Cliche and melodramatic as it may be, I think I'm at the point of being done purchasing anything owned and/or published by EA if this turns out to be true. If their response to what should be one of their flagship franchises not doing as well as they hoped is to take it out back and shoot it, then yeah, done. Battlefield of the Week isn't for me.
I'm already committed to Suvi this playthrough, but if I ever do another one afterwards, I'll be romancing the heck outta of him.
I'm not sure why they even added that option.
Sloan is acting like a gangster while people are barley hanging on. Fat lot of good being on top will do if literally everyone is dead. Also, she's openly hostile to your very existence and doesn't really give you any reason to want her around. I have no idea what the writers were thinking with her character.
I think they were going for a "devil you know" situation with that. But they
made Sloane such a gigantic piece of shit that I was actually angry I couldn't kill her MYSELF far before that, when she was in that kett cave.
If you're going to have someone like Sloane be a tyrant, give her reasons for doing so. Racketeering is pointless when your currency doesn't even exist outside a computer screen. As is it now, she is a piece of shit just for the sake of being a piece of shit, whether that's from brain damage or her own power fantasies.
Bhelen vs Harrowmont in DA:O was handled so, so much better. Bhelen was an asshole who did some pretty asshole-y things to get to the top, but actually ends up being a pretty solid dude for his people once he gets there, compared to Harrowmont who plays the "nice guy" but is worse for his people overall.
I think they were going for a "devil you know" situation with that. But they
made Sloane such a gigantic piece of shit that I was actually angry I couldn't kill her MYSELF far before that, when she was in that kett cave.
If you're going to have someone like Sloane be a tyrant, give her reasons for doing so. Racketeering is pointless when your currency doesn't even exist outside a computer screen. As is it now, she is a piece of shit just for the sake of being a piece of shit, whether that's from brain damage or her own power fantasies.
Bhelen vs Harrowmont in DA:O was handled so, so much better. Bhelen was an asshole who did some pretty asshole-y things to get to the top, but actually ends up being a pretty solid dude for his people once he gets there, compared to Harrowmont who plays the "nice guy" but is worse for his people overall.
Everybody on Kadara deserved a bullet, except the bartender. Just remember, whiskey is only served neat at Kralla's Song.
There is no aspect, no facet, no moment of life, that cannot be improved with pizza.
So an interesting take on Reyes I found interesting was
He may be a high-level Cerberus officer that made it over to Andromeda. He doesn't like to operate in any kind of high-profile role, and while seemingly benign is extremely manipulative
I can also see potential DLC (if the rumors are false) panning out as
A second-chance resolution to the Reapers, Geth, and Quarians. If I were a Bioware writer, a Quarian ark would be ideal to be located by Geth at least as a ride to surreptitiously hitchhike on. Depending on which faction found it and did so will color the story around that ark. If it's mainstream Geth (a-la Legion) it's the same morality play we had in Mass Effect 3 and wouldn't be very interesting. If it's the Heretical Geth, we might end up with something really interesting like a Reaper-Altered SAM and its Quarian pathfinder counterpart as a potential serious antagonist. True AI and sapient vs True AI and sapient, but with the Reapers cut down to the point it's a fair fight.
That can really go places.
So an interesting take on Reyes I found interesting was
He may be a high-level Cerberus officer that made it over to Andromeda. He doesn't like to operate in any kind of high-profile role, and while seemingly benign is extremely manipulative
I can also see potential DLC (if the rumors are false) panning out as
A second-chance resolution to the Reapers, Geth, and Quarians. If I were a Bioware writer, a Quarian ark would be ideal to be located by Geth at least as a ride to surreptitiously hitchhike on. Depending on which faction found it and did so will color the story around that ark. If it's mainstream Geth (a-la Legion) it's the same morality play we had in Mass Effect 3 and wouldn't be very interesting. If it's the Heretical Geth, we might end up with something really interesting like a Reaper-Altered SAM and its Quarian pathfinder counterpart as a potential serious antagonist. True AI and sapient vs True AI and sapient, but with the Reapers cut down to the point it's a fair fight.
That can really go places.
Yeah, but he is competent!
