Before I start, just a heads up: There will be some mild spoilers throughout the review and some major spoilers when I talk about the storyline and plot holes in regard to the previous trilogy's events.
I'm going to start by saying that anyone who's familiar with the Mass Effect trilogy (1, 2, 3) or story-driven RPGs in general, and gave Andromeda an 8/10 or higher, has some of the worst standards in gaming and should refrain from reviewing games in the future. The only reason why should anyone give it an 8/10 or higher is because he's new to story-driven RPGs or video games in general and thus inexperienced. I'm being condescending regarding the score because while I can understand how might one enjoy this game, I honestly don't understand how can one give it such a high score when it falls flat in every possible aspect of the game, as Andromeda is being surpassed by any other AAA story-driven RPGs out there, by miles.
So... what do I really start with? So many issues to discuss and tackle...
1. Graphics
I'll refrain from commenting on the bugs and glitches as many have already done that already and they can be fixed after all. However, the facial expressions and graphics in this game are just... terrible, even when compared to Mass Effect 3 which came out in 2012.
The characters seem lifeless and I had a hard time getting myself immersed in the game and its story when I felt I was interacting with people who don't portray their emotions in accordance to the situation they're in. The terrible voice acting and writing also didn't contribute to that aspect, but more on that later.
Some areas in the game are nice on the eyes but that's about the only positive thing I can say about the graphics. It seems like everything was downgraded in regard to Mass Effect 3. Take a look at Wrex in ME1 and Grunt in ME2, and then take a look at Drack in Andromeda. Drack (and everybody else for that matter) looks alot less detailed and alot more generic. The same can be said about the 3 new factions (or races, if you will) that Andromeda introduced us with - the Angara, the Kett and the Remnants. All of the Angara look and sound pretty much the same and they're quite ugly as well in my honest opinion. The same can be said about the "bad guys" - the Kett. All of them look exactly the same and generic and they're again, terribly ugly on the eyes. I can understand why the Remnants look generic though. They're a synthetic AI race after all, but their modeling also look quite ugly undetailed and unappealing.
Graphically speaking, the game doesn't look very good for an AAA 2017 release. This isn't a subjective opinion, it's a fact.
2. Exploration
There are certain games where I really like the exploration feature and others that I don't. In Witcher 3, the exploration felt good and rewarding. In games like GTA, in which the exploration feature is its bread and butter, it also feels very good and one of the reasons why I like the franchise so much. I didn't like it in Andromeda though and here's why:
The planets in Andromeda are basically wastelands (except for Havarl, which was somewhat okay, but not great) with nothing interesting going on there. The planets are pretty much the same, with a different set. Lots of nothingness with a few ruins and bases here and there and too many redundant points of interests that aren't very fullfilling to explore. The Remnant vaults also felt repetitive and generic. Also, many of the structure modeling were used numerous times in different areas to create an even more generic atmosphere to the game and its exploration feature. Furthermore, given how the loot system is basically obsolete in this game (and more on that later), the exploration just wasn't rewarding and felt tedious.
In Witcher 3, especially during the Blood & Wine DLC, I found myself riding Roach (you know, the horse) slowly or toggle to walk instead of running just because I was so mesmerized by the lansdcape and the flora and fauna the game had to offer, that I didn't want to miss it and I wanted to act as if Geralt is just another NPC, blending in the background. In Andromeda, I just wanted to be done with it so I could say I finished it already. I simply wasn't impressed with these barrens and nothingness.
3. Looting, Crafting and Scanning
The best way to get the best weapons and armour in Andromeda, is to craft them, because that way, you can add special augmentations to them that improve your weapon/armour and can also change the way they function. So, why are there so many chests at every corner? What's the purpose of buying weapons and armour at the vendor if they can't be augmented? What was the point of amassing so much credits throughout the game, only to use it twice or so to buy some cheap augmentation that couldn't be found elsewhere? What's the point of credits in this game if there's nothing really useful you can buy? Note: I was playing on the hardest difficulty and finished it with ease. That's how obsolete credits are in Andromeda and how pointless it is to loot anything but a few resources to craft items with.
The new scanning feature was also quite terrible. I found myself using it alot just because I didn't want to miss "useful" research points which I thought I needed. This had a major impact on the flow and pace of the game, for the worst. In fact, one of the side quests required me to scan wildlife. Thing is, most of the wildlife just disappear once you kill them and you can't really scan their disappearing corpses. What you need to do, is get close enough to them for the scanning to work, enough for the wildlife to attack you while you try scanning them. Why am I supposed to scan them while they're attacking me, leaving me a little helpless for that short window? This is just dumb and the scanning feature is ridiculously bad.
