Back in July of last year I wrote a little piece about the leak of a possible Mass Effect Trilogy Remaster(which you can read here if you’re interested in seeing what we got right and wrong.) Since then we’ve gotten the official announcements and many of the predictions were shown to be true, while others… eh not so much. Anyway, back when I wrote it I decided to give every game in the series a playthrough so I could rank them and write an article about it, but in doing so I also was also reminded of something... MASS EFFECT: ANDROMEDA DOESN’T SUCK.

I’ve decided to take a moment (or an hour, or ten, we’ll see how long my ranting goes) to talk about the red-headed stepchild of the series. This game is the favorite whipping boy of many fans of the franchise, with pre-patch ME3 being a distant second, and based on what I heard about it at release I can totally see why. The thing I find interesting about this game is that it’s achieved what I like to call “herd-hate” status. That’s where so many members of the community hate on it, that even people who have never played it adopt the opinion that they hate it too, until eventually they end up outnumbering the people that have actually played the game and formed a real opinion.

So if you’ve never played it you’ve probably asked yourself, does Mass Effect: Andromeda really suck as bad as people say it does? Well, I’d say not even close, but the answer depends on what you actually look for in a game. Personally, I’d say it’s pretty great in its current form. While it isn’t without its flaws, it has some features where it really outshines every other game in the series. I tend to go very “deep dive” on these things so if you’re looking for a TL;DR just skip to the conclusions. So without further pause, let’s get into it!

Not gonna lie, jetpack mechanics like this need to exist in every shooter.

Let’s put our best foot forward here: Gameplay and Mechanics

Those of you who played the buggy shitshow that was this game at launch might find this hard to believe, but I find the gameplay and overall mechanics of this game to not only be the best in the series, but honestly the most fun third-person shooter I’ve ever played. From rocket propelled jumping and dashing, to a virtually seamless cover system, to the wide variety of abilities and weapons, there’s an almost unlimited potential for mayhem and shenanigans.

This vid has some pretty cool examples of the amazing skill combos you can pull off in this game. The bit at 0:52 is a personal favorite.

Let’s start by talking skills. Unlike previous games in the series which required you to choose a class and stick with it, Andromeda lets you build your skillset any way you want. Not only do you get to choose your skills and passives, but you can also customize skills to an incredible degree. One of my favorite builds for example was a melee focused build that relied on the tactical cloak invisibility, combined with a passive that causes you to re-cloak when you kill an enemy in melee, combined with the biotic charge ability(which has an insane reach btw) and another passive that made melee attacks restore my shields, and a melee weapon that restores hp on hit. Which effectively made me an invisible, invincible, ninja-juggernaut-berserker. Another build I enjoyed immensely was a more standard “pure biotic” build where I could basically spam combo lift and throw to launch enemies hundreds of feet into the air or toss them around like rag-dolls. It’s amazing how creative you can get with the skills.

Making a lightning rifle seems like some good wholesome fun!

It’s also amazing how creative you can get with the weapons. There are a large variety of basic weapons available, more than that there are TONS of mods you can apply. Some of my favorite examples include:

Taking the most powerful sniper rifle in the game with the longest reload time and only 1 shot per clip and making it instantly reload at the cost of a few hp
Taking the most powerful shotgun in the game and giving it homing rounds.
Swapping the ammo type of a continuous beam weapon with unlimited ammo(sure it overheats and you have to wait a bit for it to cool down, but you don’t need any clips) and making it launch a continuous line of sticky grenades instead.

Really though stuff like that just scratches the surface.

I’m typically only a fan of huge, open-world games when they’re done exceptionally well, otherwise I get bored, honestly this was one of the worst aspects of ME:A for me.

That being said there are definitely a few complaints here. I wasn’t a huge fan of was the vehicle stuff and the open world travel (way bigger fan of the mission/hub based exploration of ME2 and 3) but even that was still way better than what we got in Mass effect 1. The other thing people who played at launch might be concerned with are the bugs and glitches. Honestly I can say that on my last playthrough I only glitched out and had to restart once. Sure that’s one more than anyone would like, but compare that to my last Mass Effect 1 playthrough where I had to restart like 6 times due to glitches (and don’t get me started on the terrible auto-save) and it doesn’t seem that bad.

I can’t be the only one who had flashbacks while waiting the 2 months it seemed to take for Mass Effect 1 to Auto-Save, right?

