YMMV / Mass Effect: Andromeda

• Adorkable: Jaal has a few instances of this, most notably if Ryder agrees to a relationship. His reaction is similar to that of an excited teenager who just successfully asked their crush out on a date. The fact that the conversation takes place in Jaal's bedroom at his family home completely sells it and makes it that much more endearing.
  Jaal: My mother is going to love you. (Beat) I'm sorry.
  • Suvi also has a few moments, particularly when she's flirting with female Ryder.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Given certain revelations through the story, and the fact some of his own troops eventually turn on him, one does start to wonder if perhaps the Archon is just a colossal asshole even by kett standards, and the reason he's been in the Heleus Cluster for seventy years and counting is because even his bosses just wanted him somewhere far away.
• Angst? What Angst?:
  • Ryder doesn't seem to be too emotionally impacted by the death of their own father. Somewhat explained in that they barely knew him and it's implied when they did interact there was some recurring disagreement, but still a little jarring to see. This may be intentional given that whichever twin is in the coma appears to be more shaken up by the event than the protagonist-Ryder.
  • Ryder also seems rather casual about the fact their sibling - their last known surviving blood relative - is in a coma; when given a chance to communicate with their sibling via tech, Ryder seems more excited about the technology than having been able to communicate, and particularly seems to shrug things off if they told their sibling about the death of their father during the communication.
  • If brought along on the search for the asari ark prior to completing her personal quest, and onto the ark ship itself, Peebee isn't even the least bit concerned that thousands of her own people are in danger. Cora actually calls her out on this.
• Annoying Video Game Helper: SAM will constantly tell you when you're entering/exiting a hazardous area in addition to to the pop up on screen telling you the same thing. He will also constantly remind you that that you're in a mining zone when you open the mining interface in one, even if you opened the interface earlier in the same place. SAM also continually reminds you how to mine for minerals, which is helpful the first time, but not the 100th. This proved so annoying that BioWare toned it down in the first major patch after release.
• Awesome Music:
  • The announcement trailer using "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky" by Johnny Cash to create a spectacular Space Western atmosphere for the game's reveal.
  • "Edge of Twilight", a sweeping orchestral piece from Hi-Finesse used in the N7 Day teaser, provides a fitting and emotional soundtrack to Commander Shepard's farewell message.
  • The ending credits song, "Under Stars" by AURORA.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Out of all team members, Liam appeared to be one of the most divisive due to his interactions with Ryder and the other companions. While he has his fans, there are those who do not like Liam for his treatment towards Vetra and her sister and his reckless actions in his Loyalty Mission. He is also nearly identical to Jaal in terms of combat ability.
  • Cora. While there are plenty who like her for her abilities in combat and her status as The Stoic (who has a pretty positive view on aliens in general), others view her complaints about being a biotic as Wangst (especially because characters like Kaidan and Jack had it worse), and dislike her culture worship of the asari. Even her haircut got in on the action, with some thinking it was perfect for her and others calling it the Recycled In Space version of the memetic "I want to talk to the manager" haircut.
  • There are a number of reasons players may not like Peebee: she can be very abrasive and aggravating to talk to (on purpose, as she doesn't like getting close to others, but she can succeed too well at it), she's often considered a poor substitute for other well-received asari squadmates like Liara or Samara, and some just considered her design ugly and unattractive for a potential Love Interest. She also has her fans, who loved her for being one of the funniest characters in the game, having a well done character arc, being a Loveable Sex Maniac, or for being nothing like (and taking some indirect jabs at) other asari, in personality nor culture.
  • On an NPC note, Hainly Abrams. Some people didn't mind the character while others complained about how unrealistically she's portrayed. ^Explanation Prior to a patch, Hainly would openly admit to being trans by dropping her Deadname in casual conversation. Deadnames have a great amount of negative stigma among the trans community, as this term is used to refer to a person's birth name before their transition, and can even act as a Trauma Button for some. Though Bioware released a patch that locked that conversation behind a subquest, the fact that she still drops her Deadname at all was a point of contention. On top of that, some people were upset that she seems to only exist to be a non-white transwoman for the sake of scoring "progressive" cred, especially because of the fact that she's an extremely minor NPC, which is a constant problem with underrepresented individuals, especially LGBT ones.
• Broken Base:
  • The move to the Andromeda galaxy, abandoning the Milky Way and setting the game 6 centuries into the future caused some discussion among fans. Was it the only way BioWare could respect player choice from the end of Mass Effect 3? Or should they have picked an ending as canon and told more stories in the Milky Way exploring the fallout? (The game ultimately leaves the door open for more Milky Way-based stories and in fact opens a few potential story threads that could be picked up by a future game set 600 years earlier.)
  • Ryder having a family that would also be a major part of the game. Some were excited about the idea, pointing out that it was one of the more popular story elements of Dragon Age II and a function of the Spacer backstory in the first Mass Effect to argue that it could be done well. Others pointed at Fallout 4 to argue that poor execution of a family angle would lead to a lack of connection to the characters.
  • The removal of the old trilogy's Karma Meter, replaced with Logical vs. Emotional and Casual vs. Professional axes. Some welcomed it, as it made your choices less binary, removed the need for Black-and-White Morality, and stopped BioWare from having to dictate said morality (inevitably resulting in interpretations on Bioware's part which players could and did dispute). Others found that it exaggerated Shepard's problem of saying the same thing in a slightly different tone of voice, which resulted in a blander Ryder, and also removed the GUI foreshadowing that subtly let players know what results any given conversation option would produce.
  • The main protagonist's species being human, yet again. Some believed that it would have been awesome to play as a character who isn't human since Shepard's story is complete and it would have been refreshing to experience the narrative from a new perspective. Others felt that playing as a human again fits the tone of the series and/or that it would have been too difficult to implement as many playable species as the fans want.
