Another entry in my list of things I dislike about MEA. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m actually enjoying playing MEA a fair amount, but it’s still making me cringe quite often. Also since the last post it updated to 1.0.0.7 and then to 1.0.0.8, so this post will actually be two entries in one – the one I wrote for 0.7 and the one I wrote for 0.8. This post contains spoilers. Also videos for the first time.

Part 1   Part 2

Main Menu

• Menu takes a long time to decide that a unit upgrade is available.
• Mouse very, very rarely, ceases to work in menus at all. Game must be restarted

Dialogue

• You meet new allies, the Angarans. Instead of telling you what they’ve been calling the Kett the whole time, they call them the Kett too. How about telling me what they’re really called?
• “I need to change your entire planet’s climate so my people can live here, lol” ‘oh OK, but do this task first’
• Jaal threatens to kill me in my sleep. Hilarious.
• Sohkaa and Ryder treat each other like fucking idiots
• “Are all humans so quick with words?” after I went afk and left the screen paused on dialogue for 5 minutes (not really a complaint, but still)
• “They put every credit they made into my education” how very Americocentric of the writers to assume capitalism would be universal.
• “niche” said like NITCH
• “download some movies for me lol, I like bad movies, I’m literally a walking meme” – Liam
• “just be yourself and the flirts will flow” holy fuck I just lost brain matter
• “Damn politicians”
• Using the question-mark option in some conversations throws out a total non-sequitur, making it sound awkward when you put the conversation back on track
• “tell me more about fighting Kett” needs to be selected constantly, never greys out even when you’ve exhausted all options.
• “Want us to get out and push?” ‘Veeeerrry funny Ryder’ No.
• “by who?” “by whom.” fuck off SAM you cunt.
• “you took out the kett crown jewel” seconds later “we want to hit the crown jewel of the kett” so did I take it out yet, or do I still need to take it out?
• “what the actual hell” fuck off with your tumblr meme shit
• What sort of rude fucking bastard ends a conversation with “I’m good for now”?
• SAM SHUT THE FUCK UP I KNOW IT’S COLD

Game

• Dumb fucking escort mission in the Angaran settlement when you first land (Hidden City)
• The Angarans draw a bead on me the second I take out my scanner
• What the fuck accent do these things have? Is it African, English, Australian? All three? Why do they have EARTH ACCENTS?
• Ryder is told the Angaran people get kidnapped. Looks bored as fuck, like he’s about to fall asleep standing.
• Avela seems excessively enamoured where 5 minutes earlier she didn’t give a single fuck
• Background plants behind Avela shimmer terribly
• These aliens I just met are WAY too trusting.
• I don’t remember picking up a universal translator?
• Peebee’s writer is a stupid fucking cunt. She is the most fucking irritating piece of shit in the game.
• The entire crew is unmotivated to do the fucking jobs they’re supposed to be, instead opting to make dumb wisecracks and say other stupid shit.
• Not even on my second planet and I have a full roster of crew. There are no more companions to collect.
• Whoever wrote Suvi is a fuckwit. Her dialogue is pure shit.
• Right-click doesn’t skip dialogue.
• AWWW DRACK IS ACTUALLY A SOFTIE. Most boring fucking trope ever.
• Being biotic is literally an oppressed state, like being Black or Asian
• Talking to Cora again immediately after ending the automatic cutscene changes her mood, her stance, everything entirely.
• You can call an Andromeda Galaxy alien a BIGOT for calling YOU an alien. IDPOL HAS GONE TOO FAR
• Cutscenes starting with you standing 30cm behind your chat target like you wanna fuck them
• Every time Peebee talks I want to shoot myself, or better, her in the fucking head.
• And her flirting is just absolute fucking trash
• Not only is she annoying, she’s a thief, a liar, and a menace and should be in a fucking jail cell.
• SJWs literally wrote appropriation into the script
• Suvi talks about the least interesting thing about her (not that there is much interesting about her) too much – her stupid fucking faith.
• SHE BECAME RELIGIOUS IN HER TEENS. HER PARENTS AREN’T RELIGIOUS. SUVI IS DUMBER THAN SHIT.
• Aliens have weirdly human personality traits.
• A protester with red hair has hair that looks like it was put on over the top of another hairdo
• The protesters are ridiculous as fuck.
• Reporter quest ripped directly from Mass Effect 2/3
• At least Addison looks less stupid as of 1.0.0.6
• With the amount of load screens, this game would be irritating as fuck to play on a non-PC
• Game continually sends me back to the Nexus. That’d be fine if it didn’t take 5 minutes of cutscenes each time.
• WHY DON’T YOU JUST TAKE A FUCKING NAP MID SENTENCE RYDER, YOU SLEEPY LOOKING FUCKING CUNT
• Ryder tells Spender he’s onto him well before he has any evidence or even reasonably doubt to be able to have him arrested, making sure Spender can clean up any mess he needs to or disappear.
• You can leave Voeld in the middle of nowhere which causes a 2 minute fucking leave-the-planet cutscene.
• After this line is from 1.0.0.8 
• After rescuing Nillj, his companion speaks to you but is not in range at all, so only her subtitles show up but her audio isn’t heard. She doesn’t seem to come closer either.
• If you don’t have a weapon drawn, you cannot use melee.
• Using the remnant elevator causes the game to undraw the AI companions, and then redraw them again at the top.
• The AI companions act like they contribute to kills during combat. Without mods, they do zero damage and are nothing more than a liability.
• An item disappears and reappears when using the omintool. Item can be clipped through when omnitool not used. I made a video of it, here or embedded at the bottom of the post.
• NPC walks around me several times, then walks off. Video of it Here or embedded at the bottom of the post.
• Addison is probably the most inept, useless, and fucking stupid character in the entire game.
• You can’t talk to NPCs without them facing you, which gets irritating.
• Nostril holes look stupid as fuck
• The whole “sibling in a coma for the entire duration of the game” is pretty fucking stupid
• There are 5 videocom consoles and you can only use one of them. In about 30 hours of playing, I’ve only used them once, what’s the point?
• SAM things it can boost the Angaran’s computer power despite not having actually interacted with an Angaran computer before, and not knowing how much processing power they do or do not possess.
• A graphics glitch made it look like Ryder had a mouthful of metal, like Jaws in 007
• Some quests marked as complete remain in the menu, and don’t elaborate what else needs to be done to ACTUALLY complete them.
• Jaal’s clothes blow around like there’s wind when there isn’t
• Ryder asks Jaal about biology. Jaal fobs him off completely leading me to believe that the writers never bothered actually fleshing out the Angara. Lazy as fuck.
• WHY DOES A HOLOGRAM HAVE EYELASHES

