Mass Effect Andromeda review?

After building my new PC, Mass Effect Andromeda is the first new game I have tried to play on it.
I have this game for quiet some time but never played it, knowing that it is very hardware demanding and I wanted to play it when I can really play at ultra settings.

While I love the Mass Effect franchise the many negative critics about Andromeda in the past months which eventually even has lead to the point that the game studios where Andromeda was developed were closed and all announced Singleplayer DLCs were canceled. At the moment it looks like EA/Bioware pulled the plug.
I consider the current state of inactivity more concerning than the problems that this game really has.
I still love Mass Effect (no matter if it play in Andromeda or the Milkyway galaxy) and would love to see this franchise to go on.
At least the EA vice president said in an interview that there is no reason not to continue Mass Effect. Thats at least something.

But lets take a look at the current game. What went wrong?
For me it is very early to judge about it since I installed the game 2 days ago and have not made much progress so far. I am just a few hours into the game and there is certain much more to explore.
However fundamental problems are easy to spot early in the game.

There is a massive problems with the animations.
Not only with the facial animations. The character animations are broken throughout the entire game.
My character looks like having broken shoulders while speaking with NPCs. There are silly walks, clipping animations, npcs looking in the wrong direction, emotion lacking faces and dull facial animations that to a noticable degree disturb this extremely beautiful game. Yes, never before Mass Effect look that beautiful. High res textures everywhere in a very detailed environment.
I can really say that this is the best looking ME so far. That needs to be said because not everything in this game is bad.
Its just that a few details manage to ruin something that would have been great.

In many articles people tried to find excuses for the broken animations and protect the animators. But lets face it. ME1, ME2 and ME3 had great animations, everything worked great. We are not talking about something that never has been done before. Even if the animators would just have done a copy/paste job the results would be better now. These animators had one job... and they failed badly.

But ok the game is not only about animations.
Unlike ME1-3 Andromeda promised an open world that you could explore and go wherever you want, with more than 100 planets.
Andromeda has open worlds instead of careful crafted cities and levels that you cross once during a mission.
These worlds are very big and you really need alot of time to explore everything. The problem here is that they worlds, despite their beauty (they are) are mostly empty.
Your job on these planets is to go from one ruin to another and do scans and collect stuff. But very often you do the same tasks in an environment which reuses assets too often.
I mean, many places in ME1-3 during the missions looked unique and special. Different designs, different cities with different looks. I miss that a bit in Andromeda.
The game does not look bad.... no it looks really great but I miss the diversity a bit.
And then there is the issue about the "you can explore +100 worlds in the whole galaxy". Lets face it, you are not exactly in the Andromeda Galaxy, you are in the fictional Heleus Cluster of the Andromeda Galaxy. Thats a dwarf galaxy at the edge of Andromeda. You never really visit the main galaxy at all. Good. Because that is a nice way to explain how you can travel around this galaxy without using Mass Relays. You dont have to because you are actually just in a very small area where you can travel with the normal engines.
Thats ok. Not what the title of the game promised but its ok.
Visiting +100 planets? Oh yes, there are +100 planets in the game but very soon the player has to realize that its not possible to visit them. You can land only on a handfull of worlds. Thats it. On the others you can do stupid scan jobs that people already didnt like in ME2 and ME3.
IF compare the size of these worlds (which are large) with the hand crafted levels of ME2 or ME3 then I really have to ask myself if Andromeda is really bigger than previous games. Yes, maybe a few km² more ... but mostly empty terrain while in the previous games that was filled with interesting stations, cities and other structures to explore.

Another problem I see is the amount of new stuff in Andromeda. There is a new dead Civilization around which the main story seem to be focused. A new enemy race and one other alien species. But thats it.
That is not anywhere near the complex world of the original game where you had so many species and factions. Humans, Turians, Asari, Salarians, Volus, Elcor, Geth, Reaper, Rachni, Batarians, Quarians, Hanar, Keepers, Leviathans, Proteans, Vorcha, Drell, Collectors, Yahg.
Mass Effect Andromeda falls a bit short on this one with just two new races (and the lack of many old Milkyway races). To me it appears like the developers have been a bit lazy with the development of the game.