  • The introduction of Hainly Abrams, a transgender character. Some thought the characterization^note Deadnaming herself for no reason was offensive, others thought it was not. Others still thought it was overblown for a minor character that had no real involvement in the overall plot beyond her quests.
  • Were the wonky facial animations worth getting fired up over? The first camp believed that, considering the game's massive budget and being released long after the first ME game, the less-than-stellar animations were inexcusable and that the second camp was being too forgiving. Meanwhile, the second camp believed that the animations weren't that big of a deal when compared to the rest of the game and that the first camp was blowing things out of proportion. The same arguments could be heard from the same people about virtually every other flaw in the game.
  • On August 20, 2017, BioWare officially announced that they were ceasing support for the single-player mode. While many were upset and believed single-player would be the best way to redeem the game's reputation, others thought that after all the controversy, cutting losses and starting fresh was the best path forward for Bioware. The same announcement that the planned quarian ark story would only be done in the novels/comic split the fanbase into yet more camps, those grateful that the quarian story would get resolved in some format, and those who thought the entire premise was wasted outside of the games.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: If you completed sidequests and paid any attention at all to ambient chatter and your various mission objectives from the moment the Tempest made planetfall on Voeld, The Reveal of why the kett are so hellbent on capturing angara alive really shouldn't come as a surprise anymore. You probably figured it out hours ago and just go I Knew It! when the game eventually confirms your suspicion.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Though the Crafting system and Profile Favorites are intended to prevent this, they actually enforce it. As a result, many players quickly single out two to four guns that work best for them, equip gun-damage-boosting gear, and stick with that approach for the rest of the game while using powers strictly for utility (or ignoring them altogether).
  • Depending on how well players do with the difficulty settings, they may rely on Cora and Drack all the time due to her game-breaking Shield Boost and his survivability.
  • Before Patch 1.05 removed it from all merchant inventories and restricted its acquisition to rare random drops, the Cobra RPG was an easily accessible and even more easily applicable way of neutralizing almost any boss the game has by pressing three buttons. Unsurprisingly, a lot of players made liberal use of it.
• Complete Monster: The Archon of the Heleus Cluster is the commander of the kett forces waging war with the native angara, whom he's been slaughtering, enslaving, and experimenting on for decades. The most disturbing crime the Archon facilitates is exaltation, a process where species are converted into new kett by breaking a person down and destroying everything they are in order to turn them into the fanatical monsters. When races from the Milky Way appear in Andromeda, the Archon captures the Salarian Ark and begins running tests on them, such as harvesting their organs while they were still alive, or torturing them for information, before he attempted to shoot down the Ark and the thousands of Salarians within. Trying to get his hands on the Remnant technology known as Meridian, the Archon plans on using it to force entire races to surrender, threatening to destroy their worlds if they refuse. During the final fight, the Archon rescinds the offer entirely and just decides to commit galactic genocide out of petty spite.
• Contested Sequel: To say that the game divided both fans of the Mass Effect series and gamers in general is a major understatement. Opinions range anywhere from it being a generally decent game that just didn't measure up to the lofty standard set by the original trilogy, to it being one of the absolute worst big-budget games (especially outside of the "games as a service" ones) from its console generation. Its defenders point to its attempting to expand the scope of the franchise in both gameplay and story terms, while its detractors claim that these new elements bombed on nearly every count, and detracted from what worked in the second and third games.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • All large animal species (read: the ones with an armor bar instead of health). They're slow but deal a lot of damage and require large amounts of firepower to bring down. Not to mention that they rarely come alone and quickly respawn.
  • Fiends in multiplayer. Despite being elephant-sized monsters that run around roaring and smashing their way through things, they have a very disturbing tendency to sneak up on players. Their sheer size means that in confined maps they can completely block off avenues of escape and all too often the first sign of their presence is the camera suddenly swinging around as they start their sync-kill animation.
  • Kett Ascendants, for being Banshee Expies in all but name. What makes them worse than the Banshee is they're shrouded in an impenetrable shield that can only be broken by shooting their orb that constantly revolves around them. Taken up to eleven in multiplayer, where the smaller map sizes mean that they're able to Flash Step into melee range and nail you with their sync-kill attack much, much easier. If there's any lag at all, your first warning that one's in the vicinity is when the "you're going to die and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it" animation starts to play.
• Don't Shoot the Message: The general consensus about Gil's baby subplot was that while the idea of a m/m romance leading to them becoming dads is good on its own, the handling was extremely poor.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Bain Massani for being a badass by casually hunting for kett and being the son of former squad member Zaeed Massani. Fans wished he could be a character for any sequel coming up.
  • Reyes Vidal was generally considered to be the best non-squadmate in the game due to his personality and Lovable Rogue status. It was telling how much fans loved him that his romance route rivals (and some cases, surpasses) those with much more screentime such as Jaal, Cora, Peebee and Liam.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • Of course, fans of other open world RPG franchises took their shots at Andromeda, but by far the most vocal were fans of the Witcher franchise. In particular, many Witcher fans loved comparing Andromeda to the near universally well-regarded The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, although Bioware intentionally invoked the game themselves on some occasions.
  • The game's premise (humans and other aliens awakening from suspended animation to colonize a hostile and inhospitable new planet/galaxy) also sparked rivalries with the fans of Xenoblade Chronicles X. Both games even have similar elements, such as venturing out and setting navpoints.
• Fan Nickname:
  • After the reveal that male and female Ryder are siblings and the N7 explorer is their father, the usage of the terms "Bro!Ryder", "Sis!Ryder", and "Ry!Dad", respectively, have become used in the fanbase.
