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Mass Effect: Andromeda |OT| Ryders on the Storm

Just bought the game but I'm getting a direct x error when I launch the game on Origin. Is this a known issue? Should I refund the game at this point?


Yes, it's a known issue. I had adirect x out of memory error despite having 16gb system ram and 11gb of vram on my 1080ti.had to do some research on the interwebs but found a solution.

Im assuming you have an SSD and windows 10? If so It's likely the pagefile system in Windows set to 0. Go into settings and let windows automatically handle page file and you'll be good to go.
 

Bisnic

Really Really Exciting Member!
This game is $13.28 on Amazon right now? Worth it?

13$ is nothing for a video game, if you won't buy it at that price, might as well never think about it. I buy a dozen lootboxes in Overwatch at almost every special events for that price and that's just cosmetics. :p

Despite the flaws and some unresolved plots at the end of the game(since no DLC and most likely no sequel), the game is fun enough for at least one playthrough as long as you stay away from the quests under "Additional tasks".

It's nowhere near as memorable as the trilogy(but that's kinda hard to beat for any fan I'd guess), there is some repetitives sequences on each planets (find vaults, get high % by doing quests and attacking the main enemy base, kill big robot at the end) and the sountrack is pretty forgettable too.

But the story & characters(well, most of them, I don't care much about Liam or Cora) are interesting enough and the combat can be quite enjoyable with all the jumping, hovering, shooting, casting and explosions going on. Plus the main story & loyalty missions are quite good too.
 
Is it me or does it feel like half or the majority of the R&D stuff is worthless? I hate how they have different levels of weapons/guns. The only stuff that looks interesting is the Heleus weapons/armor but those points seem more rare to come across.

I also don't care for any of the Kett lol, not sure if it has to do w/ their design but as a alien race they are the 'least' interesting in the ME universe.
 

Paganmoon

Member
If it's the PC version, yes. If it's the console version, no, because you lose out on all the quality of life improvements mods give you.

Holy fuck, I wish I'd have run with the reduced SAM-chatter.

"Ambient temperature is below normal"
"ambient temperature is within normal paramters"
back and forth a thousand times... Add to that whenever it changes you get a huge flashing text in the middle of your screen notifying you of the change as well (blocking part of you reticule for aiming...)

Lots of those mods seem to do a good job of makeing the game less annoying it seems. Still wouldn't make it a good game imo though.
 

Dance Inferno

Unconfirmed Member
If you're playing on PC, here's a list of mods I highly recommend:
Free Remnant Decryption Keys (1000x)
Road Rage (increased Nomad collision damage to enemies)
Materials for Sale (all crafting materials can be bought on the Tempest for free)
General Augs Rebalanced (full disclosure: I made this mod - sets a wide variety of augments to give 10% bonuses to weapons/gear)
Weight Cooldown Bonus (brings back ME3's less weight = faster cooldowns mechanic)
Hyper Mobility (better sprint speed, better jump height & distance, might get you stuck on invisible geometry)
Squadmates Damage (buff to squadmate stats so they're less useless)
No Profile Switching Cooldown (switching profiles doesn't cause all abilities to cooldown)
Shut Up SAM (Reduces SAM chatter about environmental hazards)
Cheap Research (Reduces research costs by 75-80%}
Research No Level Requirements (Actually build the highest tier stuff without going into New Game Plus or tons of grinding)
Shorter Landing and Departure Cinematics (Cuts most of these cutscenes down to sub-10 seconds)
Increased Weapon Range
Faster Kadara Doors
Nomad Top Speed Increase (Now it peaks at 200 km/h)
Ultimate Camera FOV mod
DS4 Buttons

Tools you should have:
MEA Recovery Tool (let's you revert changes if modding causes problems)
Frosty Mod Manager (lets you run mods in a nice UI, remember to double click the mods on the list to the left)
MEAExplorer Ansel DLLs (download them & stick them in the MEA game folder so the mods will actually work)

Edit: You don't need the DLLs with Frosty Mod Manager.

