https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c1j56fgvE8

Mass Effect Andromeda is Bioware’s attempt to catch lightning a second time by introducing a new cast and story into the critically acclaimed Mass Effect universe. While the combat has been updated with a pleasant modern design, the original trilogy was about your connection to the characters, the choices you make, and how they affect your story. In Andromeda, I was never able to develop that connection due to bland characters who, even if you stabbed them in the back, would stare at you with the same dead eyed look that renders any of the good dialogue moot.

While Andromeda takes place in the Mass Effect story universe, as the name suggests, it does not take place in the same galaxy. You play as Ryder, a Pathfinder. A title held by only one member of each of the four Council races. You and one hundred thousand other explorers spread across four ark-like ships have volunteered to venture out into the great unknown, leaving the Milky Way behind to establish life in a new frontier. After being roused from your six-hundred-year nap in stasis by an unnatural cosmic storm-of-sorts enveloping the world that is supposed to be humanities new home. Time is of the essence as the lives of the twenty thousand humans, and your family, are in jeopardy if a viable habitat is not found. As you explore you find a hostile alien race and the all too familiar plot device, the highly advanced technology of an ancient civilization.

The combat, planet diversity, and exploration via the Nomad is where the game excels. While it is still a cover-based shooter, the jump jets attached to your armor introduce a new dimension to the exploration and combat with high-jumps, evades, and the ability to hover. The original Mass Effect had my favorite humanoid character design of any sci-fi game to date, but it is the planets of Andromeda that I was most impressed with. Similar to the glaring differences of each zone in World of Warcraft expansions, each (required) planet has its own theme of desert reds, cool blues, or toxic greens. Exploring these large planets is made more enjoyable with the Nomad, a vehicle very similar to, but vastly improved over the Mako. This six-wheeled beast will drive over almost anything, and what it has trouble with will undoubtedly be defeated by the jet-powered boost and jump abilities.

Andromeda has the bones for a fun sci-fi, exploration focused, action-adventure game but falls short as a story first role-playing game compared to its predecessor which ironically was the opposite. The main story feels like it was copied from Mass Effect’s homework, changing just enough to try to not get caught for plagiarism. The enemy forces you fight have a similar motif to the enemies of the previous two games, just on a smaller scale. The allure of mystery is enough to keep you interested for the first couple of hours but quickly becomes repetitive with the same design and elements in each dungeon you delve, all the way up to the finale. This quickly turns into, “follow the compass marker and check the necessary boxes of each location” to push the plot forward, instead of interesting interactions with characters driving you to each location. The added story element of unlocking your characters history through interacting with specific nodes on the map is a vehicle to force exploration but all I found were some admittedly pleasant scenic views and nothing else of note.

I was really excited to play after finishing the remaster of Mass Effect. Even with the lukewarm reception Andromeda received at release, it is essentially Star Trek in the Mass Effect universe. A new galaxy with new planets to explore, creatures to fight, and intelligent life to interact with. But of the four main locations I visited there were just eight or nine new creatures and only two new races are introduced. In a new galaxy. Two . Only one of which are you able to get a member of to join your crew. If you have played the original trilogy and enjoyed exploring each option on the conversation wheel, you’ll be disappointed to know that a lot of the additional dialogue options with characters are a waste of your time. To ensure the game is accessible to new players, a lot of dialogue options simply tell you about subjects you already know about, like the Genophage. Accompanying that dialogue are voices that did not fit the tone of the races you remember from Mass Effect. E.g., the salarian and krogan on board the main base, compared to Mordin and Eve from Mass Effect 3, just don’t give off the same vibe and breaks any immersion I was able to garner in the first hour or so.

The gameplay is fun enough to bear the time it takes to complete the main story, which can be done in a little under twenty hours. I played a solider-like build, akin to my Legendary Edition playthrough, swapping through four different types of weapons and three abilities to fight my way through the enemy . I say “soldier-like” because choosing a class is gone so you’re no longer locked to certain abilities based on your specialization. Instead, you are free to experiment with your build but each ability has a skill tree with each tier increasing in cost to unlock. I recommend unlocking everything at level one to see what you like and then respec your talent points into the build you want to commit to. The closest thing to specializations is now called Profiles, which give a bonus to or grant certain abilities and the effectiveness of those bonuses increase as you put more points into a correlating tree. While you are locked to three abilities at a time, you can set four different profile favorites with three abilities each, effectively giving you twelve different abilities to cycle through without having to return to a loadout station like you must for your weapon loadout.

Built on DICE’s Frostbite engine, it is no wonder the gameplay is good, but the animations are bad. Until around 2015, the engine was used almost exclusively for Battlefield games, which are not known for their in-depth facial animations as all cutscenes are pre-rendered. Andromeda did have one profound effect, it made me realize I have never truly understood the magnitude eye and brow animation has on selling character emotion. The lack of proper animation in scripted events is a testament to its importance. Even waiting to play until after the final patch was released, it does not seem like enough was fixed. If you’re playing on PC, I highly recommend using mods to improve some aspects. Luckily for the rest of us, some Mass Effect fans are so dedicated they’ve taken up the reins from Bioware when it comes to fixing bugs in Andromeda. The most noteworthy mention in my opinion is a mod called MEA FIXPACK by NightWolf2503 on NexusMods who has fixed dozens of bugs reported by users that Bioware left unresolved before abandoning the game.

Unfortunately, Andromeda just feels like Bioware used the Mass Effect IP to take advantage of fans desire for a new adventure in their beloved universe. Playing this game four years after its release, and two years after Anthem’s, Bioware’s other massive failure; it is easy to see that they just used fans to generate funding and testing for Anthem’s development . Since Mass Effect 4 announced via teaser trailer, the developers have confirmed the galaxies shown in the beginning are the Milky Way and Andromeda. I can only recommend playing Andromeda in case it has significant effects on the next game and you are a big enough fan of the universe that you want to understand any references that may be made. That is if you are even excited, or trusting enough, to play it with the consistent decline Bioware has had since Andromeda originally released…