#the archon quest was SO GOOD oh my GODDDD

[wisebilly]

weeps sobs cries i love fontaine so fucking much :''']]]

[victorian-creepshow]

Finished Andromeda today. 

Pros:

Like I already said, the combat’s fun. Still not sure that the profile system was necessary, but I can understand some people enjoying it.

The main story was pretty good. I like how the Ryder twins worked together at the end, that was pretty cool. I just kinda wish we would have gotten a little more interaction with our twin. 

The worlds/scenery are v pretty. Voeld and Kadara are my favorite. Elaaden made me think of Borderlands. Part of me was expecting to find a Handsome Jack billboard somewhere rofl

I really like how they included more of those special friendly bonding moments with squadmates, whether you’re romancing them or not. V nice touch pls give us more of this in the future

Peebee and Drack ended up being my favs and I’ve never been a Krogan or Asari lover lmao. I mean, there wasn’t anyone on the squad I outright hated, but them two... definitely my homies.

Loved the little pathfinder cool kids gang that happened. I want to see more of them all. I’d love for them to all go on a mission together, pathfinders only no squares allowed

Kesh. Kesh is a positive all on her own. Love her. Vorn too. I like that they showed more variety in personalities within all the species. Krogan scientist 4tw

Kudos for ethnic diversity this time. They actually look like what they’re supposed to be! And it doesn’t look weird!

I never felt that overwhelming feeling of Hinterlands 2.0 on any of the maps. I’m not really interested in exploration, and I didn’t find any of the worlds too ridiculously huge like I thought they might be. Though they were all huge compared to Inquisition’s. It makes sense though, since they were clearly made to be used with the Nomad. If not for that, I think I would have been gritting my teeth trying to get from one side of the map to the other

More than two nice looking hairstyles for men, even if they were all a little bland.

Liked the color wheel on clothes, although I would have given it up in a heartbeat in favor of better physical feature customizations

Cons:

 At certain times the writing felt a little rushed to me.

There were still too many pointless quests, Bioware. chiiiiiiiiiill

Should I even bother to say it? I can hear the boos already. No imma say it anyway. DEAL. Some of the facial animations were nightmare fuel aight. Even for Bioware. Be real. I’m still clutching my rosary. But then some expressions felt much more natural than in previous games, too. I feel like they could easily build on that and refine it without too much hassle if given more time. Some walking and running animations felt a little less stiff than before, at least to me.

I’m still irritated at the CC. It’s pathetic, and using Alec as the reason it ‘has to be that way’ is ridiculous and cheap. That feeling of playing a pre-established character never went away and I was never able to fully connect with Ryder because of it. It took away from my enjoyment of the story. That, combined with the fact that it seemed like there were less dialog options this time around. And sometimes those dialog options seemed... bizarrely inappropriate to the situation. That’s nothing new, and sometimes it is just a matter of opinion, but ehh.

I fucking hate that fucking Sudoku wannabe decryption bullshit minigame oh my godddd. They can DIE. FOREVER. Ok this isn’t a legitimate complaint since technically you could skip most if you had a key thing, and I’m sure plenty of people out there enjoyed that hell. I’ve never had the patience for complex puzzles. Why couldn’t we just stick to matching lines of code like in ME2? cries  

The Kett story was a little predictable imo. And the Archon, I expected more out of him. As in, I was kinda hoping he’d be the sort of antagonist that you could empathize with. That maybe his motivations were less black and white than a certain other I AM A GOOOODDDDDD MWAHAHA bioware villain. 

Bugs. Buuuuugs everywhere. I couldn’t settle Elaaden because of a bug that prevented me from completing the mission. I had to replay several parts including a portion of the final mission. One time I lost about five hours of play. It was bad. Though, recalling what Inquisition was like on it’s initial release... it wasn’t completely unexpected.

Still doing that thing with Asari I see. Lmao. Like, I love Peebee, but I pulled a muscle rolling my eyes at the fact that I can’t be friendly to her without her trying to grab my junk. A whole new galaxy and we still hypersexualizing all the blue not-lady ladies. Nice. Can you imagine the meltdown hets would have if Gil had a cutscene that involved him rubbing up on Scott unprovoked? And the only reject option is along the lines of “Eheh.... well... I’m sorry, but I just... c-can’t... please don’t be mad your undeniable sex appeal isn’t working today...”

There was a very minor trans character, a side lesbian character, one gay/bi alien who’s love is dead, one bisexual human male and one possibly??? gay?? human male. The bisexual male is better written than the ONE other m/m romance, and one can only assume it was only given decent treatment because it’s also a potential fem!Ryder romance. Gil’s endgame if not romanced is to have a child with a woman? Lol. Also never explicitly states he’s only interested in men even when rejecting fem!Ryder. I could just sum all this up by saying “do better” but from where I’m sitting, this specific group of writers and developers aren’t interested in hearing it. So I’ll just say, fail. Fucking fail. No gold star for effort. If you want credit for being so ~*~progressive~*~, do the work. And for god’s sake, don’t treat it like someone twisted your arm to include it.

All in all, it was a fun game. I may play the DLCs if/when they come out. The main game doesn’t have a whole lot of replay value imo though, at least not for me. 

The problematic writing everyone foresaw going in turned out to be well-founded, and no, there is nothing here that would even begin to make up for it. They could do better if they wanted to. They’re aware of the issues. This was their chance to fix that and all they proved was that they really don’t care. Simple as that. So yep, I’m still extremely disappointed in that respect.

On that note, let’s not dwell on it. At least we all know what to expect now. On to what really matters... DA4~ And if they fuck that up, there will be hell to pay.