4. Voice Acting
Never have I heard such lifeless, awful voice acting. It seems like the voice actors were handed out (badly written) scripts to read, without being told of the situation their characters were in, so they couldn't convey the emotion required for the reading. I mean, the protagonist's father just died and the Ryders are just fine with it like nothing really happened! This is but one, important example. It's hard to blame the voice actors though, when it feels like none of them had been directed, as if it took 1 take for every line and line in the game. I honestly couldn't find a single voice actor/actress who did more than a mediocre job. The cinematography was also terrible.
5. Soundtrack
I thought it's worthwhile to talk about the soundtrack because soundtracks are becoming more and more important in story-driven RPGs. Sadly for Andromeda, its soundtrack is both almost non-existent and forgettable. How are you going to get people immersed in a bad story (we'll get there) if there isn't even well-thought music to compensate that?
6. Gameplay
The gameplay is mediocre at best. It's not bad, but it's also not particularly good. At least in that aspect, the game is not a colossal fail.
You have quite alot of skills and passives to choose from that are tailored for different kinds of ways to play the game. I personally liked the previous Mass Effect better, where you could choose classes and each class was very different from the other, which affected the way you're going to play the whole walkthrough. This is again depends on preferences. The fact that you don't really have classes in Andromeda and you can just respec to a different build, means for me that I'll be less inclined to play this game for a 2nd time (oh, who am I kidding? I'll never play this game again regardless).
The gameplay is supposed to be more fast-paced because you can't freeze time and plan ahead anymore, but that is an illusion. You could play Mass Effect 2 and 3 without stopping time, planning ahead and I have to admit, it felt alot better and harder this way. In Andromeda, you don't really have a choice and the game's difficulty went down due to this. The game is actually alot slower than previous Mass Effect installations.
Combo detonations felt rather obsolete, as most of the gunfights are taking place in these large, open areas where your enemies are randomly scattered and usually isolated. This means that on most ocassions, the combo detonation would only affect 1 enemy. Furthermore, you can no longer give your rather dumb squadmates any orders so you have to rely solely on yourself for combo detonations.
The AI is also not particularly smart on most ocassions. Very rarely they'd actually try to flank you together, coordinately. Most of the times, they'll just go out in the open so you can spray them from cover.
Again, the gameplay isn't terrible, but I for one thought the previous Mass Effect installations were better in that respect (and any other). Nothing was really innovative or fresh about it either.
7. Storyline and Writing
This is basically where the game has failed. You can't have a story-driven RPG without a decent (decent is the minimum expectation) story and plot. If you liked the story, good for you (though I suspect your standards are rather low) but this terrible storyline simply can't be compared with the previous installations, let alone similar story-driven RPG games. It's not compelling nor intricate or well-thought. I honestly believe I could come up with something better on my own and it wouldn't have taken me 5 years. ME1 for instance, was rather vague like Andromeda, being the first game to start to franchise and all, but Bioware did a good job back then, explaining all the lore, history and events that are taking place. I felt attached to Shepard, his/her mission and his/her companions, and the narrative and storytelling were excellent. Not only Andromeda's storyline was terrible, its pacing was off and the narrative didn't really get me invested, but the turn of events didn't seem very plausible. For instance, various people on the Nexus keep speaking about a rebellion that occured prior to your thawing from the cryo-pods. There's no real explanation and reasons as to what caused it, just a few minor disagreements that don't really justify any of this turn of events. The game also fails to explain other important bits such as how exactly is SAM becoming integrated with you. Andromeda is filled with implausible turn of events and a very uninteresting story progression.
Like in pretty much any other category, the writing in Andromeda is one of the worst I've seen in an AAA story-driven RPG. I'll skip the famous quotes as we all know them already. The writing is just bad. Sometimes, you're given several choices to say something but guess what - they're nearly exactly the same thing only with a different phrasing. Why is it that during most parts of the game, I'm given the illusion of saying 4 different things but they're all actually the same? Sometimes it's even worse, as you want to say one thing but then Ryder says something completely different that doesn't have anything to do with your choice. How am I to feel invested in Ryder when I can't really say what I want to say? I'll add by saying that other than the fact that the game looks like it was written by a special snowflake SJW college student, the attempts at comedy are just very very sad. Remember how funny the Citadel DLC was?