  • Before (and to a lesser extent still after) her name was revealed, Peebee was referred to by fans as the "Raccoon" or "Hamburglar Asari" thanks to her distinctive dark streak across her eyes. Others call her Blue Shrek because of some similarities in the faces.
  • Doctor Lexi, the asari med bay officer, is modeled and voiced after actress Natalie Dormer, leading many of her fans to label her "Doctor Sexi".
  • Gil is often referred to as simply "Renly Baratheon" or "Renly the Engineer" due to his voice actor and sexual orientation.
  • Transgender character Hainly Abrams is occasionally called Deadname Abrams, due to her introducing herself by her dead name without any prompting. Her dialogue was changed in a later patch.
• Fanon: Many believe Cora is somehow related to Jack Harper, better known as the Illusive Man, due to having the same last name, most likely as his daughter. Those who are pretty dedicated to lore also believe her age to be 27-32, which would make it possible for her to be Jack's daughter.
• Fountain of Memes: During a single conversation with Ryder, Foster Addison managed to give birth to three distinctive memes, namely the infamous "To whom?", "My face is tired" as well as "No one's a pathfinder until they've pathfound something."
• Franchise Original Sin: Many criticized the kett for being one-dimensionally evil, despite the Reapers, geth, and batarians being similarly straight up evil in the first game, only gaining depth and sympathetic traits in later installments. There are a few differences, besides their raising the bar; the Reapers had the power, mystique and scope to pull it off with style ^note  even then Sovereign, in his one conversation with the protagonists, was more sociable and slightly less arrogant than the Archon . The batarians had a backstory that gave them a character arc with a Freudian Excuse, a member who displayed Even Evil Has Standards (Charn) and were reduced to irrelevance in the scope of the first game, and nobody in-universe fell for that aforementioned excuse. The geth also had the Freudian Excuse backstory, power and mystique (though less of the latter two than the Reapers) combined. The kett (who were allegedly supposed to be "empathetic") lacked all of this.
• Game-Breaker: See here.
• Genius Bonus: In the Andromeda Initiative Orientation trailer, when Jien Garson discusses the first contact protocols the explorers will be using in the new galaxy, a copy of the Voyager Golden Record is shown onscreen, which was launched aboard the Voyager spacecraft in 1977 to be read by any intelligent extraterrestrial life.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Each faction has one fast-moving flanker designed to force you out of cover or interrupt your movement from place-to-place. The Outlaws have Adhi, which can grab Ryder. The kett have wraiths, which can cloak. The Remant have Breachers, which can both grab Ryder and explode on impact.
  • All wildlife species with a health bar instead of armor aren't dangerous but really annoying when they inhabit an area you need to investigate, largely by virtue of their insanely high respawn rate. The same is true for Remnant Creepers.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • There is an easily accessible infinite experience glitch on Voeld that hasn't been patched as of version 1.05. The mission "Remove The Heart" has an optional objective that requires three defense matrix nodes in the planet's primary kett base to be destroyed; doing so grants 530 XP apiece. These experience points can be gained over and over again every time the base area is left and reentered, even after the mission has been completed. Abusing this glitch for about 1-2 hours is probably the fastest and most convenient way to get Ryder to the level cap of 135. As a side note: level 131 is necessary to max out any and all of Ryder's powers.
  • The Remnant Vault on Voeld is one huge Level 2 cold hazard that'll kill Ryder in less than a minute, forcing you to hurry from one small safe zone to the next while battling robots and solving puzzles. However, letting Ryder succumb to the cold and reloading the last save completely removes the cold hazard and lets you explore without all the hassle. Before patch version 1.05, the bug also worked the other way - i.e. it was possible to encounter no cold hazard in the Vault except in the supposed safe zones.
  • Though the player is only supposed to have one Tempest romance, some Loyalty Missions end with the possibility for Ryder to make a declaration of love. If Ryder does, but previously romanced someone else, sometimes the game doesn't reset the choice. This leads to both romances being "active" at the same time (the player receives romantic emails from both, can continue to flirt with both, and can sleep with both). However, NPCs will alternate between acknowledging one or the other, and certain scenes which check for only one romance partner will instead show both. Leading to weird situations like both character skins being overlayed on each other or empty space where Ryder or their lover is supposed to be.
  • Eiroch and Fiends encountered in the wild are subject to a glitch that immobilizes them and thus prevents them from doing anything except making noises. Helpful for taking them down without the danger of getting Eaten Alive, but it's always a bit jarring to witness due to how strange it looks.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • During one conversation, Liam will talk about a family car that he has packed in his personal belongings in order to ship it to Andromeda. In February 2018, Elon Musk packed a rocket with his personal sportscar and launched it into space.
  • The 2018 movie Upgrade is about a quadriplegic man given a computer chip implant allowing him to walk, and it turns out the computer is an AI named STEM that communicates with him, able to modify his body chemistry and augment his physical abilities. All that, plus the overall vocal style and cadence, is almost identical to SAM.
• I Knew It!:
  • The name of the new protagonist, Ryder, was essentially old news to the fanbase by the time it was confirmed at E3 2016, which had correctly guessed it from the dog tag found in the N7 Day teaser (which, incidentally, does not belong to the protagonist, but likely their father Alec Ryder).
  • A lot of people correctly guessed that Liam was going to be a love interest despite no information regarding him as such.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Despite the game being advertised as a new start, its setting and character archetypes are copied wholesale from the first Mass Effect. Just like in the first game, Andromeda has the player exploring ruins of an ancient advanced civilization while trying to stop an evil dogmatic alien whose goal and motives are 'beyond your comprehension.' Likewise, squadmates include an asari archaeologist, two humans, a roguish turian and a veteran krogan.