The last aspects of gameplay I’d like to give minor complaints about are the more roleplay based ones. As you may already know, this game did away with the trilogy’s Paragon/Renegade system and instead offers you more options to respond in different ways, with no real rewards or penalties for your response. This turns it into more of a roleplay favor thing instead of a hard choice or forcing you to play your character one way or the other. This wouldn’t be too bad, all you need to do is make consistent choices to play the character the way you want, except the problem is that no matter what you pick you basically come off as a vanilla good guy. This is in contrast to the other games where you can basically be either an understanding, forgiving classic hero, or a paranoid, genocidal, utilitarian. Then there’s also the romance system, which was just okay, except many of the paths feel unsatisfying or incomplete.

Ryder had all those options, but Shepard only ever needed one.

Don’t ask me about multi-player, I never bothered.

Also pretty darn good: The Story.

Honestly I really dug the new baddies, the mystery around them and their motives, etc.

While I do enjoy a good story I’m fairly easy to please in that department unlike many people. A lot of folks enjoy dumping on Andromeda’s story, but I notice a lot of them aren’t being entirely fair. One of the main problems I see with this is that people have this tendency to treat all 3 games in the original trilogy as a single story, while I can see why they would be inclined to do this, it’s a little unfair. I mean, is it really reasonable to expect a single game to have a story that’s comparable to a three part epic?

Realistically ME2 and ME3 get a pass from a lot of people because they have the framework of the ME1 to build off of, and while they have some really great moments, missions, and character development, the main plots of both games fall kind of flat. I mean, the second game plot is mostly just preparation for one suicide mission (admittedly with tons of universe building packed in) and the third game’s plot is seriously hampered and shortened by the fact that they had to make different versions of everything to account for all the player decisions in the previous two games. Which left it somewhat lacking in new developments… and the less said about the ending (even the extended one) the better. I will say that if you add the Citadel, From Ashes, and Leviathan DLCs it does bump ME3 a bit ahead of Andromeda.

Andromeda’s story is great, but dis ole boi is still the reigning champ on that front.

If I’m breaking each game down and focusing on their stories as stand alone pieces I’d say the only game that tops Andromeda is the original Mass Effect. Both games have a ton of ground to cover. One in establishing the lore and history of the Milky Way galaxy as we know it on top of having a lengthy and involved main plot, the other in establishing a new galaxy while trying to include just enough of the old, established galaxy to make it not seem like a completely unrelated title.

Being from another galaxy instead of another star system, it makes sense that these dudes were waaaay more alien looking than the other species.

I think Andromeda actually does this better than most folks give it credit for. There are no relays in this galaxy so you’re stuck in one carefully selected star cluster. You get there and everything has been completely f-ed up in the 600 years the trip took, all the habitable worlds are now highly uninhabitable. The first aliens you meet try to kill and capture you, and you’re just stuck trying to unravel the mystery of all these strange new things. The plot moves along at a decent enough pace, and gives you more and more pieces of the puzzle as it does, not to mention what I felt was a satisfying resolution and even an “after the journey” segment which I always love.

Unpopular Opinion: The characters were also pretty good… mostly.

Here’s another one where I feel like people judge this game too harshly. They always say the characters aren’t as well developed as the ones in the original trilogy, once again I think it’s just a matter of it being 1 game vs 3 games. I’d say they rank somewhere between the original trilogy’s fan favorites and the less interesting characters, which is to say average to above average. I’d like to give my breakdowns of each character and what I like or dislike about them. Skip it if you like.

Liam: He’s fun enough to bro around with. He’s more or less just an altruistic do-gooder, and a bit basic, as the human shipmates in the series tend to be.
Cora: She’s a total Asari weeb. This gives her a bit more depth than Liam, but can get a bit annoying. That being said you can have some interesting chats with her all the same.
Vetra: Girl-Garrus. This is a good thing. Much like how Garrus was best boy in ME1-3, Vetra is best girl in Andromeda.
PeeBee: Very divisive. She has crackhead energy. You will either find this charming or be totally annoyed.
Jaal: New alien, does the new alien thing from ME1 where you basically spend all your time learning about his culture. I found him to be interesting, unique, and overall likeable. Solid addition to the team.
Drack: Grandpa Krogan. Honestly my favorite character in the game. I like him better than Wrex which is honestly saying a lot. He’s like if you mix Wrex and Zaheed, but with a soft side.
Suvie: Charming accent. Interesting discussions on the relationship of science and religion. Licks space rocks to see what will happen.
Gil: Always bickering with Kallo. Funny Australian dude.
Kallo: Snarky Silarian. Not as fun or interesting as Mordin, but he fits in fine.
Lexi: Voiced by Natalie Dormer. Very limited role. Ship doctor. Has a thing for Drack.

