Fans of the Mass Effect series by BioWare eagerly awaited the release of the fourth installment called Mass Effect: Andromeda in March. In the past, players have fallen in love with this action RPG series because of its detailed story, meaningful character interactions, and the overall gameplay style. Andromeda takes place 600 years after the events of Mass Effect 2.

Overview: Andromeda features a new story completely removed from Commander
Shepard and the Reapers with a new customizable hero of the player’s choice. Depending on which of the Ryder twins you choose the other will still be active in the story itself. The game starts in the Milky Way where humans, Asari, Turians, Krogan, and Salarians plan to populate the Golden Worlds in the Andromeda Galaxy as part of the Andromeda Initiative. When they arrive, this new galaxy holds unexpected problems like a deadly space anomaly called the Scourge and the fact that the Golden Worlds are uninhabitable.

Graphics: 3/10 The graphics are by far the most disappointing part of this game. The backgrounds and scenery are beautiful, but the humans and aliens, save for the Angaran, look dead and low-res in most cases. Cut scenes sometimes had graphics not load in at all. Not to mention in the effort to make the graphics 4K worthy the frame rate will sometimes drop as a result. While the team who worked on Andromeda was
smaller than that of the rest of the Mass Effect trilogy, this just seems like a huge
step backward.

Gameplay: 7/10 Andromeda’s main focus is on exploring all of the open world elements. Most of the trilogy’s gameplay elements remain, while others have changed. The addition of the jump jet improves the overall fluidity of the game and adds a faster
way of traveling Akin to rolling across the fields of Hyrule. Combat changed from nearly exclusive cover-based to a more mobile and versatile fighting style. The multiplayer mode functions much the same as the squad-based hoard mode of Mass Effect 3 but now moves much faster. This, of course, comes with various glitches, ranging from going through the world to the main character’s body itself looking broken. Ally and enemy non-player characters struggle to find cover sometimes making the game either fairly frustrating or dull and repetitive. The paragon and renegade options have been completely removed from the dialog choices and are replaced with four different tone choices making for an interesting mix of gray in the morality of Ryder.

The Verdict: 8/10 Andromeda is not a complete failure of a game. Overall, it is a
fairly enjoyable experience and does have enough going for it to justify spending the $60. The romance options are interesting in their own ways. The new races have a level of depth that gives hope for the continuation of the series. However, with everything that game does right, there is a problem that always arises that overshadows the good.

Lasting Appeal: This is a setup for a bigger arch not necessarily involving the Pathfinder and not a bad one. The new galaxy and the stories that can come from it has so much potential and definitely something to look forward to. Let’s hope that they iron out the bugs for the next installment so we can love it as much as we loved the previous ones.