I probably put 35-40 hours into it. I think I started getting pissed when one of the missions was "go to Tempest and call Addison on the vidcon". So many animations you have to go through and if you aren't done, you had to reland the ship. There's a good game in there, just so poorly constructed narrative wise. So much of what you are doing seems like a waste.
OMG that pisses me off so much. You have a bloody omnitool that can do almost anything but it can't do email or vidcons. You have to get on the ship and into orbit to do that and then land again. That is just so messed up. It's very lazy design.
Not sure if anyone is unaware of this or not (I stumbled on it by accident) but you can instantly get back on the Tempest while sitting in the Nomad simply by pressing 'T'. Also, as a general rule with these kinds of games, I wait until I have quite a few sidequests for a certain location piled up before I go back to visit, as it's a fair bet most of them are going to be brief conversations and "now go to this other place and do a thing". Similarly, I generally wait until all said sidequests done before leaving and doing the rounds on the ship. I find it's a more efficient and immersive approach. ETA: That said, I'd much rather the ship not have to take off every time you get into it. Aside from the minor irritation of the take-off movie playing every time, it would've been great for the immersion if you could still see the planet surface out the windows. Granted those pre-rendered scenes are probably hiding loading screen, but I'd take a codex entry loading screen over that over and over again.
Yes the Nomad thing was a godsend but why not allow you to do that when you're not in the Nomad! I also save quests up but you would clear one planet of sidequests then move onto the next one and quite often you would be pointed back to the planet you have just cleared! There seemed to be a lot of quests which meant moving from one planet to another and all you did was have a quick conversation or yet another generic fight. DAI had a problem with dull, repetitive sidequests but it is a lot easier to move around all the different areas in DAI so it is worse here.
I agree and it bugged me too a little. What was (and still is) also bad game design was exploring new systems. You arrive and then have to travel to each planet individually, first to planetary overview and then down to planet where you can finally scan (and often enough don't find anything). Then on to the next and repeat all animations.. Thankfully with the first patch they included the option to skip most of the animations but i get the feeling the designers/programmers went "We invested countless hours into creating this, now watch it!"
Yeah I kind of got that impression too. "Hey look we made this for you" now watch it, and they hope no one would complain too much. I get that, and it shows they spent a hell of a lot of time on this game and its design, it's just the stuff like having to get into orbit to do your email that annoys some of us.
For me, the main problem with the star system "exploration" is that there's just not that much to explore. This has always been a part of ME games and the main reward was the little nuggets of story and lore you'd get from the planet descriptions. Not very much of that here at all and the material rewards amount to nothing more than a pittance of crafting resources, junk, credits or research. Not terribly exciting, especially late in the game when you have more resources than you have any use for (mostly because you can't equip you squadmates.) That last bit actually leads me to another mini-rant: why are there no alt appearances this time around? I mean Peebee's design is nice and all, but seeing her walking around in sub-zero temperatures with an exposed midriff and bare calves just looks silly. Also, for some reason since ME3 they seem to have decided that Asari are allergic to helmets and that a tiny little breathmask is somehow going to stop their eyeballs from freezing in hard vacuum! It's not just Peebee either: While it may make sense that Drack literally lives in his gear, having Vetra walk around in her armor even on the ship just seems weird. They gave Liam, Cora & Ryder casual outfits, why not Vetra? And why not an option to have Peebee wear something more suited to extreme environments?
I have to agree on the fetch quests. I've spent multiple hours running around and feeling like I've accomplished very little. I am now trying to get all the quests on one planet lined up for each run so that makes it a little easier. This run isn't even a particularly completionist run. I've done the Meridian mission, but I don't think I've bumped into any Architects yet. I think I've got one loyalty mission to finish before I go back to the main story line along with one or two other quests. I also wish we could change our teams gear and weapons.
Not being able to change your teams stuff is indeed a pain. It also takes away from the crafting, there's a hell of a lot of crafting/research options just to improve your weapons and armour. On the positive though I've been getting into the Multiplayer even if it is nowhere near as fun as ME3. Though the dull variety of enemies is the main problem there. On top of that though 7 waves is a bit short, on Bronze anyway - I haven't levelled my character up enough to try silver and now that everyone is flying around it feels less like a team event - people don't bunker down together as much which made you feel more like a team in ME3. In single player I did like the last mission. It felt like a real set piece that otherwise was lacking in this game though the storytelling was somewhat confused yet again. Overall I enjoyed it enough to start up a new game, playing Sara this time. I tried using different tones from last time though it didn't feel very different unlike the Paragon/renegade approach in the original trilogy.
