Mass Effect Andromeda

[retroed]

A message from Bioware. 

 

[DisturbedSwan]

4 hours earlier, 40 total.

 

Started right at the beginning of Liam's loyalty mission.

You smuggle your way in in a shipping container and only when you break out do you realise it isn't the Pirate ship you'd hoped for, but a Kett ship...cue lots of bickering between Ryder and Liam, some gun fights happen and you realise that even though this is a Kett ship you're actually fighting Angaran pirates. 

 

After the first encounter with them you see the ship's leader come up via Video on one of the consoles, and the ! interrupt button comes out, if you choose this you keep powering down his screen everytime he wants to make his typically grandiose big-bad guy speech and Ryder and Liam talk amongst themselves. 


Everything after this is a bit more ordinary really, you make your way through the ship taking out hordes of smugglers and eventually the leader, what I loved though was that the ship inverts at times so there's some mild puzzle elements thrown in where you have to find your way out of the room.

 

So that was done, first loyalty mission in the bag (only another 4/5 more to go!), after a little scanning of Planets for materials (and that sweet 100% scanned accomplishment) I carried on with the main story on Kedara.

 

Just before you land you're given some info about the place and it all sounds very Tatooine from Star Wars really. You land in the town and straight away it's reminiscent of the Mos Eisley Cantina in Star Wars, this dingy pirate town rife with rival factions, pirates, mercenaries and smugglers. I think it's possibly the first location I've come to that doesn't feel bright and clean, it's almost the polar opposite of Aya really, the only place I've really experienced in Andromeda so far that has a darker vibe to it than other places and I really enjoyed it, it immediately felt unique in this world and was absolutely gorgeous with the stark Neon Lights flashing away as soon as you get off the ship and oppressed Angarans getting hounded by the local militia crying out for help on the floor.

Continued on the story here,

Spoiler

 

meeting up with the local leader and various other NPC's I could speak to, then made my way down into the 'slums' where things got even dingier and darker, lots of dead bodies down here, strip clubs and lots more unsavoury characters. After I'd finished all the side quests available in these areas I finally made my way out into the greater Kadara region with the Nomad.

 

Just when I stepped out from the dingy Slums I knew this was my favourite Planet so far, it's just a stunningly beautiful sight to behold, rocks glistening in the sun, strange blue toxic pools shedding steam into the atmosphere, sulphur patches catching fire all over the place, it was just a really pretty place to look at, and of course I couldn't wait to dig in and explore. It was a little disappointing within the first hour to find out that I couldn't use the Nomad to climb up huge mountains, with them seemingly locked off by a 'you're leaving the mission area' notification which I was surprised about, here more than any other planets you don't really seem to be able to go off the beaten track, everywhere I went I primarily followed the roads.

 

A huge advantage Kadara has over other Planets is that it feels much more populated, Voeld had pockets of the Angaran resistance scattered around the map but on Kedara the warring factions' camps are seemingly everywhere, every track you go down you will encounter a hostile group whether they are Kett, Outcasts, Roekaar or Collective and this gives it a more lived-in vibe to it than any of the other Planets, it feels like the Outlaws here have been flourishing, living on their own in these camps for quite some time. 

 

I must mention the darkest side quest I've had in the game too, you track down a women that has been thrown out of the town for not paying her protection money by mistake, you track her down to a base in the Kadara Badlands, when you get to the floor you see blood strewn everywhere, piles of bodies all over the place. From the data cards you pick up it's clear that they were harvesting peoples organs and selling them on, just thought it was worth highlighting, definitely a dark moment especially contrasted with the beauty, elegance and cleanliness of somewhere like Aya.

 

 

A few pictures of Kadara too, will put them in Spoiler tags just in case:

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

[DisturbedSwan]

4 hours earlier, 44 total.

 

And...it's back to being my GOTY again.

 

I really didn't get an awful lot done today to be honest, did a lot of exploring in Kadara, activating the Monoliths and Vault here and exhausting all possible side quests available. Kadara is definitely my favourite planet, I just love the way it looks, it's so beautiful and has so much beauty to it, the others look fantastic too but they're more one-dimensional whereas this has so much going on. Pools of water, smoke, rocks, dust, explosive sulphur, bandit camps, it has everything, the only bum-note (as mentioned previously) is that it's not quite as explorable as the other planets, meaning you have to stick to the routes available, but even so, still my favourite planet by far.

 

Once I got back on the Tempest a metric fuck-ton of stuff opened up, lots of quests to speak with my crew (which then opened up a few loyalty missions), the main story quest and a couple of others to help endangered worlds in other systems. It seems the map has completely opened to me now as I could explore systems within the cluster that previously weren't there, so naturally I flew around 100%ing them gathering all materials and resources.

