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So I Replayed and Beat Mass Effect. It is flawed but still really great. TRILOGY COMPLETE! (and MEA too)

Bacon

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Bacon

Bacon

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MEA also has a lot of unresolved plot points that were either slated for DLC or for the Sequel. I should want to know who the Benefactor is and actually end or make peace with the Kett and save the Quarian Ark. But I really don't care. Would I have liked to resolve those points? Yeah, sure. But I really don't care. MEA is bad enough that even should an Andromeda 2 come out I won't get it. I'll look up the few answers I'd like to know on the ME Wiki should MEA2 happen but I won't get the game, not even for free.

 

Playing MEA has killed a lot of my desire to see a Mass Effect 4. I really would love to see a proper sequel to Mass Effect 3, untainted by MEA. However, how could Mass Effect 4 not end up tainted by MEA? It can't. It's not even the same BioWare. I really do want Mass Effect 4, but I think we'd all be better off if it never happened. 

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Spawn_of_Apathy

Spawn_of_Apathy

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I definitely didn’t hate ME A as much as you. Far from my favorite, but overall I found it entertaining. It is a distant 4th place in the franchise. 
 

still I would have bought the Quarian Arc DLC had it come out, or any story DLC for that matter. I would have bought a MEA2 had it come out. I was sad at the announcement that future MEA content was canceled. Had this been a whole new franchise, new universe, new races and lore, then maybe not. Then again maybe still yes. Hard to say since either way I’d likely compare it to ME. I was really hopping Bioware would pull it around in Anthem too. But I definitely felt emotionally invested with ME A, because I helped all these races in ME1-2. It felt like I left friends behind, but I had a chance to continue helping way out here. To ensure everyone’s survival. 
 

im not saying reviews were wrong. But some of that stuff didn’t bother me as much. Some of the stuff that bothered me more was barely mentioned in reviews. I think most people got so hung up on facial animations and character model bugs that some much deeper issues went uncriticized. Like the fact that world building and lore in the Andromeda galaxy was so superficial compared to the crafting done in ME1. The kind of stuff you only need in an introductory story, because in sequels so much of everything is now already established. It’s just disappointing because it felt like the writing fell into some pretty lazy sci-fi tropes that some better scifi shows figured out over a decade before this game was written. 

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Bacon

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3 hours ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

I definitely didn’t hate ME A as much as you.

For me, I didn't realize how important GOOD decisions were to my enjoyment of the series. I don't mean morally good, but responses that actually match the player's thinking. MEA has none of that. 

 

Another example of just where MEA fails is with Drack and the decision between choosing A FUCKING PATHFINDER or some shitty ass krogan scouts. Of course I chose to save a pathfinder. A pathfinder, despite my dislike for the title, is what this initiative hinges on. I should be able to explain that to Drack, but there is no option for that. The game acts like I didn't pick the Krogan Scouts because I don't like krogan. No you stupid fucking game. Only the biggest of idiots would choose some shitty scouts who got captured over an excellent pathfinder who has proven their ability over the course of the mission. 

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stepee

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17 hours ago, Bacon said:

Beat ME:A. 

 

It is pretty shit. Ain't got much to say because I dislike pretty much all of it. Biggest flaw I say is dialogue. Hard for me to describe the issue but I say that is lacks consistency and cohesion. It feels very choppy in a totally different way than the trilogy. For all of its faults, ME 1-3 had very consistent conversations and Andromeda lacks that. Tone feels all over the place all the time. It often felt like I was picking wrong dialogue options. Like I didn't pick the options the Devs expected me to pick. 

 

But if I had to sum up exactly why MEA fails and why the Mass Effect trilogy didn't, well these videos should point out exactly why I don't like MEA and I never will.

 

I'm not even kidding when I encountered that bit in MEA I just didn't care anymore. Game was made wrong. 

 

The Mass Effect Trilogy asks what are you going to do about it, and then you show it. Mass Effect Andromeda tells you that you will do nothing about it and tells you to fuck off. 

 

That Andromeda video just makes me excited to play it finally later this year 

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skillzdadirecta

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I agree with @Spawn_of_Apathy and with @Bacon about ME: Andromeda. It's a weird game that is like rpg-lite. The gameplay and combat is probably the best in the series. Everything else is... not. I've only played and beat it once so maybe after I finish my current run of ME:3 (my seventh or eigth I think... Thanks @Bacon) I'll give Andromeda another go. To be honest, I didn't fully appreciate and fall in love with the games in this series until I replayed them and understood the sytems better. ESPECIALLY the first two games. 

