Info about Mass Effect™: Andromeda Deluxe Edition:

Official game description:
Mass Effect: Andromeda takes players to the Andromeda galaxy, far beyond the Milky Way. There, you'll lead the fight for a new home in hostile territory as the Pathfinder, a leader of military-trained explorers. This is the story of humanity’s next chapter, and your choices throughout the game will ultimately determine humanity's survival.  
The Deluxe Edition contains:  
**Deep Space Explorer Armor.** Looking for armor that can stand up to anything a brand new galaxy can dish out? With the Deluxe Edition, you'll get to gear up with Deep Space Explorer Armor.  
**Nomad Skin (3).** Make sure your Nomad really stands out while you're exploring mysterious new planets with this unique skin.  
**Multiplayer Booster Pack.** Jump-start your multiplayer co-op play with a booster pack. Includes five 50% XP Boosters (entitled instantly, limit 1 per match).  
**Pathfinder Casual Outfit (2).** Nobody wants to wear their uniform 24/7. Whether you're relaxing aboard the Tempest or exploring a friendly space dock, this casual outfit will help you look your best.  
**Scavenger Armor.** Stand out from the crowd, even when you're planetside on a deadly new world.  
**Pathfinder Elite Weapon Set (4).** Ditch the standard gear and go Elite. Battle your way through Andromeda with this unique set of weapons.  
**Pet Pyjak.** Everyone’s favorite space monkey is back and can join you aboard the Tempest.  
**Multiplayer Deluxe Launch Pack.** Get a head start on co-op play with the Multiplayer Launch Pack, which includes items to kick start your progress (entitled instantly).

Release date: 11 Jun, 2020

Categories: Open-World Exploration, Real-time Combat, RPG, Single-player Story, Character Progression, Character Customization, Cooperative Multiplayer, Crafting, Research and Discovery


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Underrated Mass Effect Entry (weight 0.78): Despite initial backlash, many players now consider the game a solid and worthy addition to the Mass Effect franchise. They appreciate its attempt to establish a new storyline and perspective within the universe, often finding it better than its reputation suggests.
- Improved, Fluid Combat System (weight 0.74): The combat system is a standout feature, praised for being dynamic, fluid, fast-paced, and highly customizable. Reviewers frequently noted it as the best in the series, offering diverse playstyles and improved mobility with elements like the jetpack.
- Impressive Visuals and Graphics (weight 0.67): The game's graphics are consistently praised as gorgeous and well-executed, particularly the environmental design, lighting, and planetary landscapes. Many noted its visual appeal holds up well even years after release.
- Engaging Story and Characters (weight 0.63): The narrative is generally seen as good, captivating, and often underrated, with a compelling main plot and intriguing twists. Characters, including the new crew, are frequently described as interesting, well-developed, and charismatic, fostering player attachment.
- Engaging & Enjoyable Core Gameplay (weight 0.56): Players consistently found the game's core gameplay loop to be fun, engaging, and dynamic, often highlighting fluid combat, satisfying abilities, and a general sense of enjoyment across various activities. Many expressed surprise at how much they liked the game, especially after initial negative press.
- Vast & Beautiful Exploration (weight 0.56): The game excels in exploration, offering a huge, beautifully designed galaxy with diverse and unique planets. Players enjoy discovering new worlds, solving mysteries, and engaging with extensive side content, feeling like true pioneers.
- Strong Sci-Fi & Space Immersion (weight 0.44): The game provides an excellent sci-fi experience, successfully immersing players in its vast universe with compelling lore, atmospheric environments, and a genuine sense of space adventure. Many found it effectively scratched their 'sci-fi itch'.
- Enjoyable Side Quests & Content (weight 0.43): Side quests and companion missions are often highlighted as engaging, varied, and effective in deepening the game's lore and making the world feel alive. Many players found these elements more interesting than anticipated, contributing significantly to overall playtime.
- Excellent Nomad Vehicle Experience (weight 0.06): The Nomad vehicle is a popular feature, praised for its smooth handling, improved traversal compared to previous games, and overall enjoyable driving experience. Players appreciated its contribution to planetary exploration and found upgrades meaningful.

