Recensione: Mass Effect Andromeda

It seems that Bioware ed Electronic Arts just can't manage to stay away from the controversy regarding the saga, and the new chapter Mass Effect Andromeda is not far behind. Even before it came out, the title caused an uproar for a whole series of reasons that we are not here to explain, they are things that happened almost two months ago, on which kilometers of words were weighed, both in print and online, we will not revive the question here, not in detail and above all not to make controversy.

It has to be said that this review is based on a full match that started on Day One and ended after Update 1.07, so it's been a long time and a lot of patched changes have been made to the game.

Five years after the end of the Shepard trilogy, Mass Effect returns to our screens with a whole new adventure, completely unrelated to the three previous games. Wanting to facilitate the inclusion of new players, Bioware has decided to move the action to a new galaxy, Andromeda precisely, but above all to let six hundred years pass between the old trilogy and the adventures of the Pioneer Ryder. Locked in a cryostatic sleep, tens of thousands of humans, asari, salarians, krogan and turians embarked on a centuries-long journey to find a new place to call home, establishing new colonies in the Helios cluster.

But obviously nothing goes as expected, indeed, everything goes wrong, and every minute that passes is getting worse. Unknown forces destroying even the most resistant of hulls, electrical problems, shortages of food and water, rebellions and worlds that from the Milky Way looked like terrestrial paradises but which turned out to be deadly traps, a disaster across the board.

And this is where you, the Ryder Pioneer, come into play. On board the small and very fast Tempest, at the beginning it will be a question of trying to patch up the leaks, to give a little hope to those who no longer have it, to try a first contact with an indigenous civilization, the Angara, who for decades it has been under attack from another invading people and consequently does not trust. Being able to be accepted will be hard work, complicated by the presence of the Kett, who will try in every way to conquer what little we can snatch from a hostile environment, to the point of forcing us into a strenuous battle for the survival of both us of the Initiative. Andromeda that of the Angara.

Said like this, the plot seems to be traced from the original trilogy, but only because I didn't want to spoil anything. In fact, the story of Mass Effect Andromeda is its greatest strength, also thanks to a couple of unexpected plot twists that leave you speechless. The main mission is very direct, it is simply a matter of saving the skin of tens of thousands of people, but it is enriched by an endless plethora of side missions, some of which remain well impressed, for one reason or another.

Although they force you to go back and forth and from time to time they make you feel a little like the mailman of the galaxy, they expand the lore, they bring you to know the culture of the Angara, their history and that of your companions, through their chains. of loyalty. And let's not forget the romance, one of the main features of Bioware games.

The team we will command will consist of six characters who will fight alongside us plus four others who will remain fixed on the ship, all with their distinct personalities, their beliefs and their weaknesses, for ten distinct character development and relationships, both sentimental and emotional. simple friendship and respect, completely different from each other. Not to mention the ground crew, sometimes antagonistic but more often only exhausted by terrifying conditions, who will gradually realize that the best way to survive is to always push beyond the border and that compromising is not a thing. so bad.

It will be easy to become attached to the characters, also thanks to their distinct and well-characterized personalities, the funny moments will not be lacking and they will develop friendships between them, which you will see evolve during the small conversations they will have during the quiet moments of exploration. Sometimes they will be trifles, small things, other real confessions about their past, about why they behave in a certain way instead of another, or how people expect. This mostly happens between Peebee and Cora, while Jaal will be more focused on asking about the Milky Way's past and culture, and Drack will instead be more interested in the past battles his comrades have fought. There is a little for everyone, and there is no shortage of laughter.

So, Mass Effect Andromeda is, in fact, a classic Mass Effect, an RPG with a sci-fi setting that bases its narrative in part almost equal to the interpersonal relationships between the protagonist and his companions and the phases of exploration and combat, revolutionized in this fourth. title of the saga. If, unfortunately, the management of the companions has been lost if not the position in which to place them and the spec, the gameplay of the main character has significantly improved.

