Seriously though two races + a Prothean ripoff in the Jardaan. We had husks, then we had collectors which worked because same dudes making them, but now we have Angaran husks called Kett.
One of which has twilek tentacles the other of which is a heinously ripped off idea from Mass Effect. So many people say it's a good game with a bad title, but who is going to play this without that title? Reviews won't come in favorably when your Andromeda Galaxy is entirely bipedal two arm two eyes nose mouth humanoids. I'm glad you brought up the indie thing too. Andromeda decided fetch quests with tiny smudges of nonsense writing is just as good, off we go. You generate wonder even if it's not all perfection. And we ate it up because something is better than nothing, and the main quest was good anyway so it really didn't matter if a side quest missed the mark. The Thorian, the precursor to Edi (which was sorta there), the homocidal AI, the bizarre intrigue of the Prothean structures, these were all ideas that were decently handled at best, poorly handled at worst. I wanted ME1's half-baked ambition in a modern lens. We could have a side quest ripping off Solaris and I would be so happy for it. I just wanted some cool alien forms to have some real dialogues with. I used to just say "It's Mass Effect 3 but amplified to extreme degrees" but have since stopped after having ten more discussions following that exact train of thought - ME3 is totally cool except for the ending!. If it was an indie it'd come and be gone before you even noticed it. Literally the only reason a game this shit shared this big a limelight is because of the words MASS EFFECT in its title. If it was an indie it'll probably get more hate because it wouldn't have the shield of nostalgia to protect/excuse it. Sure the combat is good but that's about the only thing good in this game. I play Mass Effect for the sense of wonder that was missing here. And this, to me, and not those facial expression memes (which could be rectified later, unlike the narrative faults) is the game's biggest failing for me. The whole writing/narrative side is so lopsided that I have to wonder if they even have a writer onboard or did they just browse tvtropes, note down all the cliches and decided to string them togather in a make-belief story. They even brought back the prothean storyline and slightly reworked it, said well we can run this story again! The entire excitement of seeing a new galaxy is missing here. nah they're just the generic aliens with slightly different plastic face.
#Mass effect 3 all dlc edition full
But I'll just say how awesome it was to travel to a whole new galaxy full of new life forms and new civilizations and new cultures and whatnot. The writing in this game is piss poor and there are many narrative analyses online if you wanna know what's wrong with it, and there's a mountain of it. And the same argument was trotted out at ME3 times too ("the game is fine except the ending!"), and here it's "the game is fine except for de facial animations! Haters gunna h8". The combat was really solid and I wanted to like the game. You can handwave it away as "EA hate" and frankly you can love the game all you want. If the game was an indie game it would still be one of the most poorly handled games of the last few years. Oh but they have twilek tentacles, that's pretty creative. Unexplained/unexplored Scourge (at least the Reapers had a voice by the end of ME1, Scourge was basically not in the game except to have a random plot point), the Kett were copied from husks/collectors, Remnant are just hostile Keepers created by the Andromeda copies of Protheans, the Angara have two eyes, one mouth, bipedal humanoids. And any creativity Andromeda generated was stolen from ME1-3. Mass Effect 1 had way more creativity in the opening hour than Andromeda had in entirety. So we have one new alien race for our brand new galaxy that should be full of intrigue and anomalies. Two alien races for a brand new galaxy, and one of them won't properly talk to you in a dialogue heavy RPG. People do not love to hate, but hating is a lot easier when you consider how the game is dogshit.
The real Andromeda players could be recognized by anyone acknowledging how utterly bankrupt all facets of writing became in the game. The "Hurr durr facial animations" was a meem by people who don't even play the games. People hated Andromeda after it launched, people laughed at Andromeda before launch.