No doubt there’ll be a part 4 soon, but I’ve already catalogued a lot of the shit that pisses me off, and I’m finding it harder to find new things that aren’t completely dialogue based. Also there are mods now, so I can remove a lot of annoying things. EOF

Since I wrote part 1, the game has updated once again to 1.0.0.6, and some of my critique is out of date, but most of it still applies. Here’s part two. Possible spoilers ahead.

Part 1

Main Menu

• Still can’t use enter key to select anything from the game’s opening menu

Dialogue

• “have a Dirty Squirrel” the bar has dumb as fuck names for drinks. Because they couldn’t possibly just use existing names.
• “Fine, you can be a regular” said to Scott Ryder by the bartender.
• “Be careful, the snark is strong with this one”
• DUTCH HAS THE MOST WANKY SHIT DIALOGUE SO FAR.
• “You can’t deploy and omelette without deploying eggs. And eggs won’t get you steak” WHO FUCKING WROTE THIS SHIT
• “They’re scanning us!” ‘WELL SCAN THEM BACK’ genius dialogue. 10/10.
• Ryder snorts in his dialogue, subtitle says he “exhales”

Game

• NPC bumped through a crate, NPC was then difficult to interact/talk to. Once dialogue was initiated, NPC proceeded to walk BEHIND the player character.
• NPC fucking asks me to talk to it a second time to start the quest it has.
• Game breaks 4th wall. Example – an NPC has a quest icon above his head, instead of asking him how he’s going, and then him responding that he has some trouble and could you look into it, your dialogue starts immediately with “is something wrong?” despite no indication that anything is wrong in the first place.
• Seems almost everyone who isn’t a random filler NPC has a dull, monotonous and very mundane quest for you to do.
• Pathfinder gets paid for completing tasks.
• Pathfinder also needs to pay for items and equipment, as if he’s not the most fucking important thing in the entire goddamn galaxy at that point.
• A quest involves finding ingredients for “new cocktails”
• Junk, filler quests everywhere. I cannot state this enough.
• The Nilken Case. The options are black and white. You cannot choose for him to go into community service (although one of the options makes that happen anyway) or serve 3 months in a cell, you can only choose to release him or exile him.
• Addison randomly talks to herself. Possibly the worst design choice ever, to include this fucking batshit insane character.
• Brecka’s accent sounds fake as fuck
• The drop pod/AVP is similar to the Inquisition Powers in DAI (this isn’t a complaint, just an observation)
• Default load screen times are excessive.
• Ryder’s face lags and changes in an instant.
• Kett aliens seem to speak in alternating accents
• Somehow the aliens damaged their ship without actually attacking it at all.
• Ryder makes first contact with the Angara by being an arrogant fucking prick. Very American.
• Aliens speak to each other in English, after starting dialogue in their own language.
• “Hidden City” not actually hidden at all.