This is awesome, thanks for the list! I just downloaded like 75% of these and am excited to try them out.
 
Guys, getting this game right now. I have a PS4 Pro and will get an Xbox One X at launch.

Which platform? Since this game doesn't have a direct support for One X, will it have any improvements over the PS4 Pro version?
 

Lime

Member
Went back to Andromeda to take some screenshots with HattiWattis cinematic tool (+ mods) and it feels like going to a shitty funeral.
 
Finally finished the game, 120ish hours...


Game was good, but WAY too much padding. Could have been distilled to a great 80-90 hour 100% run game. Plus...
WTH is up with the Quarians?
Will we ever know? Reapers? Who paid for the Initiative?
 
Finally finished the game, 120ish hours...


Game was good, but WAY too much padding. Could have been distilled to a great 80-90 hour 100% run game. Plus...
WTH is up with the Quarians?
Will we ever know? Reapers? Who paid for the Initiative?

You'll get those answers
in 10 to 15 years when they make another ME. Who am I kidding the Andromeda storyline is never getting picked up again.
 

Lime

Member
Imagine how the tease ending must have felt for the new comers to the series - just a bunch of name dropping of races you’ve never heard about. It’s literslly coasting on the nostalgia of the previous titles. Pretty lazy storytelling all in all.
 
Going to give Andromeda a second chance today...pray for me gaf!


Edit: about an hour in and the facial animation is much improved and same for frame rate. Im a little disappointed in the ryder editor not being improved so playing default femryder.
 

Deadstar

Member
Yes, it's a known issue. I had adirect x out of memory error despite having 16gb system ram and 11gb of vram on my 1080ti.had to do some research on the interwebs but found a solution.

Im assuming you have an SSD and windows 10? If so It's likely the pagefile system in Windows set to 0. Go into settings and let windows automatically handle page file and you'll be good to go.

Thanks I'll try this. I do have an SSD and win 10.
 

Artistic

Member
Giving it a another spin after taking some time off.

While I don't necessarily think it's a bad game, can't honestly think of anything that Andromeda does better than ME 2 or 3. The open ended gameplay instead of the linear mission style shooter could be preferred and I do actually like the verticality...just nothing has just flat out wowed me from what I played so far.
 

Agent_4Seven

Tears of Nintendo
Combat in Andromeda is definitely better than in all previous games combined, minus the lack of proper tactical stuff of course. I also miss harder difficulty stuff from ME2. Such a shame that the team behind this game won't be having a chance to fix all of the flaws of this game and make a proper sequel.

Maybe i'll replay Andromeda sometime in the future just for the story and loyalty missions alone in NG+.
 
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Kadayi

Banned
Such a shame that the team behind this game won't be having a chance to fix all of the flaws of this game and make a proper sequel.

Agreed. I didn't think ME:A was all bad, just a little bland in places. Nothing that couldn't be rectified in a sequel. My biggest gripe was the apparent overabundance of Exiles, which seems at odds with the idea that the Nexus was populated by a skeleton crew whilst the bulk of the alliance colonists were in in the Arks in cold storage. After the umpteenth battle against them, ludo-narrative dissonance started to nag at me. There needed to be a cut-off point in Act 1 where Exiles were no longer a thing (say after the first viable Colony is established or some such), because after a while I was beginning to think that the greatest threat to the colonists survival wasn't the Kett, but Ryders decimation of the collective gene pool.
 
Combat in Andromeda is definitely better than in all previous games combined, minus the lack of proper tactical stuff of course.

As a BIG fan of Mass Effect multiplayer, the melee combat was much better in ME3, because you had both light and heavy attacks. This made the game more strategic, added personality to the characters and just outright looked cool (Batarian swinging a shotgun and the Krogan Warlord with his 3 hit combo were my favorites). I really dont understand why the light melee options were removed for Andromeda. Oh well.
 

prag16

Banned
Anybody been playing lately? Might finally start a second playthrough soon. I'm one of the weirdos who is hyped for the Quarian Ark novel dropping in June..
 

