Recent reviews by jay

Often imitated, never duplicated, Final Fantasy Tactics is still a great game in 2025 in part because of the QOL changes they made in this edition. I could do a pros and cons list but honestly there's no need, it's a great game, if you like RPGs this one is a must play.

Pros:
- Combat, movement and character builds all feel very good. Movement especially is very snappy and responsive while you air dash around and hover while aiming.
- The vehicle you get is fun to drive around, even though some of your time is going to be climbing mountains like it's Skyrim and you're on your horse.
- Some (definitely not all) characters have pretty good arcs and are written well, a few of your party members really stand out and are memorable.
-Exploration can be fun and there's a good many secrets tucked away in places.

Mixed:
- The game's story is very sci-fi cheesy which I didn't mind so much but I can definitely see other people taking issue with it. It's much more goofy in it's presentation at times than even the original Mass Effect trilogy
- I don't know if it was just my two character designs I used, but man did my character look out of place in a lot of cutscenes, especially standing next to the alien races. Facial animations were awful and a lot of the time despite both my designs using the palest skin possible I looked yellow like a Simpson. I'm putting this in mixed because I suppose there's a chance the two bases I used were the worst examples of this.
- There's a lot of content, a lot of side quests, however a lot of the planets feel very empty (which is understandable in a way considering the plot) and I just don't think the game is good enough overall to be as long as it is, especially if you're going for 100% viability, however I can see instances where people would like the grind.
- If you're an achievement hunter this game has very silly and time consuming achievements.

Cons:
- The game is buggy in a way that's inexcusable, so many things have never been fixed all these years later. Some missions with long stretches before you get a checkpoint with a save just straight up don't move to the next flag and you have to do large sections over again. Random crashes, flickering textures, much more.
- The amount of time you sit in loading and unskippable scenes (Such as your ship taking off) can be very annoying, especially doing side missions where you have to travel to multiple places to talk to multiple people for quests. I could not imagine what this game was like on an HDD.
- Scanning planets from your ship is very time consuming and awful, especially for the extremely shallow rewards you get for doing it.
- There is a puzzle minigame that isn't hard, but VERY samey and you have to do it A LOT throughout the game, with optional ones sprinkled in as well.

Overall, Mass Effect Andromeda doesn't deserve all the bad reputation it's garnered over the years, but definitely deserves some. It has medium-highs and low-lows, but there is fun to be had in this game. It's a slightly above mediocre AAA game that has some major problems that could of been fixed post launch and wasn't, and if you can get it on sale for 10$ or less I would say it's probably worth about that. This game would get the middle thumb from me if it were an option.

Definately recommend giving it a try if you like adventure games.