8. MAJOR Plot Holes in Regard to Previous Mass Effect Installations Events
Either I didn't really understand the timeline (and please correct me here if I'm wrong with what I'm about to say), or Bioware did some very poor job at explaining the important events that took place while Ryder was in cryo-pod and their chronological order. I'm inclined to believe in the latter.
We're told that the AI (Andromeda Initiative) was set out somewhere between the events of ME1 and ME2, when Shepard was killed by the Collectors and then later revived by Cerberus (approximately 2 years has passed between the events of ME1 and ME2), and we know that it took the AI approximately 600 Earth years to reach their destination. Later in the game, we discover that a "mysterious benefactor" was behind the AI expedition. Said mysterious benefactor was aware of the Reaper threat that Commander Shepard managed to uncover and temporarily neutralize, so the mysterious benefactor funded the AI, in hope to preserve the dominant Milky Way races. Other than that, we don't really know if this mysterious benefactor is one person or an organization we and don't know if it's the sole aim of the mysterious benefactor and the AI. We do know, however, that only a handful of people involved with the project were aware of the AI's true mission and believed that the Reaper threat was imminent.
The scope of the AI project was obviously huge and it doesn't make much sense that it only took a little less than a couple of years to plan, fund and build when it remained such a big secret. It also doesn't make sense that the Milky Way races had access to cryo-pod technology at the time, yet no such thing exists in the ME trilogy. We know the Protheans possessed cryo-pod technology but we also know that the Milky Way races never really managed (or even tried) to copy it or make it work on themselves. I'd also expect to hear some refrence to the AI during ME2 and ME3 but there's nothing. I'll let that slide because Bioware probably didn't know at the time what they're going to write.
This is where it gets weird, confusing and implausible. Later in the game, we discover a message that Liara sent to Alec Ryder, your father. In the message, Liara tells Alec what we already knew - the Reaper threat was real and that their (Milky Way races) time is short as the Reapers are prevailing. We can only assume that the message was sent somewhere during the events of nearing the end of ME3. How exactly did Liara send this message to Alec if the AI was set approximately 1-2 years ago and were already in dark space? Did she manage to send this message to Alec because the AI were only beginning their journey through dark space and were still in close proximity, enough to receive messages from the Milky Way? Why wasn't it explained? If so, why wasn't Alec being informed of the repear's eventual defeat? After all, Shepard manages to save the galaxy in every possible scenario. The logical thing to do is to inform the AI that the Reaper threat is no longer and ask them to turn back and help rebuilding, so long as Shepard didn't choose the "control" ending, I suppose. Either way, the AI and Alec aren't even being informed about this. Unless.... the indoctrination theory is correct, though Bioware never confirmed it. If someone could make sense out of it, I'd very much appreciate it because this seems like a big, giant plot hole.
What I also found implausible, is the Krogans joining the AI. The Krogans despise the Salarians and Turians for the genophage, which is still affecting them by the way. They're also not given a pathfinder, to show they're not treated as equals even in this clean-slate new galaxy situation. Why would the Krogans join the AI? Why did they think that everything will be different from now on if evidence strongly suggests that the attitude towards them isn't going to change? I'm not taking a side on the matter by the way, I'm simply looking at this from the Krogans' perspective. We later find out that history kind of repeated itself. The Krogans felt they were being treated as a lower-class race so they took alot of Nexus resources (how exactly?) and started their own colony.
If the feud with the Turians and Salarians isn't enough to question the Krogans' joining to the AI, we have the genophage which is still in effect. The genophage made sure that the Krogan population are put in check. How are the Krogans to populate the new galaxy this way? To do so, they'll need to bring some very big numbers to the new galaxy just not to dwindle. Krogans are also wary of the other races due to the genophage. As a collective, they'll never agree to part with such a large number of Krogans because that will leave them vulnerable and make their attempts at restoring the Krogan to their former glory in the Milky Way impossible. It seems like the Krogans were brought as an excuse to call this a Mass Effect game.
One more thing (amongst the countless of other implausible series of events). Why does Ryder end up fighting so many Milky Way personnels? Why are so many of them turn criminal? You'd think the AI were recruiting people randomly. It's as if there was no screening process, no filtering. This is never discussed throughout the game and we're expected to believe this nonsense.
9. Squadmates and Non-Combatant Companions
Liam - Wish I could throw him down the airlock. Without a doubt, the worst companion in the Mass Effect franchise. Even your other companions kind of despise him if you listen closely enough. He's reckless and everything he touches is doomed to fail. Has some of the worst dialogue I've ever seen in a game.