• Like You Would Really Do It: SAM stopping Ryder's heart to break them out of the Archon's trap aboard the flagship was probably meant to build up nerve-wracking tension during the failed reanimation attempts, but that twist mostly falls flat as there's no way in hell the game would kill off the Player Character about halfway into the story. Even more so since their twin is still out of commission by that point.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Katherine Nigh, codenamed Knight, is a genius hacker turned anti-AI extremist after nearly losing her beloved son to the horrific Project Overlord. Coming to Andromeda, Knight gathers a following of other victims of synthetic life and plants a virus in crucial yet falsified data in an attempt to free Pathfinder Ryder from their AI partner SAM and kill it in the process. While infiltrated by Ryder, Knight plants AI detection software in her base in case Ryder's betrayal and they only learn her plans by saving her son with SAM's help. Despite fully knowing doing so would cripple the Initiative, Knight's master plan was to use powerful EMPs to destroy the quantum computers on the Nexus to stop A.I.s from ever being created again, yet ultimately lets go of her hate when she finds out her son was saved by the very AI she tried to destroy.
  • Reyes Vidal—aka the Charlatan of the Collective—is a suave smuggler that resides in Kadara. Planning to overthrow Sloane Kelly, Reyes has Pathfinder Ryder perform numerous tasks for him, including investigating murders caused by the Roekarr and serving as a distraction at a party while he steals whiskey from the Outlaws. Drawing Sloane out to a Duel to the Death, Reyes rigs the shootout by having a sniper trained on her. Should Ryder not interfere, Reyes successfully takes control of Kadara, and later helps Ryder during the battle for Meridian.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "My face is tired.◊" A line uttered by Foster Addison in a conversation in which she sounds agitated and worried, but sports the same blank, staring face the entire time.
  • The animation glitches became infamous after they were discovered during the early access Origin preview.
  • The use of 'Human' by Rag 'n' Bone Man in advertising became this, due to the game's awful facial animations and the line "I'm only human after all, don't put the blame on me", interpreted by some as obliquely referring to the animation team.
  • There was plenty of jokes about male and female Ryder, which involved Scott being a "vicious psychopath" and Sara suffering from "mental problems". Simply put, all of them were jabs at the poor facial animations.
  • Some fans also compared Peebee's facial expressions with the titular character◊ of The Mask.
  • Comparing◊ Peebee to Shrek also seemed rather popular.
  • Moving away from the animations... say, did you know that Cora was trained to be an Asari Huntress? With how often she's mentioned it, it's become somewhat common to act like she's just a standard, normal, everyday asari...
  • #PeebeeNot2B ^Explanation As noted on the trivia page for this game, NieR: Automata and this game were Dueling Works. This (most likely troll) tweet◊ was sent out with the aforementioned hashtag, with the user suggesting that gamers pick up MEA over Nier. As a result, many people began using the hashtag to mock the aforementioned tweet
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • The Archon crossed it before the game begins, but if you want to reminder of how such an evil bastard he is, he hijacks Ark Hyperion and tortures the unchosen Ryder sibling for his/her SAM implant.
  • The turian running Charybdis point. At first it seems like he is just a regular guy trying somehow to make it in the dangerous badlands, and helping others make it too, by providing a bed and clean water. Except for the fact that to get his clean water, he didn't just steal some water filters and their blueprints from a particularly unpleasant angaran merchant, he then sabotaged those angaran' water filters so they would die slowly and painfully from sulfuric acid eating into them from within.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Whenever Ryder levels up; especially when you recognize the first note of "Vigil".
• Narm:
  • The early access version the game showed quite a few moments of this:
    • One of the highlights was the somber scene where Cora and Liam inform Ryder of their father's death while smiling nonchalantly.
    • Ryder, especially Fem-Ryder, also came off as nonchalant when informing Trann and Addison that their father is dead and now they're the new Pathfinder. Fem-Ryder in particular gives a rather unnerving smile after giving the news, As this meme◊ shows.
  • Some players found the Archon impossible to take seriously because he looks too adorable to be scary, between his short stature and a face that has drawn comparisons to baby monkeys. In his dialogue sequences with the captured Ryder sibling, his face is also very expressive compared to other kett, which doesn't help the comparison.
  • This gem by Foster Addison (who also uttered the infamous, equally Narmy "My face is tired" line), who delivers it in a serious, unironic tone:
    "No one's a pathfinder until they've pathfound something".
  • Cora's complaints about how rough she had it due to growing up as a powerful biotic come across as pretty wangsty for players who've already completed Mass Effect 2 and saw Jack's childhood, or heard from Kaidan in Mass Effect 1 what he went through in the Alliance's first biotic training program. Compared to either of the previous two squadmates, Cora got off very lightly.
  • Finishing the New Tuchanka questline results in a duel between Nakmor Morda and Jorgal Strux. Given the krogans' reputation as a Proud Warrior Race, one might expect a brutal fight to the death. Instead, Morda stiffly runs up to Strux and the two exchange some very slow, heavily telegraphed punches for a few seconds before a kick from Morda causes Strux to fall on his back, after which he immediately gives up. It's hilariously awkward and anti-climactic, and the fact that it's set to a sweeping camera and dramatic action music only adds to the unintentional comedy.
  • Nakmor Morda speaks with an absurdly effeminate falsetto, made all the worse by its enormous contrast to the usual gruff and grizzled krogan voices. It's as if the voice actor was given instructions to emulate the most ridiculous stereotype of a gay male voice they could. Combined with the above "duel," Nakmor Morda's status as a warlord and clan leader is nothing short of comical.
  • The high-pitched voices of some female salarians were unintentionally comical; they sound like stereotypical air-headed secretaries from 1950's sitcoms, which really doesn't match their serious lines.
