Okay I played 3 hours of my Trail and I'm gonna go ahead and wrap this up and say that the combat is fluid but I kinda still prefer ME3 combat wise but it has gotten into me. The face animations on the Human sides is a little turn-off but nothing for me to hate the game for what it is and playing as a Technician is fun for all the cool gadgets and mixing it up with little Biotic just turn me into a Sentinel again. Overall, playing it on PC was enjoyable and I'm still going with my 7/10 and I'm still lock & load day one pre-order EA Origin and the best thing is, my save files will carry over to my pre-order game.
I played the second part, it didn't hooked me. I wonder, why everyone is so into it?
Huh? Did you play the previous Mass Effect games? If not, then there's a reason why everyone seems to be into the new one as it is and I happen to be a big fan of the series.
I'm enjoying the story so far, taking my time to fully immerse myself. If I had to mention a minor gripe, I would say during combat I was a little unsure how to take cover, but that could be my fault. Like to avoid fire, I would walk behind a structure but I don't think it gave me the option to park myself behind cover, if that makes sense. Minor thing though, combat is fun and you have dashing thrusters as well, kind of like Halo 5, to quickly avoid stuff.
Minor spoilers
I always enjoyed the parallels Mass Effect shared with Star Trek, and this holds true so far for this game. During your first mission you are reminded of your prime directive, which is not to harm another Alien lifeform unless necessary in self-defense. There are numerous side missions that appeared and I'm having fun just exploring the first planet, still not done yet.
Well, I think I'm done giving impressions, I don't want to give too much away. This kind of game I have to let it sink in to my brain a few hours, I'm really taking slow and getting into it. Feels great so far to me, hopefully the game stays good and others enjoy it too. Now to get through 2 more workdays, that is the tough part :)
@mjorh: It's possible that the game picks up after the intro then. Let's just wait for reviewers to play all the way through and provide a thorough verdict.
It could be the case. I remember Dragon Age Inquisition had a really long lead up almost like a pre-game, 10 hours or something then suddenly something big happens, and that is when the real game started.
Agreed. It is at least unfair to judge a game based on its first few hours or even last few hours (looking at you ME3 ending!). Now if certain complaints like shallow characters carry on, it could be a bummer. On the other hand, the exploration and general introduction into a new galaxy resembles ME1 as far as I've read so that's fine by me. I don't expect this to be as amazing as the trilogy, those games were special to me. Just give me a decent adventure in the Mass Effect universe and I'll consider my money well spent.
Despite my early reports, I can say I'm impress what I played so far and the only negative downside I can say is just the Human models are a letdown but nothing to bring down my enjoyment playing the actual game and I finally gotten use to the Combat controls and playing it using my Xbox Elite Controller makes it easier on my part so the actual combat is way fluid then it is in Mass Effect 3. I played 3 hours and my final impression is gonna be a 7/10 (score not for GS review) and playing it on PC, you shouldn't have any problems and I got stable framerates.
@Alucard_Prime: Considering that the intro to the game might be its weakest part (since opinions differ...) it's good that you found it great. I suppose it'll only get better as the real exploration begins.
@Alucard_Prime: Taking cover is automatic now, I too got confuse on that one as well but I would've like it if I hit A button to do it myself and yeah, I lock into 3 hours and already done giving out my impression so I too will stop talking about it until launch and for now, I'm just gonna try finishing up with Horizon: Zero Dawn and Breath of the Wild this weekend so I can just focus on Andromeda. Glad to hear it that you enjoy the game and so did I. BTW, did the Trail let you played the MP? I didn't bother trying it out and just wanted to focus on the SP.
@johnd13:Makes sense, I feel like I barely scratched the surface yet(no pun intended). I'm really trying to take it all in slowly. I hope others enjoy it too, I kind of did my best to keep my expectations in line, and I'm feeling good about it. Story is clear and compelling to me so far, looking forward to playing more.
@davillain-: cool yeah I think it did that automatically a few times behind a rock, thanks. No have not tried multiplayer yet, I want to keep playing solo until either my trial period runs out or I get far enough where it will not let me progress(until official release date that is). And then when that happens I will try multiplayer.
I'll be honest I never was a huge fan of the Mass Effect Multiplayer, it was fun for sure but I'm far more interested in the campaign. But it looks cool for sure, will definitely play online as well, they have a survival mode I think and it also ties in to the story somehow apparently.
