Mass Effect: Andromeda

The Good
Mass Effect: Andromeda consists of various open planets with a lot of quests. I have to admit, clearing quest markers which don't require any thinking is very relaxing. Combined with the good and fast combat system - a jetpack is always a nice addition - makes the initial sweep of every planet an almost rewarding experience. Because combat becomes pretty easy after a short playing time (on normal difficulty), I could kill dozens of enemies without even using cover. This is what a power fantasy looks like! It gets a bit old towards the end, but all in all the combat is enjoyable.

The Bad
The obvious best part of Mass Effect was the fantastic lore. So what is the obvious next step for a sequel? Throwing most of it away in order to replace it with the blandest new universe possible. The original had a multitude of interesting alien species, while Andromeda introduces only two new: the Angara (more or less humans with a slightly changed Prothean model) and the Kett (the evil faction which is not fleshed out). Not even the planet visuals are inspiring: they are much less interesting than the gorgeous environments of Dragon Age Inqusition. The lore and the world are a big disappointment.

Unfortunately you will see much of the planets because of the awful quest design. The number of interesting quests can be counted on two hands and the rest is just farming quest markers. This isn't as bad in the beginning when there is a lot to do on each planet, but becomes dreadful later when a planet has to be visited for just a single conversation which adds a new quest marker on a different planet. This is made even worse with the movement between star systems: every time, a cutscene has to be watched. Over and over again. I modded out as much as possible and it was still unbearable.

The writing is mostly inadequate as well. There is so much pointless dialogue it almost hurts when every obscure NPC tells Ryder their uninteresting life story. The quest dialogue is mostly pointless chatter, but when the writers want to include moral choices, it becomes worse. One false dilemma after another. However, I appreciated the companions and their many short conversation quests which flesh out their relationship with the main character - but it is all ruined by the above mentioned slow movement between planets.

Besides the basic combat system, the supporting game mechanics are pointless and cumbersome. The game has a war table variant (too simple and rewards only unnecessary resources), crafting (makes the player overpowered too fast and is a pain to use), a perk system (even more unneeded resources), badly designed role-playing elements (all useful abilities are unlocked after the first planet and afterwards new levels are only interesting because of the new crafting recipes) and so on. They all have to be navigated in a UI which is horrible to operate with mouse and keyboard, and I can't imagine it works significantly better with a gamepad.

The game is a also a technical mess. Over the years, I played the game on three PCs and it frequently crashed on all of them. The UI is buggy (for example, after the first few quests the journal tab can't be cleared anymore). After the game's release there was way too much discussion about facial animations and BioWare patched it considerably back then, but I still have to briefly talk about them. Personally I didn't mind them much even then, but especially the laughing and frightened expressions look so bad they hurt the atmosphere.

The Bottom Line
Mass Effect: Andromeda is simply too long and is bogged down by too much mediocre content and mechanics. I'd like to say it could have been salvaged by cutting out most of its content and then polishing the remaining stuff better, but even then it would be an uninspired and frankly unnecessary game at best. All in all, Andromeda is a mess and can't be recommended at all. I never was a huge fan of the original trilogy, but it didn't deserve this.