  • Many players commented that every asari in the game except Pee-Bee has literally the exact same face structure with only minor differences with tattoos, eye color, and skin tone. Every feature: the eyes, nose, face shape, chin, etc. is exactly the same◊ with no variations. Many accordingly found it hard to get invested with any asari NPC, especially during Cora's Loyalty Mission, because they all look like clones of each other, which made it hard to tell any of them apart. It's especially jarring because the previous games made an visible effort to make every asari NPC stand out, even those who only appeared in Single Missions. It has been joked that those who were frustrated at being unable to romance the ship's doctor, Lexi, at least have the option to romance one of her dozens of lookalikes.
  • Liam's epic line, "I think I really pissed that one off. Maybe because I shot him in the face!", caused quite many "No shit, Sherlock!" reactions. Angry Joe lampshades the narminess of said line (while he and Other Joe are laughing their asses off, mind you):
    "That's like what I would have said in middle school!"
  • Amusingly, the game has also been accused of sometimes falling on the other end of the spectrum; namely that the moments of intentional comedy and the relatively high amount of snark and sarcasm from both the Player Character and the companions at times worked to undermine many of the game's attempts to establish a serious tone and have danger and stakes.
• Narm Charm:
  • You can't have a science fiction protagonist named Ryder and not think of Big McLargeHuge, a.k.a. Blast Hardcheese.
  • Suvi and Female Ryder's awkward first flirt dialogue.
  • Intentionally done with the Movie Night sidequest conclusion.
• Obvious Beta: Wonky character animations, glitchy gameplay (E.G. characters rocketing through the roof of the Tempest), constant freezes/crashes/framerate drops, and characters carrying placeholder weapons during cutscenes. Even after patching, the game still feels VERY unfinished. Most of the blame was laid on trying to make the game on the Frostbite engine, which does not handle this type of game well, then on refusing to give the developers time to properly get the game working on the engine.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Let's just say the game didn't have a very gentle release... to note:
  • Since the EA Access trial, the issue of the game's lacking, and occasionally downright disturbing, facial animations dominated discussions about the game, with many fans and critics accusing the game of being rushed and/or having an extremely Troubled Production. The controversy resulted in a number of memes and videos that mocked the animations by popular youtubers such as Pew Die Pie and Crowbcat.
  • Same-sex romances had a hefty amount of criticism due to their lack of options, leading to a response by the developers after a few weeks and a patch after a few months.
• Paranoia Fuel
  • One of your squadmates, and the second in command of the Tempest, is Cora Harper. The Illusive Man's given name was Jack Harper, while his gynoid spy in ME3 is named Eva Coré (who may be named after an old associate of Jack's from the comic Mass Effect: Evolution). Could Cerberus rear its ugly head again in Andromeda?
  • You can actually find former Cerberus scientists! And, true to their style, they are experimenting on other species.
  • What exactly has befallen the quarian ark? If it was just the Scourge or a kett attack, they'd have sent a distress call. The fact that they sent a "do not approach" warning seems to suggest that something has afflicted them perhaps, that they don't want spreading. What is it? The warning makes it sound like some sort of contagion or dangerous thing would destroy any rescuer. The Mass Effect Andromeda: Annihilation novel eventually confirmed this: the quarian ark suffered an unintended outbreak of a deadly virus that had been genetically tailored to kill off all the major races so the minor ones (quarians, drell, elcor, etc.) could take over in Heleus. Its creator was none other than the ark's quarian captain who, after witnessing first-hand what her brainchild had wrought, grew a conscience and contained the outbreak at the cost of her own life. Long story short: what's Paranoia Fuel to the ME:A characters became pure Nightmare Fuel to those in the know.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: A number of reviews praised the gameplay but found the story and characters to be less interesting and absorbing. Rather ironic, given that the original Mass Effect was praised for its story but criticized for its clunky gameplay.
• Porting Disaster: Most of the game's exploration and combat features are smooth to handle on PC, but some of the buttons (like the one for disabling the Nomad's traction control) are awkward to access on a keyboard while simultaneously trying to steer the vehicle clear of obstacles or enemies, and any hectic attempt at hitting a target in melee has a chance of activating Ryder's scanner instead because their respective keys are right next to each other. Menu navigation, however, is a pain in the ass virtually all the time thanks to the haphazard, non-customizable key bindings. Last but not least, certain functions are completely absent in the PC version. One of those - being able to tilt the Nomad's front up or down in mid-flight - is crucial for unlocking the "Hang Time" achievement; its absence makes the achievement all but unobtainable even with cheats and trainer support.
• Salvaged Story:
  • This game establishes that the Milky Way had access to drive technology that renders the Mass Relays pretty much obsolete (and just hadn't been widely deployed outside the Initiative yet), rendering much of the Fridge Horror from the previous game's controversial ending moot.
  • The lack of female non-humans in the original trilogy led to the creation of more female turians and krogan in the base game of Andromeda, gave major roles to several, as well as featuring a number of major female roles related to the new race, the angara.
  • After Bioware received heavy criticism for their claim that relationships with asari don't really count as lesbianism to justify the lack of a Gay Option for men in the first two games, Andromeda firmly establishes in conversations with Cora that asari cannot override a person's base sexual orientation.
  • Due to criticisms about gay male players having fewer romance options than other gender combinations and no options on the squad, patch 1.08 made Jaal a legitimate romance option for Scott Ryder.
• The Scrappy:
  • Foster Addison. Aside from the memetically terrible first impression she delivers for players (a triple whammy of poor graphics, poor writing, and poor voice-acting from one of the first NPCs you meet in the main gameplay hub) she's just a generally unpleasant person. What really escalated her to Scrappy level was her insistence on not investigating the numerous (and substantiated) claims against her assistant Spender, and that she hired exile mercenaries to protect Initiative ships and when they attacked the ships instead, she covered the whole affair up. Unlike Tann, who was clearly never meant to hold the role he has, the codex states that Addison was always supposed to head Colonial Affairs. Fans despised her incompetence and the fact that she gets no comeuppance for her bad decisions.