 

By the way, I'm playing ME: 3 on Insanity and just got past Grissom Academy last night after being stuck there for a couple of days. That's one oft the hardest sections in the game right?

 

2 minutes ago, stepee said:

 

That Andromeda video just makes me excited to play it finally later this year 

 

Yeah his video definitely made me more enthusiastic about revisiting it despite the fact that he was spot on in his comparisons between how the two games handle the same scenario.

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Bacon

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1 minute ago, skillzdadirecta said:

By the way, I'm playing ME: 3 on Insanity and just got past Grissom Academy last night after being stuck there for a couple of days. That's one oft the hardest sections in the game right?

 

The court yard part with the mech on the farside? Yeah it wasn't easy. 

 

As a Vanguard it was pretty much luck if the next charge was going to end up getting me killed or not. And omg so many heat seeking grenades and engineer turrets that were a pain in the ass to kill as a cqc class. 

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Bacon

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Also, while he combat gets a lot of praise, I am not a fan of it. Becomes very boring and you do a lot of it. Like, I couldn't believe I had gotten over 2k kill before beating the game. The combat is truly just destiny + the division. Class identity was stripped away and abilities felt like watered down generic versions. I know shooting is what you do the most in combat in all of these game, but when your best ability is just shooting then I feel like the game has failed. Like, you wouldn't say, in me3, your best ability is shooting unless you were a soldier class. Hell, I didn't even use biotics as I felt they we useless when compared to just shooting your gun. I used Overload, Turbocharge, and Incinerate with an automatic shotgun with heat seeking bullets and with an augmentation that consumed HP to instantly reload. I would literally just turbocharge and then hold down the fire button and everything died. It is cool that you can do that but that doesn't make the game actually good. I missed the old feeling of Vanguard that the trilogy provided. While MEA can let you recreate that, it just isn't the same when your gun is still just far stronger. I never played these game as a cover shooter until MEA. When you have the ability to just make the strongest class, you are going to end up making the strongest class unless you resist the obvious path. 

 

I found a video that is pretty darn close to my build. This guy's build is probably better since use used cloak but it is pretty much the same. It is timed stamped to the most accurate part of my playstyle. 

 

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Spawn_of_Apathy

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17 minutes ago, Bacon said:

For me, I didn't realize how important GOOD decisions were to my enjoyment of the series. I don't mean morally good, but responses that actually match the player's thinking. MEA has none of that. 

 

Another example of just where MEA fails is with Drack and the decision between choosing A FUCKING PATHFINDER or some shitty ass krogan scouts. Of course I chose to save a pathfinder. A pathfinder, despite my dislike for the title, is what this initiative hinges on. I should be able to explain that to Drack, but there is no option for that. The game acts like I didn't pick the Krogan Scouts because I don't like krogan. No you stupid fucking game. Only the biggest of idiots would choose some shitty scouts who got captured over an excellent pathfinder who has proven their ability over the course of the mission. 


I have these problems in many games with dialog options. To be honest there were a few of these moments in ME1-3 where a dialog option I wanted wasn’t there. 
 

I don’t know if it was intentional, to show Ryder still doesn’t have confidence to stand up for themselves, or if it is just amateurish writing. I liked that there wasn’t morality system in the game in the gaming sense. It’s just where decisions had consequences. Some good, some bad, but the game wasn’t color coding your decisions to then rate how good or bad you were. 
 

I try to treat games like this more like choose your own adventure games, rather than TT RPGs where you can nearly say or do whatever you want. It’s more like where the character has things they want to say and I’m the tie breaker. So if they don’t “think” to say it, I can’t help them choose it. Maybe that’s just me excusing a lack of imagination in the writing. But I find this slightly more forgivable than other lazy or bad writing tropes and world building. 

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Bacon

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I really do hate that Ryder is a bitch. I don't know if I have ever played a video game where the MC is such a pansy. I really don't like it. 

9 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

To be honest there were a few of these moments in ME1-3 where a dialog option I wanted wasn’t there.

I am sure this is true for me as well, but ME1-3 always had an option that was good enough even if the option I wanted wasn't there. MEA doesn't do that for me. Even when I kill NPCs my team doesn't want me to kill, it doesn't even matter. MEA is a game without real consequences. And killing those NPCs wasn't even satisfying as the shots weren't even dramatic. I want that over-the-top action drama. I love it. I crave it. In MEA your gun goes "plink" and the NPC dies lifelessly. Weird way to put it, but yeah. 

