This review and subsequent score have been edited after playing more of the game. An additional paragraph has been added to the bottom of the review.



This is my first review. I felt it was necessary given the situation. ME:A is not a bad game. It is however, not a good game. I would go so far as to say it is more of a "mass effect clone" than a mass effect game. That may seem harsh, This review and subsequent score have been edited after playing more of the game. An additional paragraph has been added to the bottom of the review.



This is my first review. I felt it was necessary given the situation.



ME:A is not a bad game. It is however, not a good game. I would go so far as to say it is more of a "mass effect clone" than a mass effect game. That may seem harsh, but if you try it out, you will understand. If you are a huge fan, and have played the originals for hundreds of hours, you will really understand what I mean.



For the people saying that there are no animation glitches - that is true. I have not experienced animation glitches, but the game does have very poor animations. First year in animation school bad. And they are plentiful. It would be one thing if they were some side character off in the distance, but this game takes about a decade or two of steps back in animation. It is painful sometimes. Like physically so.



The characters are not as bad as some people have made them out to be. I can tell that they wanted them to feel familiar without being too similar to the characters we grew to love in previous games. But, I do think they miss a beat with poor introductions and poor followup. If you take my advice (listed below), you will see what I mean, but this tends to repeat itself.



Combat is fun. I am playing on insanity difficulty and enjoying it. It is much more tactical and much more "cover-shooter" this way. The powers and abilities are excellent. There is an appropriate amount of depth in this system. Sometimes I feel my companions are not really helping, but I am supposed to be the real BAMF - not them - so that is fine. Nothing more to say here.



The writing is sub par. And ultimately, it isn't what defeats the game or the experience. There have been plenty of games with poor writing that are still fun (some even make it top 100 games of all time list), and it isn't as if ME:A doesn't have a good premise or a good general story. But - and you will see this if you take my advice (listed below) - between 30% - 50% of the dialog is just... bad. I get the sense that whoever wrote it is just not cut out to be a writer, but I don't want to attack anyone. The truth is that a lot of the issues ME:A suffers from should have been noticed and fixed by upper management. In general, it feels as if the game had zero oversight. Writing is one of those things.



The scanning system, exploration system, and crafting system are all excellent. If that is what Mass Effect is, I am writing the wrong review. These systems are great. I believe these systems/mechanics were fleshed out very well in comparison to the problem areas. I do not know much about game development, but I do know that I would take ME:A without any of these systems if it meant the animations were at least on par with the other games, the characters were properly delivered, and the writing was better. Because those three things are more important to me than fleshed out systems like the ones above.



My advice is to buy the game on steam and give it the hour it deserves. I believe you will see what I have come to see, and that is that this game is more of an off-shoot, or a clone, than it is Mass Effect. And it really has nothing to do with Shepard or the other Mass Effect games. This game has a great premise, I would even say a "Mass Effect Premise," but broadly speaking, it fails to deliver - on nearly everything. Its execution is its biggest issue.



So buy it and play for an hour on Steam (if you are on console, do not purchase this game until you have tried it). If you enjoyed that hour and were not bothered by the glaring issues, then by all means keep playing. If not, refund it through Steam and write a review of the game to help other people make a decision.



After 30+ hours, I can safely say that this is a journey worth taking. SPOILERS FOLLOW. However, I stand by what I said above. It is easy for me to look past the fact that half of the aliens that make ME's universe so amazing are missing. It is easy for me to look past the fact that animations are actually horrid. It is is easy for me to look past the fact that Bioware seems to be making their female character less attractive than the models they are based on (but not the male characters? - I thought this was propaganda but wtf it's actually not. Not to mention their personalities are lacking. Miranda, Liara, and Tali, please come back. You were all intelligent, powerful, and beautiful female characters. You were all someone my daughter could aspire to) I can even - unbelievably - look past the fact that most of the game's quests are fetch quests that are poorly written and just not very fun.



Here's why: Because what's left is actually good. … Expand