  • The Archon. Despite him being a Hate Sink of a Scary Dogmatic Alien, he drew fans' ire for different reasons. His design was often seen as either not intimidating, unoriginal and/or blatantly allegorical. He has no positive traits that would make him a more effective villain, and even failed as a Scary Dogmatic Alien because he betrays his people for a worse, selfish agenda. The players also don't get the satisfaction of fighting him in a final battle. Nothing about the character made fans gravitate towards him, even as a villain, and many considered him the worst antagonist that Bioware ever created.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Mining for resources on planets is imprecise and generally boring, but one of the less time-consuming ways to gather resources for crafting weapons and items. Planet scanning was found to be similarly boring.
  • The inventory system:
    • There is no locker or similar storage space aboard the Tempest.
    • You can't change your equipment on the fly.
  • The research system, due to never knowing exactly how the new gear will handle in battle and having to estimate based on the displayed stats.
  • Equally - the crafting system for pretty much the same reasons. Will that ammo change give you a badass gun capable of doing a ton more damage or will it render your shiny new Widow VIII into a gun that might as well be be shooting spitballs?
  • The revision to multiple iterations of the same weapons from Mass Effect 1 (i.e. M-8 Avenger I - X). ME2 and ME3 dropped this in favor of weapons having single iterations, but each being substantially different from their counterparts. The reiterized weapon system was presumedly put in to artificially expand the research system from ME2, require more resources to research, and help push players toward playing the multiplayer (thus buy loot boxes) to speed up the process toward the end game weaponry.
  • Like in 3, multiplayer loot drops are random. It can feel like it's biased against you, as they are more likely to upgrade existing equipment instead of unlocking better stuff. The end result is usually that your most used character and guns stay at low levels while stuff you don't use gets constant upgrades. Especially now that Veteran bonuses were added.^note Every upgrade past X improves some passive abilities until XX is reached. So you might end up with a level III engineer and a level XVII soldier, for example.
  • Some side quests don’t even update your nav points directing you to the next place to go to advance the quest. You are left to aimlessly drive around and hope for another random encounter that may spawn what you need to advance that quest. While some of these are enemy squads you can run into, making at least the combat somewhat enjoyable, other fetch quests don’t even give you that. Those are nothing but needle in a haystack searches.
  • The unnecessary Arbitrary Weapon Range for weapons was crippling to sniper rifle focused characters. In corridor shooters like ME 2 and 3, this wasn't as big of a deal because you were rarely in combat beyond the range of the weapons, and the vast majority of enemies spawned already aggro'd to you. However, with the return to wide open worlds here, enemies spawn at far greater distances, yet the mechanic remains. You can see them in your scope to line up a shot, only to discover that it does no damage. Inch closer and maybe you'll get into range for a reduced damage shot...only for it to fail to kill even the weakest of enemies while also alerting all of their nearby friends to your presence.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: Although not a direct sequel to the original trilogy, ME:A is both the next title in the Mass Effect franchise and significantly easier than any of its predecessors - at least once you're past the sadistically tough major battles against the kett in the prologue mission. The Player Character quickly becomes exceedingly versatile and very difficult to kill, all squad mates are powerful assets made of tank-grade composite armor, and there are a lot of hard-hitting guns with potentially unlimited ammo available. Weapons handling in general is notably smoother, too, since even the most powerful guns have little to no climb or sway. If you play on Normal difficulty and actually manage to get Ryder killed in combat, you either did it on purpose or something went horribly wrong.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The plot doesn't really kick in until the Remnant vault on Eos, a few hours into the game.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • As has been mentioned elsewhere, the numerous animation bugs resulted in this. In one particular cutscene Peebee draws and fires her pistol. However, the animator put the gun the wrong way around in her hand so the muzzle flash emanates from its back. Even more hilarious, an attempt at fixing this in version 1.06 has the pistol oriented the correct way, but with a good few inches of the gun's front (including the actual barrel) simply gone.
  • While most of the planet surfaces are visually stunning, the skybox on H-047c looks jarringly bad by comparison, and only a little better than the skyboxes from the original Mass Effect.
  • Some of these were fixed in the patches that followed the initial release, although (as of early 2018) the game still features a bizarre glitch in some dialogue scenes where Ryder's head will rotate and make it appear he/she's imitating Linda Blair in The Exorcist.
• Spiritual Adaptation:
  • Despite - or perhaps because of - Andromeda's vague premise and development, the game had swiftly been compared to Interstellar, largely because the marketing for both Andromeda and Interstellar had been so similar, with the focus on space exploration and the romanticization of humankind's place in the cosmos, and the fact that Andromeda's second trailer so closely resembled Interstellar's teaser. Additionally, the reveal of the Ryder family, with the N7 explorer being the senior Ryder father and the male and female protagonists being siblings, closely resembles the family structure in Interstellar with Cooper as the father, Murph as his daughter, and Tom as his son.^note Andromeda began development in 2012, though, so the resemblance is coincidental.
  • Its use of country music in previews, emphasis on exploring the frontier, and footage of encounters with criminal kingpins caused many fans to compare it to Firefly.
  • This could be what would happen if Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri was turned into a third-person shooter.
• Tainted by the Preview: Pre-release gameplay looked rather shoddy. Highlights included a gun being fired backwards (resulting in the shot coming out of the grip instead of the barrel), awkward walk animations, and a character flat-out vanishing after walking behind a krogan. The animations, in fact, reached viral levels thanks to Memetic Mutation. Not helping matters was confirmation that the day 1 patch wouldn't fix any of these animations.
