Mass Effect Andromeda had all the hallmarks of a hilarious disaster upon release back in 2017. It was a buggy, disjointed, ugly mess of a game, a production hell behind the scenes, and an amphitheatre of pointing and laughing from its audience. Even before this, it faced a weird legacy challenge; the original trilogy was (and still is) widely adored, meaning it had very large shoes to fill. At the same time, Andromeda needed to rally against the exceptionally poor reception garnered by the lacklustre ending to Mass Effect 3 that had finished the series on a sour note. To combat this, EA gathered the celebrated creative team behind the previous three games and put them right to work. On new IP, Anthem. History has not judged this to have been a good idea. Instead, Andromeda was to be built by an entirely new team. On an entirely new engine. With the scope and direction being changed completely every time someone in a position of leadership was cycled away from the title. Which was shockingly often.

The new engine meant that none of the assets from the previous games could be reused. Everything from entire galaxies, character animations and muzzle flashes needed to be created anew by an unfamiliar team with revolving door management. So, it's of little surprise that what day one buyers got was a game populated by murderous-looking mannequins with lizard lips and legs constructed entirely of kneecaps. Walls became suggestion rather than reality. Stairs were a softly whispered rumour, unascendable monstrosities of broken dreams, the possessive guardians of slightly raised platforms. But the faces, dear reader, the faces have gone down in derpy meme legend. Many were bad, but the truest victim was that of the female default protagonist, who seemed to have been expertly sculpted to scientific imperfection. The unsettling facial tics, the disturbing smoothness and expansive reach of the cheeks and forehead. Eyes that can't help but wander, as if trying to escape the hellscape in which they were trapped. But it was mainly that smile, equal parts predatory and gormless. It haunts my dreams.

Fortunately, the walking nightmare that was Sarah Ryder has since been patched to the point where she's merely just horrific to look at. Structural integrity has been enforced so most walls are no longer constructed of mist. Cut scenes no longer feature suicidal characters holding their guns backwards. It's better, but not perfect. For example! During my playthrough, one member of the crew was so intent on avoiding a conversation that his pathfinding took him into and through a computer embankment, where they stayed until the next time we docked the ship. Another time, upon completing a side mission, an in-game cut scene triggered where the team gathered around their won objective and discussed the next step. Only, the world around them remained active and a pack of ravenous space dogs spawned in and killed everyone while they calmly stood around chatting. I wasn't even mad; ignoring a horrific mauling while casually discussing the mundane transportation of glowy space rocks was pretty funny.

As of right now, the game is as solid as it's ever going to be, its oft-mocked technical flaws relegated to frustrating rather than game breaking. For people like me (Gary Hartley, noted Mass Effect enjoyer) who avoided the game at launch to join in with the pointing and laughing from afar, that reason for abstention isn't nearly as valid. It was brave of me, I know, to wade in to see if there was something hiding there behind the bug wall. In my 100 or so hour odyssey through Andromeda, I still found plenty of things to be disappointed by. But more than my fair share of pleasant surprises.

Let's start on a high. The main idea and mission behind Andromeda are great. Trilogy hero, Shepard, was a Spectre agent who, by design, had all their universe's political weight and resources at their disposal. In contrast, Team Ryder has been bundled aboard an ark ship, frozen for 600 years and transported an entire galaxy away. There's no safety net; there's no resources or help at all, and anything they need they're going to have to scourge up themselves from a collection of unexplored systems. The only upshot is that before they left the Milky Way behind, they'd managed to earmark several golden planets, ripe for habitation. That was a lie. Instead, they find inhospitable death worlds filled with unbreathable air, intolerable atmospheres and homicidal local wildlife. The first plant you visit is a disaster; crash landings, scattered crewmates, heavy background radiation and rock-faced xenophobic aliens trying to gun everyone down. It's far from the shiny new home the expedition promised. There was also supposed to be a huge hub ship constructed by the time you arrived, something akin to a smaller scale citadel from the original trilogy. It exists, but it's bare bones. Half constructed, low on power and short staffed. Many people died during the construction, many more abandoned the project, exiling themselves, gambling on having better luck on the scattershot planets that are only nearly inhabitable. More still stay cytogenetically frozen; the way things are, there's not enough resources available to justify thawing them.

