MASS EFFECT ANDROMEDA All Cutscenes (Full Game Movie) PS4 PRO 1080p HD
Special Thanks to EA for the early complimentary copy of Mass Effect Andromeda
MY THOUGHTS ON THE GAME: (Spoiler Free)
Disclaimer as always. I am not a reviewer and I don't hide the fact that we are always extremely biased for story heavy games since it's what we do on our channel. It's what we enjoy. So take anything I say with that particular grain of salt.
I must admit, I was not super impressed with the first couple of hours of Andromeda. The worlds were beautiful, and the graphics are stunning. We played it on the PS4 PRO, and we had no frame stutters at all in our 24 plus hours on the game. But other than that, the story felt way too slow in the beginning. Part of this is the original trilogy's fault. The trilogy had so much weight to it, since there was so much on the line. You were literally deciding the fate of the entire galaxy, and so in the beginning, this new group felt very.... unimportant I guess?
Things do pick up a lot midway through the game, as we start to discover what happened to other Arks and all the other explorers. The end of the main campaign gets even more intense, but overall I must say that the main story is not as good as the original trilogy. What it does do better than the original, is create more interesting worlds to explore. They're not the most detailed planets every created in video games, but definitely much better than the exploration options we got in the original tirlogy. In many ways, I think this could have been the greatest Star Trek game ever. If I'm the owner of Star Trek's digital rights, I'm building a studio right now just to copy this game's formula.
The characters are very well done overall. The loyalty missions are excellent, albeit optional for the main story. But just like Mass Effect 2, they really help you get to know your crew, and they all have an interesting back story worth exploring.
Combat is simpler than I thought it was going to be based on the trailers, but fun nonetheless. The ability to change classes is a welcomed edition on my end, but I've never been a hardcore RPG player. I can see fans complaints about it taking away from the immersion of the character, but for me personally, I like the flexibility more than anything. The abilities feel powerful and dynamic. Leveling up your squad mates doesn't feel completely essential on normal difficulty, but it was nice to see them do their work in the field. The AI for the squadmates was good and it felt like they really helped you in fights.
Through our playthrough so far we've only had one romance so far, and are trying to romance 2 more. We did them after the main story, so there's no wall that you have to do it before the end. We're yet to come across a casual encounter, but overall the romance plays out how you would expect. Keep talking to them, find out things that are important to them and help them.
Graphics are beautiful, and one of the prettiest looking games this generation. Particle effects are EXCELLENT, and the environments are highly detailed. The one complaint, which has been everyone's complaint, is the facial animations. They are pretty stiff, especially the humans. Are they so bad that you shouldn't buy the game? By no means; I do believe the internet's reactions to the facial animations have been blown out of proportion. It'd be different if the facial animations were great in the original trilogy, and now they've been downgraded. But they weren't because they've always been horrible. But now with games like Witcher 3, the bad animations to stand out more.
The dialogue is good overall, but again, there are certain characters who sound stiff as if reading from a script but that is not the majority.
Overall, the main story took us only 12 hours to beat. We did this without any of the loyalty missions, since we knew from interviews that it wouldn't affect the ending. 12 hours still feels short, but the extra missions are definitely worth for you time. We've played an extra 12 hours doing side missions, and they feel the same quality as main missions. Lots of story and lots of cutscenes. We still have many solar systems that we haven't explored at all. We're guessing it would take 50 to 70 hours to do all the missions, that's not including time taken just to explore.
We did have the Day 1 patch installed from the beginning, and we did experience some bugs. 3 times the game crashed where we had to restart. A couple goofy animations on characters that were more funny than anything. A couple of times side missions didn't seem to trigger when they should have, and we would have to restart the game.
All in all I give the game a solid 8. It's fun to explore, and the combat is will keep you entertained. The story is good, but starts off slow and not as strong as the original trilogy. It's a good start to a new saga/series.
My Score: 8/10
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