Common complaints:
- Inferior to Original Trilogy (weight 0.98): A pervasive sentiment is that the game fails significantly when compared to the original Mass Effect trilogy. It is perceived as a downgrade in story, characters, lore, emotional depth, and overall quality, often feeling like a 'generic Sci-Fi game' rather than a true Mass Effect successor.
- Lackluster Story & Characters (weight 0.95): Players found the main story unengaging, predictable, and often rushed, lacking the depth, urgency, and emotional impact of previous titles. Characters, including the protagonist Ryder, were frequently described as bland, uncharismatic, and poorly written, failing to create memorable connections.
- Technical Issues & Bugs (weight 0.89): Despite years since release, the game is still plagued by numerous bugs and glitches, including game-breaking issues like corrupted saves and mission progression halts. Poor animations, especially facial expressions, and optimization problems also detract from the experience.
- Repetitive & Tedious Gameplay (weight 0.83): The open world is criticized for being filled with an excessive amount of uninteresting, generic, and repetitive fetch quests and scanning tasks. This content artificially lengthens the game and makes exploration feel like a chore rather than an engaging experience, leading to player boredom.
- Unskippable Travel Animations (weight 0.16): Players are highly frustrated by numerous unskippable cutscenes for planet landings, take-offs, and system-to-system travel. These animations are perceived as a significant waste of time, breaking game flow and contributing to the overall tedium of exploration.
- Uninspired Enemy Design & AI (weight 0.12): Combat encounters suffer from repetitive enemy types, lack of variety, and 'bullet sponge' health, making battles feel tedious. Enemy AI is often criticized for being simplistic or flawed, further reducing tactical depth and engagement.
- Unappealing NPC Designs (weight 0.08): Many NPCs, particularly alien races and human females, are described as aesthetically unappealing, generic, or having 'ugly' facial designs. This lack of visual diversity and often strange character models detracts from world immersion.
- Meaningless Player Choices (weight 0.06): A core RPG element, player choice, is severely criticized for having minimal to no impact on the story, characters, or game outcomes. This creates an illusion of choice, diminishing replayability and the sense of player agency inherent in the franchise.

Gameplay feedback:
- Focus on open-world exploration (weight 0.2): The game emphasizes open-world exploration across multiple planets, often compared to Dragon Age: Inquisition or newer Assassin's Creed titles. This exploration is a core gameplay loop, differing from the more linear structure of previous Mass Effect games.
- Distinct from original trilogy (weight 0.2): Many players noted that Mass Effect: Andromeda significantly diverges from the original trilogy in terms of setting, story, tone, and gameplay mechanics. It is often described as a new IP set in the Mass Effect universe, or a spin-off, rather than a direct continuation.
- Revised combat system (weight 0.17): Combat in Andromeda is more action-oriented and faster-paced than previous Mass Effect titles, often described as similar to Mass Effect 3's multiplayer. It incorporates jump jets, diverse abilities (biotic, tech, combat), and a flexible class system.
- Colonization and Pathfinder narrative (weight 0.15): The central plot revolves around the 'Pathfinder' mission to explore and terraform planets in the Andromeda galaxy, making them habitable for Milky Way settlers. This involves establishing outposts and interacting with new alien races.
- Extensive side quests and content (weight 0.12): Andromeda offers a substantial amount of content beyond the main story, including numerous side quests, loyalty missions for companions, and various secondary activities. Completing these can extend gameplay significantly, up to 80-90 hours.
- RPG elements and character development (weight 0.06): The game retains RPG elements such as dialogue choices, romance options, character leveling, skill trees, and companion interactions. The dialogue system features multiple tones, and players can customize Ryder and their squad.
- Crafting and research mechanics (weight 0.03): The game features a Research and Development system that allows players to collect points and resources to craft new weapons and equipment. While extensive, crafting is optional and can be skipped without significant impact.
- New mechanics and learning curve (weight 0.02): Andromeda introduces many new gameplay mechanics and plot lines, requiring players to adapt to changes in controls and systems. The game also features a loot and weapon improvement system.