Though I did kill roughly 1000 of his followers so...that part fits.
Just beat the game! The last two missions or so are actually really well done, nothing unexpected but it was all pretty well put together. Felt like the endings of ME1 and ME2 mashed together.
And finished, at 100+ hours, including about 2 hours of post-credits epilogue stuff. My chief regret is that I didn't get to
shoot the Archon in the face
. Was a far from perfect game, but I enjoyed it a lot and, as I said, will be sad if we don't get any more. On the technical side, my biggest problem was awful performance when I was on the Tempest -- fortunately, I was able to generally hit 60FPS when I was planetside. Also, most of those "the Resistance is using Rubik's Cubes to encode their transmissions; find & scan six of them in Resistance camps to decode a message" task missions were bullshit -- I can kind of see why you won't just give me objective markers for the actual items, but at least identify the potential sites on the map.
I ended up with the Heleus cluster 97% scanned; that last 3% is forever going to nag at me.
I also thought I had missed triggering movie night, but when I boarded the Tempest post-credits, it triggered the last couple of missions. So we all gathered in my quarters and watched "Last of the Legion" and that seems like a good place to leave everybody, at least for now. (And if they really wanted to make a fun DLC or other extra, how about a full-length version of the movie?)
I think I've run into an extremely poor design choice. I'm on the PS4, if that makes a difference. At the moment, I have three weapons. A pistol, assault rifle, and a sniper rifle. I have all three of them with me on a mission, however you can only scroll through two at a time? I'll hit square and only cycle through whichever two are set up at that moment. I actually have to tap the giant center button to bring up a wheel and manually choose the third weapon if I want to use it. Is the Xbox like that? If the PC version is like that, that's even dumber. Anyway, what is the thinking behind that? Consoles get enough crap thrown at them for being a dumbed down system to play a game on, you don't have to play into it.
0
OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
On PC you can scroll through however many you have setup. That's a weird design choice/oversight if it doesn't work that way for consoles.
Honestly, I kinda wish they'd have limited us to two weapons though...
Yes, ME:A multiplayer now has all the same crates that ME3 had after several months. (They added three crates a few weeks ago. Two crates that cost 100k with 2 rares one increases the chance at characters the other increased chance of weapons, and the other crate that gives you five of each of the in match consumables as well as some boosters for 10k.)
They also added the ability to buy a random mod with Mission Funds.
So with 30 mission funds a day from the Daily Challenge and then the mission funds you get from doing the strike team missions, you should be able to make enough Funds weekly to buy the Equipment that gets added on the weekend and the occasional random mod.
And yah, the Xbox One SP also does the thing where you have to open a menu to get to your third and fourth weapons. I think I accidently set it once so that when I pushed the button to switch weapons I switched to the weapon I was already using.
Canceling single player DLC after everything that's happened seems like a good way to further alienate their audience. It's possible that we won't see another ME game based in Andromeda, but they need to tie up loose ends in MEA in order for that kind of decision to be even remotely palatable.
The worst part is that the people burned worst are the fans who really liked the game. I get it as a business decision: limited resources, initial release was below expectations, have new IP coming out, therefore double down and put your eggs in the basket that still has a chance of blowing everyone's socks off.
But it's still leaving fans who engaged the product twisting in the wind, and makes the single player a more hollow experience, if confirmed. ME:A's whole plot is designed for a sequel, explicitly.
+3
BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
With Anthem as EA's big play I would absolutely not be surprised if they're moving their eggs into the one basket and shelving the item that made bad PR for them
It's disappointing but it is what it is and I would rather not have them continue to produce DLC if their human resources allocation is just as distracted as it was for the main game.
BioWare has had a stellar track record with Mass Effect DLC and it would be awful if we had to settle with 'mediocre' because of the same reasons that Andromeda was a diminished product
I can't help but compare Andromeda to FF15 and SE and EA.
Both games turned out rather lackluster after long waits and much excitement.
But you have SE determined to update, fix, and support FF15 even going so far as to make new cutscenes and story segments to address fan complaints and looks to be adding more content and features through the rest of the year and maybe beyond.