But ok, Andromeda does not have to be better than the previous games as long it is still fun.
And that is still the case. Even if the quests are a bit repetive they are not boring and you get rewarded by a very good looking game (and funny animation glitches).

I am not able yet to tell if the companions are any good. ME1-3 were really awesome in this area since there were conflicts, interesting stories of your teammates and emotional moments like every time where you lost a team member (because they were such great characters).
I really hope Andromeda can build up relationship with the companions with time where you really start to care. But like I mentioned I am not far in the game yet so I will have to see if that really happens.

What Andromeda does really good is the general gameplay.
Character movement is fluid, the combat is really nice. New is that you have a jetpack that allows you to reach distant areas or gain tactical advantage in fights. That really works very well. Also is there no cover system that you need to activate manually. In ME1-3 you could take cover by pressing a key, now that is done automatically if you are in range of a cover. That makes fights alot more dynamic. I really like that.
Also the use of the new ground vehicle is really nice. It is fun to drive over the surfaces of the planets with out crashing it every 5 mins (like in ME1). Boosters, "jetspacks" and multiple drive modes really help to get even into difficult areas.

So what else can I say about the game (that early in the game).
Story.
Oh, that is a tricky topic.
While I understand that is was tricky to explain a Mass Effect game after the end of Mass Effect 3 (which was really an end by its very definition) I have a few minor logical problems with Andromeda.
The overall idea that Humans, Assari, Turians, Salarians and Quarians have sent Arks to Andromeda before the Reapers arrived in the Milkyway Galaxy (before the events of ME3) is ok with me.
However, I have a problem with the massive scale at which this happened.
One station ship almost as big as the Citatdel was sent as first ship to the Heleus Cluster (15km legth). Ok, there I have to ask myself how such a big station was build and how it was able to build it in such a short period of time. In my eyes the construction of something like that takes decades, expecially since this new station (the Nexus) also seems to have large habitats with trees and all the fancy stuff that was found on the Citadel. Next to that this station and the Arks were funded privatly... no way that this could happen, especially since no private organization knew about the Reapers until they arrived (which was after the Arks launched).
Every Ark holds 20.000 people in cryo sleep. So shipping 100.000 people and setting up such a project takes ALOT of money and ALOT of time. It is something I could imagine to be prepared with decades of preparation but the project leader and all people that were responsible for planing and building it were still relative young.
I dont buy that part of the story.

Next to that do the pathfinders (the guys which search for new worlds in Andromeda) have their own ships... which look very similar to the Normandy but appear to be much more advanced. How can that be?
The Normandy SR1 was a Humand/Turian prototype. The SR2 Normandy was also a somewhat larger prototype build roughly at the time where this expedition must have been in full progress. The existence of this new ship is a miracle to me.

Another miracle to me is that in Mass Effect Andromeda explain their decision to join the Andomeda Initiative with "Milkyway, been there done that" and "there was nothing new to explore". In the original Mass Effect games it was clearly said that less than 10% of the Milkyway were explored. That does not really fit together. There was still enough to explore in our galaxy and no really reason to start and overly risky, overly expensive and overly unrealistic expedition to Andromeda... expecially since the Reapers were not known by that time.
Bioware tried to find a way to explain and justify Mass Effect Andromeda but didnt really care about the small details that conflict with their explanation.

Overall I can say that Mass Effect Andromeda is not a bad game but it has some problems. Those being fixed and it would be really good.
It is fun to play, it looks great and it is still a Mass Effect game.
I really hope that EA/Bioware revise their decision on the current support for this game and keep developing patches which address the problems with the animations and other minor bugs. If just the animation problem is fixed this game would be ALOT better.
And I believe this game deserves a sequel.

I think the game is good but its release should have pushed back 1-2 years in order to address the obvious problems.
I also consider it a huge mistake that the game studio was closed. In my eyes they should have worked on patches and put people into place which have better understanding of animations etc.

I suppose this sums it up:

Ive just noticed that there is a mid game bottleneck.
All open missions done and now I can only progress when I finish one final quest... and since I have still to find the other missing ships and build two new colonies.... this really appears to be a bottleneck in the storyline.
Most likely it is used to balance difficulty.

Ok, after finally playing through the game I think I am able to say more about the state of the game.

