Mass Effect: Andromeda (2017) Review

After reviewing the original Mass Effect trilogy, I thought it would be appropriate to play the 4th game in the franchise Mass Effect: Andromeda and I have finally finished the game and here is my review. The premise of the game is set 600 years after the Mass Effect trilogy and sees a group of people travelling to a new galaxy in order to start over. 

Characters

Commander Shepard is gone and this time we play as Pathfinder Ryder, this time I decided to play as the female version of the character played by Fryda Wolff and wow this is a terrible main character. Ryder is a weak character and doesn't have that presence that Shepard had. The writing for her character is pretty terrible and I did not care about her at all. When the main character is bad, it doesn't stand well for the rest of the game. 

Luckily the majority of your squad mates are entertaining and good characters. My favourite characters are Nakmor Drack and Jaal Ama Darav. Drack is a really old Krogan and feels like a bit of a father figure to Ryder, he isn't as good as Wrex or Grunt but he is a great addition here. We are introduced to a new species called The Angaran and Jaal is our main view into them and is a really cool character. He is both charming and sensitive and is a great alien companion and something new for this game. 

Cora, Vetra and Peebee are also fun squad mates despite the fact that they aren't as good as the two already mentioned. They are different versions of Humans, Turians and Asari that we saw in the original trilogy so that was nice to see. Unfortunately, Liam is possibly the worst squad mate in all of Mass Effect and is so annoying throughout this game. 

We are also introduced to new villains in The Kett and they are really boring, this is encapsulated by the main villain The Archon. He is incredibly dull and his motivations are as generic and stereotypical and we have seen it done so much better. 

Story

The story has so much potential and with proper care and time it could have been amazing but the story sucks. The villain sucks, the main hero sucks and the missions suck. Nothing really matters and if you just do the main story missions you can rush through the main story and not care about anything. There isn't enough new here for a new galaxy and doesn't do enough to raise it above the basic feel here. It's so convoluted and I really don't like this story and the a lack of important decisions which is what the franchise has been built on. 

Side Content

This game has so much side content it is unreal but the best is easily the loyalty missions that you have to do for all of your squad mates and I really liked all of them. It helped flesh out your allies and make you care about them more. But this game goes for a quantity over quality approach and it fails, so many dull side missions and fetch quests that you will end up skipping the majority of them because they are an absolute chore. 

Gameplay

There is no doubt that the gameplay is fun and the combat has its moments. The fact that you can change between the different classes on the fly is a fantastic decision and allows people to play classes that they would never do in the original trilogy. However, the gunplay feels a bit of an afterthought and I just didn't feel like it really hit the way I wanted, also the return of the weapon weight is here and really restricts player with what weapons they can use which sucks. 

Graphics

This game sees Ryder and the crew go to many exotic planets and I will say that I liked the variety here and the beautiful time that had been taken on these. The rest of the graphics are poor, when this game was first released there was a load of controversy regarding the graphics and 7 years later they are still poor and peoples faces look so uneven. Also, I still come across plenty of bugs and glitches, some that were game crashing. 

Overall

Overall, Mass Effect: Andromeda is a Below Average Game that falls super flat and is pretty disrespectful to its licence. I am a huge fan of this franchise but I felt like it was a job to play this game and didn't particularly enjoy it. 

Rating - 4/10