 

Back to Aya briefly to complete a few quests...only it's never as simple as that in this, as I got roped in to about 3/4 more whilst I was there. Finished everything and then made my way back to the Tempest to head back to Kadara to finish off the last of the quests there when my time ran out.

 

Utterly engrossing today, loved every second of it.

 

[Sambob]

We need to take that GOTY stamp away from you @Blakey

[ThreeFour]

He's all over the place man  Love him. Loves life he does, loves life.

[DisturbedSwan]

12 hours ago, Sambob said:

We need to take that GOTY stamp away from you @Blakey

 

it's raining GOTYs man I can't help myself 

 

 

 

 

 

Anyhoo, another 4 hours played earlier, 48 total.

Went here there and everywhere today really, finished off everything in Kadara,

Spoiler

the badlands and town, settled the dispute here between the two warring factions (chose to side with the collective) and had some sexy time with one of the leaders there (who I accidently entered into an exclusive relationship with meaning I can't bang anyone else now  ). Really liked this whole plot-line, felt very Bethesda-esque but it was ultimately a very easy choice choosing the faction I did.

Touched on this yesterday but I absolutely adore Kadara as a whole, by far my favourite planet.

After this I went around finishing side quests off around the galaxy, stopped by the Nexus, then Aya, 

Spoiler

Cora's loyalty mission,

then back to Kadara, back to the Nexus then eventually back to Eos. Almost discovered all the systems now too, got all of them up to 100% apart from 2 I think.

A couple of missions were like wild goose chases across the galaxy, one where you had to go to about 4 different systems and scan for a lost shuttle which I didn't really enjoy.

The highlight of my day was definitely 

Spoiler

Cora's loyalty mission though. You arrive at the Asari Ark, it's bathed in darkness, all the powers out and it's all a bit eery, some tactically sparking wires made me jump a bit too, just loved the whole Alien vibe, of course you eventually find civilisation and manage to successfully take the Ark back to the Nexus but that opening section when all the power was out was bloody amazing.

Back to Eos after this to mop up a couple of side quests and then I called it a day.

 

[DisturbedSwan]

Just the 3 hours for me earlier, 51 total.

After finishing up some side-quests in Eos, Kadara, Nexus and Havarl I headed to the planet for Vetra's loyalty mission.

Now I thought this would just be similar to Liam's where you get a Shuttle in and it's a very linear kind of affair but

Spoiler

as soon as I landed I was placed in the Nomad (couldn't get out because of Radiation) on a moon-like Planet, surrounded in asteroids (so incredibly beautiful).

This was the only planet so far that didn't have earth-like gravity, which meant I could bounce the Nomad around getting MASSIVE air as much as I wanted, such a ton of fun, I think even my FemRyder was like 'whoooaaaa' the first time we went over a Jump, and I really couldn't blame her.

Not a huge planet to explore by any means and not much to do but just one massive bouncy castle to have fun in really, there were other missions here so put Vetra's on hold to kill some exiles or whatever. The cool part about these was that you had to enter an airlock to get out into an orange dome (which protected you from the radiation) in order to kill the bad guys, just thought this was a nice little mechanic. After this I had to enter some Remnant looking thing, fight my way through (quite tough against an Elite Detroyer at the end) and turn on a console which means the Nexus could have an ever-lasting energy supply, pretty cool how it tied into the story.

Once I was done with this I carried on with Vetra's mission, kind of had a Jabba's Palace vibe to it from Return of the Jedi, you enter this building Vetra's systems earmarked, trip a laserwire and get send into a pit below. You then have to figure out how to get out, shoot a load more raiders and eventually rescue Vetra's sister Sid. Wasn't as good as Liam's I didn't think but was pretty unique and had some cool moments to it.

After this I headed back to Havarl to begin Jaal's loyalty mission and called it a day there.

Few pics of bouncy castle planet and the Vault:

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

[DisturbedSwan]

Whoa that doesn't sound good @Nag seems a strange issue to have with just this game, have you tried it out with other games/controllers to see if it still occurs?

 

Had a quick google myself but could only find a handful of threads of folks having issues using 360/xb1 controllers on PC but nothing specifically for xbone so can't help anymore than that I'm afraid.

 

 

 

 

Anyhoo, another 4 hours for me today, 55 total.

 

Finished off Jaal's loyalty mission, some really cool vistas in there across Havarl but otherwise it was pretty disappointing really, probably the worst so far, had some emotional ties there and I love Jaal as a character but the mission itself just didn't do much to feel unique for me really which was a shame given the subject matter.