Then you have EA, who will try to keep the multiplayer going but responds to anything less than unanimous adulation by basically saying "screw you guys, I'm going home." and killing off the series.
Viskod on
+2
DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited July 2017
Question.
Not to say EA isn't pulling a DA2 situation or worse.
But all I've heard about DLC is that one kotaku article and a bunch of dev/investor tweets that don't say anything concrete.
So do we even really know what the future situation is?
Like a recent investor talk thing I saw floating around basically says the game had mixed reviews but it also had a lot of good reviews. So I dunno. Sounds like it could go either way.
But you have SE determined to update, fix, and support FF15 even going so far as to make new cutscenes and story segments to address fan complaints and looks to be adding more content and features through the rest of the year and maybe beyond.
Then you have EA, who will try to keep the multiplayer going but responds to anything less than unanimous adulation by basically saying "screw you guys, I'm going home." and killing off the series.
Square Enix is also the company that considered Tomb Raider 2013 a failure after only ~4 million sales, skipped a Sleeping Dogs sequel in favor of a multiplayer spin-off that it killed late in dev, and jettisoned IO. They put a lot of money into fixing FF14 and now apparently FF15, but I'd say Final Fantasy favoritism is the outlier in Square's repertoire.
Alternatively, they're both publishers who put a franchise in the icebox after a less-successful sequel and switched the Montreal studio over to other projects.
Not to say EA isn't pulling a DA2 situation or worse.
But all I've heard about DLC is that one kotaku article and a bunch of dev/investor tweets that don't say anything concrete.
So do we even really know what the future situation is?
Like a recent investor talk thing I saw floating around basically says the game had mixed reviews but it also had a lot of good reviews. So I dunno. Sounds like it could go either way.
you also have voice actors for ME:A talking about going back into the studio to do additional voice work.
the kotaku articles have yet to be cited/verified/or in any way confirmed.
If there is DLC incoming, it's going to be a little bit, but until it's actually confirmed one way or the other by EA/Bioware everything else is just speculation.
But you have SE determined to update, fix, and support FF15 even going so far as to make new cutscenes and story segments to address fan complaints and looks to be adding more content and features through the rest of the year and maybe beyond.
Then you have EA, who will try to keep the multiplayer going but responds to anything less than unanimous adulation by basically saying "screw you guys, I'm going home." and killing off the series.
Square Enix is also the company that considered Tomb Raider 2013 a failure after only ~4 million sales, skipped a Sleeping Dogs sequel in favor of a multiplayer spin-off that it killed late in dev, and jettisoned IO. They put a lot of money into fixing FF14 and now apparently FF15, but I'd say Final Fantasy favoritism is the outlier in Square's repertoire.
Alternatively, they're both publishers who put a franchise in the icebox after a less-successful sequel and switched the Montreal studio over to other projects.
FFXIV was an impressively broken clusterfuck on virtually every single level that required a complete overhaul to make it even remotely viable in the long term. I played 1.0 and saw how terrible it was first hand and jfc was it terrible.
ME:A had some bad animations/character modeling, some quest bugs and a few multiplayer bugs that were fixed in relatively short order
The two aren't really comparable on any level
The surprising thing to me was that the outrage over ME:A felt far more vehement, which considering the shitshow that was FFXIV 1.0, makes absolutely no sense to me at all.
0
OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
But you have SE determined to update, fix, and support FF15 even going so far as to make new cutscenes and story segments to address fan complaints and looks to be adding more content and features through the rest of the year and maybe beyond.
Then you have EA, who will try to keep the multiplayer going but responds to anything less than unanimous adulation by basically saying "screw you guys, I'm going home." and killing off the series.
Square Enix is also the company that considered Tomb Raider 2013 a failure after only ~4 million sales, skipped a Sleeping Dogs sequel in favor of a multiplayer spin-off that it killed late in dev, and jettisoned IO. They put a lot of money into fixing FF14 and now apparently FF15, but I'd say Final Fantasy favoritism is the outlier in Square's repertoire.
Alternatively, they're both publishers who put a franchise in the icebox after a less-successful sequel and switched the Montreal studio over to other projects.