• That One Level:
  • The kett stronghold on Eos. It's packed to the teeth with almost endless waves of kett that respawn if you leave the area, has few checkpoints, and ends with a Cardinal-like mini-boss that can insta-kill you just by getting close enough to you. It's unlocked right after the completion of the priority quests on Havarl and Voeld, with nothing stopping underleveled players from trying to take it on before they're properly ready.
  • The Architect Boss Battle level on Voeld. Unlike the encounters on Eos and Kadara, this place throws in an environmental hazard for you to grapple with (extreme cold), on top of everything the architect throws at you. This means that the "shoot and scoot" tactic you used before can backfire on you by draining life support and health while you are running around, avoiding the Area of Effect attacks of the architect. Try to camp in a Safe Location and that Area of Effect attack will nail you.
  • The vault on Voeld. Unlike other vaults which are environmentally sealed, the Voeld one still has that bone chilling cold. Spend too much time figuring out the platforming puzzles, and watch as the cold saps your health. You have to turn on consoles to activate life support "bubbles" to replenish your life support, but doing so diverts power from consoles you need to activate the platforms. And one of those consoles will activate enemies to throw a curveball at you.
  • Firebase Zero in multiplayer, especially when fighting kett. It's much more cramped and has fewer options for evading enemy forces than other maps, making it common for enemies with One-Hit Kill attacks like Adjutants and Fiends to wipe out the party even on Bronze difficulty.
  • On higher difficulty levels, the sequence where the player briefly takes control of the NPC twin. Enemies are as tough as they are in normal gameplay, but NPC Ryder lacks the high level powers and equipment of their sibling, making that sequence very frustrating.
• That One Puzzle: Remnant "sudoku" puzzles in general can be exhausting, but the optional one in the Elaaden vault really takes the cake. While the others make it immediately clear which sequences are impossible, this one requires that you think several moves ahead and decipher which sequences would become impossible by placing each glyph down in each space. Its difficulty is lampshaded by your party members if you exit the menu, and it's the only one you can't bypass with a consumable item.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The game's character creator was panned even among the game's supporters due to being incredibly limited compared to the one in Dragon Age: Inquisition and in some ways more limited than the one from the trilogy. The criticism was mostly related to the creator's reliance on facial "presets", which limited customization of the face's shape (eye/nose shape cannot be changed, for example, and ears and the neck can't be changed at all), and gave only a dozen hairstyles. BioWare mitigated this somewhat in the 1.08 patch, adding two extra presets for both sexes, adding more skin tones, and making all hair options unisex.
  • Some favorite powers and abilities from previous games didn't return in this game, or return with drastically reduced abilities.
  • The dialogue options in the game came under fire for similar reasons to Fallout 4 since many of them aren't so much different things to say as different ways to say the exact same thing in a different tone of voice, creating an illusion of choice where there's really none.
  • The lack of Multiple Endings compared to the original trilogy was also criticized as well. In the original trilogy (particularly Mass Effect 2), the players' choices had a noticeable impact on both the ending of the game and on future installments. Mass Effect Andromeda, on the other hand, has only one ending, and many fans felt as though any acknowledgement of player choices was purely cosmetic.
  • The lack of control of squadmates and their abilities was been heavily criticized. One of the hallmarks of the Original Trilogy's combat system was the ability for the player to command the squad to do specific actions and/or use their special abilities. ^note  Such as the popular biotic detonation, where the player would have one companion summon a Singularity to trap enemies, while another or the player would make it explode with a Warp or Throw attack And because every companion had different abilities and missions have different types of enemies, it made choosing companions for a mission a careful but fun choice for players. In Andromeda on the other hand, there is no way for the player to command the companions to use their special abilities, and they frequently do actions on their own without the player's control. At best, the player can only occasionally order them to specific positions. Even if a companion is the logical best choice to deal with a specific group of enemies (such as a Tech Expert for Remnant enemies), they are still of little use because they won't even use their powers adequately and to the player's desire.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Bain Massani. Not only did he have a cool name, he's the son of everyone's favorite Psycho for Hire Zaeed from the old trilogy. Many wished he was made a squad member or given a larger role.
  • The Archon, in more of a "They wasted a perfectly good boss fight" vibe. He boasts to Ryder and his subordinates that he's "the genetic inheritor of a thousand species". Further reinforced by his lieutenant, the Primus, stating one of the reasons she turned on the Archon was him "...hoarding the genetic bounty for himself". He remains The Unfought, so absolutely none of that boasting came to anything.
  • Crossing with They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot, Ryder's twin just outright disappears after beating the game. If google is any indication, a lot of players wanted to talk to (or even see) them later. It's especially jarring since Ryder was really concerned about them throughout the story, yet their interactions are pretty limited when they finally wake up. Some even wished to have them as a squad member. Related to this is the fact that a pretty major plot point related to the twins ( the fact their mother is still alive and in stasis) is not only blown off on a totally optional side mission, but is completely ignored once said side mission is completed. Also, given that several times during the game protagonist Ryder is heard looking forward to their sibling eventually sharing in the exploration, that once the main plot ends and the major threat is taken care of, the fact the other sibling doesn't become a Tempest crewmember is actually unrealistic.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The whole game falls under this to some capacity. Despite ostensibly being all about Settling the Frontier in a foreign galaxy, almost anything related to this endeavor is 1) optional and 2) disconnected from the main story even if you take the time to complete the tasks. Out of five possibly outposts you can set up, only the first is mandatory to advance the plot, any sidequests there are just that - optional sidequests - and the remaining outposts can be ignored completely without losing or changing anything worth mentioning. This despite numerous characters constantly whining about the Initiative's dire lack of resources. There was a whole lot of awesome stuff Bioware could've done with this premise, but they all but squandered it by focusing the main story almost entirely on Ryder's fight against the Archon.