Let’s talk about the less good: Graphics and Animation.

While I wouldn’t call the graphics themselves bad-honestly they’re mediocre overall-the facial animation really does drag this game down. Seriously, it is the stuff of nightmares at worst and the stuff of cringe compilations at best. I will say they’ve made efforts to fix this up… with mixed results. There are some other minor weird things in the animation, like when you alternate between running and walking or moving left to right quickly, but they can generally be overlooked. In terms of textures and polygon counts and all that crap (As a child who grew up playing 8 and 16-bit games, I find the technical aspects of graphics and game design to be boring, and ultimately unimportant) it gets the job done. All in all, I’d say that when you’re playing normally there shouldn’t be anything too bad, and when it comes to story scenes… well, try not to let it bother you too much. We made a quick compilation video of some of the more entertaining glitches that you can check out on our TikTok by clicking here.

Thankfully a good number of the derp faces have been fixed, some still remain though.

How about the audio?

In keeping with everything else I’d say the soundtrack and voice work in this game is also a mixed bag. The soundtrack didn’t really leave any sort of impression, but neither did the soundtracks for the originals if I’m being honest. I don’t have anything bad to say about it, it was kinda just work-rate. It’s just there doing it’s job. The voice work is an odd one, because the quality of the performances isn’t too bad for the most part, but every once in a while you’ll get lines that come out awkward, or it sounds like they used different recording equipment or settings for it. I will say that things like that are few and far between and it could just be my memory playing tricks on me.

What’s missing?

There are a few things you’ll definitely notice are missing from this game… Like the entire Quarian race (you’re seriously telling me there wasn’t a single Quarian on the nexus?) Also missing are the Volus, Elcor, Hanar, and Drell. There isn’t much connecting it with the other games outside of the general setting. They left the Milky Way some time between ME2 and ME3 so you’d think they’d be able to sneak in a couple of minor characters from the first two games that didn’t pop up in the third… that being said the game does have its easter eggs. There was also a very unsatisfying side quest where you’re trying to figure out what really happened to the Andromeda Initiative’s founder… with the end basically being “GUESS WE’LL NEVER KNOW LOL”. You can tell they had a lot more planned for this game and they were just forced to release it before it was ready, and then the DLC was all scrapped due to poor fan response. It’s a pity, really.

So in conclusion:

So here it is, you’ve come a long way making it through this article and you’re at the end. Now choose for yourself from one of our two amazing endings! Does Mass Effect: Andromeda still suck or not? I might patch in more if there are too many compl… — So here it is, you’ve come a long way making it through this article and you’re at the end. Now choose for yourself from one of our two amazing endings! Does Mass Effect: Andromeda still suck or not? I might patch in more if there are too many complaints.

Does this game suck? I guess it really depends on what you value. If you’re a hardcore graphics/visuals person and can’t stomach a little wonky animation, or an audiophile who NEEDS both the sound direction and the soundtrack to be iconic and on point rather than just okay, you’re not gonna like this game. That being said, after all of the fixes this game has had since release, even these worst aspects aren’t really all that bad. Also since the fixes were implemented there aren’t any game breaking glitches any more. As I mentioned my game glitched out once in 2 whole play-throughs. The gameplay is excellent, the combat is fun, some of the best 3rd person shooter combat ever in my opinion, and smooth with tons of options to suit any play style you could want. The story is great, second only to Mass Effect 1 in my opinion. The characters are likable, though some might get on people’s nerves, others will usually make up for it. All in all, I’d say it’s a solid entry. Depending on what you look for in a game you still might rank it the lowest of the games in the series (though going by my personal values I’d say it’s better overall than ME1) but that doesn’t make it a bad game. So my conclusion is: No, while it’s not nearly the best game ever(or even the best one in the series), Mass Effect Andromeda doesn’t suck. Feel free to fire it up and draw your own conclusions though.