FFXIV was an impressively broken clusterfuck on virtually every single level that required a complete overhaul to make it even remotely viable in the long term. I played 1.0 and saw how terrible it was first hand and jfc was it terrible.
ME:A had some bad animations/character modeling, some quest bugs and a few multiplayer bugs that were fixed in relatively short order
The two aren't really comparable on any level
The surprising thing to me was that the outrage over ME:A felt far more vehement, which considering the shitshow that was FFXIV 1.0, makes absolutely no sense to me at all.
Leftover outrage from Mass Effect 3, 5 years of buildup and anticipation since, unrealistic expectations, and a slew of truly excellent games coming out at the same time.
To stand out in that crowd they had to bring their A-game. They unfortunately didn't, and ME:A looked even worse in comparison.
It's a reasonable, fun game. I'd put it somewhere in the 3-4 range. It's just not amazing, and the many bugs and defects from a rushed development can jar you out of engagement--at which point all of the usual minor defects in storytelling and mechanics come to a head and you may find yourself no longer buying into the story.
Plus, the internet seems to be a great amplifier for outrage, warranted or not.
+10
BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
edited July 2017
FFXIV in some respects was not a surprise. It had a shit-load of hype but it wore that out pretty quickly with gameplay systems in beta that immediately showed their problems and system requirements that (at the time) were absurd. Andromeda's technical issues were well-masked under its (frankly, gorgeously produced and edited) promotional content and trickles of "hey, something seems up with this jank" only came in like a day before release.
FFXIV was not a perfect storm of bugbears alongside a flourishing market like Andromeda was, and at the time Square Enix already had some community-perceived reputation for hubris after the reception to Final Fantasy XIII months prior.
Also, Square Enix's poor track record of giving things a second chance at life is still better than EA's, which can tout... Mirror's Edge? And maybe SimCity?
There's a lot of problems with ME:A's story. If it weren't a Mass Effect game, we'd be more forgiving.
IDK... I have to disagree the latter part of this. I think that this game is getting a whole let of forgiveness because it is a Mass Effect game.
Could you break that down for me, because I don't see it. None of the problems I've seen in this game are significantly worse than other AAA titles that weren't savaged nearly as hard.
Some weird animation and models? Big deal. A few janky mechanics? Par for the course. If this weren't ME, people would be very optimistic about the future of the Andromeda franchise, I bet.
There's a lot of problems with ME:A's story. If it weren't a Mass Effect game, we'd be more forgiving.
IDK... I have to disagree the latter part of this. I think that this game is getting a whole lot of forgiveness because it is a Mass Effect game.
Nah.
Most games have shitty writing. For all of Andromeda's problems in that department, it's still better than most of them. I found the writing better than ME1's, even.
Also
I saved Sloane from Reyes, because when I realized he'd been playing me from the beginning, it raised the possibility that he might in truth be an even worse person than her. I couldn't trust anything about the person I thought I'd come to know, after all.
So yeah, "devil you know" mixed with a nice dose of "you seriously owe me now." I also pushed consistently for reconciliation / rehabilitation for Outcasts, which I couldn't honestly do unless I was willing to extend that to Sloane. "Nexus saved our leader despite everything" seemed like a really nice way to start getting into the hearts & minds of the regular Outcasts, and the game left me with a sense that it was probably going to work.
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
Honestly, I don't want DLC for this game. Hear me out. DLC will likely give the devs a chance to tweak some of the issues (a la Destiny) without really fixing the game and its fundamental problems. We need a clean break from this game (drop detective vision, drop all the menus and subsystems, fix the script and animations, I could go on). I don't want them to put out something incremental that retains the broken underlying structure yet fixes some of the surface things that can be done in DLC.
Just let it go cold, rethink the game, and come back with something new in 3 years.
There's a lot of problems with ME:A's story. If it weren't a Mass Effect game, we'd be more forgiving.
IDK... I have to disagree the latter part of this. I think that this game is getting a whole let of forgiveness because it is a Mass Effect game.
Could you break that down for me, because I don't see it. None of the problems I've seen in this game are significantly worse than other AAA titles that weren't savaged nearly as hard.