  • Beyond that, despite the fact that your title is "the Pathfinder", you don't seem to do much true exploration. Just about everywhere you go, someone else has been first, whether they are other members of the Initiative, Exiles, the Angara, or the Khett. And even the big "first contact" moment on the Angara homeworld isn't really a true first contact as the Initiative exiles had already settled on a planet full of Angara exiles, and the Angara homeworld had non-Angara agents there. Your job seems to be more about fixing problems than exploration.
  • The game also squandered the chance of performing first contact on various new species and polities despite that being alluded to in the marketing and being a perfect subplot for an RPG that takes heavy inspiration from Star Trek. There are only two new species and first contact has already been made with both of them long before you got there.
  • Despite the announcement trailer using Johnny Cash's "Ghost Riders in the Sky" and showing a mesa that wouldn't be out of place in a The Wild West, the actual game lacks any significant Space Western influences outside of Kadara (which is more like Borderlands than anything).
  • The Ryder/Gil romance has very little content after the two get together. Despite the fact that there might be a child involved.
  • A lot of players found the game's "polyamory" options to be rather lacking. Keri T'Vessa and Avela Karr are treated like The Mistress rather than true polyamory, with the latter actually calling it cheating. Peebee and Reyes, who also are polyamorous, change to monogamy after completing missions for them.
  • Late in the game you learn that some of the kett oppose the Archon. You make contact with the Primus, the Archon's lieutenant who has been rallying kett against the Archon in an Anti-Mutiny, and are given the option to make a temporary alliance with her. You never get more information about the kett as a whole, the Primus' offer is treated akin to a Deal with the Devil (even being called such in the quest log) and the conflict turns out to be a case of Evil Versus Evil.
  • Ryder's ability to learn biotic powers before becoming Pathfinder combined with the fact that their mother died from repeated eezo exposures had great potential to explore the Ryders' feelings on the matter both as individuals and as a family, but it never comes up because Ryder's biotics are never acknowledged in the script.
  • One aspect of the game's premise and plot that irked a lot of longtime Mass Effect fans was the reason why the Andromeda Initiative existed to begin with, and how it got so many people to enlist into what was a one-way, centuries-long expedition to another galaxy. Nearly all the characters in the game state that they they joined the initiative to start a new life and/or explore the great unknown, which many fans saw as a very flimsy and weak reason to essentially abandon their previous lives and any family and friends altogether.^note  Especially since it's been established in the Mass Effect Codex that 99% of the Milky Way is still unexplored/undiscovered The game later on does explain that the real reason why the Andromeda Initiative went ahead was because of the imminent arrival of the Reapers, and the need to flee the galaxy to save any-and-all races as a contingency before they arrived. However, it is also established in the game that only a small handful of the initiative's leaders, like Jien Garson, Alec Ryder, and the Benefactor were aware of this; everyone else was left completely in the dark and left for the previous aforementioned reasons. Many fans felt it would have been much better if instead it was widely known among everyone in the initiative that they had to escape from the Reapers, since it would have provided solid justification as to why everything in the initiative is so poorly organized. Instead, it makes the people who left the Milky-Way look less like the Galaxy's Best-and-Brightest and more like Morons who were lucky.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: While the character designs were generally decent quality, the lackluster facial animations were wildly seen as one of the more detrimental flaws of the game. It was even worse with the character creation interface that had a really difficult time making a personalized Ryder that even looked appealing, with some guides admitting there was only 2-3 face options that wasn't unsettling. It was revealed that a Troubled Production meant most of the character animation was outsourced to another studio who often didn't have context for the scenes, and automated animation sequences ^note Due to sheer number of cutscenes and dialogue sequences they can't all be done by hand and the player has control over some of the pacing, so they rely on algorithms to fill in the gaps had way too much flexibility that resulted in awkward asymmetrical smiles during dramatic moments or bland gaping expressions that should convey awe. This came after Mass Effect 3 was praised for nuanced and naturalistic animation, and some have said even the aggressively neutral Mass Effect faces would have been preferable. A few updates tried to fix some of the more notable problems, but was dropped once future DLC was canceled.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: "The Little Things That Matter" quest has you rescue the pregnant Dr. Zoe Jean Kennedy, who along with others fled the Initiative's moratorium on having children. However, the Initiative did so since it was too dangerous to have children at this time: the golden worlds were unsuitable for sustaining enough life to bring the full adult population out of cryostasis, the Nexus was damaged from a run in with the scourge and struggling to support the fraction of the population that was dethawed - at least a quarter of which was in open mutiny by the time Zoe Kennedy decided it was a great time to have a baby. This was made even before the Nexus knew about the Kett, the Angara (and the Roekar), and didn't yet know the Vaults existed let alone what the Vaults did. Worse, Zoe's group stole vital Initiative supplies and tech which would have let them stabilize the outposts more quickly, and compromised Nexus security with her backdoors and satellites to do it. Dr. Kennedy put herself, her baby, and others in danger because of her decision to have a child despite the Initiative's justified reasons to not, yet shows no regret and faces no consequences once she returns.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The human designs and animations got a lot of flak, but the environments are amazing:
  • When you walk around the Tempest, you can see whatever planet or other stellar body the ship is orbiting outside the windows.
  • The descent to Habitat 7. First, you can see the voyage through the Scourge into the planet's atmosphere. Then, you get ripped outside the shuttle with out a loading screen. It really shows off just how graphically superior Andromeda is to the trilogy.
  • Beside the environments, the sequence of Ryder's brain cells being killed and revitalized as SAM is transferred into them is breathtaking, especially when combined with the haunting score that plays over the imagery.
• Wangst: Cora's annoyance about people being weird around her due to her biotics, and about being shipped off first to the Alliance military, then to the asari, then to the Initiative, came across as melodramatic to some players who'd played the trilogy and remembered what Kaidan and Jack went through.