Kadayi

Banned
I haven't felt the need to revisit it. Knowing now that there's little prospect of a sequel means I don't really feel the motivation (in a world of infinite distractions one has to choose one's fascinations judiciously). I kind of hope that somewhere down the line EA might reboot Mass Effect wholesale. Keep the core ideas that worked and jettison the stuff that was less successful.
 

Artistic

Member
Don't see how a reboot would be beneficial, the game has some things going for it with the last few times I picked it up to play.
 

ruvikx

Banned
I played & finished Andromeda last September, clocking around 60 hours in the game. What can I say? As someone who really (I mean really) loved the original trilogy (insofar as I did numerous playthroughs) & also equally had severely lowered expectations (after the bad fan feedback & reviews), I was still bitterly disappointed & in some cases absolutely gutted by the gameplay, its design, its story & its characters.

Gameplay: weak AI, bad encounter design against bland enemies who only knew how to flank, flank & flank again without any other strategy, no time slowdown for infiltrators, awful glitches (the broken state of the Kett outpost on Eos is offensive), no more incendiary or cryo ammo as part of the class/or upgrade path, boring massive selection of samey weapons with mediocre stats & last but not least, the most annoying eye-gougingly horrible cover system - devoid of the necessary precision. Perhaps playing as a Biotic or Vanguard on a lower difficulty made this problem unnoticeable, yet as an infiltrator/sniper on insanity? It was like drinking a cup of acid after chewing on a razor blade.

Design: a bland Nexus (which looked more like a futuristic dentist reception office than a space station), bland Angara homeworld (i.e. so much colored concrete it looked like a vacation resort for retired people - yet Ryder said "it's beautiful! without the player having any choice in the matter... as if the developers were so certain their ugly world was Avatar-esque Pandora mk2 :rolleyes:), bland planets (welcome to Eos aka Arizona) & a Tempest ship which was effectively a mere re skin of the Normandy, i.e. itself a prototype "one of its kind" ship in the original trilogy which had cost the human Alliance billions! (as a joint project with the Turians). Which brings me to the story.

Story: it's an offense to the lore of Mass Effect, its rules, its physics & its history, i.e. first & foremost such an initiative as Andromeda would have been economically impossible during the events of the first trilogy in which the Council races bickered over the smallest policy proposals (hence the rise of Cerberus as a private investor seeking power outside the law). It was an absolutely stupid premise, i.e. akin to a sequel to Oliver Twist in which one of his friends from the workhouse decides to travel to another country in a luxury yacht. I'm not exaggerating. The Nexus (beyond its boring design) would have bankrupted everyone, i.e. it was literally a new Citadel. As I'm avoiding spoilers in this mini review, I won't go into detail, yet suffice to say the overall plot is equally as stupid as the premise. Oh & where are the choices? i.e. "military base or scientific research base" (with the same skin irrespective of the choice!) doesn't cut the mustard.

Characters: Ryder - male or female, i.e. a wisecracking frat boy anointed new 'space Jesus'. The crew is no better, with a stereotypical 'tough guy' Krogan, an ice queen biotic (Cora) who is (surprise, surprise!) actually really sensitive, vulnerable & romantic under her cold exterior (we've seen this before.. oh yes, Miranda Lawson circa Mass Effect 2:oops:) & a bunch of others who were too annoying to even take note of their personality. Special mention in their category goes to the abjectly irritating Pibi, i.e. a character whom the writers probably assumed "sarcasm & contrarianism = interesting personality traits".

Bottom line, I hated it with a vengeance, even as a shooter. Mass Effect isn't dead of course (it's a great universe), but the Andromeda spin-off series can crash & burn as far as I'm concerned. It should also be jettisoned from the canon.
 
