Review - Mass Effect: Andromeda

In the early days of the Xbox 360, each console was released with trailers of multiple games and features. Some showed off the old wireless capability of the 360's controllers, others cinematics from games such as Halo Wars and Bioshock. One of these was the Mass Effect X06 2006 trailer, and I was hooked. Just like Bioshock, I'd watch that demo trailer over and over, fascinated with the option of choice and the space to explore. Ever since I have been a (no pun intended) massive fan of the series and have often exclaimed my commitment to it. Mass Effect 3 was one of the first reviews here on this site, among the criticism and controversy over its ending.
Five years later comes Mass Effect Andromeda, a brand new edition to the series and a fresh start to its license. Delay after delay worried fans and many argued to not become excited for it, just to be safe, but I had faith in Bioware. The team had never let me down before and I know from experience that delays in a game are good, that they're ironing out the kinks and making sure the game comes out on time. By now the game has been out for a week and a half and while many are still meme-ing the animation issues, Mass Effect Andromeda is a flawed game, but one that shows a lot of promise.

To the uninitiated, Mass Effect Andromeda takes place in between the timespan of Mass Effect 2 and 3, with the Initiative and its Arcs departing in the year 2185 (the year of Shepard's revival and the assault on the Collector Base). You play as Ryder, a twin of Pathfinder Alec Ryder aboard the Arc Hyperion. Awakening in the year 2819, you discover the Andromeda galaxy isn't all its living up to be, with many obstacles and fresh faces to meet. With your ship the Tempest, you and your team must face these new challenges and help to make the galaxy habitable for the thousands of lives drifting in space. 
One of the biggest questions gamers have had is "does the story live up to the original?", and I must admit, it does in its own way. It's hard to push past the main series and its plot; massive creatures coming to destroy everything and the galaxy. In truth, part of this does incorporate itself into Andromeda, but not with the affect or the longevity that the original series possessed at the time. The story itself is solid and well rounded and one of the biggest praises I can give the game is its size. Currently at my first finished playthrough, I am sitting at around 90+ hours of gameplay time. In that same amount of time I had completed the original Mass Effect game to the point where I had armor, weapons and my Credits maxed out and with the best components. One side mission leads to three which eventually will lead to ten and more. Two thirds through the game did I finally reach that point of "there's too much to do", a thing gamers experience in games such as Skyrim or The Witcher. Plenty of the side missions themselves are gathering missions (observing new minerals in the universe, collecting objects, etc), but there are also a handful on each planet that give something unique to the culture there: hunting antiques of a dead race, solving a plot of poisoned water sources, to simpler things such as finding lost parents and saving a pregnant woman. These missions, along with the main campaign will chew up a lot of your gameplay.
That in itself brings me to its controls, which are unique to the series but very fluid as well. Players are no longer limited to their class and can mix and max what abilities they wish their Ryder to have. This gives a huge amount of experimentation in the gameplay and solving what works best for you to take on the enemies of the galaxy. Gone is the Paragon/Renegate options to a more open system that makes Ryder a little more human than Shepard. During the previous titles I avoided any option going against my playthrough, but Ryder has four main options for main conversations: Emotional, Logical, Professional and Casual. None of these have the true evil tendencies of Renegade, but Casual will have you calling enemies swears from time to time. All this with the jump-pack, the customisation of weaponry and armor both new and old and all tied up in exploring giant sandbox maps of planets gives plenty of ways to play the game.

Moving onto the finer points of the game, voice acting admittedly can be hit and miss. While the main cast does an incredibly well job (especially the Ryder twins), some of the side characters can be a bit off at times. Turians can oddly sound similar at times, but I put this down to the sound mixing of the characters themselves. The new aliens, the Angara and Kett, are both diverse and incredibly voice acted, especially Nyasha Hatendi the voice of Jaal. His performance throughout the game made him one of my absolute favourite characters to take along on each mission. 
Sound effects and musical score are fine tuned and well accounted for. There are beats here and there that will be familiar to old fans, but otherwise they have been completely redone for the purpose of the new technology in the galaxy.
Graphics, on the whole, are beautiful. Many of the planets look incredibly exotic and worthy of a screencap here and there. Characters look good as well (I especially love the detail in many of the eyes and skin textures), but of course I can't talk about that without mentioning the creepy animations at the time. Speaking from a professional standpoint, I would harbor to guess that to improve polygon textures in the mapping (or improve their spacial needs), vertexes would have been reduced, and vertexes can make or break animations in the game.
If this game was judged purely on its campaign, for what few issues I found, including the animations and a few death bugs here and there, this game would be a solid 8/10 and a must buy for lovers of space. But where the issues truly begin is the multiplayer. 

The multiplayer follows the same principles of the previous games', only with lesser rounds and more tasks to do. While surviving round based enemies of Kett, Raiders of Remnant, players must do three tasks during their time on one of five maps: kill specific enemies, hack into an area or multiple objects, and control three points of data. The maps themselves are small and dense but do have a lot of options in which gives enemies and players to hide or climb. The inclusion of Strike Teams does give your campaign an advantage of weaponry, credits and resources, giving you the option to undertake them yourself or set an APEX team to try and tackle these missions.
Before I continue, I may want to remark that the multiplayer itself is fun for what its worth, and that Bioware was confident in the multiplayer that they canceled their open beta for the game. 
This was a grave mistake.
Over nine Kick To Dashboards in random matches, countless bugs that booted me offline, back to the multiplayer menu or further, items disappearing randomly, credits lost after care packages fail to load (This would be hell if someone used the game's microtransations to buy them), characters unlocked but being unplayable until a match is completed and so on. These moments were hair-pulling infuriating and what makes it worse is how fun the multiplayer can be: having a fun game be unplayable in your first two weeks of launch is surprisingly horrific for a gamer, despite the odd 3'000+ ranked people there are in the game. If you're coming to Andromeda for the multiplayer, stay away until the patches launch in the coming weeks, or stick to the Campaign. 

 Even now I don't want to mention the other nitpicky issues such as dropped frames in both modes, the odd non-death after dying moments, glitching out of the map using Biotic abilities (especially Lance and Charge), but as a reviewer I have to be fair and give these things to you so that you, the reader, can make an informed decision on your own.
Despite the waiting and the issues, still, I trust Bioware. Patches coming out within the week should fix the animation issues and the romance problems many had in the community. They've done this before, and they're doing it now. Mass Effect Andromeda was clearly pushed out the door before it was ready, I'm personally willing to guess that perhaps the cancelled multiplayer beta was due to a lack of time with the team itself, as the signs are all there. 

If you are a die-hard Mass Effect fan, you will find no problem destroying the many enemies to face with a Warp and a Throw while looking for aliens to kiss. If you enjoy space, you'll love the exploration of the planets and the many mysteries to solve. Even fans of shooters will get a kick out of this game. But if you're new to the series and want to experience it all, I'd suggest starting with the main series while the patches will roll out within the next few weeks. Mass Effect Andromeda is a flawed game, and while its issues do drag it down somewhat, there's still plenty of galaxy left to explore.
With pun intended, this game has a ton of mass, but can struggle the effect.

Mass Effect Andromeda - 7/10