MEA had a lot of potential but it ended up very disappointing. It's not a bad game, but the missed potential is all over the place. I've seen the "Blandromeda" label thrown around a lot and with good reason.

Spoiler: Grievances
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BW seemed to have a lot of trouble deciding on whether the tone should be hopeful and thoughtful exploration or the high-octane gunplay the series has been known for since ME2. They tried to have it both ways, contriving a war that our (mostly civilian) colonists got thrown into against an enemy that was impossible to reason with so that we wouldn't have any qualms about whipping out our guns all over the place, as well as having a very disproportionate number of the natives and the colonists themselves basically be axe-crazy.

Focusing on the combat itself only served to highlight how lacking it was compared to ME3. The addition of a third dimension had a lot of potential that wasn't realized (the folks who could have jazzed it up having been inhaled by the Anthem team, is my theory anyway), and even a large number of existing aspects were removed. ME3, especially the multiplayer, had such a wide variety of combat styles that didn't make it to MEA at all, such as the N7 classes or tanky builds or even the guns being less weighty and impactful than ever before - and the vast majority of enemy types were just humanoids with a single weapon and/or gun type. The powers and combos felt much less interesting and impactful too, even after they buffed them to keep the casters from hitting like wet noodles on higher difficulties.

If you compare that to ME3's combat/enemies, the difference is striking - bombing drones, rocket-snipers and shotgun hunters, multiple insta-kill mechanics to avoid, multiple giant bruisers that necessitated different tactics like the Brute/Prime/Atlas, and then they added the Collector faction which had cool enemies like Seeker Swarms and Praetorians... in short, a lot more variety than MEA had. Throw in ME3 tactical powers like They had the opportunity to build on all of that and bring in the verticality of the new combat engine, but they didn't.

The other big complaint i had was the roleplay. I could understand them wanting to ditch the Paragon/Renegade alignment system for more of a gray morality, but in its place we got basically nothing. Whether your Ryder was Logical or Emotional or Casual or Professional changed literally nothing about how the story played out nor even how squadmates or most NPCs would treat you. Your "choice" for how each settlement you established in Heleus would structure themselves also made no difference to the narrative.

And speaking of the squadmates, I found most of them dull. The humans were the worst as usual, but Liam and Cora somehow managed to plumb new depths compared to their predecessors (I would have definitely kicked Liam off the ship entirely if the game had let me.) Peebee's premise as the anti-asari asari was an interesting starting point but it never really went anywhere - she was the same character at the end as she was at the beginning. Drack got entertaining lines as all the big tough "team Krogan" archetypes usually do, but lacked Wrex's depth or Grunt's insecurities/unique perspective on his culture, he was just there to introduce the Krogan to a potentially new audience and be a stand-in.

Jaal and Vetra were the standouts though, I found both quite compelling.


Most of the technical issues have been fixed though, so you won't have that getting in your way like us early adopters did.