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Droxcy

Member
Is this game worth playing on PC? I see mods are available, is it like unplayable without these? I'm a huge fan of the series but have yet to give this one a go, since all the weird press from day one.
 

Kadayi

Banned
Is this game worth playing on PC? I see mods are available, is it like unplayable without these? I'm a huge fan of the series but have yet to give this one a go, since all the weird press from day one.

Perfectly playable. I didn't encounter any real bugs of note. It's a solid 7/10 game in my view. Could have been improved in places but they patched the animation issues and other things.
 

Rellik

Member
Great post ruvikx ruvikx

I'm surprised you managed to finish the game because I couldn't and sold it. But I have this bad temptation to get it again and finish it because it bothers me that a game in one of my favourite series went unfinished. But damn... it sucked.
 

bati

Member
Great post ruvikx ruvikx

I'm surprised you managed to finish the game because I couldn't and sold it. But I have this bad temptation to get it again and finish it because it bothers me that a game in one of my favourite series went unfinished. But damn... it sucked.

Too bad, ending is easily the best part of the game. It felt like a proper Mass Effect game and the execution was way better than in ME3, there was actual payoff at the end. Honestly, without all the busywork and open world structure (+ all the filler content that comes with it) it would've been a pretty good Mass Effect game, even by the trilogy standards. The new races need to go though, terrible writing all around. If they ever reboot the series I hope they get retconned out of existence.
 

prag16

Banned
Too bad, ending is easily the best part of the game. It felt like a proper Mass Effect game and the execution was way better than in ME3, there was actual payoff at the end. Honestly, without all the busywork and open world structure (+ all the filler content that comes with it) it would've been a pretty good Mass Effect game, even by the trilogy standards. The new races need to go though, terrible writing all around. If they ever reboot the series I hope they get retconned out of existence.
The key is play it as a 40 hour game, not an 80 hour game. Way too much laborious bloat just like DA:I (though that game was even worse with the good content being locked behind the bullshit power mechanic.
 

RAIDEN1

Member
I'm going through it at the moment as I hardly looked at it last year following its critical reception....for good reason too, it's just a shame that it's rough around the edges to such an extent that it was worthy enough to have gone "gold" when it did...if EA Bioware are pouring all their resources into Anthem, then why couldn't they have done the same with Andromeda, knowing the high standards the previous 3 games were at...you look at the production values of a game like Uncharted the lost legacy then you go to Andromeda and you instantly see the drop in quality..ie characters glitching into you, or some of them skating along as if they are on an ice-rink in the station..people you interact with around you either standing like statues, lack of any emotion in the main character(s) to me it doesn't look like a game that couldn't have been released on the Xbox 360/PS3...Saying that it is still drawing me in because after all it's a Mass Effect game (so to some extent that atmosphere is still there) and with next to no better Space RPGS out there of a similar format...it's the best we will get for the very near future...which is a shame...it's quite ok bringing out new books for the universe but DLC no go...

So ultimately right now the franchise is in a similar state to what Aliens is, after Covenant...
 

RavageX

Member
Well it was my disappointment for the year, that's for sure.

Mostly disappointed with the character personalities. There aren't really any layers to them, and there is no molding Ryder to fit personal tastes, he/she acts the same way regardless.
 

Rellik

Member
The key is play it as a 40 hour game, not an 80 hour game. Way too much laborious bloat just like DA:I (though that game was even worse with the good content being locked behind the bullshit power mechanic.

Weird thing is, I really enjoyed DA:I and its bloat (Got the plat and completed it like 3-4 times), so I'm not sure what went wrong with my interest in ME:A
 
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Keinu

Member
Weird thing is, I really enjoyed DA:I and its bloat (Got the plat and completed it like 3-4 times), so I'm not sure what went wrong with my interest in ME:A

I guess you enjoyed the combat more in DA:I? I enjoyed ME:A quite a bit purely because of the combat. DA:I I really struggled to complete once.
 