I played just a few hours last night. Combat and exploration seems to be an improvement from previous games. I do dislike the facial animations, they aren't great. But overall it seems like a huge expansive game and I can't wait to jump into the world.
Not a fan of bioware these days. Seem to litter their game with student politics. That last dragon age game had awful characters as a result. Few redeeming ones. That annoying elf woman just summed it all up. A metropolitan trendy outlook.
I love the mass effect series but they rewarded the person behind the awful ending to 3 with a major role in this one so I'm kind of skeptical. Add to this the animation and design flaws and I'm disappointed right now. The female design of Ryder is so so ugly for the first time I will be playing it with a male avi. If I even get it. That should never have been in question after number 2, which was one of my favourite games of all.
I will be getting it because its Mass Effect but jesus, those animations.
The character creater is the first thing in the game......... and it's the worst part of the game. Totally pathetic in fact. 10 year old Fallout 3 had more advanced options. That's not a joke. You have 11 hair options and legitimately none are good. Male and female. And forget about being blond. Unnatural doesn't even cover it if your hair colour is even a shade lighter than dark brown. The idea seems to be that a good portion of the customization is built in to the default faces.... Which is freaking stupid since all of the default faces suck. The only possible exception is I think they got a couple Asian faces right. As a white dude, I like playing as a white dude, and yeahhhhh, that wasn't gonna work. TLDR the character creation is beyond unacceptable and fans should absolutely demand that Bioware fix it. If we can get them to try and fix the ending of ME3, we can get them to fix the damn character creator.
The facial animations. Not gonna write too much on this. We've all seen it. Some of the most expressive characters like Peebee are acceptable. The aliens are okay I guess. But humans? **** no. It's actually creepy a lot of the time.
I'm gonna tentatively put the open world exploration in the cons. There's a lot of driving around useless areas in the Mako 2.0 from what I've seen. Not a huge deal, but the stuff I'm driving to is so good that the exploration is a let down.
Romance options. So I'm hardly very far in the game, this might change.... But wtf Bioware? IknowIknowIknow, I'm supposed to love banging the aliens. I'm a huge ME fan after all!!!...... Buuuuuuut I don't. I do love a good romance though. I'm just into humans, and specifically females. Nice to see I have one single option as a straight male dude. Really Bioware? I can bang a Turian and a couple Asari, a cat thing, and a couple dudes... but one human female? Every replay of this game, I guess that's what I'm stuck with. And of course they made Cora a badass beat-'em-up butch lady with a haircut to match. So I'm a little upset on that front.
Call me old fashioned, but I hate the way all RPG's these days allow you to be everything at once. Bring back the class restrictions. It was half the fun of replaying the game. Trying the new stuff. It doesn't even make sense. I get the explanation, but I still feel like it's not good enough for why Ryder is just so badass at everything. He's like, 25, and he's already technically a more dynamic threat than Shepard was...
PROS!!!
Performance to start with. I have a gtx 780. Used to be incredible, but 3 years later it's mid range. But never mind that, because this game runs fantastically on a mix of high and ultra. Never notice frame drops and the weird stuttering which bothered the **** outta me in Dragon Age Inquisition is mostly gone. Plus, I only had one crash the entire time, and it was a graphics error. I remember it from DA:I, and it was eventually patched with a driver update. Should be fine.
Immediately noticeable: BroRyder's voice actor is fan-FUCKING-tastic at his job. Good emotion, a pleasing voice, and well put together by Bioware. It was an issue with DA:I that I never felt fully attached to the voice of any voice actor. BroRyder sounds young and inexperienced, but simultaneously he sounds like he has the potential to be a great leader. When half the talking you're gonna hear in a game comes from one guy, he better be good, and he is.
TheCOMBAT. It's so good. I never like combat in RPG's really. I love leveling up in RPG's so I can smash shit better than ever, but I don't much care for the actual smashing part, since the mechanics are usually barebones and/or boring and/or poorly put together in a game that has other things to concentrate on. NOT SO HERE!! I loved every second of combat. It felt intense. It felt like I had control of my fate and I wasn't being cheated. It felt like my biotic combos basically made me God (a great biotic God!). Tech explosions are nasty. Guns sound badass. Grenades blow'd dem up! The new cover mechanic is quite good. Enemies are aggressive, even on lower difficulties, and are constantly trying to flank you. Basically, it's everything you could reasonably hope for out of a massive RPG like this. It's not Doom... but I didn't even expect it to be as good as it is. And this is coming from someone who loved ME3's combat.