Some weird animation and models? Big deal. A few janky mechanics? Par for the course. If this weren't ME, people would be very optimistic about the future of the Andromeda franchise, I bet.
If this wasn't a Mass Effect game, or a AAA title with the backing of EA, then the reviews and response would have been worse. And, to be clear: my post wasn't in relation to the various back/forth commentary that happened during this game's development, nor the animation clickbait articles, but the actual reviews and commentary about it.
If this wasn't a game in the ME franchise, then people would point to it and say that it's trying and failing very hard to be a ME game. A good example of a game of mediocrity without pedigree is The Technomancer. That isn't to say that either game is bad, because I don't find either to be. But, Andromeda, as a Mass Effect game from Bioware (and EA)got more leeway in actual reviews, and word of mouth coverage than a game with similar proportional failings.
This iteration of the franchise isn't the only one where it's pretty much the momentum of the past carrying it forward either.
Not really a hill I'm interested in fighting over, so IDK. If you don't see it the way I do that's fine.
tastydonuts on
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
Just logged into MP and saw that all the Soldier classes had been reset. Was this with the last patch? I'm trying to assign points to my Turian Soldier and I'm 4 points less than I was before. Is that why they were reset because of some bug with points?
There's a lot of problems with ME:A's story. If it weren't a Mass Effect game, we'd be more forgiving.
IDK... I have to disagree the latter part of this. I think that this game is getting a whole let of forgiveness because it is a Mass Effect game.
Could you break that down for me, because I don't see it. None of the problems I've seen in this game are significantly worse than other AAA titles that weren't savaged nearly as hard.
Some weird animation and models? Big deal. A few janky mechanics? Par for the course. If this weren't ME, people would be very optimistic about the future of the Andromeda franchise, I bet.
My biggest issues were a combination of endless loops between locations to complete quests, fighting enemies who were little more then reskins of each other across the 4 hostile factions, a plethora of guns that might as well have been loaded with blanks for all the good they did (seriously, so many of the guns in this game require you to empty the clip to down some rando grunt), a pretty uncompelling antagonist, sodoku, and how I was constantly being handed armor that was of no use to me.
That's a lot of problems for the game and drag down it's legitimately good parts; the companions were the best we've had in a bioware game since me 2, Scanning felt rewarding because it presented a fun challenge and gave me information on the environment/enemies, the first few architects were neat and I really wanted to go everywhere and see everything that the setting had to offer.
With Anthem as EA's big play I would absolutely not be surprised if they're moving their eggs into the one basket and shelving the item that made bad PR for them
It's disappointing but it is what it is and I would rather not have them continue to produce DLC if their human resources allocation is just as distracted as it was for the main game.
BioWare has had a stellar track record with Mass Effect DLC and it would be awful if we had to settle with 'mediocre' because of the same reasons that Andromeda was a diminished product
I think that putting more eggs in the Anthem basket is a bad, bad PR move. There's a portion of Bioware's audience (myself included) that sees Anthem as Bioware doubling down on the mistakes they've made over the past five years - they just don't seem to get why some people want to play their games. Or they assume that we'll learn to like their direction.
Shadowhope on
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
Posts
If they did I'll probably start playing again.
I could have stopped it.
But fuck Sloane.
Plus Reyes is too sexy to betray.
I'm already committed to Suvi this playthrough, but if I ever do another one afterwards, I'll be romancing the heck outta of him.
Steam / Origin & Wii U: Heatwave111 / FC: 4227-1965-3206 / Battle.net: Heatwave#11356
Started to chip away at the SP in this game again... on Kadara...
so not only is Sloane inexplicably an asshole...
Then there's Reyes who is clearly a dick as well.
Also starting to recognize the rando NPC character faces from the MP character faces and wishing there were helms only on humans again in MP.
If you're going to have someone like Sloane be a tyrant, give her reasons for doing so. Racketeering is pointless when your currency doesn't even exist outside a computer screen. As is it now, she is a piece of shit just for the sake of being a piece of shit, whether that's from brain damage or her own power fantasies.
Bhelen vs Harrowmont in DA:O was handled so, so much better. Bhelen was an asshole who did some pretty asshole-y things to get to the top, but actually ends up being a pretty solid dude for his people once he gets there, compared to Harrowmont who plays the "nice guy" but is worse for his people overall.
