I've played all of the ME games so far. Each one was increasingly better than the last until now. This was also, imo, the top game franchise to beat in this area. It was better than Skyrim, better than Dragon Age, and the most anticipated game for me for years.
This lands with a resounding thud. First off, character models, both for the players and any human-like alien face are down right horrible. Whoever did that work should be fired. In previous games it's the first thing that grabs you. You don't even care what they are saying when they look so awesome and lifelike. In this game, it's the first thing that grabs you but in all of the wrong ways. It's like going in to a restaurant where you expect the food is going to be some of the best you've ever eaten, but you smell vomit and feces as you walk in the door. You can't get past it even if you are a believer and so hopeful like myself.
Next the game play. It's not much worse than before, but it's worse. The biggest problem is the most basic, the interface and commands. I'll list some things I absolutely hate about the game.
1. No quick save. I don't trust any other type of save, and I've lost progress a few times trying to.
2. No mini-map. WTF are you thinking. This isn't world of Warcraft where you don't need to precisely know where things are and can just head a general direction. I find myself going back and forth trying to find something I want to go to on the map. I see enemies on the map bar and can't tell hardly anything about where they are except direction. It's like walking into a fog sometimes, again moving back and forth.
Also, I get vague inspection indicators when I'm around something. I don't know when to pull out the gadget and when not to, so i'm pulling it out for nothing, or missing things. I see a command popup when i'm close to something sometimes, but that method really sucks. I usually find half of the stuff I would like to pick up, when i'm randomly walking back to the ship or something.
3. The level of detail that you can build and control your followers took a big hit. It took some getting used to before, but you felt like they were really and extension of you. Now they feel more like mindless automatons. Another unpredictable Yet another AI component that's really more bothersome in allot of ways. The control over their build/stats feels completely dry.
4. The controls in general suck. Some things are much like the last game, but bunches of them, mostly the changed ones, went the wrong direction.
5. The inventory management is horrible. The menu's are confusing. If I go in to a menu, like the map, I have to hit escape twice to get out instead of once, even though I only hit one key to get in to a function like the map. Inventory items aren't intuitive and i'm collecting all kinds of things that seem mindless. I've played quite some time now and don't have any items that are really substantially interesting. It took me a long time to figure out what they were trying to do with the menu's and when I finally got it I was so disappointed. You have to go deep in to weird places to get to things that should be their own menu's. It took me a really long time just to figure out the easiest locations to change my build out.
6. The story and questing is REALLY dry. There have been some interesting quests, cut scenes and such, but the writing is bad, and watching these horrible character models play them out makes it even worse. The side characters are boring, unlike previous games where I was actually interested in their story lines. I don't feel like my decisions mean much.
7. I left something out so I came back to edit this. I didn't realize it until I hopped over in to a couple other great games, like Witcher - 3 wild hunt. ME Andromeda has no character depth. When I played all of the other ME games I was quickly invested in the characters and personalities. I've now been playing ME Andromeda a long time and I have no idea who anyone is. It's like one of those invasion of the body snatchers movies where you recognize someone, but they have been replace with a robot. So far no one I can emotionally invest in, get to like, get to know. The poor character models accent this some, and the lack of good character depth does the reverse, it amplifies the horrible character models.
Now I'll talk about a few good things.
1. The game areas and color pallets are beautiful. What you would expect from a ME game.
2. Non-human-ish character models still look good, like previous games.
3. The new Nomad rover is awesome, fun to drive.
4. Some quests have been fun and not monotonous, but they are too spread out to hold my attention. A few of them i found exciting, like escaping from the first remnant.
Overall very disappointed. I played Witcher 3 wild hunt recently (my first Witcher game), and they NAILED that game. I feel sad for the ME franchise. They lost their edge big time here and I can't see myself excited for the next game. I think too many titles are going to pass them up now. You can't spend so many years building a game then not get it right.