 

Nevertheless, onwards to Kadara for a brief Sojourn to meet Peebee at a bar (for her loyalty mission), and then it was finally time to make my way to Eladaan. Pretty much as soon as I landed I got a real Mad Max vibe from the place, kind of similar visually to Eos (desert type area) but different enough to still stand out and be interesting, the sand is a different colour, it's much rockier and it has full on dunes (which are so incredibly fun to jump in the Nomad) with warring factions and lots of mysteries dotted around the map.

 

As soon as I landed at the Scavenger camp I was immediately blown away by the graphics in this area, all the dust swaying around, the desert plants swaying in the wind, the light reflecting off the Nomad as you drive along and all the individually placed gravel, everything just looked so vibrant, and in a desert environment that's a very hard task to achieve and somehow they've managed it. The Sun gets SO incredibly bright sometimes as well, whilst jumping some Dunes I honestly had to squint at times as it got so bloody bright!

 

Stuck to my usual Planetary settling routine, found all the fast travel pods first, activated the Monoliths (a surprisingly long and puzzle-focused Vault this time around too) to make the extreme heat levels go away (now a balmy 37 degrees apparently), and then it was time to mop up all the little missions/tasks dotted here and there, basically any mission marker I saw on the map I go to and eventually I managed to mop up all the smaller ones and mop up a few side-quests too before getting on with the more involved missions.

First stop was Drack's loyalty mission

Spoiler

 

, which takes you to a Moon off of Eladaan to a pirate base on a rainy moonlit night. Really enjoyed this, Drack is just an absolute bad-ass charging through everything in his path, laughing at the enemies for not being worthy of his beatdown , him charging full on at enemies and raging was a sight to behold, might put him in my squad more often going forward. The plot of the mission itself wasn't too brilliant but kept me involved, all the humour definitely helped to and it ended up being one of my favourites, just got Peebee's to go now.

 

After this I made my way to the Krogan colony (New Tuchunka)

 

which again was such a beautiful sight to behold, placed next to a huge sink-hole in the ground, under an enormous rock with humungous red banners flying in the wind decorating the outside, just walking around was a real joy, and I loved speaking to all the Krogan again, such great characters. Picked up a few missions here that I'll pick up tomorrow and then called it a day.

 

One of the most hilarious things happened whilst I was riding around in the Nomad as well, PeeBee and Jaal had frequently been bantering each other throughout the game over Jaal's ability to go to sleep at the drop of the hat whilst making our way across a Planet and today this escalated in Eladaan. Jaal was snoring (at first I thought what the fuck is that noise? Thought my game was bugged or something) then Peebee goes 'Again Jaal, jesus' or something like that. She then goes full-on Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally and started making lots of sex noises and faking an orgasm to see if Jaal was actually asleep....sure enough after a bit of panting and moaning Jaal wakes up and says something like 'must you really make all that noise?' and Peebee's like 'I knew it!', the conversation ends with Jaal saying 'Well I wasn't the only one faking it'  absolutely loved it!

 

Lots more pics as Eladaan (and some vistas on Havarl) are so damn beautiful:

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[DisturbedSwan]

Whoa, fair play.

 

Seriously surprised, never even heard of a game related controller disconnect issue on console before, really bloody weird.

 

Not good at all.

[DisturbedSwan]

6 hours ago, mr lakitu said:

 

Zelda had the exact same problem on Switch so quiet you 

[DisturbedSwan]

Just the 3 hours today, 58 total.

 

Fuck me I love this game and I ain't afraid to say it.

 

Today was just magical. Finished up everything on Eladaan (keep reading it as Aladdin ), all side quests available there,

Spoiler

settled things with the Krogan (plenty of double crosses going on), another Remnant architect defeated and settled my colony there in partnership with the Krogan.

 

Which means...I'm now at 100% viability for every Planet really chuffed with that, felt so damn satisfying ticking each one off, almost assassin's creed levels of satisfaction ticking everything off and seeing that 100% on the board, bloody awesome.

Only a couple of cool moments to point out today.

Spoiler

 

The was a mission that required you to go into an old derelict remnant ship, this plays with your expectations and you're thinking its going to be absolutely riddled with enemies but surprising its not and you find scavengers have been in before and stolen the drive core of the ship, so you have to chased them down.

 

The other great moment was being thrown into a pit as a right of passage with 2 Krogan, up against 3 fiends. You don't have your crew with you and the 2 Krogan aren't too effective, coupled with the 1-hit kill move the fiends can do and it meant the fight was incredibly edgy and bloody tough, died a couple of times before equipping a shotty and Incinerator ammo for my 3rd try which seemed to do the trick.