I miss a few things in this game that would be essential for a good game.
One of these things is the importance of the story.
Yes, of course the main story is important in some way but for the longest time playing this game the main story had no importance at all because you drift away into many unimportant side quests and repetive tasks that you almost forget that there is a bigger story somewhere out there.
And then when you finally get into the main story you notice very soon that it is done way too fast, way too short and it leaves you behind with many unanswered questions and information you have no idea where they came from.
I meanwhile know the name of the race that created the relics... I just have no idea at which point in the story this ever was mentioned. My crew just kept talking about that. Dunno why.
I also dont have an answer to why this race did what they did and why their work was attacked... and why then all of a sudden their "main structure" wasnt attacked in exactly the same way. There is alot in this game that can not be explained in a logical way.
The ending was also very disappointing since it was way too short, way too easy and way to confusing.
Instead of getting a heavy fight against the bad guy you just get to fight multiple waves of normal enemies and a relic architect (a boss) which was much weaker than all other relic architects before. Again content was recycles instead of providing new content at least for the main story.
The bad guy died eventhough i didnt really kill him.
And then the game isnt over... you can pointlessly keep playing after the ending.
Ok, a few talks with the crew, the other pathfinders and important people was (partly) nice... but it completely takes away the "yes ive done it" feeling.
The fact that the ending is so short gets even more clear when you think about how long it took to organize a movie evening with your crew. That was a task that kept you busy with stupid delivery jobs for half of the game... (with the result that less than one minute animation was played)

Gameplay wise (controls, combat, interactions, etc) the game is still great.

The game balance is terrible.
But lets break it down here.
There is no level cap so you can keep playing and earn xp until you have unlocked all character abilities in the game.
Your crew stops leveling at lvl70... and thats about also the point where I was ready to start the final missions.
The thing is for someone who likes min-maxing it would be nice to have the best armor and the best weapons in the game. Unfortunatly the tier 10 (X) equipment unlocks at lvl 80. So ive spent a good amountof time grinding... and repeated to kill respawning NPCs on the colony worlds until I did hit lvl 80.... well lvl81 actually since there seems to be a bug where some specific items unlock one level later.
You can not reach the point where you get the best equipment buy just playing the game.... you are forced to grind and/or use the online features of the game to earn extra XP.
Then there are also Cryopoints to earn which unlock specific bonuses. Throughout the game I managed to earn 24 of 28 Cryopoints. I have ignored the MP part simply because I believe that a singleplayer game should never depend on any MP stuff. But ok... the missing Cryopoints were not such a big deal since they mostly were increating the rewards from MP only (nothing I really cared about).
But there is something I consider really bad.
The fact that you have a nice crafting system in this game which completely loses its purpose because you are not able to collect enough reseach points in this game to unlock all the items you can craft. If you dont know from the beginning that there are not enough research points you probably start distributing these points equally to your armour and weapons and at the end of the game you run out of these research points just to notice that you can only craft tier VI or VII equipment while you actually should be using tier X equipment.
Of course you can get the tier X stuff also from vendors but then you are not able to put augumentations into them.
The research and crafting system is a nice idea which completely fails to deliver because the developers have not put enough research points into the game to fully use this game feature.
Very disappointing and no first time player can predict such a problem.

What else?
The game never went through any form of quality control.
- crashes during cut scenes (one specific cut scene)
- crashes in a specific vault
- crashes during the ending mission
- missing relic textures (invisible consoles, invisible bridges)... sometimes reloading the game fixed that
- shadow problems on the Eos landing scene
- stupid NPCs and animals
- broken necks due to animations where the npcs or the main character all of a sudden looks behind him
- the already mentioned facial animations which are broken
- stupid walk animations
- quests where you are supposed to open doors which already were open
- large gaps between voice samples
- corrupted savegames after crashes
- many logical errors
- colony building floating 1m above the ground
- etc.
Ive seen alot of strange bugs in games but the amount of bugs in MEA is incredible high.

Despite all the problems of the game I do not regret having played it. It clearly Mass Effect and it introduced something new that could become something interesting IF the developers get the green light for a sequel.

The dev team behind Andromeda did the DLCs for the other mass effect games. So i would assume they not bad at what they are doing.
I generally believe that a stupid release date is to blame. Especially considering that Andromeda was done for a new game engine. 1-2 years of additional development time and the game probably would have been alot better.