60 hours in 50% competed, level 42 so far. Very mixed bag of impressions. Despite face-gate the overall graphics of the game are quite good (including the faces), some of the environments are very pretty, albeit a tad generic. I feel they could have pushed the 'alien-ness' of the designs way more. The added mobility also really ties in well with the theme of exploring and the big open spaces. Gameplay has been pretty good as well, I'm playing with a Charge/Singulariy/Nova/Piranha/Melee build. Charge just makes the action feel really dynamic, charging all over the playfield.
The game really suffers from a bit of a slow start though, Eos for example, is a pretty boring quest hub, nothing too special happens here. Doesn't help that it looks exactly like places you could find on Earth. Then when you visit the Angaran planets it doesn't pick up too much, they're not terrible, but I feel the Angarans are one of the weaker alien additions in the ME universe, there is no big hook to this race that make them particularly engaging. And obviously there are also the endless fetch-quests through almost context-less environments, and the copy paste Kett/Remnant base encounters. To play the devil's advocate, open world games always have struggled with filling a big world with actual quality content, even Witcher 3 had it's fair share of running around from point A to B to get X amount of stuff.
I'm also really feeling short-changed by only having 6 team-mates. Mass Effect 2 had 10+2 (dlc) and Mass effect 3 had 6+1 (dlc). You didn't notice it as much in Me3 because you had so many of your old squat mates to meet up with during your quests. In Andromeda the amount just feels incredible sparse. They're also relatively quickly introduced so there's no squad mate to look forward to. Really would have helped the overall enjoyment level if they paced the addition of squad mates a bit more. Doesn't really help that they're probably the least interesting bunch out of all the ME series. I don't really hate Liam or anything, but I'm pretty sure you could have cut him out of the entire game and not noticed too much of a difference. I don't expect every character has tie in very deeply to the over-arching plot to have to be interesting though. For example, I don't think Thane was too important for the plot either, but he was a Amphibian Zen assassin dressed in black with a terminal disease and a cool voice, it pretty much sells itself. Same goes for Jack, really distinctive look and personality, although she didn't play a crucial part in the main plot as far as I remember. The new crew just doesn't stand out as much in comparison.
I'm going through loyalty missions right now though and the game does pick up a lot during the bigger quests. The Krogan colony and Drack's loyalty missions were really enjoyable, frantically dodging 3 Fiends while the two rival Krogans were bonding was pretty epic and funny. Doing the low-gravity planet right now, also a nice change of setting.