Spoiler

 

 

 

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skillzdadirecta

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39 minutes ago, Bacon said:

Also, while he combat gets a lot of praise, I am not a fan of it. Becomes very boring and you do a lot of it. Like, I couldn't believe I had gotten over 2k kill before beating the game. The combat is truly just destiny + the division. Class identity was stripped away and abilities felt like watered down generic versions. I know shooting is what you do the most in combat in all of these game, but when your best ability is just shooting then I feel like the game has failed. Like, you wouldn't say, in me3, your best ability is shooting unless you were a soldier class. Hell, I didn't even use biotics as I felt they we useless when compared to just shooting your gun. I used Overload, Turbocharge, and Incinerate with an automatic shotgun with heat seeking bullets and with an augmentation that consumed HP to instantly reload. I would literally just turbocharge and then hold down the fire button and everything died. It is cool that you can do that but that doesn't make the game actually good. I missed the old feeling of Vanguard that the trilogy provided. While MEA can let you recreate that, it just isn't the same when your gun is still just far stronger. I never played these game as a cover shooter until MEA. When you have the ability to just make the strongest class, you are going to end up making the strongest class unless you resist the obvious path. 

 

I found a video that is pretty darn close to my build. This guy's build is probably better since use used cloak but it is pretty much the same. It is timed stamped to the most accurate part of my playstyle. 

 

Yeah I agree with all your points about Andromeda and the combat. They definitely stripped the identity from all of the classes but I wonder how different the game is on Insanity. I found that the combat gets really interesting in these games on the harder difficulties because you have to pay attention to enemy resistances and damage types and just shooting everything doesn't work. Like that Grissom academy party I was playing, I struggled with until I changed my tactics. Once I did that I was able to make it through. What difficulty are you playing these games on @Bacon? I never played Andromeda on the hardest difficulty but I definitely felt like it was too easy on whatever difficulty I played it on.

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Spawn_of_Apathy

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2 minutes ago, Bacon said:

I really do hate that Ryder is a bitch. I don't know if I have every played a video game where the MC is such a pansy. I really don't like it. 


yeah. I mean maybe that was the character they wanted. But coming from Shepard it was felt wrong. Especially when everyone is being asked to follow them. And Ryder keeps acting like they have any authority when they’re probably the least qualified person. 
 

it reminds me of characters like Chuck. A character who is included because of something they have that everyone else needs, and not who they are and what they can personally do. 
 

maybe they thought they wrote the “reluctant hero” in Ryder. Like a Luke Skywalker. But so little was earned and the game seemingly wanted to forget it as fast as possible. 

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skillzdadirecta

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1 hour ago, Bacon said:

As a Vanguard it was pretty much luck if the next charge was going to end up getting me killed or not. And omg so many heat seeking grenades and engineer turrets that were a pain in the ass to kill as a cqc class.

I played as an Infiltrator and turning those turrets against them with Sabotage saved my ass. Also my Sniper rifle made short work of the farther enemies. I had Edi and Javik with me... not the best companions for that section to be honest :p

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Bacon

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34 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

What difficulty are you playing these games on @Bacon? I never played Andromeda on the hardest difficulty but I definitely felt like it was too easy on whatever difficulty I played it on.

Insanity all 4 games.

 

I did use mods for MEA tho. While their intent wasn't to make the game easier, they totally did. I was unwilling to partake in the crafting and gathering systems outside of creating 1 set of armor and the weapons I decided on using. My mods reduced the research currency to pretty much nothing and removed the level restriction that prevents you from crafting the higher tier gear. I don't care that it made the game easier. MEA was still the hardest of all the games on Insanity. 

 

If I had known better, I would have made tier 8 gear instead of tier 10 as by the end of the game tier 8 is what was dropping from enemies. My goal with those mods was just to give the the Mass Effect 2/3 experience where my gear didn't have levels and was complete from the start. I wasn't trying to make myself stronger, but rather to get all the crafting out of the way so I would never touch the system again. And technically ME3 did have weapon levels, but that was just spending credits. I didn't have to make a whole new gun to go from level 2-3. In fact, when I got the scimitar in ME3 I upgraded it as high as it could go the moment I got it. Even when I play dark souls I try and get as much of the upgrading out of the way and make it a priority to get the embers asap. 

 

No interest in ever doing a "legit" play-thru either. I 100% got a better experience than what the devs intended.

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