The story is solid so far. Mostly there are only questions to be answered, but the questions are good so far, and don't seem to contrived. The game has a real focus of exploration that you would expect. It's living up to the Bioware standard, at least for me.
Characters are Bioware's bread an butter, and they're still good. I haven't gotten far enough, obviously, to really get attached to anyone, but they mostly seem well written. I was seriously worried about Liam. If you'll pardon me, I hated Jacob. Not just because he was boring as ****, but because of why he was boring as ****. He was the black guy. Let's be real, that's why Jacob existed. And that's unacceptable. But thank God, Liam is not Jacob. Like Bioware succeeded in making Dorion in DA:I more than just "the gay guy" (I fucking love Dorion), they seem to have succeeded in making Liam more than the black guy. He's also kinda your bro. Which is great. Vetra is interesting; your pilot is cool; your geologist lady licks rocks apparently (but not dudes. Shuts you down instantly); Drack is awesome; Margaery Tyrell the medic is legitimately interesting... Bioware succeeds again IMO. Time will tell if they become as beloved as the old crew.
Separately from the other characters, and his voice acting, I'm already super invested in Ryder. He's a great character, and you can shape his motivations to what your own would be if you made the 600 year jump to Andromeda. I really feel like he's me and I'm him. Which is kinda the whole point of an RPG.
Progression. Unlocks unlocks unlocks. You get one and you get one and you get one!!!! It's going to take a long time to get it all sorted in my head, but man oh man is there a lot of customizing to do. From paintjobs and clothes, to armour and guns, to your abilities themselves. It's all there.
The environment is SO. FUCKING. COOL. Frostbite 3 is a godly engine, and they take full advantage of it. The views out the ports. The scale and detail of the ships and station. The worlds. They're all really well put together. I want to exploreexploreexplore, and they want me to do it too.
The galaxy map is freaking sweet!!!!!! Zooming around the Heleus cluster. I just wish the loading times between every excruciatingly detailed part of the galaxy wasn't so long. But that's obviously the price of having it looks so damn good.
It will never match the Normandy for sheer coolness factor, but the Tempest is obviously better put together. Seemless movement through the whole ship with some seriously interesting and varied areas, and actually enough bunks to fit the whole crew. I did notice they had gender neutral bathrooms too. Friggin lol Bioware.
I think that's it. Unless I remember some more and add it. Overall, don't worry about the reviewers and whether or not they're impressed. If you love Bioware and Mass Effect, the first 10 hours of this game are great.
Despite my early reports, I can say I'm impress what I played so far and the only negative downside I can say is just the Human models are a letdown but nothing to bring down my enjoyment playing the actual game and I finally gotten use to the Combat controls and playing it using my Xbox Elite Controller makes it easier on my part so the actual combat is way fluid then it is in Mass Effect 3. I played 3 hours and my final impression is gonna be a 7/10 (score not for GS review) and playing it on PC, you shouldn't have any problems and I got stable framerates.
Awesome!
The first time they announced this auto cover system, i was not happy, i don't like it, i prefer to be in controll when i'm in a cover, just like previous games.
I'm enjoying the story so far, taking my time to fully immerse myself. If I had to mention a minor gripe, I would say during combat I was a little unsure how to take cover, but that could be my fault. Like to avoid fire, I would walk behind a structure but I don't think it gave me the option to park myself behind cover, if that makes sense. Minor thing though, combat is fun and you have dashing thrusters as well, kind of like Halo 5, to quickly avoid stuff.
Minor spoilers
I always enjoyed the parallels Mass Effect shared with Star Trek, and this holds true so far for this game. During your first mission you are reminded of your prime directive, which is not to harm another Alien lifeform unless necessary in self-defense. There are numerous side missions that appeared and I'm having fun just exploring the first planet, still not done yet.
Well, I think I'm done giving impressions, I don't want to give too much away. This kind of game I have to let it sink in to my brain a few hours, I'm really taking slow and getting into it. Feels great so far to me, hopefully the game stays good and others enjoy it too. Now to get through 2 more workdays, that is the tough part :)
Great!
Hope the game picks up the pace and momentum, can't wait to play it myself.
Character creator and human facial animations are gonna be bad - we already know that, but I guess I can live up with those if the rest of the game is good. I hope there will be more romancable human females than just Cora and I kinda also agree with the profiles. I prefer picking a rough playstyle and sticking with it instead of being good with everything. Good thing is I can still do that.
All the pros sound amazing. I'm gradually raising my expectations again!