Kadayi

Banned
I guess you enjoyed the combat more in DA:I? I enjoyed ME:A quite a bit purely because of the combat. DA:I I really struggled to complete once.

I made the mistake of stopping DA:I about 2/3rds through and then playing TW3. That pretty much killed off my interest in finishing it.
 

prag16

Banned
I picked up the collector's edition guide (500+ page hardcover) used in excellent condition for $4 the other day. Very nice looking book. Will be cool if/when I get around to another full playthrough. Might need to throw some sticky notes in there though to remind me which quests to actually complete, and which are trash though, lol.
 

prag16

Banned
Mass Effect Annihilation novel delayed until September 4th.

Last year the author had indicated that the premise of the novel hadn't changed as a result of the game's subpar performance. But with this additional delay, it makes me wonder if they're shoehorning some more things into it to perhaps close off some more storylines, with Mass Effect (and certainly the Andromeda offshoot) likely dead.
 

prag16

Banned
Mass Effect Annihilation novel delayed until September 4th.

Last year the author had indicated that the premise of the novel hadn't changed as a result of the game's subpar performance. But with this additional delay, it makes me wonder if they're shoehorning some more things into it to perhaps close off some more storylines, with Mass Effect (and certainly the Andromeda offshoot) likely dead.
Self quote / necrobump, but this wasn't by any means worth a new topic.

Finally read the Annihilation book. It was a pretty entertaining read. But it as expected it doesn't answer jack shit in terms of any of the loose ends from Andromeda (other than filling in backstory behind the Quarian Ark and the message received by Ryder at the end of the game. Nothing on what would have presumably become DLC had the game sold better with regard to the Quarians, and also nothing on the benefactor or more minor things like the Ryder twins' mother. In short, nothing that happens after the Quarian Ark arrives in Andromeda.

It's too bad that we may never get closure on any of that stuff, but I still recommend the book to fans of Mass Effect who enjoyed other Mass Effect novels.
 

Werewolf Jones

Gold Member
I bought this game for £10. The facial animations are better than what I saw at launch but still a bit spotty in places. Gameplay is very good for the most part, story is standard BioWare shit and so is the writing of the characters it just has A LOT more whack moments than usual.

I remember the hate and rode the hate wave too, now it's more like... This game is just "okay"? Like it's playable but not much to be offended by. I don't think highly of Mass Effect anymore though, used to love it in 2011 but now I just see it as an average franchise.
 
I bought this game for £10. The facial animations are better than what I saw at launch but still a bit spotty in places. Gameplay is very good for the most part, story is standard BioWare shit and so is the writing of the characters it just has A LOT more whack moments than usual.

I remember the hate and rode the hate wave too, now it's more like... This game is just "okay"? Like it's playable but not much to be offended by. I don't think highly of Mass Effect anymore though, used to love it in 2011 but now I just see it as an average franchise.

The writing sucked. It didn't have the flair and over the top hero space opera shit that I've come to expect. They really need to get someone fun in there, to write, if they ever plan to revisit this IP. Also, the OST was boring as hell. ME1-3 OST and sound effects were so good, this game looked pretty, but that's about it.

About 2/3 of the way through on Insanity, but my PS4 bit the dust and apparently my progress isn't on the cloud for some reason, I might never finish this. Shame. I wanted to go through it on Insanity, first playthrough and never touch it just so I can shit on it properly, later.

I paid full price for it as well. Main and big complaint is there is still a glitch that exists, right now and it can be game breaking if you don't have a save going far enough back. it involves a door that opens(it simply does not open) and triggers an event or multiwave fight inside of a facility. That's a huge reason to destroy this game in a legitimate review.
 

Verdanth

Member
Grabbed this one a couple of months back on PlayStation promos, paid 7€ for it. Great game, it does not deserve the shitload of negativity that it had.

When anybody asks me for an action RPG its easily one of my picks.
 
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