Via the classes to choose from when creating the character, we welcome the Profiles, which will be unlocked based on how many points we will put in the combat skills, the biotic ones and the technical ones. They will offer a bonus to the use of certain skills and are interchangeable at any time, offering greater variety in the approach to encounters with enemies.

In addition, a small jet pack has been included that will allow us to make long jumps, to dodge and obviously to reach elevated points that give us an advantage in the fights or that will allow us to overcome the puzzles that we will encounter during our wandering around Andromeda. Very useful during firefights, it becomes essential in the exploration phases that will occupy a good 25% of the hours of play, together with the Nomad, the rover made available to us to visit the planets on which we can descend. Bunny hopping becomes a kind of sport, especially when it's not clear where to go. And yes, the Nomad is a worthy successor to the Mako, and can climb even the steepest mountains. Some things just never change.

The firefights have been made much more dynamic also because some covers can be destroyed, in addition to the artificial intelligence that pushes enemies to always look for the most suitable position to hit us based on where we are at that moment. We will therefore be forced to move often from cover to cover and often we will be pushed out of cover especially by heavily armed enemies or attacking us from above. They will also be faster as well as more dynamic clashes, which will force us to act faster, to think faster than in previous games.

Technically speaking, the title is starting to creak. Known and strange have been the problems, at the exit, of the facial animations and some glitches of the movements in general, and actually Bioware does not make the most of the Frostbite 3 engine. Far from being a graphically ugly title, it has some problems that after several updates have not been fixed yet. The animations were not 100% correct but significantly improved to the point that, compared to Day One, playing now is like dealing with a different product, but the fact remains that certain problems remain.

If the animations have been correct, the pop up of the vegetation on the planets and the freezes especially when launching the Nomad at high speed are the order of the day, the interpenetration of the bodies in the cutscenes and in the conversations, or the occasional disappearance of an enemy in the textures that prevent you from completing the fight they are still a very present problem, especially on Playstation 4. Less evident on XBox and computer, but still persist.

Another sore point is the lack of exploitation of the music. The audio mixing is excellent, the sounds and voices bordering on perfect, but unfortunately the music does not live up to the Shepart trilogy. If we exclude the song that is the background to the final battle, the soundtrack of Mass Effect Andromeda, by John Paesano at his debut as a video game scorer, does not stand out, but remains a forgettable, albeit pleasant, background.

Rich in content, perhaps too much, it is easy to get lost in the vastness of things to do, the list of quests seems endless at certain points, and more or less in the middle of the story it will seem that you will never see the end, but even if the journey will be long will not miss the twists, including two in particular during the main plot that you do not expect and leave you speechless. The richness of detail, however small and insignificant, of some conversations almost gives the idea that the characters on our screens are alive, or at least make them plausible.

Places that haven't been reduced to deserts covered in scorching sand or shrouded in a frozen blanket are wonders to explore, and the new alien race living in the cluster the Initiative was supposed to inhabit is multi-faceted, with a culture particular that avoids excessive stereotyping and that is not too similar to a culture of the earth in particular. Even these trifles, trifles when compared to the importance that good gameplay and a well-made technical sector can have in a video game, serve to make a game a great title. And Mass Effect Andromeda is a great title, both on the single player and multiplayer front, that replicates the frenzy of the battles of the base game but on a larger scale. Connections are miles around, crashes and lag are terrible at times.

Controversy aside, it is true, it had a launch on the verge of disastrous. Between the española controversy for the lack of dubbing - although the localization was done very well anyway - and the global one for the facial animations, many were the detractors of a title that however has a lot to say, as the beginning of a new adventure but also as a classic Mass Effect title. Gameplay innovations and graphic restyling aside, the beating heart of Andromeda is Bioware's classic RPG and, let's face it, the Canadian software house has spoiled us a bit over the years.

61 hours, 27 minutes and 7 seconds after the start of the match, we can say it without fear of denial: Mass Effect Andromeda it is an excellent title that has been able to recover after a disastrous fall, which has shown how, unfortunately, the haste of the distribution companies to go out does more damage than anything else, but also that you can put a nice patch on those damages with a little 'of hard work by the developers. But if you don't like sudokus, get ready, there are several to solve.