This concludes part 2, part 3 should arrive in the next couple of weeks, since there’s so goddamn much wrong with this title.

I bought Mass Effect Andromeda about 2 weeks after it first came out, and I’ve played through as much of the first planet as it would let me (which wasn’t all that much). As I’ve played the game, I’ve wrote down what has annoyed me. Here I will detail what has annoyed me about the game so far. POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD

Main Menu

• mouse highlights wrong item on hover (fixed – sorta) after update 1.05
• Game loads for a significant amount of time after exiting character creator back into the main menu

Dialogue

• Almost all the dialogue listed here will be goofy. As a general rule, if the dialogue isn’t goofy, it’s flat fucking boring.
• “I feel like a 600 year old popsicle” after coming out of stasis.
• “since when do rocks float” ‘just go with it’ when flying above the first planet you come to, to complete the tutorial level, Liam and Ryder have this exchange.
• “it’s like they didn’t finish building it” after it was stated that the Nexus wasn’t built.
• “can you tell me where the welcome party is hiding” after boarding the Nexus and seeing no one around
• “you’re a BRAVE PIONEER” don’t blow smoke up my arse, NPCs.
• Liam continually mentions the Nexus is vacant
• “Unknown Error” spoken like VI has never spoken either word before
• MEMES LOL
• “14 months and you start stooping to poetry”
• “ugh goddamn poetry”
• Tann’s voice actor seems to be playing a “character” and is doing it badly.
• Scott uses “uh” to answer questions
• Suvi sounds fucking stupid
• LIAM SPEAKS IN MEMES
• “oh you know things? good for you, I know things too” Wow, Peebee you sure showed them
• “We nearly died!” “YEAH BUT IT WAS TOTALLY COOL” – definite seizure probability.

Game

• textures shimmer
• blank, non-moving faced weird fucking NPCs (noted as fixed with update 1.05, but not actually fixed)
• Ryder’s hand passes through an item he is grabbing hold of in a cutscene
• too easy to cut off dialogue/dialogue doesn’t complete often
• clunky movement at times (but combat is very satisfying)
• Rocks. Are. Floating.
• animation of shooting at corpse doesn’t contact
• dopey, clueless expressions POST 1.05 update
• Scott Ryder seems overly happy immediately after his dad’s death
• Foster Addison is excessively stupid. Holy fuck.
• Female Krogan – goofiest fucking Krogan in the galaxy
• Numpad keys are totally randomised
• Not much difference between selection colours – already chosen dialogue very slightly different hue from unused dialogue. Gets really fucking confusing during times where you revisit a character.
• Animations do not match voices
• Textures popping in and out during interviews
• Weird model tooth overlap
• Vetra is an atypical turian
• Two audio files from the same NPC can play simultaneously, creating some weird fucking shit
• only 2 squadmates compared to 3 in Dragon Age Inquisition (minor annoyance)
• 3 different NPCs talking over each other…
• Peebee is an annoying fucking Mary Sue who speaks in Tumblr memes.
• Pretty sure they won’t be calling it “3D printing” so far in the future
• Quests with no clear objective
• After selecting to land on a planet, the decision CANNOT be cancelled.
• Weapons loadout cannot be changed at the ship without leaving the planet.
• Pee(nis)b(reath)ee walks like she’s shat in her fucking pants
• No choice of whether to recruit or abandon new team mates, they are automatically added.
• Ore remains behind after being picked up, instead of disappearing.
• Game flickers yellow in certain areas, due to the ingame filter having a certain boundry the camera crosses
• Group dialogue reads/plays out like a fucking terrible sitcom, without a pathetic laugh track
• Game arbitrarily forces you to leave Eos. No real reason at all, just so you don’t exhaust all the content on that planet straight up.
• BORED ALREADY WITH NO DESIRE TO PLAY ANY FURTHER.

Hopefully I’ll end up playing more, so I can make a part 2, but until then, this is all. EOF