Ryder: "Liam, you said to expect pirates. This is a Kett ship. A big one"
Liam: *Making an expression that makes him look like he's mentally retarded*
"Change... change of plan?"
I hope Liam dies in agony in a future installment. I'm not going to play a future installment but I sure hope to hear of his death.
Cora - The fact that she looks like a lesbian SJW irritates me personally and her lack of character also doesn't really contribute. She constantly talks about her training with the Asari commandoes, despite not being an Asari, as if she's breaking the glass ceiling, as appropriate to "feminists" in our times. *Yawn*
Jaal - Quite boring. The Angaran culture in general is very boring and uninteresting. His voice actor did a really terrible job by taking weird, unexplained pauses between words, inhaling air rather loudly and he chuckles sometimes when nothing even remotely funny is being said. His weird cape makes him look retarded.
Peebee - I'll ignore the fact that sometimes she looks like Shrek and sometimes like The Mask. Even after doing so, I disliked her quite alot. She thinks she's really cool for coming up with the abbreviation "Rem-tech" instead of "Remnant technology". This is basically all she talks about - the Remnants. Unlike Liara (who can talk about other things, other than the Protheans), PeeBee isn't really an expert on Remnants, she's just intrigued by them and she's terribly reckless to make it plausible that she can prove a valuable member of your team.
Vetra - As many others have already said - female Garrus, but not as intriguing nor cool as him. I didn't hate her, so that's a plus.
Drack - Wrex imitation. Not necessarily a bad one, but also not particularly a good one. My favourite companion by far that has more depth than expected.
Lexi - Natalie Dormer is just not a good voice actor. Lexi is uptight and boring. She has nothing of interest to say.
Kallo - Like Lexi, he's very boring and his fights with Gil over mundane things are quite ridiculous and implausible. BRING BACK JOKER!!
Suvi - So, her name is Suvi, which is apparently Finnish. Her last name is Anwar, so she's obviously coming from a Muslim background (even though the Abrahamic religions are never mentioned in the Mass Effect franchise) and she has a strong Scottish accent. Wait! There's more! She's also gay. WTF? Seems like Bioware are adding multiculturalism and diversity features just for the sake of it, to promote an agenda. All Suvi's missing is a hijab, a yarmulke and a cross chain. Needless to say, I hated her and I still don't quite understand what's her job on the ship and why is she even needed, other than promoting an agenda, that is.
Gil - Seems like Gil really thought that I, the player, cared for what he had to say. I honestly didn't and I found him irritating, whiney and dull. On top of that, his facial hear was really disturbing. Aaaaaaaaaaaaand he's gay. We get it, Bioware. Gay people are human beings just like anyone else and so on and so on. Stop making characters gay, bisexual, transgender or unicorn just to promote your agenda. We're not homophobes and some of us even support gay rights and gay marriage. You can stop degrading and devolving your game to make a point.
10. Political Agenda
This had also been said before by pretty much everyone so I'll not delve too deeply into it. I'll just say that I strongly agree with the criticism over Bioware's obvious political agenda that they try to shove down our throats. It's obvious to anyone who isn't blind that these extreme leftist views are gradually devolving the gaming industry, especially when these agendas are being promoted in-game. Bioware can be free to choose to champion leftist values which I'll most likely disagree with, but I'll respect them enough not to criticize them, so long as they keep these political views and agendas in real life and outside their games. I won't be surprised if in the next Mass Effect installation, you could change your sex in mid-game. Stop this nonsense, Bioware.
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Summary:
Mass Effect: Andromeda is by far, the worst AAA game I've ever played. If Andromeda was starting the franchise, its score would've been slightly higher due to lower expectations and less plot holes. Nevertheless, even as a standalone and disregarding the trilogy, Andromeda is just plain awful. The game reeks of political agendas - us against them and them against us. The storyline is boring and I didn't feel connected to my own character, the protagonist of this installment. Ryder felt like an uncharismatic special snowflake who couldn't really get angry at anything (except for dumb Liam in his loyalty quest). Other than a mediocre gameplay, I didn't find anything positive about this excuse for a game. This game, is a solid two.
This was actually shorter than I expected. Talking about how terrible Andromeda was and is could take days, even weeks, so I'll end it here. Feel free to correct me where I'm being wrong (if at all) regarding the plot holes or other matters, or add anything new that you think I've missed and is worthy of discussion. If you don't like my opinions, feel free to comment on that as well, so long as you manage to maintain a civilized discussion.