With Mass Effect Legendaries release, i deep dove back into the Mass Effect universe. I was one of those that hated ME:A on its release, but looking back, a lot of the criticism it received was unfair.
I’ll make this quick.
Combat in ME:A is better than 1 and 2 and on par with 3, if not better. Thats not debatable.
The worlds were beautiful. Far better looking than anything the OG trilogy had to offer.
Yes the animations had, and still have, issues.
The Mass Effect 3 ending pissed people off and they took it out on Andromeda.
All in all, it comes down to the story telling and characters.
The overall story telling… Well that’s a tough one. How the hell do you one up the Reapers? If you are being honest. You dont. No bad guy could ever match up with the reapers. We are talking about a galaxy neutralizing event that repeats every 50,000 years. There is no bad guy you can create that would be on par, without diving into tropes already established in the ME universe. And i did hate that the Remnant seemed to fill the same hole as the Protheans. Why must there always be an ancient extinct civilization?
That brings us to the Characters. They arent bad. One thing that has always bugged me is that people compare ME:A to the entire Mass Effect series, which is ridiculous and unfair. Why compare characters you spent DOZENS of hours with vs characters that only appear in one game? Is Drack a better charcter than Wrex in Mass Effect 3? Nope. Is he as good a character as Wrex was in Mass Effect 1? You bet he is. No one is comparing Peebee with Miranda. They want to compare Peebee with Garrus or Tali. I wont explain why thats unfair. Given two more games, i can almost guarantee Peebee would be just as loved as Tali or Garrus. And at the very least ME:A had the balls to show us average female Krogan and Turians, something the OG trilogy never bothered with. Does Liam suck? Yup. So does Kaiden or Ashley. Does the Archon suck as a villain? Yup. But so did Nihlus. Take Garrus out of ME2 and 3, and no one would give two craps about him.
Another major complaint i hear about ME:A is how there are only 2 alien races. Well, honestly, what did you expect? The Andromeda galaxy doesn’t have Mass Relays. They do not have the convenience of traveling across the galaxy with no issues. ME:A takes place in ONE cluster vs the entire milky way galaxy. The fact that we encounter more than 1 intelligent race itself beats the odds, by quite a lot.
I replayed ME:Legenday and after finishing it I have been looking for something similar to scratch the itch. After being a huge Dragon Age fan, I could never get into Inquisition, so i redownloaded Andromeda. Its really not as bad as it was made out to be at its launch, and its scratched the itch i need fulfilled. The only sad thing is we will never get the story of the Quarian ark.