Everybody on Kadara deserved a bullet, except the bartender. Just remember, whiskey is only served neat at Kralla's Song.
I can also see potential DLC (if the rumors are false) panning out as
That can really go places.
Yeah, but he is competent!
I ended up with the Heleus cluster 97% scanned; that last 3% is forever going to nag at me.
I also thought I had missed triggering movie night, but when I boarded the Tempest post-credits, it triggered the last couple of missions. So we all gathered in my quarters and watched "Last of the Legion" and that seems like a good place to leave everybody, at least for now. (And if they really wanted to make a fun DLC or other extra, how about a full-length version of the movie?)
Honestly, I kinda wish they'd have limited us to two weapons though...
Yes, ME:A multiplayer now has all the same crates that ME3 had after several months. (They added three crates a few weeks ago. Two crates that cost 100k with 2 rares one increases the chance at characters the other increased chance of weapons, and the other crate that gives you five of each of the in match consumables as well as some boosters for 10k.)
They also added the ability to buy a random mod with Mission Funds.
So with 30 mission funds a day from the Daily Challenge and then the mission funds you get from doing the strike team missions, you should be able to make enough Funds weekly to buy the Equipment that gets added on the weekend and the occasional random mod.
And yah, the Xbox One SP also does the thing where you have to open a menu to get to your third and fourth weapons. I think I accidently set it once so that when I pushed the button to switch weapons I switched to the weapon I was already using.
The worst part is that the people burned worst are the fans who really liked the game. I get it as a business decision: limited resources, initial release was below expectations, have new IP coming out, therefore double down and put your eggs in the basket that still has a chance of blowing everyone's socks off.
But it's still leaving fans who engaged the product twisting in the wind, and makes the single player a more hollow experience, if confirmed. ME:A's whole plot is designed for a sequel, explicitly.
It's disappointing but it is what it is and I would rather not have them continue to produce DLC if their human resources allocation is just as distracted as it was for the main game.
BioWare has had a stellar track record with Mass Effect DLC and it would be awful if we had to settle with 'mediocre' because of the same reasons that Andromeda was a diminished product
Both games turned out rather lackluster after long waits and much excitement.
But you have SE determined to update, fix, and support FF15 even going so far as to make new cutscenes and story segments to address fan complaints and looks to be adding more content and features through the rest of the year and maybe beyond.
Then you have EA, who will try to keep the multiplayer going but responds to anything less than unanimous adulation by basically saying "screw you guys, I'm going home." and killing off the series.
Not to say EA isn't pulling a DA2 situation or worse.
But all I've heard about DLC is that one kotaku article and a bunch of dev/investor tweets that don't say anything concrete.
So do we even really know what the future situation is?
Like a recent investor talk thing I saw floating around basically says the game had mixed reviews but it also had a lot of good reviews. So I dunno. Sounds like it could go either way.
Square Enix is also the company that considered Tomb Raider 2013 a failure after only ~4 million sales, skipped a Sleeping Dogs sequel in favor of a multiplayer spin-off that it killed late in dev, and jettisoned IO. They put a lot of money into fixing FF14 and now apparently FF15, but I'd say Final Fantasy favoritism is the outlier in Square's repertoire.
Alternatively, they're both publishers who put a franchise in the icebox after a less-successful sequel and switched the Montreal studio over to other projects.
you also have voice actors for ME:A talking about going back into the studio to do additional voice work.
the kotaku articles have yet to be cited/verified/or in any way confirmed.
If there is DLC incoming, it's going to be a little bit, but until it's actually confirmed one way or the other by EA/Bioware everything else is just speculation.
I think the tweets got taken down, because I saw both Jules de Jongh and Danielle Rayne (Cora and Vetra) had mentions of it.
FFXIV was an impressively broken clusterfuck on virtually every single level that required a complete overhaul to make it even remotely viable in the long term. I played 1.0 and saw how terrible it was first hand and jfc was it terrible.