Performance notes:
- Patching significantly improved stability (weight 0.08): Many players reported a substantial reduction in bugs and performance issues after post-launch patches. While some minor glitches persist, the game is generally considered more stable and playable than at release.
- Lingering in-game bugs (weight 0.07): Despite patches, players still encounter various bugs, including characters falling through floors, getting stuck in environments, glitched cutscenes, disappearing enemies, and NPC issues, which can sometimes block progression.
- Varied PC performance and optimization (weight 0.06): Player experiences with PC performance vary widely, with some reporting smooth gameplay even on older hardware, while others encounter significant frame drops and crashes on high-end systems, suggesting inconsistent optimization.
- Startup and crashing issues (weight 0.05): A notable number of players, particularly on Linux, reported severe issues with the game failing to launch or crashing frequently. Some found workarounds like borderless windowed mode or updating Visual C++.
- Steam Deck compatibility (weight 0.04): Experiences on Steam Deck are mixed; some report smooth 60 FPS gameplay out of the box, while others indicate the game is broken, crashes often on Linux, or requires the lowest settings for playability.
- Cursor and keyboard issues (weight 0.03): Some users experienced issues with the mouse cursor getting stuck on screen or keyboard input problems, which were occasionally resolved by disabling the Steam overlay or running in borderless windowed mode.
- Facial animation quality (weight 0.02): Initially, facial animations were a significant point of criticism, often described as 'laughably bad'. While patches improved them, some players still find them inconsistent or abysmal compared to modern standards.
- Corrupted and slow save issues (weight 0.01): Several players reported issues with corrupted saves and buggy autosave systems. Additionally, save loading times can be excessively long, sometimes making the game appear frozen.
- Fullscreen mode instability (weight 0.01): The game has bugs related to its fullscreen mode, with reports of the game exiting fullscreen randomly, greyscaling the screen, or frequently switching to windowed mode.
- Long and frequent loading screens (weight 0): Players noted that loading screens are frequent and often excessively long, particularly when transitioning in the open world, disrupting the flow of gameplay.

Recommendations:
- Manage expectations vs. original trilogy (weight 0.53): A predominant sentiment is to approach the game as a standalone title, separate from the original Mass Effect trilogy. Players who avoid direct comparisons tend to enjoy it more, acknowledging it doesn't match the trilogy's depth but offers its own merits.
- Good for sci-fi/RPG fans (weight 0.49): The game is recommended for fans of sci-fi, action RPGs, and open-world exploration. If players enjoy these genres and are seeking a new space adventure, they are likely to find enjoyment in Andromeda.
- Controversial and polarizing (weight 0.41): The game elicits strong, divided opinions, with some players highly recommending it and others strongly advising against it. This suggests a highly subjective experience, often depending on individual expectations and tolerance for its perceived flaws.
- Worth trying on sale (weight 0.4): Many players recommend trying the game, especially if purchased at a significant discount (often around $5-$10 or 80-90% off). This suggests the game offers value for its reduced price, despite not being worth full price for many.
- Deserves a sequel (weight 0.38): A significant number of players express a desire for a sequel or additional DLC, indicating that despite its flaws, the game laid a foundation they wished to see continued. This suggests potential for future development if the issues were addressed.
- Enhance experience with mods (weight 0.33): Several reviews suggest that applying mods can significantly improve the gameplay experience, particularly for issues like load times and vehicle controls. This indicates community-driven solutions can mitigate some of the game's shortcomings.
- Focus on main story, skip side quests (weight 0.3): Some players advise focusing primarily on the main story and character relationship quests, recommending against completing all side quests. This implies that the main narrative is more compelling and the side content can be tedious or repetitive.

