This game and plotline had potential but the main story is short and everything else feels like filler content. There's some good but probably would not finish all the missions or play again.

Playtime: 30.4 hours

Overall: 5.5/10

Narrative: 3.5/10 - The priority mission line is quite short in Andromeda as compared to the previous entries in the IP. Unfortunately, it's also quite uninteresting despite the grand implications. The climax for me was discovering that the Kett were converting Angara into them. Nothing after that really topped that and that aspect was barely touched on again. I didn't get to a lot of the ally missions because I also found those dull for the most part. There didn't seem to be any sort of over-arching theme past saving the cluster and being a hero and there is bizarrely some faith-based conflict and dialogue thrown in which just seems silly given the time period. It was also completely unexplained how the MC is able to interface with the Remnant without SAM at the end. Disappointed in the storylines all around.

Visuals: 7.5/10 - BioWare used some more advanced lighting techniques in this game than in the previous ME games. The planet surfaces look great in general and are well-detailed, as well as locations of interest such as the Nexus. Some impactful visuals with the vaults and grand locations on planets. HDR worked well and brought life into the planets and locations; Aya looks great even today. However, there is no HDR in the pre-rendered cutscenes so there is an abrupt change in visual style when entering and exiting a cutscene. All character faces are extremely static which is strange given how much effort was put into the visuals. Weapons often will block faces during dialogue scenes.

Audio: 8/10 - The codex isn't narrated, which should be illegal. The score is great and the soundtrack is pretty good. The voice acting is consistent and good quality but is often hampered by the static faces of characters when speaking. Kumail Nanjiani's voice was too distracting to take seriously, I suppose that's why they made his character so unserious.

Gameplay: 4/10 - The player's main goal besides the main mission features some of the worst gameplay I've seen in a while, forcing you to do Sudoku puzzles about 15 times in this game. Speaking of the main mission line, it's unfortunate that it's so short because it puts a lot of pressure on the side quests which were also severely lacking in depth and intrigue. Side quests given on planet surfaces are typically find and collect with some enemies in between, and even quite a bit of the ally/relationship quests are like this. I was going to complete these quests before the last main mission and gave up because they got so repetitive and uninteresting. The combat isn't quite as satisfying as in ME3 and weapons don't feel as important to grab/pay attention to because they all seem to be basically the same, however I liked the addition of different melee weapons. The space travel is better in Andromeda than the other games and feature some flyover scenes as you travel through Heleus, and planet surface traversal is also better. Props to BioWare for finally adding proper quest markers to the Mass Effect IP, though I still would have liked a section in the quest log that compiles all active quests for individual planets, including ally and priority missions.

Character Design: 4/10 - The allies aboard the MC's ship are moderately enjoyable, with some outliers which came off as completely uninteresting. The captain of the ship is boring and I don't know why BioWare doesn't like making missions involving the captain/bridge crew. Peebee's plot line felt forced and only a couple of the ally missions I did were interesting. Character's faces don't move almost at all which makes conveying emotions to the player difficult. Speaking of emotion, right at the beginning of the game the MC realizes that all the planets are (presumably) completely lost and there is no scene that addresses this emotionally despite it possibly being the most emotional scene. Despite these things, I really liked SAM; it takes some of the pain away from losing EDI. As mentioned, didn't see some of the ally plotlines because the missions are littered with boring quests. NPC cross-dialogue in the Nomad is incorporated nicely.

Environment and Level Design: 8/10 - The planet surfaces and locations of interest really shine in this one, featuring large areas to traverse and discover with some really impactful terrain and visuals. The Nexus and Aya really take the cake and the player's ship is the best out of all the games. Its layout is great and the doors being closed to indicate an awaiting mission is a nice addition. There are a few too many enemies littered throughout the planet surfaces for my taste, particularly on Havarl, which is basically one big battle arena. I didn't particularly like the vault puzzles, mostly because of the level design. A lot of the vaults had empty areas for combat that felt like an afterthought with cover areas randomly scattered.

Personal Engagement: 4.5/10

Personal Replay Value: 3/10

Performance: 5/10 - Quite a few issues, first of all the EA launcher (-3 points). There is a resolution scaling issue with alt-tabbing that resizes the program. The game forces the use of a microphone regardless of whether you're using online services, which causes bluetooth issues unless you disable the microphone in Windows settings. There is a launch issue that disables HDR, only restarting my computer fixed this, happened several times. 2k100 highest settings, rare stuttering.

i5-13600KF; RTX 4070 Super 12GB; 32GB RAM