 

 

After everything was settled on Aladdin I just tied up a few side quests on Kadara

Spoiler

(featuring an awesome bar fight with Drack ),

Aya, Voeld and the Nexus and called it a day.

[illdog]

I'm 21 hours in, about 4 of that was today.

 

I've never not enjoyed this, I've just struggled to want to play it. But every time I put it on I struggle to turn it off. I think that pattern may have ended now I know the structure of the game, I'm having a good time with it.

 

It's not without it's faults but I've enjoyed fucking around on Eos where I've spent around 70% of my time, the other 30 on Havarl I suppose. It's a real OCD delight, the map becomes littered with missions and bits to explore, it would give @Hendo a real boner.

 

Not sure about GOTY, it lacks personality but there's fun to be had here.

[DisturbedSwan]

Just finished it, put in another 12 hours since my last post.

 

70 total, 96% completion.

 

The whole of yesterday and today I basically tying up loose ends, procrastinating hard before going back to the main story really. Once I'd finally run out of things to do I finally went back to do a story mission, found the 

Spoiler

Salarian Ark and took down a Kett ship in the process. Very reminiscent of Halo once again, you find out the Kett are doing experiments on captured Salarians as well, disposing off them like rubbish when they're done with them and there's a cool scene where SAM has to kill Sara in order to free her from the stasis field the Archon has captured her in. There's a 'tough' decision to be made at the end whether you want to save some captured Krogan on board (to stop them being indoctrinated into Kett) or some of the Salarians, I chose the latter (Drack was pissed).

 

More ends to tie up after this, Peebee's loyalty mission was a highlight 

Spoiler

set on a Volcanic planet, pits of lava everywhere, bits of platforming to jump onto Lava rocks to cross chasms, and a fantastic set piece at the end where you have to choose whether to save the remnant tech Peebee came for or Peebee's ex-turned-smuggler Kalinda. I shot Kalinda and made Peebee get the remnant tech as I thought it would be handy later and Kalinda had already tried to kill us multiple times.

 

Thought Peebee would be pissed off with me but when we got back she decided to say in front of everyone that we were an item and then pinned me to the floor in a kissy scene.

 

Lots more busy work after. Aya, Nexus, Kadara, Voeld, Eos, basically just landing, speaking to someone then getting back on the ship and going to the next location, can't say I'm a huge fan of these missions at all, they're such a wild goose chase and not the good kind at all, one of them had me meandering across Eos looking for 5 beacons before the mission ended and another had me go to almost every planet above to have a chat with a Salarian and that was about it, not too exciting and I was pleased to get them over with.

 

They did have one benefit though, getting a 

Spoiler

Kett commander who'd already turned against the Archon to assist me in exchange for some data about Meridian in the process.

So that was pretty cool, and not a bad payoff in the end.

 

More busy work and exploring Planets (to get them all up to 100%) and then back to the story, 

Spoiler

infiltrating the Remnant mother base and then escaping alive. I know I've said this many times but it was so incredibly Halo it was uncanny, that's the best way to describe it. A humungous remnant structure, tons of enemies to wade through and a boss fight at the end of it.

 

Got the achievement for romancing 3 people too, someone on Kadara, Peebee (of course) and Keri the interviewer on the Nexus. Kadara man and Keri were both incredibly shite 'love scenes' if you can even call them that but Peebee's was surprisingly explicit, was weird seeing Peebee and my character's tits I have to say  

 

Went back to exploring Planets, then clicked on the next story mission and it gave me a warning 'you won't be able to return to the Tempest until the story is complete' so that signalled the final mission for me, felt a bit abrupt, but I carried on with it.

Spoiler

You go to a Remnant planet on the coat tails of the Archon, using the Remnant fleet you activated on the huge ship to help you out. HUGE space battle cutscenes ensue, was really on such a grand scale and evocative of something like Star Wars. 

 

As soon as you land on the Planet you're in the Nomad in a race against time to reach the Archon, kill a few enemies and you're in yet another Remnant structure. Fight through here for a bit (made easier with the help of the Kett Commander mentioned previously) with help of all the allies you've met/rescued along the way and eventually put the Archon to bed.

 

What I loved about this mission was the scale of it, hugely bombastic and adrenaline pumping, was fantastic seeing all these faces you've met along the way come together to help you defeat the Archon as well, a really happy ending with plenty of good vibes.

