Having got a bit further now, around 2 hours left on my trial, I'll add a quick critique of what I've experienced.
1. The big deal everyone will see first: Facial Animations.
This is the easiest to spot and it is rather prevailent in some of the more important conversations, I don't think anyone has ever said anywhere that this is fine. Because it's not. But it is not as big a deal if you've got Subs on or playing on Console on the big screen. As your eyes are more on the subs rather than the faces and what's happening there. That's most likely why there's such a big furore over it, as those who came from console (such as myself) have grown accustomed to playing with the speakers blaring everything out and reading the subs to help, whereas a lot of other players also play with headsets and can not enable subs as audio is mostly clear for them to not need it.
Quick mention of body animations/walking, running, etc that's featured in a lot of the gifs. These are not as apparent on the male Ryder twin. So I won't make a lengthy bit over this as of this time as I haven't played with the female Ryder twin yet.
2. Dialogue: delivery problems and appropriateness.
I made a slight mention of this earlier. There are situations where your team mates will yell out stuff which makes no sense:
Incredilous tone: "Where are you GOING???" (After you die)
Angry at you tone: "The fights OVER HERE!!!" (When you are being surrounded and need to reposition or face being killed)
Cheering tone: "Excellent, only one left!" (After team mate is incapacitated and shouldn't be able to give a running commentary of the fight that I'm solo'ing)
This should be easily correctible, but it is rather jarring to hear after I am moving away to reposition on being surrounded and being told in an angry tone "Where are you going??!". Doesn't match the events, or totally inappropriate use, as I wasn't running away from the fight, just moving to a safer position.
Then there's some of the delivery in dialogue moments. It sounds like some of the VA REALLY were just reading lines out like they were back in secondary 1st year drama school. It doesn't flow very well and sounds very flat for some of the delivery, losing much of the feeling that you get from reading the subs, but can't hear from the voice.
The dialogue itself, doesn't appear to me to be "better written" or indeed "more badly written" compared to previous Mass Effect games - when you are reading the Subs and listening. If you are listening only (and watching the facial animations as well), this will make you cringe, so I recommend putting the subs on.
3. "Compass" map indicator is poor at directing you to things.
Seriously, if I could, I'd throw that thing out completely. I spent probably 30% more time trying to locate something using that and it totally fails at sending me to the correct location. As I reach it, it goes straight to another one, so I run over to that one, and realise half way that it's pointing me back the way I came. Run back, and repeats. Really poor. Gets even worse when in combat, where a lot of enemies get "Out of sight" of this, and you need to often "Look around" constantly to see if you have been surrounded or someone has snuck around without realising it. The older ME series where enemies are on it's own "Radar" where it show rought direction and distance was much better I feel. The reason I feel the older one is better, is because of the new cover system.
4. Cover system can be difficult to manage and learn.
The new cover system I briefly talked about earlier; as someone else prior mentioned, it's a soft cover system, and works similiarly to ME2 and ME3, so if you're familiar with those games, you'll be right at home here. The big difference comes from the fact that it is extremely easy to accidently get out of cover as well, and in many cases, something that looks like should give you cover, doesn't. Giving the player a quick death by hail of fire. This comes from the issue of Mass Effect now having to deal with the Z axis.
5. Larger world from Z Axis inclusion.
Seriously, I spent a good 5 hours at the start because I was exploring the locale. Leaping to higher locations with Jet Packs and looking around for more things. This is sort of a plus, but also a noticable negative as well. It's a plus because now it gives players a massive change from the origianl ME2/3 Universe; it's more akin to the ME1 combat where it's possible to get onto ledges or other high locations and perch or stalk enemies. Something that was not there in ME2/3 because everything was rather lineraly flat.
The bad is also related in the same fashion. Exploring is not for everyone, but the bad part comes from not having a easy to see pathway as in any of the previous ME games and the extra Z Axis inclusion in many more things, makes every map larger. In all the prior ones, with the flattish plane and somewhat singular pathway available to you it was rather quick to get through and not as easy to get lost in. Here you can spend lots of time "lost" because there's no easy indicator of where you "should" be going.
I don't believe anything can be done about this though, as although increasing the size of the play area is nice, it can also make it rather cumbersome for some players. And if Bioware made it linear like the older games, they'll be accused of dumbing it down, or not advancing the tech/game. So this is more a statement than full critique of that.
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That's all I've got to put forward regarding ME:A at the moment, I'm sure there'll be more to add at some point, but as there's only 10 hours trial and I only have 2 hours left, I don't think there'll be more for me to add until 22nd when I get my hands on the full thing.
All I'll say for older ME Series gamers, is to give it a shot on the trial, it might not be as jarring for you as the short clips you've been seeing are like. I was braced for the bugs seen in them for example, but personally haven't ran into any of them so far (other than the ones listed above). Just make sure all drivers are updated and you've got a fairly decent GPU to put all settings to maximum.
