Should I play Andromeda First?

[MaXXimus Maverick McClane]

I am going to get the stink eye for asking this question, but as someone who has not played the Mass Effect Trilogy yet.......I know lol what your thinking. Should I play Andromeda first? Andromeda is considered the worst of the Mass Effect games and takes place between Mass Effect 2 and 3.

[spork865]

Thanks, guy! I'll have to check those mods out and play around with 'em at some point - The no profile switching cooldown sounds pretty awesome.

[Darth Alpharius]

Andromeda is set after 3.

[Ogami]

While Andromeda in itself is not a "bad" game, its a bad Mass Effect game.
If it wasc a new SciFi game IP with the exactly same gameplay and story but unrelated to the
Mass Effect franchise i believe it would be viewed quiet a bit more favorable.

But as a sequel to the Mass Effect trilogy it pretty much fails all around to even slightly evoke the same quality and feeling while playing.

[Maestro Rugosa]

I would play the games through in the order they were released. It's a solid story, and it makes sense when told in sequence.

Andromeda only takes place between 2 & 3 in that the mission was launched at that time -- the actual story takes place well after the story in 3 is completed.

Andromeda has a superior interface, and the game engine works great... but overall, the total impression is lacking because dreadful reviews discouraged them from supporting it with franchise-boosting DLC. The action and combat is still a lot of fun, it's just not as emotionally engaging.

[Sticky Wicket]

Messaggio originale di Maestro Rugosa:

Andromeda has a superior interface, and the game engine works great... but overall, the total impression is lacking because dreadful reviews discouraged them from supporting it with franchise-boosting DLC. The action and combat is still a lot of fun, it's just not as emotionally engaging.

The dreadful reviews were because Andromeda was just a fake cheap imitation of the original games trying to cash-in on the ME name. No amount of DLC was going to save it.

[Maestro Rugosa]

You may be right. To me, the most disappointing aspect was the writing for the NPCs on the ship.

But let's not turn this into another ME:A therapy session...

[☢GASMAN☢]

Are you for real? Andromeda is a disgrace to mass effect its nothing like the previous games because its made by millenial hipster trash devs who dont know wtf theyre doing

[talemore]

The Outer Worlds is a copy of Andromeda done right.

All content from mass effect Andromeda: The ship, the HUB station, the planets, the companions added with Fallout's kill whoever you want and skill checks.

and them even added some city building into the game by adding options to the colonies based on choices but it's technically no difference from picking science vs military in Andromeda. You either go the scientist path or the spec ops military.

It's amazing how much is exactly copy and pasted from one game to another.

The question is why should people want mass effect when there's already a spiritual successor.

[AbedsBrother]

Outer Worlds has better conversations, voice-acting, and consequences. Andromeda is a better game in every other category, whether we're talking about graphics, gameplay, crafting, skills or sandboxes.

[Guydodge]

while i know its the cool thing to do hating on a game,andromeda is not a perfect game but it does have some great moments in it and would have been a great start to a new beginning.that was probably killed due to this new wave of complainers.dont be afraid to play it.if your truely into gaming you will find enjoyment in it.it has solid voice acting graphs gameplay and story and i personally liked most of the characters.i think the story is spread out due to the massive open world which to me is its biggest fault.so its kinda hard to follow.(do the reading) on my second and third playthru it was much easier to follow.

as far as should you play andromeda first no i would play 1 ,2 , 3 all great games IMO enjoy

[Sticky Wicket]

Messaggio originale di Guydodge:

if your truely into gaming you will find enjoyment in it.it has solid voice acting graphs gameplay and story

You have got to be kidding with this.

The voice acting was an atrocity.

*solid* ? seriously.

I got given 40 hours of free gameplay and could not stomach it, precisely because I AM truley into gaming.

Been playing games for a long time and Andromeda was cheap, nasty, and is a testament to the very worst kind of mediocre money-making rubbish that has been churned out over the last few years by inept developers with no imagination.

[Punished Jeremy]

Messaggio originale di piq:

Some people may not like Andromeda for personal reasons, but not objective ones. It may not correspond to anyone's expectations or preferences, but this does not mean that the game itself is bad. On Metacritic, most of the negative reviews were written in 2017, when the game was buggy, most of the positive ones were in 2018-2019.

That is a load of crap

Ignoring the facial animations
Ignoring the bugs
Ignoring whatever the hell you think "personal reasons" mean

Andromeda has
-Terrible dialogue
-Flat, boring or stupid characters (every character, one of these)
-Too many weapons on a weak research system that is a waste of time to invest in
-The removal of choices that actually matter (especially with loyalty missions)
-The bad guys are basically just rip offs of the Collectors (ME2 baddies), and the only new friendly alien species is so poorly developed and effectively uninteresting
-The jetpack is poorly implemented, like most of the new flashy combat additions
-Profile switching is a waste of time
-This was there chance to introduce a new universe and what we have as a setup is the most inept and barebones colonization effort. They cant make a sequel out of this. Its a worse place to continue from than the ME3 ending

Most people will tell you to play the trilogy first. And if you are considering buying Andromeda (on sale), then I would suggest you watch some more in depth videos like Weekend warriors to understand what you are getting in.