Other player notes:
- Not like original Mass Effect (weight 0.19): A pervasive sentiment is that Mass Effect: Andromeda fundamentally differs from the original Mass Effect trilogy. This difference, whether in story, characters, or overall feel, led to significant comparison and often disappointment. Many players suggest it should have been marketed as a standalone spin-off or even a different franchise entirely.
- Sequel highly desired, despite initial issues (weight 0.13): Many players express a strong desire for a sequel to Mass Effect: Andromeda, feeling the game had significant untapped potential and unresolved plotlines. They believe a follow-up could have addressed original shortcomings and built upon its unique premise, especially given that many criticisms were related to its launch state and high expectations set by the original trilogy.
- Initial reception was overly negative (weight 0.12): A significant portion of the feedback indicates that the game was 'review bombed' or unfairly maligned at launch due to various factors, including facial animations, bugs, and perceived 'woke content.' Many players now feel that the initial backlash was overblown and that the game, in its current patched state, is much better than its reputation suggests.
- Mediocre but decent game (weight 0.08): Players often describe the game as 'fine,' 'okay,' or 'serviceable,' rather than outright bad, but acknowledge it falls short of being a masterpiece or living up to the standards of the original trilogy. It's often seen as a weaker entry in the Mass Effect series, with a different tone and structure, but still possessing some merit.
- Game frequently on sale (weight 0.02): Many reviewers note that they purchased the game years after release, often at a heavily discounted price. This suggests that the game's value proposition improves significantly when not at full price, making it a more appealing purchase for those willing to give it a chance after its initial troubled launch.
- New galaxy, new beginning (weight 0.02): The game's narrative successfully establishes a fresh start in the Andromeda galaxy, distinct from the Milky Way and the original trilogy's overarching conflict. This new setting allows for exploration and discovery, although some found the main plot less engaging than previous installments.
- Long playtime offered (weight 0.02): Despite mixed reception, the game provides a substantial amount of content, with players reporting over 100 hours of gameplay for completionists. This indicates that there is a lot to explore and do for those who enjoy the core mechanics and world.
- EA app integration required (weight 0.01): The game requires the EA app in addition to Steam, which can be an inconvenience for some players. However, saves from EA's launcher are transferable to the Steam version, and it runs smoothly on platforms like the Steam Deck.
- BioWare's role in development (weight 0.01): There's a mix of appreciation for BioWare's work on the series and criticism for their role in Andromeda's troubled development and perceived decline in quality. Some express concern that the studio has lost its original talent and vision.
- Original trilogy highly praised (weight 0.01): The original Mass Effect trilogy is consistently lauded as a 'god-like,' 'timeless,' and 'epic' work of art, setting an extremely high bar that Andromeda struggled to meet. This strong affection for the predecessors heavily influenced expectations and comparisons.

