I'm a hardcore fangirl of the ME:OT. I picked up Andromeda and dug in immediately. My reactions? Potentially spoilery but I did my best to not be....
Open Worldness: The open worldness doesn't really open up for a bit. If you remember in Skyrim it's all "Shit, survived that first dragon encounter and didn't get my head chopped off. Guess I'll go see wtf is out there." That's not this game. It guides you more or less on rails for a bit until you progress a bit in the story. Then it opens up and gives you a lot more sandbox to play in. But even that's got some edges. As you go to new areas, you again start back to a bit of rails before you unlock the open gameplay of that area.
Story: I like the premise, but I think the writers are targeting millennials with their turns of phrase and character tone. Often, the lines sound like they were raised on a diet of Youtube and reality tv.
Squadmates: I'm not really attached to anyone, but then I didn't really get attached to any of the old crew until towards the end of the first game. You have a good range of fighters, biotics, in betweens...
As you play Skyrim, the
race I just met seems like what would happen to the khajiit if they mated with the residents of Pandora from Avatar
Graphics: The face animation can be pretty bad at times in casual side-questy conversations. The cut-scene or major plot story interactions are much better. The system maps are gorgeous. Though, my character is no where near as lovely as my beloved FemShep.
Gameplay: I'm about 20ish hours in. The shoot-em-ups are pretty standard and the enemies are a lot smarter with some hiding, some trying to flank, others trying to rush you. Having jet packs to get to higher ground for better angles is really nice.
You can't manage your squadmate loadouts or powers/ammo/whatever during a fight, which is a change. The new game also has completely different button controls (at least on my xbone). Now when I'm trying to run someplace, I'm jumping in the air. Totally frustrating.
Also, I hate the Nomad. It's like they took the worst parts of the Mako and made them worse. I'm using both hands and a bunch of triggers/paddles to control the thing, and still ending up runnig off cliffs, up rocks, blah blah. I'm a typical "woman driver" in this thing. And it has no weapons, so you have to get out and fight each time you encounter enemies.
Overall: As I said, I'm a ME nerd so I was going to buy it anyway. I know I will finish the game, but I don't know how it's replayability will be. Maybe once I play through the second planet I will have a better grasp of it. And maybe it will start to grow on me more. Right now, I'm very nostalgic for the old games.
If you're coming at this from Skyrim or Fallout, you might be disappointed at the lack of open worldness from the get go. I would say to see about finding a friend who has it first and giving it a go that way.
