I will admit that I am a huge loyal fan of the ME franchise.
About 40 hours in to MEA:
There's something just not right about this game, depth of story, polish, and all of it feeds into a subtle feeling that for all the hype it's not that great. The ME story line has always been about story over visuals, even in max settings graphics are a mixed bag. Immersiveness of an RPG has been abandoned here more due to issues & focus on being a shooter than keeping to the successful mix of the previous triology.The writing in this feels more fan story, but that would be an insult to some awesome fan fiction. The writing is very forced, with huge disparity between characters, all of it lacking the subtle world building of the previous trilogy. In MEA visuals range from pre-ME1 to beautiful [a great shame that one moment at ultra settings its gorgeous and within seconds you have sub par graphics, efforts show on planets and the tempest but elsewhere its shockinkly distracting, including the animations], voice acting is clunky [on the verge of cringeworthy] and you'll be compelled to skip some conversations, the open world doesn't work a as invisioned at implentation and plenty of bugs. The menu systems and lack of quick save add to to the lack of polish and feel of a game console import, quicksave and lack of mini map becomes mind numbling annoying. MEA just feels awkward or forced. It almost seems ambition and reality of timeline in dev didn't work out. Also you can rush through this game and I think they should have stopped that or discourage it more as was found in ME2. In its simplist form you can get a real difference by listening to the ME1 Soundtrack against the MEA one. You kind of just get a 'meh' feeling. I think over time and progression, even if the main antagonist storyline improves, much of the detractors start to really grind, wear you down and get bored. There are hints of issues in the 'real world' appearing at times.
I've tired to keep an open mind that this is a new storyline and to give it a chance but in real terms this doesn't feel like 5 years of dev or classic bioware. If this is a start of new trilogy they have no option but to follow up quickly with a MEA2 and sort it out as many will feel that lack of wanting more as was found with ME1. Many wanted it to be more similar to ME1, but the genuius of ME one was polish, critical storyline and a moderated open world, this had not been achived in MEA. Some may even call it DAI in space. Its hard to bond with characters or even be that fussed with the storyline and sometimes events, plots and quests seem a drag or no real placement in the context they are set. You get quickly overloaded with fruitless side quests of no meaning or little relevancy. Loyalty missions reguarly have little to do with the team mate and youve hardly got to the stage of feeling any loyalty to them. As we can see from reviews, it's not bad, it's not great but 'neutral', a mixed bag which I think is the worst kind. Many of the old team left bioware and the ME franchise and random people bought in, and it shows. It lacks the maturity of ME1 and worst out of the 4, it certainty will be amongst biowares lesser titles. We all accept some bugs and issues but MEA sits on the dangerous grey area which has split the gaming community. A remaster of ME1-3 would have made some happier. Do I feel gripped to play this or rushing back to play it again or continue it from day to day life and work, no. This is a signficant difference to ME1-3.
In all it's a mixed bag and for many it will be the overall feeling of the game. My gut feeling so far is disappointment but most of all it lacks 'soul'.
Give it it ago, but be prepared. Many will feel they would have wanted to face the reapers than run away to andromeda. What a shame we had to wait 5 years to find out.
