TL;DR Absolutely only get this on sale, and lower your expectations. No, lower than that. Not quite there yet! ... Ah, there you go. Despite everything, though, the game offers some interesting ideas and moments, and some surprisingly loveable characters. Once more, I wish Steam reviews came with a "meh" option - but if you're patient and a bit of a dreamer, who can still enjoy a game for what it could have been, I do think ME:A is worth playing. Now, before I go on to tear this game a new one, here's your obligatory reminder that I, unfortunately, actually like this goddamn thing for some reason. The Good + some of the graphics are genuinely quite nice +a lot of the characters are loveable and interesting, although character development drops off sharply after the first half of the game. +A few questlines were surprisingly interesting +Gameplay isn't bad, all in all. The Neutral ~I found less of the infamous animation bugs than expected ~The soundtrack is pretty inoffensive; Appropriate for the situations at hand, and neither annoying nor overly memorable. ~generally, nothing went game-breakingly wrong. ~The untapped potential is palpable; you can almost see how cool this game could have been. It has some fundamental issues that would've hampered it either way, but for the most part, the bones of a really good game are there , buried under a layer of terrible choices and what seems like a horrifically bad allocation of dev time and general resources. ~Do yourself a favor and don't do any tasks that do not seem interesting to you. Basically none of them have any kind of payoff. ... and the Ugly -I found many, MANY small, inconsequential but annoying glitches that made the entire game seem shoddy, from the background of the equip screen flickering to the "unread" marker on the journal simply refusing to go away -Of all the characters, Ryder has the highest probability of being insufferable... and that's despite my best efforts -Whoever decided on the high-contrast, flickery warp effect when traveling between systems deserves to have their office lit solely by strobe lights for a week. -The game does not hold up compared to the original trilogy, and even when judging it on its own merits, it's just not very good. -Whatever the game does right with its characters and storytelling, it utterly, frustratingly squanders in the second half. -And, because gamers were justifiably mad about this, the game never got a potential redeeming moment via DLC or a sequel. -The game is bloated by irrelevant nonsense that's honestly best ignored. Additional Notes I went into this game not really expecting much. I'd been a Mass Effect fan since long before this game came out, but my gaming rig at the time was too bad to play it at launch, so I watched the hype and the following outrage from the sidelines. I knew what I was getting myself into. In a way, the game surprised me. I was really only there to keep up to date with the franchise and get a better look at Vetra (am I simping for the sexy space dinosaurs hard enough to buy an entire game for that? yes), and was expecting to be vaguely annoyed by most of the cast. That... didn't happen. Peebee in particular, whom I fully expected to loathe , quickly became my new favorite Asari; and the rest of the bunch was genuinely very interesting, too. If they'd put more time and effort into the characters' continued development, I would've enjoyed the game a lot purely on that basis - but as it is, characters basically stop reacting to stuff or getting more voice lines after the midway point of the game, which is unforgivable. Want your romanced squadmate to acknowledge the romance outside of the two cutscenes you get? No such luck! Did you bring squadmates on a mission anticipating some insightful commentary in the second half of the game? Nope, it'll be half-assed enough to be out of character, if there's anything at all. It's frustrating, especially because there's so much good stuff there. Peebee's personal questline could be the plot to an entire, surprisingly deep action movie. Vetra slowly warming up without entirely losing her edge was super neat to see while it lasted. The rest of the cast is also vibrant and fun, and even the human squadmembers are actually kind of interesting this time; Liam especially. Sure, he's a walking problem and notorious royal pain, but in a way that's genuinely interesting. And the game turning into a murder mystery at one point? Splendid! Wish they'd actually gone somewhere with that. Uncovering the mysteries of the Andromeda galaxy? Wonderful! If only it would change the game world measurably or have ANY kind of pay-off! The tone is, overall, notably lighter than in the original trilogy - I've heard it referred to as having field trip vibes, and that isn't entirely wrong. This, I don't actually hate; I do think they go too far on it sometimes, and make Ryder a little too much of a spoiled brat in a way that you can't really avoid as a player, but all in all, that could've been a breath of fresh air in a better game. If only they'd put their resources towards better character writing, if only they'd kept the theme of slowly expanding and rebuilding the Nexus, if only they'd actually finished any of their goddamn plotlines , if only they'd showed some progress on the outposts, if only they'd shown you any kind of progression, anywhere... this game could have actually been a worthy successor of the original trilogy. Even if it had remained buggy and flawed. I hate how close this game came to being genuinely, if jankily, good. Goddamnit, Bioware. Or, more likely, goddamnit, EA; but that kind of seems like a given at this point.
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