Your first real mission is supposed to change that. There's a nearby planet that would merely be a horrific place to live if not for the absence of water and sweltering non-stop desert heat. There's been two previous attempts to establish a settlement, both of which have led to the death of many prospectors. The few survivors returned so damaged and shell-shocked, they were placed back on ice. It's a suicide mission by any optic, but it's also the best part of the game. Failure means everyone dies, so you need to brute force yourself through the endless obstacles your would-be hellfire home presents. At this point, all that really awaits you is various shades of failure. You're under levelled; you're under equipped and if you stray outside the heatproof barrier set up inside the now dead settlements, you'll fry on the spot. Also, those barriers, the only thing keeping you alive, are all failing. There are scavengers picking the bones of the sites; To Shepard, this would be a minor inconvenience, one easily bullied, manipulated or shot into compliance. Ryder can do none of these things; they can only appeal to the scavenger's humanity and shared interest in the newest expedition's success. But this does net new resources. A small victory, but one that gives you more options, the ability to push a little further into the planet. It's the Wild West out there; unexplored desert plains filled with unforeseeable dangers. Lost alien artifacts, acid-spitting sand bugs, rolling metal-melting heatwaves and rock-faced alien arseholes with laser rifles.

You can't do much, but you can do something. So, you scrape. And you scramble. You find little pockets of progression and each small win makes the world of difference. As the planet is slowly tamed, as your foothold in this new galaxy becomes firmer, things change in your favour. You find ways to make the planet more hospitable; you find ways to drive hostile forces out; you find the means to establish a new settlement. With the means to support more life, more people are defrosted at the hub; new areas on the ship are opened and become explorable. Old departments are expanded, looking into newly discovered life and flora and geography. And you've done this. You've explored the unknown and you've been directly responsible for every advancement. You've seen it grow in real time. It's as exhilarating as it is short lived; none of it is present for the remaining five planets.

I have too many words! Full review here[www.honestgamers.com]

I've played through the original trilogy at least six times now... And after recently playing through it again I figured I should give Andromeda another chance. I've seen many people say that it has gotten much better since launch and while the story isn't so great compared to the trilogy, the combat supposedly is the best...

I disagree, vehemently.

My main gripe is, it's just not a mass effect game imho. The combat is very different and I guess people that say it's better just prefer a different style of game. The biggest change is that the power wheel is gone. You can't pause combat anymore to look around, command your teammates and choose your powers. Instead it's all real-time and you can only have three powers on your bumpers (one of which by hitting them together). As far as I've been able to see you can't command your teammates to use powers... Actually in the time I've played I don't think I've seen anything to indicate that they have any at all, it's just that I've seen there is an achievement to combo with them so they must. But there is no more tactical looking around and combining powers.

The shooting seems pretty good, but not really anything special. One other thing that annoys... They still have the weight system to hurt your cooldowns if you carry too many weapons. I started as an infiltrator (it's called differently now, operative maybe)... But if I take a sniper with me my cooldowns immediately are shot. So I end up bringing an assault rifle because with the sniper I can't use my cloak very often. This can be fixed later with skill points, but it kind of kills the class at the start.

Graphics are pretty cool, as long as you don't look too closely at the faces (especially the Rider men look like they got a skin condition).

Controls are a bit weird and coming from ME LE it's annoying they changed everything and you can't customise the controls (not on a controller anyway). One thing that really frustrated me is that x is reload, but holding x is swap weapons and that seems to be glitchy where it triggers a lot even though I was not holding the button down. I have had so many times where I was suddenly shooting the damn pistol instead of my AR... Also pressing B is dodge, which is pretty cool... But you can't manually go into cover anymore, you just have to kind of walk into cover while having your weapon out. And if you press B you just blink forward, which has made me jump off a cliff several times. Maybe it's partly me but even after playing for 6 hours I still find the controls overly complicated and unintuitive.

The story so far is pretty uninteresting, but this was expected, no-one praises Andromeda for its story.

The worst part though, coming back to that this is not a Mass Effect game... They could have dropped Mass Effect from the name, changed the names of some skills and weapons, changed the models of some aliens to humans and you wouldn't have been able to tell it was supposed to be a mass effect game. Yes there are Asari, Krogan, Salarian and Turian, but they act just like humans. There is no difference, the only thing they took from Mass Effect is how they look.

So in the end this is just a generic scifi shooter with rpg elements... It's not bad per se, but there are so many much better games, that I just can't recommend anyone wastes their time on this.

Mass Effect™: Andromeda is EVERY Space Explorers' Dream

An absolutely amazing experience! I've finished all the side and main missions and made the whole cluster 100% viable. While it did has flaws (performance and some glitches). The narrative, world building and overall gameplay was just stellar. I recall every interaction I've had with almost every NPC in the game just like in any great Bioware game in the past. But this hits differently due to the fact that it is an open-world ME game.

Truly an amazing ME experience. Because of this, I'll be replaying ME Trilogy again and I can't wait for ME5!