ShiverinEskimo

Barely 15 minutes in and I was hooked right until the end. Rarely a game that presents so simple, delivers such depth. Just the perfect level of difficulty to punish you for mistiming and mistakes, but not to make you walk away in disgust. The humour throughout is charming too. An absolute gem ****.

Takes a little bit of time to get to grips with it but as usual with many large open-world games, once you put a few hours in you start to feel more comfortable and the game just opens up for you. It's not perfect by any means, the dialogue is cheesy and sometimes cringey but the overall story and the setting is excellent. The combat is satisfying and that rush of taking on a horde never gets old. Highly recommended.

While the initial hours you put into the game are punishing, there is just enough feeling of progression and achievement to get you to the point where it clicks and suddenly the abilities and map progression drive you onward and the addiction sets in. There is zero hand-holding, the punishment for failure can be high and there's a constant feeling that everything in the game is geared against you, but beating the maps and its bosses brings greater amounts of satisfaction and relief because of it. Highly recommended.

Huge fan of the first trilogy which I replayed prior to release to get back in the groove. Probably the worst thing I could have done in hindsight as it only highlighted even more the fall from grace that Bioware have achieved with Andromeda. In the first hour you'll experience the tedium that stays with you for the rest of your experience. The breadcrumb-style fetch quests and total over-reliance on scanning ends up turning everything you do into such a chore to the point where even Ryder themselves makes frequent comments about the fact that 'nothing is ever simple'. When loading times and travel times between zones and planets are this long and you're on stage 4 of a 5 or 6 stage fetch quest between planets you start to get pretty frustrated pretty fast. Navpoint after navpoint for simple, non-consequential quests become infuriating and the rewards for completing these quests are minimal. The main protaganist is as far away from Shepherd as Andromeda is from the Milky Way in terms of being a character you can invest in and relate to. Where a huge part of Shepherd's character was being a champion of a cause that people could rally to, Ryder comes across throughout as a character out of their depth and painfully cringey in certain conversations. Perhaps having the Andromeda Initiative being a corporate-type project means that it loses that sense of authority or duty and ends up feeling like you're playing as an employee of a company you find hard to care about. Having the military theme in the original trilogy representing the species gave a sense of gravity to your actions. Not so in Andromeda. While there are quite a few technical hiccups throughout the game it's not these technical issues that hold the game back. It's a huge, lush canvass that Bioware did a great job in building and decorating but it's the lack of engaging characters, storylines and quests that let the game down. None of the crew of the tempest evoke anything close to what the crew of the Normandy did with ease in the original trilogy and this results in even their personal quests becoming yet another distraction and a further chore on a long list of chores. The enemies you fight aren't nearly varied enough and while there are a few hairy situations thrown at you, overall you'll find a one-fits-all strategy early on and then go through the motions with it throughout. Not having access to your companion's powers in combat only highlights how removed your companions are from the experience. Combat often feels like a lonely affair as a result and the devastating combos you could launch in the original trilogy are underpowered and restricted to your own three powers only. The gun play and cover system is good but the choice to remove control over your companions was a mistake in my opinion as your companions just aren't as valuable to you in combat as they were in the original trilogy. Overall a huge disappointment that failed in the writing room long before the artists and designers got to work. Bugs can be patched but there's nothing they can do about childish writing, hammy dialogue and soul-less breadcrumb quests. Swing and a miss from Bioware.

Great story covering Batman's first acquaintances with many of Gotham's most wanted criminals. WB have picked up where rocksteady have left off and have produced the goods. Plenty to see and do and no shortage of action. Enemy difficulty ramps up as Batman himself levels up which keeps you on your toes. Voice acting and animation as good as ever. The 'more of the same' criticism is perhaps valid but there's also the 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' argument too.

Not sure why this game is getting such negative reviews from the user-base. I think they've improved on every aspect of the first game which was a little clunky and aimless at times. Combat is a lot easier to manipulate and direct with the streamlined interface and overall it feels like you're more in control without having to sacrifice as much of the stop-start mechanics required in the first game to set everyone's actions up one by one. The ally AI is much improved and I find they employ the correct attacks to sync up with mine as my main character to get the best results. Playing as a mage I found all spells to have much better feedback in terms of the effects and damage they can do. The storyline is typical Bioware - they certainly know what they are doing and despite a slow start it settled quickly into the epic game you'd expect with myriads of characters whose lines were personal and meaningful throughout. Very little repetition of common lines across multiple peripheral characters you are used to seeing in other RPGs. 'Hardcore' RPG fans who are slating the game have probably made their mind up before playing it simply because a few of more mainstream reviews have described the streamlining that has taken place and automatically decided it means 'dumbed down' when nothing could be further from the truth. This is by far the most natural-feeling RPG interface on the Xbox360 so far and they make good use of the controller buttons and interface. It also performs extremely well will slow-down only occurring very very briefly in some of the most populated fighting scenarios. I would highly recommend any RPG fan to play it through.