@mjorh: That impression hits the nail on the head. I completely agree with everything he said. It's a solid game. Combat and exploration are good so far and I like the characters. Major faults are character customization and horrendous facial animation. They are so bad that I'm genuinely baffled how Bioware could release the game like this with such bad facial animation and butt ugly character customization in 2017. I like Cora but I wish there were more human female options for us straight dudes to bang. These few issues aside I think it's a solid entry into the series.
I played around with the custom character creator for about an hour before turning the game off. I hate it.
I typically really enjoy these, in DA: Inquisition for example, I made my Inquisitor look almost exactly like Daenerys from GoT, but here, I'm struggling to make a Ryder that doesn't look like a cross-dresser.
I think I might end up just going with default. I'm not a huge fan of either of the defaults, but there a damn sight better than anything this custom creator is letting me make.
That's a hard one. I don't like the series much and the new title looks kinda boring compared to past titles. GS seems to rate highly ATM though. So I'm going with an 8 on GS. Will be like a 5 to me.
Been watching this a lot on streams via Twitch—yikes...
K, I wouldn't have ever thunk it but now I'm getting concerned and likely will wait a while before buying the game. :(
I mean, if the wonky animations and facial weirdness doesn't bother you, there's probably plenty to love. ME is a polarizing series either way, it always has been. Remember all the, "Is Mass Effect an RPG" threads?
@quadknight: dragon age inquisition did the same thing, made chicks all ugly and and made romance odd and awkward, bio ware is all for feminism lately and it's whack
I burned though half my trial last night only playing MP and bioware nailed it. The combat is more fast paced, fluid, and open. The gameplay is on point.
I don't understand how the facial animations are so much worse than last gen...
Technically 3.
^This, 1 million times this.
I have been saying it in numerous threads regarding both ME:A and previously Bethesda games. How in the f*** are modern games getting a pass on these objectively awful facial animations (look at the bottom image, only the eyes and mouth are being rigged)? Half-Life 2 came out 13 years ago for god's sake and since then they have only improved on the facial modeling/animation/synching. I mean even FEAR came out 10+ years ago, and while their facial tech wasn't quite as good as what Source can do, it was still way better than this garbage. We get yearly CoD/BF games with much better animations than this.
In these dialogue heavy modern RPGs (Skyrim, Fallout 3-4, ME3 and 4) this is seriously distracting and immersion breaking. I cannot overstate how annoying this is to me. It may have been excusable 5-6 years ago, but come the f*** on, how can you not license some decent tech for facial animations that does more than (bad) eye and mouth rigging when Source engine games nearly perfected it more than a decade ago. EDIT- This is Frostbite 3, same as BF1 and several others, all of which have much better facial animations, making this even more inexcusable.
I don't understand how the facial animations are so much worse than last gen...
I saw on Gaf that it's apparently a B-team working on this game while the A-team is working on a new IP. So perhaps the people doing the animations are simply not as good?
this is a friendly reminder of what animations were like in ME3 in 2012
not sure why people are acting so surprised that they are a little wonky in this. not excusing it but expecting good animations from ME is like expecting good animations from Bethesda game, especially after the gameplay vids we have seen
@FLOPPAGE_50: Anita Sarkeesian is probably gonna have multiple orgasms playing this game. I don't understand why the custom characters are so butt ugly. This shit is baffling, it's not realistic at all. I tried making a male black character and all the options I was given made my characters look like cross dressers. I couldn't even give my character a fade. What kind of character customization doesn't give the option for a fade in 2017? Even ME3 allowed me to give my character a fade WTF.
well, the running animation is better at least. I'd say this is about as modern in 2017 relative to other games as ME3's animations were in 2012.
its certainly baffling why they don't try and hire people to improve this shit though, not sure how everyone at Bioware and Bethesda looks at this stuff and goes YEA LOOKS FINE TO ME.
We haven't seen much so it might get better down the line.
meh, its very much in line with previous ME games. the writing has always been kinda cheesy, its part of the appeal imo
Tbh, back in the day when I was playing the trilogy, I wasn't even so well-versed in English to really distinguish a great writing from a bad one, so I can't really tell how was the writing of the trilogy.
@with_teeth26 said:
@freedomfreak said:
's alright, so far. Animations are fucked though.
this is a friendly reminder of what animations were like in ME3 in 2012
not sure why people are acting so surprised that they are a little wonky in this. not excusing it but expecting good animations from ME is like expecting good animations from Bethesda game, especially after the gameplay vids we have seen
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