I meant to ask about that. If you finish the story and start over do you lose any of your levels or stats? That would go if you chose the other twin I imagine but I'm playing as Sara with a different name as I changed her name so if I do a new game when I'm done will I have to level up again?
There's a new game plus option. You keep levels, skills and gear. You can recustomize and rename your Ryder, even play the other gender. Some problems though (of course). There's no level cap. Enemies get tougher with every level, but the effectiveness of your weapons, armor, and powers plateau, making combat harder or eventually even impossible. I've heard of problems with quest specific items carrying over and causing issues with their associated quests. You might be better off just starting again from scratch. Or giving them a few months to maybe fix these issues.
I don't think I'll be done for a while. I have to push myself to even load up Andromeda haha. But that sounds rather game breaking if those issues are happening now. My personal idea for a game+ mode would be to let you play again and just mow down everything in sight for shits and giggles. That would make a 2nd play more fun, at least for me hehe.
Out of interest, what builds are you guys favouring? I've been juggling three main favs: - FAV 1 - A pretty standard Infiltrator setup for long range (I figured an open would would mean a lot of need for sniping.) FAV 2 - A nice robust Sentinel set for mid-range combat: Backlash evolved to 100% reflect fire and allow me to advance on a crowd of enemies. And the one-two punch of Shield Drain & Incinerate, both evolved to be both primers & detonators, which is fantastically flexible for dealing with any kind of defence and deadly for crowds of mooks. FAV 3 - This is a bit of an odd one that I like to call "the exploding punch biotic ninja". It's Tactical Cloak partnered with Annihilation, Throw and the Explorer profile. Oh and of course, I always have the Asari Sword for melee. Obviously it's very close quarters oriented. Basically the Asari Valkyrie or N7 Fury from ME3's MP with a cloak for both flanking and escaping. I do have a 4th fav set to Engineer with the Remnant VI, but that mostly for roleplaying reasons. I'll probably start to use Assault Turret as a dump skill, which may make this a little more useful, but so far it's fairly underwhelming.
Still using the biotic build I posted above and still loving it. So satisfying to drive up to an enemy camp, hop out of the Nomad, activate Annihilation and then Charge, and 10 seconds later everything is dead.
I know I'm somewhat hamstringing myself by doing so, but I don't want my current Ryder to be a biotic. I know, they're twins and technically they should probably both be biotic since they both would have to have been exposed to element zero while their mother was pregnant with them, but not every fetus exposed to eezo develops biotics, so I thought it'd be more fun if one of them developed them and one didn't. So I've been focusing on a standard Infiltrator setup, pumping up Sniper Rifles and Tactical Cloak, with Overload to deal with shields and Incinerate for armor (plus they both work as a fire combo). With my skill point usage I have access to Engineer and Soldier profiles, but honestly I haven't been switching between profiles at all. Maybe on my next playthrough I'll explore the whole "you can access any power" thing and switching between combat profiles. I'm not really fond of either idea, really. At least on paper, I prefer the classic trilogy's separate classes.
Currently, I'm pretty much just playing as a soldier/rifleman type. I try to keep things at medium range, though the Sniper rifle for some heavies and the Asari Sword/Incinerate/Invasion for when things get a little too close for comfort I did run into one hiccup last night with the Movie Night Quest. Towards the end of it where you're just watching the cutscene, I got a bit where Drack and Peebee both seem to have their arm around my Ryder (who evidentally chose that moment to either go somewhere or activate the cloak) Also some clipping issues but no real game breaker items
I just finished the Krogan quest with Drack and got his loyalty. That was rather fun. I'm finishing off the rest of that and then going back to Eos to help my girl Cora.
Same. From what I've googled it seems like it's a bug introduced by the latest patch. You know, the one meant to *fix*the cutscenes?
Figures. I didn't set my game to automatically upload my Ryders to the online site and this screen cap is pretty much just an alt-print screen so the pic hasn't come out as well as it normally looks on screen. So, here's my current (first) Ryder.