? Instead you get these tiny-ass maps. It also seemed a little bit laggy.

It was still fun, though. I haven't once vanguard-charged out of the level yet either, so I can't wait to unlock my Krogan Vanguard.

For all the shit this game is getting online, I am having no less fun with it than I did the previous ME games. I've only just reached the 2nd main planet and I've put like 30 hours into this. Of course I talk to everyone and read all the things.

Haven't gotten into multiplayer yet but by all accounts it's an iterative improvement upon ME3 MP so I'll probably enjoy it.

Oh I did run into one super cringe moment last night. I go up to some chick and she basically just blurts out "I'm trans and my name used to be Stefan." I was just like... uh.. oh okay... I don't remember asking...

OpticNerve wrote on Mar 22, 2017, 05:39:

HorrorScope wrote on Mar 21, 2017, 18:08:
Fell out of my chair last night watching the Warriors game on TNT. There is a series using the "We're only human after all, We're only human after all", song as part of the promo.

I've been hearing that fucking song everywhere lately for various shows and commercials. I swear it's haunting me for talking shit about it in the ME:A trailer...

I'm going to use it as my new Rickroll.

As has been stated before, the Andromeda Initiative left Earth during the early ME2 timeline.

To everyone actually playing the game, I smirked when reading the ship computer entries on a datapad concerning the voyage that one year out it logged some "Anomalous readings" on it's sensors... heh.

Creston wrote on Mar 22, 2017, 10:37:
I really like how they've done the outposts. How you can choose between what type you want them to be, how different they get, how people react with regards to that choice, it's cool. Plus they're fun to walk around and listen to the tons of intra-NPC chatter.

Any discussions of a particular major event in human history, oh about 600-years ago and something about space shepherds?

I really like how they've done the outposts. How you can choose between what type you want them to be, how different they get, how people react with regards to that choice, it's cool. Plus they're fun to walk around and listen to the tons of intra-NPC chatter.