 

There's a few nods to a sequel with the Kett commander that helped you looking on on your conquering of Meridian and getting ready to fight herself, but it ends there. A brief epilogue chatting with all the crew and that was about it.

 

A few more planets to explore to get them all upto 100%, unfortunately I'd not bothered with a few of the menial tasks (scan x number of bodies etc.) so didn't get upto the full 100% completion overall, but 96% is close enough for me.

 

Absolutely loved it I have to say, the story is probably the weakest part as there's just not enough missions really and things seem to escalate a bit too quickly and unnaturally for my liking, but the exploration of planets, getting them all up to 100%, the loyalty missions and huge swathes of the side quests were all amazing, can't recommend it enough.

 

It's my 2nd favourite Mass Effect overall, doesn't quite reach the heights of 2 but it is far better than ME1 and ME3 in my view.

 

A few pics, the ones in spoilers this time are proper end-game spoilery so don't look if you don't wanna know late-game locales:

 

Spoiler

 

 

[illdog]

I'm juggling this and Yooka-Laylee at the moment. The urge to play this is strong, I'm really in to it.

 

I've been doing a lot of the relationship quests, in between these a story mission. What I've been enjoying the most is the exploration of the planets. I've fallen in to a routine of talking to as many people as I can, littering the world map with things to do then getting my OCD on. It's quite satisfying getting viability to 100%.

 

I'm also getting my lez on with all the birds I can. Just say no to cock!

 

I've gotta be 40+ hours in, good times right now.

[DisturbedSwan]

Yeah I think I did all the side quests apart from most of the ones in the 'Tasks' sub menu (as I thought they were just mostly filler shite) and discovered/plundered all planets so I think that's why my completion % was still high, had a bugged early quest and a few tasks I couldn't be arsed doing to get up to the 100% but I have no motivation to go back to it.

 

I'm surprised you didn't like the last mission too @Nag thought it was Halo-tastic bombast and felt damn satisfying, really hope they continue the storyline myself as they've built themselves a fantastic base to work off of for a second game in a 'new' trilogy.

[DisturbedSwan]

I usually hate horde scenarios towards the end of games that's very true, I didn't really feel MEA's last mission was too bad though, you're always moving forward for the most part and it doesn't bog down, the only bit that was a bit annoying and became a slog was clearing out all the enemies around the final boss.

 

I really liked the feeling of the whole cluster, all these folks you'd met all coming together and kicking some alien ass I guess.

[regemond]

The baby decided to have a mammoth nap this afternoon so I put a few more hours in while he was out for the count.

 

I've got a nice little tech combo going that works wonders on Remnant enemies, but other than that I'm not the biggest fan of the combat. It just feels restrictive to me for some reason. There's no flow (that I've discovered yet) and firefights feel like much more of a slog than I think they should.

 

I'm barely into the story though - a side effect of me not being able to settle on one game - and spent most of my time today on Havarl (is that how you spell it?). Luckily, even though I'm not currently enjoying the combat, the storyline feels nice, familiar, and typically Mass Effect. These are good things to me - it's like stepping into an old, comfy pair of shoes after not wearing them for a long while.

 

I think (hope) I've found my game to settle on for a while...

[illdog]

72 hours of fetch quests and fighting, why do I like this games so much?

 

I've finished all the loyalty missions so I guess I'm gonna hardline the main quest now. So yeah.

 

I see the Gamerscore has gone up by 30 but I can't find any DLC news.

[regemond]

Yeah it's got its claws in now. Really want to go home and play this instead of being in work. I've barely scratched the surface of the game and I know that, but there's something grabbing my attention. I'm only on the third planet, Voeld, and slowly working on getting my viability up, but it's so relaxing just trooping about ticking off the hexagons as I go.

 

The script writing is terrible though, unfortunately.

[regemond]

Made more progress last night - I'd been on Voeld, struggling to get up to 40% viability and almost out of mission markers when I decided to go and investigate the monoliths and reboot the vault. This bumped me up to 99%, which meant I also got to build an outpost. Next on the list is to go switch up my team and do PeeBee's mission, then tidy up the remaining mission/memory markers and then get the hell off that popsicle stand.

 

I'm counting this as three planets done and dusted though, even though I've still got a couple of things left to do here.

 

I really hit my groove with the game last night and time just completely got away from me. I intended to switch it off around 10, but before I knew it, it was 11pm and I was facing a boss in a Kett base. The combat is still a little awkward, but I'm finding my own ways to make it work (overcharge/concussive shot combos work well together).

 

Looking forward to getting back to it tonight. Who knew the distinctly average sci-fi romp would hook me more than the sublime fantasy world of Zelda...