[Bird_Dog]

Ah, Mass Effect Andromeda....
AKA "What happens if you hand a popular franchise to a team of drunk howler monkeys"
The one I never even botherd to finish.

The worlds look like the devs asked "what was the most tedious part of ME1?" "Driving around empty planets." "Lets make lots of big empty planets to drive around on!"
Y'know, the devs of ME1 at least had the excuse of technical limitations for leaving the worlds barren. But the processing power of gaming platforms has increased since...


The writing was so utterly attrocious.

The devs' utter incompetence allready shows in the prologue mission.
Writing 101: If you want the loss of a character to have an impact on the player, you first need to give the player a reason to care about said character.
Why is that so hard to understand?
Game starts, your sibling gets put in the fridge (or simply left there in this specific case) and dady dies before we have spoken more than 5 sentences with him.
At that moment, it would have had a greater emotional impact if some teenagers had set fire to my wheelie bin.
And then your sibling spends the rest of the game imitating a pot plant.

Next. Your superiors: "Uh we need to make food for our people but all the planets with a breathable atmosphere are barren deserts (radioactive desert, ice desert, very hot desert, chemical spill desert), infested with outlaws and weird hostile aliens. And all our attempts to build there have met with disaster so far. Let's keep tring to grow food on a glacier!"
me: *bangs head against wall. "FFS. There's a lot of empty space around your space ship. You have space ships! And there's a lot of asteroids around. Go melt them down and build a hyroponics station!"

Remember the little side-quest with the apparent neurological defect the outcasts on the hot desert world had?
The end of the quest goes about like this:
"Hello Mr. Outcast. I'm the bland player avatar. I work for the guys who exiled you to this hellhole. Pleased to meet you. I tell you now without providing any proof that you are suffering from a neurological defect you probaby never heard off or even feel. You just gotta trust me on this out off the blue. So, my sawbones has come up with this cure here in her tiny aid station aboard my small ship in 5 minutes and hasn't even tested it on a single rat yet. My I inject it into you? No? Why would you say no?"
me: *more wall banging...

More example of writing that looks like it was done by a mentaly handicaped 12 year old?
There is that little conflict between your pilot and your engineer.
Basicaly, your pilot - who helped building the ship - wants to keep it as is - and propably ocasionaly lick it... And your engineer says we must upgrade. Well, he does upgrade.

TAKING SYSTEMS OFFLINE MID-FLIGHT WITHOUT SO MUCH AS ASKING PERMISSION FROM THE CAPTAIN OR THE XO OR EVEN WARING THE BRIDGE CREW!!!

And then when the conflict between those two clownshoes eventually comes to a head, you have to take one side or the other instead of being able to tell them that both of them have their heads up their own rectums and they better shape up fast or get kicked off the ship in deep space!

I could go on and on about it, and I havent even talked about the mostly uninteresting crewmembers or the very weird but boring aliens, or the uninspired combat with the clunky UI, or the stupid sudoku code-puzzles....

Suffice to say, at some point I just couldn't be botherd to play anymore...

[Maestro Rugosa]

These are all 1000000% legitimate complaints!

I confess am a heretic, though: I sort of liked zipping around in the vehicle.

And I liked the action and much of the planetary content (though I wish the worlds were more No Man's Sky and less familiar old planet Earth).

But I agree entirely about the boring new races and the contrived "relationships" of the dullards on the ship.

[[BSE] The Green Joki]

Since noone answered here I will give it a try.

Storywise Andromeda is the weakest ME but is great in terms of combat and exploring.
ME3 has great combat, a good story (besides the vanilla ending) but not really exploring in it
ME2 has ok combat, a fantastic story, fantastic characters for your party, but no exploring (besides scanning planets)
ME1 has an okay main story, the story in sidemissions is okay too, there is exploring on mostly empty planets, BUT it is a true RPG (with a skilltree woth calling it like that)

ME2 and ME3 have DLC that add a lot of storycontent you need to buy, Andromeda DLCs got cancelled (sadly) and ME1 DLCs are free to grab (there are a lot of postings here).

To your Question. If you are going for a story focus, you can play andromeda first (since it's an own universe), but you will cry for the combat mechanics when you switch to the Shepard arc.
But there is no harm to go for it last. Some things are easier to understand when you already invested time in the Shepard arc.