ME:A had some bad animations/character modeling, some quest bugs and a few multiplayer bugs that were fixed in relatively short order
The two aren't really comparable on any level
The surprising thing to me was that the outrage over ME:A felt far more vehement, which considering the shitshow that was FFXIV 1.0, makes absolutely no sense to me at all.
Leftover outrage from Mass Effect 3, 5 years of buildup and anticipation since, unrealistic expectations, and a slew of truly excellent games coming out at the same time.
To stand out in that crowd they had to bring their A-game. They unfortunately didn't, and ME:A looked even worse in comparison.
It's a reasonable, fun game. I'd put it somewhere in the 3-4 range. It's just not amazing, and the many bugs and defects from a rushed development can jar you out of engagement--at which point all of the usual minor defects in storytelling and mechanics come to a head and you may find yourself no longer buying into the story.
Plus, the internet seems to be a great amplifier for outrage, warranted or not.
FFXIV was not a perfect storm of bugbears alongside a flourishing market like Andromeda was, and at the time Square Enix already had some community-perceived reputation for hubris after the reception to Final Fantasy XIII months prior.
Also, Square Enix's poor track record of giving things a second chance at life is still better than EA's, which can tout... Mirror's Edge? And maybe SimCity?
Gamertag: PrimusD | Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
If it were an earlier entry in the franchise, we'd also be more forgiving. Imagine ME:A (minus all the specific plot evolution) coming out as ME2.
IDK... I have to disagree the latter part of this. I think that this game is getting a whole lot of forgiveness because it is a Mass Effect game.
Could you break that down for me, because I don't see it. None of the problems I've seen in this game are significantly worse than other AAA titles that weren't savaged nearly as hard.
Some weird animation and models? Big deal. A few janky mechanics? Par for the course. If this weren't ME, people would be very optimistic about the future of the Andromeda franchise, I bet.
Most games have shitty writing. For all of Andromeda's problems in that department, it's still better than most of them. I found the writing better than ME1's, even.
Also
So yeah, "devil you know" mixed with a nice dose of "you seriously owe me now." I also pushed consistently for reconciliation / rehabilitation for Outcasts, which I couldn't honestly do unless I was willing to extend that to Sloane. "Nexus saved our leader despite everything" seemed like a really nice way to start getting into the hearts & minds of the regular Outcasts, and the game left me with a sense that it was probably going to work.
Just let it go cold, rethink the game, and come back with something new in 3 years.
If this wasn't a Mass Effect game, or a AAA title with the backing of EA, then the reviews and response would have been worse. And, to be clear: my post wasn't in relation to the various back/forth commentary that happened during this game's development, nor the animation clickbait articles, but the actual reviews and commentary about it.
If this wasn't a game in the ME franchise, then people would point to it and say that it's trying and failing very hard to be a ME game. A good example of a game of mediocrity without pedigree is The Technomancer. That isn't to say that either game is bad, because I don't find either to be. But, Andromeda, as a Mass Effect game from Bioware (and EA)got more leeway in actual reviews, and word of mouth coverage than a game with similar proportional failings.
This iteration of the franchise isn't the only one where it's pretty much the momentum of the past carrying it forward either.
Not really a hill I'm interested in fighting over, so IDK. If you don't see it the way I do that's fine.
My biggest issues were a combination of endless loops between locations to complete quests, fighting enemies who were little more then reskins of each other across the 4 hostile factions, a plethora of guns that might as well have been loaded with blanks for all the good they did (seriously, so many of the guns in this game require you to empty the clip to down some rando grunt), a pretty uncompelling antagonist, sodoku, and how I was constantly being handed armor that was of no use to me.
That's a lot of problems for the game and drag down it's legitimately good parts; the companions were the best we've had in a bioware game since me 2, Scanning felt rewarding because it presented a fun challenge and gave me information on the environment/enemies, the first few architects were neat and I really wanted to go everywhere and see everything that the setting had to offer.
So for me, It's a 7.
I think that putting more eggs in the Anthem basket is a bad, bad PR move. There's a portion of Bioware's audience (myself included) that sees Anthem as Bioware doubling down on the mistakes they've made over the past five years - they just don't seem to get why some people want to play their games. Or they assume that we'll learn to like their direction.