Emotions:
- Satisfaction (weight 0.23): Players felt satisfied by the game's high overall quality, encompassing enjoyable gameplay, improved graphics, and engaging story and characters. Specific elements like dynamic combat, extensive exploration, compelling side quests, and effective customization systems significantly contributed to this positive sentiment, especially after post-launch patches addressed initial issues.
- Disappointment (weight 0.22): Disappointment stemmed primarily from the game's perceived inferiority to the original Mass Effect trilogy, particularly regarding story depth, character development, and impactful choices. Unfulfilled potential, weak antagonists, and the cancellation of planned DLC and sequels also contributed to this feeling.
- Frustration (weight 0.17): Frustration was mainly caused by numerous technical issues, including frequent crashes, game-breaking bugs (especially save corruption), and problems with launchers like EA App. Additionally, poor design choices such as tedious side missions, repetitive travel animations, clunky UI, and unskippable cutscenes led to significant player annoyance.
- Enjoyment (weight 0.07): Players found enjoyment in the game's core mechanics, particularly the dynamic combat system, engaging exploration of new planets, and overall immersive gameplay. The well-crafted main story, interesting characters, and witty crew interactions further enhanced the fun, with many appreciating the game's improvements over time.
- Excitement (weight 0.05): Excitement was generated by the game's impressive graphics, innovative combat mechanics, and the thrill of exploring a new galaxy within the Mass Effect universe. Players also expressed enthusiasm for the compelling storyline, the potential for future installments, and a desire for more content based on the game's strong foundations.
- Anger (weight 0.02): Anger arose from severe game-breaking bugs that persisted for years, rendering the game unplayable for some. Strong negative reactions were also directed at the game's perceived poor quality in areas like dialogue, animations, and character models, with some reviewers feeling the game betrayed the Mass Effect legacy.
- Boredom (weight 0.02): Boredom was a common sentiment due to the unengaging and repetitive nature of many side missions and open-world activities. Players also found the main story, characters, and exploration uninteresting or dull at times, leading to a lack of motivation to continue playing.
- Annoyance (weight 0.02): Players felt annoyed by specific design flaws, including unskippable animations, long loading screens, and the perceived 'cringey' dialogue and character personalities. Tedious planet travel, repetitive tasks, and the constant interruptions from the in-game AI (SAM) also contributed to this emotion.
- Hope (weight 0.01): Hope was expressed primarily for a sequel to Mass Effect Andromeda, or for future Mass Effect games in general, to build upon the foundations established by the game. Players wished for continued storylines, improved gameplay, and a redemption of the series' reputation.
- Acceptance (weight 0.01): Players expressed acceptance by acknowledging the game's flaws, especially when compared to the original trilogy, but still finding it enjoyable or 'good enough' when viewed as a standalone title. This perspective allowed them to appreciate its merits despite its shortcomings.
- Joy (weight 0.01): Joy was experienced by players who found the game genuinely fun, often after fixes and improvements. Specific causes included engaging companion banter, enjoyable Nomad driving, satisfying combat, and the sheer delight of exploring beautiful planets and compelling storylines.
- Appreciation (weight 0.01): Appreciation was shown for the game's distinct identity, its successful implementation of new gameplay systems like dynamic combat and exploration, and its often stunning visuals. Many reviewers also appreciated the ambition of the developers and the quality of new characters despite initial criticisms.
- Surprise (weight 0.01): Players were surprised by the game's quality often exceeding their low initial expectations, largely influenced by negative reviews or initial launch issues. Many found the gameplay, story, or overall experience to be much better than anticipated after giving the game a chance.
- Regret (weight 0.01): Regret often stemmed from wishing the game's development team had more time to polish the experience or not having purchased the game sooner, especially after patches improved it. Some also regretted participating in the initial negative backlash against the game.
- Love (weight 0.01): Strong emotional connections to the game, its characters (like Ryder and Vetra), and the overall Mass Effect universe led to feelings of love. Players particularly enjoyed the gameplay, story, character dynamics, and romantic options available.
- Nostalgia (weight 0.01): Nostalgia was triggered by returning to the Mass Effect universe and experiencing elements reminiscent of the original trilogy, particularly Mass Effect 1's exploration with the Mako. However, it was also caused by longing for the compelling characters and epic plot of the original series, highlighting a contrast with Andromeda.
- Mixed feelings (weight 0.01): Mixed feelings arose from the game presenting a balance of good ideas against average execution, such as enjoyable gameplay contrasted with a shaky story or stiff combat. Reviewers often found themselves enjoying certain aspects while simultaneously being frustrated by numerous drawbacks.
- Sadness (weight 0): Sadness was felt over the perceived decline or 'tarnishing' of the Mass Effect franchise, particularly due to the game's quality not meeting expectations and the unlikelihood of a sequel. Players expressed a lack of emotional connection to characters and the overall direction of the game.
- Disgust (weight 0): Disgust was primarily directed at the game's overall low quality, particularly its character models, animations, and perceived 'safe, corporate trash' dialogue. The lack of originality and logical flaws in the game world also contributed to this strong negative emotion.
- Relief (weight 0): Players experienced relief when major bugs were fixed, making the game playable, or when lip-sync issues were addressed. Relief also came from successful technical operations like save transfers and from finding enjoyment in the game despite initial negative expectations.}